This is Izan Peace of RageQuit Inc. [RQ] a resident of Blackgate and I decided to make this post after a long discussion with a ranger who was in my Fractal 52 party. Feel free to criticize my post or share your own thoughts
The highlights of our discussion revolved around Shortbow, Longbow and Pets. After reading some posts about the 12/24 updates – I’ve decided to skip a lot of crap and get right to Pets.
Pets in WvW:
“Amazing” that’s the word that springs into my mind, From taking camps solo (Bears) to hunting invaders (Eagle, Lynx and Devovers) and all the way down to healing / turtling (Moas, Eagle, pigs etc) in zergs - pets fill their role and get the job done. Yes they die a lot and you can't revive them anymore, which is really annoying but hey I couldn't ask for more. With the new spirits upgrade, the class itself has become more viable in zergs. Although I don't use my ranger in WvW anymore _(lets face it, my warrior can do everything my ranger does, 10 x better and more... like decimate small zergs all by himself)_ since i found another play style.
Pets in PvE:
For general PvE – farming mobs, killing vets etc they are really good. but in high level dungeons (esp fractals) and prolonged fights (with AoEs) they become more of a pain in the !#$& than an asset to the fight. Sometimes they draw unnecessary aggro just because the player forgot to press F3 or hit F2.
Guard mode: Pointless, unless you want the pet to stay with you (like no run off and do crazy stuff) but why should it do nothing while in this mode? at least make it take damage instead of the ranger (and no, i’m not wasting an utility slot for ‘shouts’)
Stow: What’s the point? it pops up if i take damage. The pet gets reset with it does and I have to deal with a 10s cooldown on the pet swap – not to mention the “can’t stove again until i’m out of combat”
My idea for improvement: (similar to: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Remove-Pets-and-give-us-Animal-Spirits)
Remove “stow”, Turn guard mode into “Soul” mode. I don’t know if you have seen an old animation series http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BraveStarr but that guy can “get” “spiritual” animal powers by calling upon the “spirit of an animal”
example: Ranger has a bear out and when switches to guard mode – change some visual appearance on the ranger (take notes from http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Udyr sir) and give the character some ability that belongs to the pet itself, for a bear – it could be Might and Health, maybe his skills or abilities will have a chance to maul / knockdown targets. For a lynx it could be – shredding armor and bleeding, some passive movespeed increase. For a shark – a chance to go into frenzy etc.
The idea is to not have a very dumb looking animal limping around beside you – wasting precious memory, bandwidth and clock cycles but instead utilize it. Hey maybe even beef up the “Beastmaster” tree so we’ll see less X/X/X/0 rangers in the game.
Summary of this post: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPEbzNl_mDE
/rant
(edited by Severan Rye.6215)