Guild Wars 2

So… I think we all agree the pet’s mechanics are still a nightmare at the Sword AA level: You can make it work sometimes if you cope with the weird mechanics.

I’m sure there has being a lot of threads asking and giving opinions on how the pets could be improved to be an actual ally and not an long range one use hammer you throw at your enemy face, but it is always good to remember that we have our profession mechanic so badly implemented and developed so it’s a reminder we need some rework in that area.

Right now, thanks to bits and pieces we have being collecting from Aney we know that:

• The engine can not differentiate different kind of damage sources. It doesn’t know if its melee attack or a ranged AoE because the engine read everything as an AoE.
• The engine can know however when the pet is actively targeted.
• The pathing system for the pets is simply wrong, pets don’t hit moving target because the pathing engine first locate an spot to use to launch the attack that doesn’t need to be the most close one, making the pet moving pass the target to hit it in other position.
• Pets have very long cast animations that make them very unreliable to hit fast moving targets.

What we have now:

• Pets do an ok damage when traited with BM.
• Pets move an adequate speed when traited with BM.
• Pets survivability is still none when it comes to fight group of players:
  > It likes to soak in random AoE damage when it’s in passive.
  > It does not try to avoid AoE areas when is sent to another location.
• Pets do not hit reliably moving targets and almost no hit when it comes to targets affected by swiftness or fast moving target.

My suggestions:

• Pets get the increased attribute + speed from BM by baseline. We already know the pets are more reliable with those and the BM trait line should be there to potentiate the use of the pet, not to make them usable. This increase will make them to reach the target location.

• From Smokescale we learnt that to hit reliably the pet need to shadowstep to the target, so it doesn’t need to circle around it to get to the perfect spot to hit. I don’t think Aney is in position to fix the pathing engine right now, so to fix this:
  > Melee pets get an small shadowstep to the target in basic attack so it can get in the right spot fast enough. I couldn’t say number but maybe 300 or so? Just to jump from the last stage to the correct point the pathing engine decided it’s the one.
• Reduce the cast delays/animations in all pets. Canines should hit every 1/4 second, i could take to hit every 1/2 second, but right know it’s about once a second. That’s friking slow.

• To make pets survivability increase 4 changes:
  > The leash of all pets in passive, not attacking should be at the ranger’s feet. 130 max not 600 like now. If we move our pet follow us at the spot. So if i evade an AoE my pet is with me and doesn’t soak in random damage.
  > The damage mitigation has proven right in PVE. I suggest a damage mitigation of 50% in WvW/PvP when the pet is not targeted. This could affect also conditions 50% reduction in condition damage because most AoE is condition based.
  > To balance condition damage mitigation conditions applied to the pet if not being targeted will be increased by 50%. The point of this is for you have time to cleanse the pet in case it decided to run like a crazy stag inside an area full of AoE, but if you don’t care the pet will suffer the full damage. Just longer over time.
  > The exception to this rule is any Control condition. Chill, fear, launch, sink and anything will do full damage/duration even if the pet has not being actively targeted. (chill and fear can deal damage with the necro). The point is to make the pet susceptible to CC in case that is needed.

For this to work the ranger need an small change in the HUD that is:

• Show current conditions affecting the pet.
• Show total damage pet tick the pet is affected by those conditions.

That will allow us to know when to call back the pet and to have more control about it without changing to much the mechanics behind.

Any more suggestions?

• Consumables also apply to the pet.
• Tweak attribute ratios on pet families and a select few specific pets for greater competition in certain roles.
• Lower pet cooldowns slightly on the old pets or have BM reduce pet skill cooldowns by 33% instead of by 20%.
• Give pets base Ferocity and Healing Power (150, 300, 450, specifically) like how they did with Condition Damage to make some pets have a clearer focus.
• Keybinds for “Attack My Target” and “Return to Me” and F1 & F3 to be replaced with the other 2 pet skills (besides the auto-attack).

Making all pets shadow shadow step is a gimmick/handicap.
What melee player could possibly run around spamming 1 and always hit? There is some responsibility on the ranger to movement impair the target and even to speed increase the pet as that’s exactly how a player gets melee attacks to land.

Now obviously pet melee attacks could be improved, but shadow steps is hardly the right direction. The enemy needs to be able to juke a pet by simple movement or any “100% pet never fails to hit” buff is going to be ranger “super passive dmg” buff. That takes away ranger skill and puts it in the category of camping longbow pushing 1-2.

anduriell.6280:

My suggestions:

• Pets get the increased attribute + speed from BM by baseline. We already know the pets are more reliable with those and the BM trait line should be there to potentiate the use of the pet, not to make them usable. This increase will make them to reach the target location.

Agreed. Maybe allow some more stat sharing between you and your pet on some traits (“x% of your toughness is added to your pet’s base defenses” and such)

• From Smokescale we learnt that to hit reliably the pet need to shadowstep to the target, so it doesn’t need to circle around it to get to the perfect spot to hit. I don’t think Aney is in position to fix the pathing engine right now, so to fix this:
  > Melee pets get an small shadowstep to the target in basic attack so it can get in the right spot fast enough. I couldn’t say number but maybe 300 or so? Just to jump from the last stage to the correct point the pathing engine decided it’s the one.

Largely disagree. Shadowstepping is unique to the Smokescale and should be kept that way. That would also remove any counterplay from another class deciding to target/interrupt a melee pet approaching them to CC/use an ability before they can make contact.

• Reduce the cast delays/animations in all pets. Canines should hit every 1/4 second, i could take to hit every 1/2 second, but right know it’s about once a second. That’s friking slow.

Agree. Canines and many others need some love – if not for attack speed, allow them to be more focused on knockdowns, interrupts, and general disruptive attacks.

• To make pets survivability increase 4 changes:
  > The leash of all pets in passive, not attacking should be at the ranger’s feet. 130 max not 600 like now. If we move our pet follow us at the spot. So if i evade an AoE my pet is with me and doesn’t soak in random damage.

I like this. I always felt that our pets would sit a little too far from us on many occasions, even when passive.

> The damage mitigation has proven right in PVE. I suggest a damage mitigation of 50% in WvW/PvP when the pet is not targeted. This could affect also conditions 50% reduction in condition damage because most AoE is condition based.
> To balance condition damage mitigation conditions applied to the pet if not being targeted will be increased by 50%. The point of this is for you have time to cleanse the pet in case it decided to run like a crazy stag inside an area full of AoE, but if you don’t care the pet will suffer the full damage. Just longer over time.

> The exception to this rule is any Control condition. Chill, fear, launch, sink and anything will do full damage/duration even if the pet has not being actively targeted. (chill and fear can deal damage with the necro). The point is to make the pet susceptible to CC in case that is needed.

I think a straight up 25% damage/condition damage (but not duration) reduction would be fine. Enough to keep them alive and react to cleave/AoE, but not make them too durable to it. Alternatively, maybe make the F3 skill reduce the damage they take as they return to their master (possibly adding a small cooldown)

For this to work the ranger need an small change in the HUD that is:

• Show current conditions affecting the pet.
• Show total damage pet tick the pet is affected by those conditions.

We definitely should have had this.

Aside from Wonderouswall’s suggstions, I think many pets should have a combo field finisher type. On top of having the ability to slot in what F2 skill they have, being able to have on demand additional finishers for certain fields would tie in ranger-companion gameplay a lot.

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Euthymias.7984:

Largely disagree. Shadowstepping is unique to the Smokescale and should be kept that way. That would also remove any counterplay from another class deciding to target/interrupt a melee pet approaching them to CC/use an ability before they can make contact.

I’m sorry i explained myself poorly.
The idea of the blink application is not for the pet to do a melee attack from distance, is a dirty fix for the faulty pathing algorithm.

Example:
You send a pet to attack a target. The pet arrives to melee range of the target but instead straight begin the attack y goes around of such a target to attack from other position.
I’ve seen this happening a lot of times, next time i’ll try to illustrate with a video.

The problem is the pathing algorithm instead taking the shortest way to hit it seems it doesn’t take on account that the pet should be able to go over small irregularities, small bumps unnoticeable for us but not the engine. The the engine decides the shortest is to go around the target.

You can see this happening a lot with cats. They go straight for the target just to go pass it to hit it from other position instead the shortest way.

The shadowstep (or better described a blink) is just to solve that issue. When i mean 300 could be even less, just as soon as the pet is in melee range, so it should begin the attack so blink to arrive to the right spot to begin. This is the biggest issue with moving targets.

I’ll try to do a youtube video to illustrate this behavior, it’s not clearly seen every time but it is there, and that together with the slow casts make the vanilla pet so frustrating and disappointing when they are attacking.