Guild Wars 2

One of the aspects of ranger i enjoy most is how his gameplay rewards good positioning, and especially flanking an oponent. Dazes turning to stuns, 100% bleed chance on shortbow aa, or extra damage.

These opportunities give incentive to play tactically and constantly think how to immobilize your opponent or otherwise bait and trap him into showing his back.

However the problem with the whole setup here, is that in PvE your pet is #1 method to get aggro of you and get yourself an easy flank, while in pvp that’s simply not the case. The pet is promptly kited/ignored, with opponents full focus on not letting you flank him.

I believe that pets just like ranger should meaningful benefits for flanking an opponent, ones that will make him face a difficult decision – do i ignore the pet, or do i ignore the ranger and focus on pet?
For example a weakness application with small icd if pet flanks an opponent, or a cc effect if pets F2 skill lands when opponent’s back or side is to them.

Another issue is pets being lame at catching moving targets, unless it’s a spider or devourer. I think pets should have ability to attack when moving, without any losses to how aften the attack is performed (just send your pet after running golem in hearts of the mists dps grounds to understand what i mean).

Unless the target moves faster then the pet he should get attacked just as often as if he was standing.

To compensate for their greatly increased combat efficiency, their base dps could be nerfed, getting a boost however whenever their target is under movement crippling effects (to reflect easier catching of immobile, or slow prey). The change would not apply to range pets ofc.

The point of the change is to allow pets to land all those on hit effects, such as cat’s vulnerability on base attack or bleeding on regular attack when traited.

Give your feedback on the two ideas:)

Pets should be kitable in my opinion.
But once their attack starts – it should execute as well.

That’s all that needs to be done.

Pets being able to connect with moving targets easier has been discussed HERE. The solution is as simple as increasing the range on most pet melee attacks beyond 130, similar to how birds’ auto attack is 300.

As for having a bonus when flanking a target, the easiest and best solution is to have Hunter’s Tactics minor trait to apply to the pet when they are attacking from flanking positions as well.

That bird solution doesn’t work too well. Just test a bird on immobile golem and then the running one and see how often an attack connets. It ain’t pretty…

As for Hunter’s tactits on pet – if it’s not already happening, it should, but in no way is this a solution to the problem mentioned. Ranger can stun you (movement locked), bleed you like crazy, and on top of that do 10% more raw damage if you don’t watch your back. Pet needs something much more threatening then mere 10% on it’s already not impressive damage to put psychological pressure on opponent and be a considerable threat when not kept in check.

That’s the thing about the range increase, it should work, just not “too well.” As Tragic and as discussed in the linked thread with Sebrent, pet attacks should be avoidable and enemies should be able to kite the damage.

Also, the 10% damage is enough. Adding in an extra condition, cc, or otherwise is unnecessary and come as traits anyways. We currently have traits such as Predator’s Instinct and soon to replace it, Wilting Strike.

Psychological pressure can only go so far and most enemies that face a Ranger are aware of what to look for depending on what pet we bring. Also, yes a Ranger can do those many things that you have listed, it’s because the player is the Ranger, not an AI.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

That bird solution doesn’t work too well. Just test a bird on immobile golem and then the running one and see how often an attack connets. It ain’t pretty…

As for Hunter’s tactits on pet – if it’s not already happening, it should, but in no way is this a solution to the problem mentioned. Ranger can stun you (movement locked), bleed you like crazy, and on top of that do 10% more raw damage if you don’t watch your back. Pet needs something much more threatening then mere 10% on it’s already not impressive damage to put psychological pressure on opponent and be a considerable threat when not kept in check.

Leap Mechanic on Attack animations of pets are the solution. Just copy>paste the Sword’s 3rd attack mechanic and you’re done.
The problem is to avoid copying to world NPCs.

Plus… Don’t you feel that The stacks of bleed, stun and 10% raw damage form ranger is deadly enough? Don’t you want the Mordrem Wolf Tripple damage from behind to our pets as well? Or a kill shot instead of auto-attacks?
You said it yourself. The flanking benefits we have already are deadly. We don’t need any more. Especially for the clunky pet that we can’t position in combat. That idea is clearly pointless and would call for much more needless rage from the community-to have benefits you can’t control or apply.

It’s not that deadly becuase opponent is well aware and watching themselves, while pet is promptly ignored.

I’m not saying pets should have such abilities baseline, more like grandmaster tier even, but if one wishes for it, pets should have such a mechanic. I’m thinking 4s weakness on 10s icd grandmaster beastmaster trait, when pet’s aa hits opponent from the side.

<cough> Wilting Strike <cough>
Why would you want mechanics that are completely uncontrollable and unreliable, when you have like ten times better answers out there already?

I don’t get it.

Ah i did forget the changes – so used to current trait setup. Though the one that makes me happy is beastly warden. that’s the threat/cc i needed.

So there’s no problem then.
All the suggestions for the current (and some for the upcoming) system are kind of pointless since everything’s gonna change.

Probably even the meta. And till we can’t test it in practice yet – speculations are the best we can afford at the moment.

Yeah, my build is gonna get broken hard by the changes, unless they let us choose parts of lines like now and not whole or nothing…