Guild Wars 2

I understand that a rangers damage is below normal due to the fact they have a pet that does some damage as well. What if you gave us an option to where if we stow our pet then our damage is mitigated back to normal like every other class. It would help in dungeons a lot. 80% of the time during a boss fight my pet dies. With this option available I could stow my pet and my damage is boosted to other classes?

Any thoughts?

ItIsFinished.9462:

I understand that a rangers damage is below normal due to the fact they have a pet that does some damage as well. What if you gave us an option to where if we stow our pet then our damage is mitigated back to normal like every other class. It would help in dungeons a lot. 80% of the time during a boss fight my pet dies. With this option available I could stow my pet and my damage is boosted to other classes?

Any thoughts?

I doubt they would make that change, our pet is our unique mechanic and it’s going to stay that way.

I highly doubt they let us get rid of our unique class mechanic. But as I suggested in my suggestion thread I do think we should get a buff when our pet is dead. No other class has their unique mechanic die and become useless after all. Our pet dying is like Necro Death Shroud having 30 min CD or Elementalist attunements 5 min CD.

Yeah I would like to see an option for that, many areas the pet is as dead as a doorstop or a liability.

Give us the choice, and up our damage to boost it accordingly.

Raege.1069:

I highly doubt they let us get rid of our unique class mechanic. But as I suggested in my suggestion thread I do think we should get a buff when our pet is dead. No other class has their unique mechanic die and become useless after all. Our pet dying is like Necro Death Shroud having 30 min CD or Elementalist attunements 5 min CD.

That’s actually not a bad idea for a grandmaster trait or something. 50% damage increase when pet is deceased.

It would be even sweeter if we had a set of utility skills (current pet skills) show up for when our pet is out. Then have a set of utility skills for when our pet is stowed. Skills that benefit the ranger if he was solo.

NaturalPortman.9562:

That’s actually not a bad idea for a grandmaster trait or something. 50% damage increase when pet is deceased.

I think it should be default. Elementalist who doesn’t use their class mechanic (switch their attunements) is bad. So I find it unfair that we rangers are unable to use our mechanic in many situations and there’s nothing we can really do about it because we can’t really stop the pet from dying.

Raege.1069:

NaturalPortman.9562:

That’s actually not a bad idea for a grandmaster trait or something. 50% damage increase when pet is deceased.

I think it should be default. Elementalist who doesn’t use their class mechanic (switch their attunements) is bad. So I find it unfair that we rangers are unable to use our mechanic in many situations and there’s nothing we can really do about it because we can’t really stop the pet from dying.

Pets are pretty tough to kill if you trait into them to be honest. With natural regen and the regen signet, even my birds basically never die.

Everytime this comes up, I can never quite figure out how “My pet dies alot in dungeons” leads to “I should get a buff when it dies” as opposed to “We should make it die less often in dungeons”.

NaturalPortman.9562:

Pets are pretty tough to kill if you trait into them to be honest. With natural regen and the regen signet, even my birds basically never die.

Well, I haven’t really tried a pet focused build as the traits in that tree aren’t to my liking. But it’s not really right for our mechanic to only be working when traited. I raise Ele as an example again as that is what my main was untill I rolled a ranger. An ele doesn’t have to put 30 points in Arcana to have their attunement switches work. Not to mention I doubt Anet intented every ranger to have to trait in pets to make it usefull. Esspecially since they made us rely on them so much damagewise. That is not to say pet’s aren’t usefull. I acctually enjoy mine quite a lot despite it’s flaws, but they aren’t quite where they should be.

Raege.1069:

NaturalPortman.9562:

Pets are pretty tough to kill if you trait into them to be honest. With natural regen and the regen signet, even my birds basically never die.

Well, I haven’t really tried a pet focused build as the traits in that tree aren’t to my liking. But it’s not really right for our mechanic to only be working when traited. I raise Ele as an example again as that is what my main was untill I rolled a ranger. An ele doesn’t have to put 30 points in Arcana to have their attunement switches work. Not to mention I doubt Anet intented every ranger to have to trait in pets to make it usefull. Esspecially since they made us rely on them so much damagewise. That is not to say pet’s aren’t usefull. I acctually enjoy mine quite a lot despite it’s flaws, but they aren’t quite where they should be.

Technically they DO have to trait into attunement swap. Ele is trash without attunement swap boons and the lower cooldown on swaps.

Vox Hollow.2736:

Everytime this comes up, I can never quite figure out how “My pet dies alot in dungeons” leads to “I should get a buff when it dies” as opposed to “We should make it die less often in dungeons”.

Most likely because giving us a new buff is much easier than fixing the AI which they have tried to fix since BWE1. If it was just dungeons they could go and make pets invulnerable to boss damage but they can’t really do that for sPvP and WvW

Vox Hollow.2736:

Everytime this comes up, I can never quite figure out how “My pet dies alot in dungeons” leads to “I should get a buff when it dies” as opposed to “We should make it die less often in dungeons”.

When I run pure power and signet build using Quickening Zephyr my pet never dies. As I utilize pet swapping for bursts. But when I run BM build, tell me how to keep my pet alive during the first boss of TA? I want to keep him alive and not switch him to benefit from the Masters Bond skill. If they made Master Bond carry over on pet swap then that would fix that issue.

NaturalPortman.9562:

Raege.1069:

I highly doubt they let us get rid of our unique class mechanic. But as I suggested in my suggestion thread I do think we should get a buff when our pet is dead. No other class has their unique mechanic die and become useless after all. Our pet dying is like Necro Death Shroud having 30 min CD or Elementalist attunements 5 min CD.

That’s actually not a bad idea for a grandmaster trait or something. 50% damage increase when pet is deceased.

Call it beastmasters rage
Angered by the death of your fallen companion your damage increases by 50% for 20 seconds and you gain stability.

or spirit of the beast
The spirit of your fallen companion infuses you granting 50% increased damage for 20 seconds and clearing all conditions…

Lines should be self explanatory…

NaturalPortman.9562:

Technically they DO have to trait into attunement swap. Ele is trash without attunement swap boons and the lower cooldown on swaps.

Yeah well, elementalist attunements don’t have trouble with moving targets and bad AI either

Ok guys..im BM traited in pve and i can see that sometimes pet die pretty easily but not 80%..Its too much..And i use cats.I think its like 30%,but still is too much since you want your pet to do the dmg.And yes the master bond doesnt make sense..They lower the swap cd by passive trait and then they give the option to not want to swap your pet……..
Meanwhile devs are talking….“Rangers make totally sense,we did a great job.Give that female Drakehounds some underwater changes”

Arrys.7145:

NaturalPortman.9562:

Raege.1069:

I highly doubt they let us get rid of our unique class mechanic. But as I suggested in my suggestion thread I do think we should get a buff when our pet is dead. No other class has their unique mechanic die and become useless after all. Our pet dying is like Necro Death Shroud having 30 min CD or Elementalist attunements 5 min CD.

That’s actually not a bad idea for a grandmaster trait or something. 50% damage increase when pet is deceased.

Call it beastmasters rage
Angered by the death of your fallen companion your damage increases by 50% for 20 seconds and you gain stability.

or spirit of the beast
The spirit of your fallen companion infuses you granting 50% increased damage for 20 seconds and clearing all conditions…

Lines should be self explanatory…

That would be such a sick trait. I wouldn’t feel ripped off playing my current melee only build with this trait.

I mean to say, ‘why don’t people ask developers to help make pets more survivable in the first place’ (how Raege answered it), not ‘why don’t people ask other people how to survive better’.

Not that I’ve got anything against the latter.
And, actually, I can dole out some advice on that boss in particular.
That vine boss loves to spit at what’s farther from them. Try and get your pet in melee range and, if you can, not stacked on top of another player. (Even if you have to return your pet, run around to another ‘side’ of the boss, and send it to attack from that angle). If you feel like going the extra mile and helping out your group as a whole, if you’ve got some mad kiting skills or feel like being the mole in a game of whack-a-mole on that ledge thingy to the left, you can use yourself as bait.

Pets do die a lot in WvW, not so much in PvE, and they are hard to maintain when there is a lot going on around you. Last night playing WvW I kept on having to stop doing what I was doing to call my pet back because he would insist, let me repeat that, he would INSIST CONSTANTLY, into running towards ALL of the area effects in front of him. It really sucks that 40% of my damage want’s to kill itself and leave me defenseless. Yea, I think until they fix all the issues with pets, they need to introduce something like this to help.

Akisame.9508:

Pets do die a lot in WvW, not so much in PvE, and they are hard to maintain when there is a lot going on around you. Last night playing WvW I kept on having to stop doing what I was doing to call my pet back because he would insist, let me repeat that, he would INSIST CONSTANTLY, into running towards ALL of the area effects in front of him. It really sucks that 40% of my damage want’s to kill itself and leave me defenseless. Yea, I think until they fix all the issues with pets, they need to introduce something like this to help.

In WvW, I usually have my pet on passive so he wont zerg of to the AoEs, and only order him to attack if I need to keep someone from ressing themselves or there’s a target I know I’ll be attacking for a while. I don’t think they can really make pet’s work better in large scale WvW, which is why I think rangers should get buffed when the pet is dead.

It’s a pretty safe generalization to say this is not so much an issue in regular PvE as it is in dungeons, PvP, and W3. Unfortunately, those are the areas we need pet dps/skills the most. I mean, regular zones aren’t that difficult to manage with your pet always in passive mode, with the possible exception of Orr.

Raege has a valid point in all this, which is really the root of the problem. Our class mechanic fails us not just because it is unavailable to us for large portions of time, but also because we’re not on par with other classes anyway. An Ele won’t be as efficient without attunement swapping, but their dmg is still high. A War won’t have that burst damage available without using his adrenaline skill, but he still hits hard. A Necro can’t be tanky without shroud, but he can still lay down killer conditions. A Thief…well I don’t know if thieves use steal really.

And yeah you can shunt points into the BM line to beef up your pet, but then it’s really hard to trait both ranged and melee weapon skills. The axe/torch combo has been reported to be a nice niche build for mid-range attacks, but can anyone really run a bow/sword build and have 15 or 20 points into BM and not be a pushover?

To me it seems like this: a ranger with his pet alive is only ever nominally on par with other classes that don’t use their burst skills or special class abilities. If the pet is dead we are not like a War who won’t use his burst bar, we are like a war who uses white weapons. Or maybe blue ones.