This rework adresses “Sic’ Em!” and “Protect me!”.
both skills lose their original cooldown and effects
“Sic’ Em!” now adds an Attack of Oppotunity to your pet (50% increased dmg) and adds Reveal.
“Protect me!” creates a bond between you and your pet that makes the pet take 25% of the dmg that you would take over the next 5 seconds.
these effects can be discussed/changed/will need a lot of balance but they are just the preparation for what comes next
The new cooldown of these two shouts is synced to the #2 and #3 passive ability of your active pet. If you swap your pet both will reset their cooldowns instantly. They now trigger your pets skill #2 (“Sic’ Em!”) and #3 (“Protect me!”).
Examples:
If your active pet is smokescale “Sic’ Em!” will now trigger “Takedown” and “Protect me!” will trigger “Smoke Cloud”.
If your active pet is raven “Sic’ Em!” will now trigger “Swoop” and “Protect me!” will trigger the “Quickening Screech”.
Notes:
for some pets #3 and #4 should be swapped, for example it makes more sence to sync the moa heal (“Harmonic Cry”) with “Protect me!” instead of “Sic’ Em!”.
once you run any of these two shouts your pet will stop using the associated skill passively since it becomes controllable, for example if you run “Sic’ Em!” your smokescale will no longer knockdown enemies unless you use the shout.
some traits might need some slight changes to work with the new system
Disclaimer:
The idea is not perfect. But you get the point. I am not saying it has to be like that exactly. Any improving suggestions you have are welcome.
Interesting idea, but i’m afraid, this wont happen.
It won’t. We already had like a dozen of amazing ideas how to fix every single issue with pets. This idea will kindly join all of them and remain seated.
I don’t like this idea at all you are overthinking it in my opinion, just give us the ability to use all of our pets abilities manually instead in a similar way we do for our weapons 1 we can pick to “autofire” and the others can be hit manually.
I don’t like this idea at all you are overthinking it in my opinion, just give us the ability to use all of our pets abilities manually instead in a similar way we do for our weapons 1 we can pick to “autofire” and the others can be hit manually.
The thing is that they wont give ranger like 7 f-keys (we have 5 right now on druid and there are 2 pet skills we cannot control yet). Actually I hardly believe they will ever make more than one ability controllable on core ranger (it might happen on a new elite spec) because that is part of their design decision for ranger. They don’t want to overwhelm new players too much and there are supposed to be “go to” profession for bad players.
So no, it wont happen that way. My suggestion makes the whole thing opitional. You would have to pick one or both these shouts to control the other abilities and you can just chose not to pick them to keep your pet automatic. If anything they will make it happen in this way (or something similiar) in my opinion.
Ranger shouts are already supposed to “command” the pet. I find this a very fitting idea that also solves a lot of complaints.
The thing is that they wont give ranger like 7 f-keys (we have 5 right now on druid and there are 2 pet skills we cannot control yet). Actually I hardly believe they will ever make more than one ability controllable on core ranger (it might happen on a new elite spec) because that is part of their design decision for ranger. They don’t want to overwhelm new players too much and there are supposed to be “go to” profession for bad players.
Ahum… Overwhelm them with what? With having useful abilities instead of bad-designed control? Much could be improved if they simply took some of the suggestions from forums and implemented them.
It doesn’t make the game any harder if you can control your pet with 2 buttons and have other 2 for it’s abilities, instead of controlling it with 3 buttons and having 1 controllable ability and being forced to use 2nd ability with the mentioned 3 control keys. Current form is 10 times more difficult to control than the proposed.
Also, I believed Warrior was the go-to profession for bad players, was it not? Successful, yet easy. There’s no real complex rotation or awareness you need.
We need more control over pets, that is unanimous.
As for shouts, I don’t want to tie them to pets as I dislike that we have to blow our utilities already to be useful (looking at you WK!).
I would LOVE for our shouts to go the way of WHaO and SoTP. Great synergy with the pet and great utility.
Sic Em’ is decent, if they would fix the issue with canceling after command. Might be nice to have it AOE reveal at pet location if you have nothing targeted.
Protect Me…needs a rework. Maybe something else, like for the duration your pet converts conditions or something?
Search and Rescue…not sure on this, as it doesn’t have a lot of practical use. Perhaps if it was to be AOE speeding of res…that might help. So everyone gets the search and rescue effort, not just the pet (maybe something like +33% faster res speed?).
You would basically be forced to pick shouts to make your pet meet new standards.
But i would support other type of idea, which would be empowering defined pet skills on their next shout use. I could see that happen with new beast mastery trait or something.
Example:
merge Natural Healing + Wilting Strike
Move honed axe on Natural Healing place
Create new Trait: Empowered creature: healing and utility shouts empower next pet attack/abilities, elite shout empowers 3 next pet attacks/abilities.
But since this topic is touch also about reworking pet control this suggestion is looking promising:
Except for the toggle skill, i don’t know how to perfectly solve this problem, but i could see ranger with 5 skills instead of 4, as it is shown under IDEA1. http://prntscr.com/8yrijg
Attachments:
Wish I could get back to GW1.. PvP-GvG. It feels like we are outcasted, not desired or rewarded..
@Gote
There were several amazing suggestions for complete shout rework.
Since we already have Signet of Stone, protect me would be understandable:
Protect Me: Your Pet aggressively taunts enemies that hit you for 2 seconds (3 sec ICD). 60 second cooldown. (stun- breaker) Search & Rescue: Your Pet pulls nearby downed ally to you and start reviving him. 60 second cooldown. Guard: Your Pet aggressively defends an area and will blink to the 1st enemy that enters the guarded area applying condition(s) briefly (root/cripple/slow/vulnerability/weakness – any of those). 15 sec CD. Sick’Em: Your pet gains 40% bonus damage, reveals the target and will stick to the target for 6 seconds (similar to Shadow Assault but can be damaged or hard-CCed)
Heal as One and Strength of the Pack are fine. They weren’t designed as shouts in the 1st place.
Those changes are in my opinion well thought over. Really go with the Ranger and Beast Mastery archetype and offer benefits those a Ranger should have.
Oh, also, there was a non-remake suggestion for Protect Me by Heimskarl (combined with others). Adding Retaliation to both Ranger and the Pet to punish enemies who attack you.
It is an idea how to address some of the issues. But I agree with Fire on this. It would literally force players into shouts which I find user-unfriendly.
But if that idea goes by – it is a partial solution. Maybe too complicated to work around cooldowns and pet synergy, but bearable.
You would basically be forced to pick shouts to make your pet meet new standards.
But i would support other type of idea, which would be empowering defined pet skills on their next shout use. I could see that happen with new beast mastery trait or something.
Example:
merge Natural Healing + Wilting Strike
Move honed axe on Natural Healing place
Create new Trait: Empowered creature: healing and utility shouts empower next pet attack/abilities, elite shout empowers 3 next pet attacks/abilities.
But since this topic is touch also about reworking pet control this suggestion is looking promising:
Except for the toggle skill, i don’t know how to perfectly solve this problem, but i could see ranger with 5 skills instead of 4, as it is shown under IDEA1. http://prntscr.com/8yrijg
That idea will allow us to control two skills (and put druid at 6 f-keys) but soon again some people would also like to be able to control the other (last) pet skill on certain pets. And we start again. I seriously think a tradeoff is neccessary and running one of these shouts if you want a specific pet skill (which can be very strong if we think about all the cc) seems fine.
I don’t think it would force shouts. Look at it as giving us like 8 (how many pet families are there again?) new utility skills for each of both shouts. Sure, it is a tradeoff and utility slots are precious but it doesn’t force you to run shouts at all – only if you think a certain pet skill will be better if actively controlled than an additional utility skill.
