Guild Wars 2

Eggyokeo.9705:

Have you tried cc’ing the Gollum

I did, but it earned me the title “Troll,” so I decided to retreat to my dark cave instead of continuing to alienate my fellow Bearbows rangers.

Pets Require Active Gameplay

If we can press one button (pet target foe—maybe 0 buttons if auto aggression is on) and deal constant damage, everyone would rightly say Ranger is a beginner class where the AI does all the work.

Edit: For those that don’t care to watch, the Lynx deals 7933 direct damage and about 7500 bleed damage in around 10s, by simply having the ranger press 3 buttons to apply some softish cc. That’s about 15,500 total damage in 10s. If the dev’s increase the passive damage pets do, they’ll have to decrease the active. I don’t want this.

Archon.6480:

Eggyokeo.9705:

Have you tried cc’ing the Gollum

I did, but it earned me the title “Troll,” so I decided to retreat to my dark cave instead of continuing to alienate my fellow Bearbows rangers.

Pets Require Active Gameplay

If we can press one button (pet target foe—maybe 0 buttons if auto aggression is on) and deal constant damage, everyone would rightly say Ranger is a beginner class where the AI does all the work.

We are an AI-reliant class. There is no alternative for Rangers; we are the pet class. Much of our utility and damage is bound up in the pet. At the very least, we can have a competent pet AI that does not hinder the player. In PvP and WvW, non-Rangers should see both the pet and the Ranger as a threat, and not be able to ignore the Ranger class mechanic completely by simply… walking.

We are also not the only class with pets. Mesmers, Necromancers, Elementalists, Engineers, and Guardians all have summonable minions. However, the pet is merely a bonus on top of other classes’ mechanics, whereas the pet IS the Ranger’s mechanic. Quite frankly, I don’t care about what other players say about Rangers, nor do I care if Ranger is considered a beginner class. That is no excuse to make the Ranger’s pet sub-par compared to other class mechanics.

Good Ranger players should be rewarded by skillful play, just as other classes should be (in fact, Mesmers—another “pet” class, are considered among the most rewarding at high skill levels. They also do not need to CC a target for their clones and phantasms to hit). Requiring micromanagement of an otherwise useless pet in order for it to perform its most basic functions is far from rewarding, skillful play.

Archon.6480:

Eggyokeo.9705:

Have you tried cc’ing the Gollum

I did, but it earned me the title “Troll,” so I decided to retreat to my dark cave instead of continuing to alienate my fellow Bearbows rangers.

You do realize that the entire point of a minion is so you can deal damage without actually attacking the person right?

There is no purpose to a pet that needs you to keep the enemy under near perma CC to make it work properly when the combined damage of the pet and player is only equal to that of other classes.

If we’re meant to just constantly attack the opponent in tandem to be viable then why is the pet even there?

What functional purpose does it serve over simply getting rid of it and buffing our damage while making F1-4 the pet skills that originate from the ranger itself?

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Star Ace.5207:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Star Ace.5207:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Star Ace.5207:

OGDeadHead.8326:

ZombieLeach.5862:

(I’m kidding by the way. Seriously needs to be fixed or seriously downplayed as a mechanic though.)

Well, considering how things works around these parts, that would most likely mean:

• Ranger pets gets their damage nerfed by 50%
• Ranger damage buffed by 3%

Also, there are lots of pve rangers running around with the pet they think look nice, and couldn’t care less about their efficiency. Many never changes pet, because they are roleplaying.

Why would that be wrong, IF RP was the reason? Though I am sure many RPers don’t do this to “validate” RP; one needs not stick to one pet as a roleplayer. If they like their pets regardless efficiency, it’s none of your business, quite frankly-this thread only concerns players that care about numbers, which is likely not that many of them. In short, that shot against RPers was uncalled for and irrelevant towards this particular discussion.

He never took a “shot” at RPers.

The “many never change pets” comment is an insult to the roleplayer’s intelligence-not to mention it shouldn’t matter to him or anyone who cares about efficicency what a roleplayer chooses to do, making the comment irrelevant to the discussion.

It’s not an insult, its an observation. And an accurate one at that. If you take it as an insult, its because you yourself personally do this and you think it is wrong yourself. Not that it is, I mean in PvE I camp Jaguar and Jungle Stalker because they look cool, deal mad damage and have good F2 skills. Not ashamed to say it, I don’t find that comment insulting.

It wasn’t an insult, please stop being overly sensitive.

You telling me I am being overly sensitive is an insult as well.

There’s nothing “wrong” with taking this or that pet, especially from a RP stance. Discuss efficiency when it matters. RP has no bearing on this issue, nor should it be mentioned. It’s not a factual “observation” by any means.

The point stands, and let’s just agree to disagree.

No, that is not an insult either. An insult is to speak to or treat with disrespect or scornful abuse. Asking someone to stop being overly sensitive when they are creating drama, in their own mind, where none exists, is neither disrespectful nor abusive. Only someone that is being overly sensitive would think that it was.

My point is that he was not being insulting either. Just because you feel that it was, doesn’t mean it is, its just your incorrect interpretation of what he said.

It is a factual observation, shall we make a poll to see how many Rangers notice other Rangers that always use the same pets? Want to make a wager that the Brown Bear is the most popular pet? Why?

You are correct though, from an RP stance, there is nothing wrong with taking whatever pet you like. Let’s be honest, it really does not matter what pet you use for open world if you are RPing because mobs die before the pet even gets there half the time. Where it does matter, is if someone decides to do group content, then they should at least attempt to be as efficient as they can, for the sake of the other members of the group.

Where this runs into issue is RPing Rangers that are using a Brown Bear on aggressive and camping LB go into group content, never say a word and are generally just bad. Hence this game’s massive Ranger hate.

Was an insult, but that’s enough of that, as we’ll never agree (no reason to even mentioning RPers to make his point).

You may be a roleplayer, but stating what pet roleplayers “like” to use without switching it “ever” is not really an argument. Rangers may use pigs, ravens, jungle stalkers, murellows, reef drakes and whatnot as favored pets. I even doubt these “RPers” you seem to disdain for giving the Ranger a “bad name” are actually roleplayers, and more randoms who are used to Ranger archers with bears from other games.

I can’t factually prove that to be true for all “bearbow” players, but so can’t you, so why ascribe that behavior universally to RPers? If that doesn’t sound belittling, you are just biased in your point of view-and I mean no offense, but just hoping you can envision how supposedly “bad playing” must be a roleplayer’s thing sounds terrible.

I feel bad for brown bears, for even mechanically it IS a good pet. But D&D Rangers (to cite a common RPG system) are not supposed to tame bears exclusively, much like many players strangely think that Rangers are named as such because of ranged weapons. :P I personally favor the Greatsword “Aragon” melee type, if anything. What’s funny is that I’ve rarely used the great old bear over 3 years, and that has nothing to do with group meta considerations-according to you-or at least so it seems-I am supposed to “camp” with a longbow and my hearty Brown Bear.

In short, roleplaying =/= bad pet management/Ranger play.

Archon.6480:

Eggyokeo.9705:

Have you tried cc’ing the Gollum

I did, but it earned me the title “Troll,” so I decided to retreat to my dark cave instead of continuing to alienate my fellow Bearbows rangers.

Pets Require Active Gameplay

If we can press one button (pet target foe—maybe 0 buttons if auto aggression is on) and deal constant damage, everyone would rightly say Ranger is a beginner class where the AI does all the work.

Edit: For those that don’t care to watch, the Lynx deals 7933 direct damage and about 7500 bleed damage in around 10s, by simply having the ranger press 3 buttons to apply some softish cc. That’s about 15,500 total damage in 10s. If the dev’s increase the passive damage pets do, they’ll have to decrease the active. I don’t want this.

Now, do the same test against a human player who can literally just run backwards and forwards for 3s at a time and by the time the pet catches up and tries to hit, the player is already behind it again. Or a player who had -% movement impeding condition durations (majority) or has good condi clears. Or have movement skills which totally ignore soft CC. Or mere speed buffs.

Your test proves nothing against a golem. When it is applied to the real world in PvP, it does not work as good as that because players are far less predictable and have many other skills to negate it totally. Plus, they have eyes and can see the pet so as to avoid it.

The test without soft CC against the golem does show that pets are pathetic because if they cannot even reliably hit something with a set path which doubles back on itself, no speed boosts, movement skills, teleports etc, then they have no chance against a player which has all of the advantages.

Archon.6480:

Eggyokeo.9705:

Have you tried cc’ing the Gollum

I did, but it earned me the title “Troll,” so I decided to retreat to my dark cave instead of continuing to alienate my fellow Bearbows rangers.

Pets Require Active Gameplay

If we can press one button (pet target foe—maybe 0 buttons if auto aggression is on) and deal constant damage, everyone would rightly say Ranger is a beginner class where the AI does all the work.

Edit: For those that don’t care to watch, the Lynx deals 7933 direct damage and about 7500 bleed damage in around 10s, by simply having the ranger press 3 buttons to apply some softish cc. That’s about 15,500 total damage in 10s. If the dev’s increase the passive damage pets do, they’ll have to decrease the active. I don’t want this.

Felines are the most reliable pets we have, try doing that with a wyvern…

Watching this Wyvern trying to kill the moving target is a pain, I really feel sorry. I will definitely swap it for my good ol’ jaguar. The bristleback looks good though.

Also, as a PvE player enemies usually don’t move that much, so it’s a not as much of a problem.

Well if there was a better mundane archer class, most of us would be playing it. Pet mechanic is a failure, and it is one of the prime problems rangers have in pvp and wvw. And they are a solid (not only) reason why rangers are not considered “enough” in competitive pvp.

alain.1659:

Well if there was a better mundane archer class, most of us would be playing it…

Well, there is always DH, now…

Firelysm.4967:

In my previous testing pets were tested how fast they kill Heavy golem with or without F2 skills and i did share ONLY the best result. Since a lot of you requested a test on moving target, i’ve ran some tests. I did pick only the best pets of its genre! On first and 2nd test i was running with beast mastery, so pets are quick!

I’ve found out shocking news, and by watching what our pets do, how they attack I was shocked that i’ve never took a moment and see how bad our pet state is IT IS ABSOLUTELY SHOCKING, developers, i know you read this, and take a good look into this stats and videos:

Because some fights were so frustrating, i limited them on 5 rounds:
PET DATA IN IMAGE: http://prntscr.com/8wx9p8

Let me stress out that no matter if pet is UTILITY or DPS oriented, there should be no pet that takes longer then 40-45 seconds to kill an enemy without resisting. This topic will also show why do we need 2 active skills as default mechanic.

—————————————-Bristleback:—————————————

• F2 very bad skill, if pet is not LITERALLY in same height and slightest object will make shots obstructed, pet will 100% miss all shots. Video to cover the problem of 100% miss if target is not on same height https://youtu.be/ZJ6GNlokc20
• Good aiming of auto attacks
• If obstructed by object, pet will go in melee range, position on the back of the enemy, and start attacking. WHAT Q_Q?
• If obstructed by terrain they wont move or do anything, they will keep attacking the ground causing obstructed.
• This pet has decent ranged behaviour, but due to problems with F2 and obstruction problem, this pet is very unreliable outside of flat areas. Totally useless in pve if you don’t carefully position your pet, but even then if enemy moves, you’ll make 0 dmg.

—————————————-Fire wyvern:—————————————

• F2 casted on current pet position makes it fail to hit target. F2 is to slow, takes to long to perform, and stays for to short duration.
• 95% Auto attack miss, to long hit animations and chains.
• Wing buffet(knockback wing blow) takes to long to cast, it doest tract the target. In my opinion Wyvern should tract target until first wing swing.
• PATH FINDING CATASTROPHE
• https://youtu.be/oIQZb-iuLmk

———————————-Electric wyvern:———————————

• F2 does miss a lot even on targets that are not moving, simple if pet is facing other way, it will miss a lot, and if the area is not strictly flat, it will bullscharge the ground.
• Same as fire wyvern, 95% Auto attack miss, to long hit animations and chains.
• Wing buffet(knockback wing blow) takes to long to cast, it doest tract the target. In my opinion Wyvern should tract target until first wing swing.
• PATH FINDING CATASTROPHE
• https://youtu.be/PvMfYAlYga4

————-Siamoth [Representing all porcine: pig, warthog, boar]———-

• F2 places item, nothing to say about it except, why can enemy pick it up, while elementalists can share weapons only between ally and not enemy?
• Brutal charge, misses way to much, cast + path + hit in line? 99% miss, another good argument why we need 2nd active skill, pets cannot control this kind of things efficently.
• Auto attacks are fine
• PATH FINDING CATASTROPHE
• https://youtu.be/3Z63q0-5d0M

———-White Raven [Representing all birds: eagle, hawk, raven, owl]——-

• F2 is pretty accurate and responsive can’t add much to that.
• Problem with Quickening Screech[speed buff] is that they force themselves to go in range with enemy, they chase for a while, and then perform speed buff, then chase again, AND then attack. Which is kind of pointless. This changes needs to be done before Esports..
• As video shows toooo much dancing around enemy without doing any damage, flying around in number 8 making them waste time with performing very long animation.
• PATH FINDING CATASTROPHE, due to “PER 1 sec TICK” path finding, this doesnt look that bad on bird, but it really is crucial, because bird attack animations take so long to perform, it makes path tracing almost fluent, but it’s not.
• https://youtu.be/YPaiPU7HOd8

———Jaguar [Representing cats Jaguar, Jungle Stalker, Snow Leopard, Lynx, Tiger]

• This is one of the best designed pets, and this is how pets should be: accurate, sticky, big enough attack range for close range melee attacks.
• F2 all pets quite accurate love it
• auto attacking is amazingly accurate, this is how all pets should be!
• Look how cats change direction when they perform attack on the end of the cast, making them good at what they do.
• PATH still crucial, but since cats are accurate with auto attacks, it’s not that crucial, but still.
• https://youtu.be/VowZ8NAuXYc

---

ALSO pointless things i’ve noticed during the tests:

• Ranged pets, if they hit obstructed auto attack, they will go in melee range, position behind enemy, and start performing ranged auto attack.
• Pets often interrupt themselves by chasing for 10-15 seconds to get in melee range, and then perform utility skill, etc birds cast speed, smokescale casts smoke field and tons of others.
• Pet F2 or actives, leaps, wyvern buffet or F2 skills, siamoth charge etc.. should attack player location on the end of the cast. What now happens is, we press skill, they store location, start performing attack, player long gone left that position, they charge that area and miss 100%. How we need to change it? Press skill, they perform attack, after full cast is done, get player location, charge that area!
• Path finding is literally checking every tick.. every 1 second checks for the location of tracking location, this makes tracking very inaccurate and you can see it in videos by dragons, why this is crucial way of pet AI not in pair with AI 2015.

f2, after three years of tickets and more postings than any can count, still does not work.

After all this, after waiting and waiting for all pets, mechanics and pets to be fixed, nope, nerf, nerf and nerf again until we are useless in WvW and PvP.

Now we the staff #1 skill not working as intended – it’s supposed to hit THREE foes – it hits only one single foe… making our one skill totally useless in a crowd where we might actually do some good.

Oh well, here we go again…

Star Ace.5207:

Was an insult, but that’s enough of that, as we’ll never agree (no reason to even mentioning RPers to make his point).

Oh I’ve totally missed this.

Anyway I’m a RPer myself, on occasion in GW2 but mostly the classic pen & paper versions.

I’m sorry if you, or anyone else, took it as an insult – that was not my intention at all, and was not the point I tried to make. This marks the end of the discussion about that for me.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

alain.1659:

Well if there was a better mundane archer class, most of us would be playing it…

Well, there is always DH, now…

“Mundane” is the key word. DH is a class that pukes arrow shaped white sticky good magic

I swear every time this conversation comes up, someone says “get rid of the pet”.

You always had warrior and now you have DH an elite spec that specializes in the bow, no pet. Go play that.

It wouldn’t take too much to fix the pet, there are many fine suggestions in this thread that would make pets more reliable without making rangers an OP AI class.

Changing the range at which auto attacks connect to be further than they are now (ala Moa transform).

The pathing thing from 1 sec to 1/2 a sec by itself would be pretty amazing for us.

Even with all our pet problems, ranger manages to be a potent contender. So there is a fine line. No one wants the AI to carry them. Our pets can’t be too good.

But they deserve to be just a little better than where they’re at right now.

It’s not an easy problem though from a technical standpoint, so “not taking much” is still quite an undertaking.

For the auto attack being further I imagine a lot of pet animations would have to be changed for this, though the pathing thing seems an easier route in simply getting the pet on the enemy ASAP.

Though I imagine getting that to “look” right without pets magically gliding around, etc, could still be an issue. There’s a lot to be considered.

It should be worth considering for a sloppy quick fix to simply give even more power to the ranger over the pet until these issues can be worked out, if they can be.

Your pet would still be a mechanic you would have to manage and keep alive for optimal DPS, but as long as they’re in a state of unreliability in PvP/WvW maybe in these game modes rangers can be given even more of the damage ratio over the pet.

alain.1659:

And they are a solid (not only) reason why rangers are not considered “enough” in competitive pvp.

A major comparison, in terms of competitive edge, can be between a burst mesmer and burst ranger. A burst mesmer requires a body (not necessarily the mesmer) next to the desired burst target. It requires at least 1200 range. Ideally, this target is isolated. This is the list of requirements for a mesmer mirror blade + mind stab combo to work. This is why mesmer + thief burst combo work so well together. The moment mesmer sees a thief teleport to a target (or the thief sees mirror blade mid-throw), the mesmer has that body needed to do his burst.

Theoretically speaking, a class which has a pull (like engineer) is the PERFECT pairing with a mesmer: As the pull isolates, draws the target to an ally body, and cc’s the target all in one instance.

Look at what a ranger has to do, and lining up his AI is a huge hurdle to tackle right now in comparison. I’m not saying ranger should autopilot his pet – he shouldn’t. If you want to play a good ranger, you should be good at micromanagement. However the hurdle still exists.

Any word from ANET regarding this? This is a very good thread.

I think Anet does not like us very much

Someday this kittenti pet mechanics may change, and we might have a chance to become what we were supposed to be. But it is not this day!

This day we suck.

Any chance of a precision buff for all pets? With Beastmastery+Spotter+Fury, they only go up to 60% crit chance. That, in my opinion, is the biggest issue facing rangers.

Kain Francois.4328:

Any chance of a precision buff for all pets? With Beastmastery+Spotter+Fury, they only go up to 60% crit chance. That, in my opinion, is the biggest issue facing rangers.

It seriously is not even close to the biggest issue, but ok. Not only that my friend, but Precision doesn’t have the same calculation on pets as we do, so they do not even gain critical chance as well as us. Go test it out.

All we can hope for is that ranger pets receive a bit of love.

This pet mechanism is worse than a dead monkey jello.

ProtoGunner.4953:

Watching this Wyvern trying to kill the moving target is a pain, I really feel sorry. I will definitely swap it for my good ol’ jaguar. The bristleback looks good though.

Also, as a PvE player enemies usually don’t move that much, so it’s a not as much of a problem.

The Wyverns are actually very good in HoT content as they cleave and both of their F2s are really solid.

Where they fail hard is solo play where the enemy targets you over the pet (which almost always happens in lvl80 areas) and you have to keep kiting to avoid the 5k+ HoT attacks.

You are running in circles and the enemy is chasing you, all the while your Wyvern is flopping around doing it’s best Magikarp impression.

Any chance we see these issues addressed? Pets need improvement ASAP