Guild Wars 2

All player controlled minions. excluding Mesmer phantasm and clones because they were already increased in a previous patch, now have 71.43% more hit points in a PvE map.

“We also did QoL (quality of life) improvements to skills that saw little play.”

- Jonathan Sharp

I hope they buff all of our skills because all of them “saw little play”.
And sick em will be a nerf. just watch! they will give something useless reveal and nerf the cool down to hell or the damage bonus.
And they need to do magic with our pets to be useful in wvw. i believe they will add little bonuses and after that forget us for a year again.
Weapon change? remove the root from sword? after a year finally they do a 2 min programing. or add a protection to the barrage what still will be a rooted death to us. who bet with me?

Won’t help us much in dungeons and zergs i guess, but could be interesting to use “Protect me” now and get away from Signets as only useful skills for power based builds

Let’s say a bear as 50k health points. It’s about to go up to roughly 80,000 health points. I got to believe that will make a noticeable difference everywhere in pve for every pet.

Edit: these numbers are wrong, see below for accurate numbers, thanks guys

it will take 71,3% longer to kill pets that could possibly get our pet to survive maybe 8 sec against aoe bosses and tequatl will still 1-2 shot them.
Because the AI will still be crappy there will not be that much of a difference in any Boss Encounter i guess. Still the same bad responsiveness etc. pp
As i said they will maybe land2 or 3 more Autoattacks against tougher enemys.
First step but that isnt a Solution by any means
P.S. Sorry for my bad English =)

Damage does not happen linearly, but let’s assume for simplicity it does. If pet dies normally in, say, 9s (anet has this data I’m sure), then

9s * 1.71 = 15.4s

Which is long enough for a pet swap.

I agree that it isn’t a final solution, but that extra health will make some pets more viable and others quite tanky. Yes, the AI is still problematic. Yes, AoE will still be a problem. But that extra health buffer should allow you to swap and keep pets alive in all but a few instances.

And as someone who has fought and beat Tequatl four times now (All on my home server. Go TC!), Tequatl does not insta-kill pets, even if you’re not traited. Well, at least he doesn’t insta-kill canines and drakes. It takes both shockwaves to down an untraited canine/drake (same vitality and toughness). With this extra health and how often those shockwaves hit, you might be able to keep full pet uptime against Tequatl after that patch hits. Spirits will still probably die, though. I’ll need to test after the patch goes live.

1 Point to you
But i still hope ist just a first step and not Anets Solution.
I wanna have a Bond to my Pet like i had it to my Trustworthy Krusty Crab back in GW Days .
But yeah this will make it easier to Keep our pet alive except maybe if our pets gets focused or really aoe heavy bosses like Subject dragontooth spam.

Tequatl kills my bear extremely fast. It is not a oneshot kill but it still dies in 3-4 sec top between waves and the other gifts big T sends me, more if we have some brains on the turrets. This is a good change but it is entirely worthless vs some dungeon and world bosses (dodge-or-die or persistent AoE). It also makes healing your pet extremely hard. I’d rather have them split this change between damage reduction and health increase to make it scale better with healing skills.

@Wayfinder
Thats exactly what i wanted to say ^^ Lets just hope ist only a first, Little step to what they plan to bring our pets
btw great signature

Hepatolith.6389:

@Wayfinder
Thats exactly what i wanted to say ^^ Lets just hope ist only a first, Little step to what they plan to bring our pets
btw great signature

I am not very hopeful given the time it takes for ANet to make such changes, but I’m very hyped about some of the trait and weapon skill changes.

“If by my life or death I can protect you, I will. ” <-pets
Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

I don’t see it helping much. But then again, 3000 more hp from 30 points in beastmaster does make a world of difference for pet survivability in many situations, so this increase will certainly help. In some situations it still won’t matter, but we may have that bit of extra time to get a heal off or swap the pet.

So it’s a welcome change and I hope it includes WvW. With the hint to increase group support for fernhound, moas and brown bear, we may have a useful support platform for zerg battles.

That said, dead pets shouldn’t have a 60s cooldown. 3 times longer cooldown is really over the top. They should at least reduce it to 2 times longer, but even that is questionable. A flat 20 seconds cooldown on pet swap (untraited) would make the most sense. Some pet deaths simply can’t be helped and punishing the player for it is therefore wrong.

We’ve begged and begged for a shorter swap cooldown but ANET won’t budge. Also, I think “pve” moniker includes “wvw”.

Hey Chopps!How do you know that?From testing?Is it writen down in the patch notes?

I wish I was a tester. No, it’s from the leaked patch notes. There’s a buff to every minion health (except mesmer minions since they already got the same buff). It’s mentioned at the start of the pastebin as opposed to the ranger section, since it applies to all minions.

This would be a nice change for a lot of content as it would allow pets to survive better between cool-down swaps.

However even with 70% more health, or even a massive increase like 400% for that matter, pets will still not be able to survive certain attacks or mechanics, such as shockwaves which are meant to be dodged or jumped over, mortars from the nightmare tree, AoE heavy bosses, mines, and laser walls.

Maybe after this change pets will have enough survivability for general content and they can then focus on making them more viable against enemies with specialized mechanics.

Make pets drop aoe stability 5s upon death and I’ll kamikaze them all day lol but ya sometimes they get unfairly nuked, it happens more often than you like to see. During heavy aoe, if pet just stayed tighter on the ranger, that would fix a lot of it, maybe. Who knows. I don’t know of anet is very serious about making pets stronger. It’s a dilemma.

Chopps.5047:

I wish I was a tester. No, it’s from the leaked patch notes. There’s a buff to every minion health (except mesmer minions since they already got the same buff). It’s mentioned at the start of the pastebin as opposed to the ranger section, since it applies to all minions.

Not just the leaked unofficial patch notes, but also from J sharp.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/October-15th-balance-skills-updates-preview/first

Here’s what pet health will look like after this patch:

Bear: 29982 → 51398
Drake: 22425 → 38443
Feline: 14868 → 25488

Here’s a more useful perspective. The first number is the % health lost to 1 attack before patch. The second number is how many hits it will survive after the patch.

85% → 2 hits
57% → 3 hits
43% → 4 hits
34% → 5 attacks, thanks chat filter
29% → 6 hits

I think this will help in some situations, but that boss that’s two shotting your pet now is still going to down pets faster than your swap recharges.

I wish they’d just change PvE so that pets evade AoE attacks unless they’re on top of the aggro table. This wouldn’t include melee attacks that cleave. Then they would be able to survive any dodge this or die mechanic Anet can come up with while preventing pets from tanking.

Didn’t they nerf pet health awhile back because of PVP? Pretty sure they did. So, if I’m right now they are buffing back up again, splitting as they originally should between pvp and PVE. Sadly, as pointed out above, unless you are traited to 15s melee pet is still going to die before the ability to swap in a many situations (like before the nerf to health that I’m pretty sure about). That’s why I wanted a perma-stow option way back then. And as pointed out above, more health doesn’t make the pet less full-kitten. AI is still going to suck.

I really wish they’d suck it up, admit they suck at programming a proper pet, give us the option to perma stow and give that % of damage back to the ranger. I would literally, and honestly, send flowers to every Anet employee who has to do with that decision… And maybe a thank you card.

They nerfed pet DAMAGE not health… They recently buffed pet survivability across the board (mostly toughness)

Holland.9351:

I don’t see it helping much. But then again, 3000 more hp from 30 points in beastmaster does make a world of difference for pet survivability in many situations, so this increase will certainly help. In some situations it still won’t matter, but we may have that bit of extra time to get a heal off or swap the pet.

That also gives 300 toughness, which is a lot.

Killsmith.8169:

I wish they’d just change PvE so that pets evade AoE attacks unless they’re on top of the aggro table. This wouldn’t include melee attacks that cleave. Then they would be able to survive any dodge this or die mechanic Anet can come up with while preventing pets from tanking.

I doubt we’ll see that kind of thing unless dodge or die AoEs become a party of sPvP because to get meaningful action on an issue (a generic health buff isn’t even trying) it needs to be a central sPvP problem. I’d love to see these changes, this is the kind of thing pets need in PvE. The ability to negate “dodge this” attacks, immunity to being targeted by “dodge this attacks” and use of the aggro table to ensure that pets don’t just tank everything.

Hrouda said they apparently trialled some kind of damage reduction but smart of use pet swap with two rangers resulted in rangers being able to pet tank some dungeon bosses and they didn’t like that (the same people have no issue with Feeback shaving off 25% of Lupicus’ health in seconds while protecting the party from projectivles).

For as long as ArenaNet keeps designing dungeon content like the spinning electrical fields from the Aetherblade Retreat and pets die to them (or the Nightmare Tree in F/U path drops an egg sack on the pet as well as the ranger), I don’t have much hope for pets ever being fixed in PvE.

I’d have to go back through the patch notes but I’m thinking it was sometime in the fall of 2012 there was a health nerf. I think it might have been before they nerfed S&R and made it useless … Been drunk too many times to remember.

thefantasticg.3984:

I’d have to go back through the patch notes but I’m thinking it was sometime in the fall of 2012 there was a health nerf. I think it might have been before they nerfed S&R and made it useless … Been drunk too many times to remember.

There was no health nerf, ever

Hmmm. Guess too many 151 proofed nights. Regardle$s, b0osting the health is a band-aid approach to a problem they can’t fix.

Doesn’t this achieve almost exactly the same thing as a dmg reduction to pets? Which is what many rangers have been asking for?

ye but healing is less effective to a health buff then a damage taken reduction . Ah well

People have been asking for AoE damage reduction to to the tune of 75% or so. It’ll live a slight bit longer, maybe get a hit or two in before it goes on a 60sec cd.

If the Devs are fine with doing this there shouldn’t be any problem with adding a perma-stow option.

I just want my pet to be smart enough to avoid red circles and damage fields. Last night at Tequatl, the edge of one of those poison gas fields caught my pet. The rest of the field was between it and me so I couldn’t use F3 to get it out of the field. I managed to hit F4 to swap it out just before it died. I was congratulating myself and forgot I was auto-attacking.

The new pet walked right through the same poison gas field and died. Arrrrgh.

Solandri.9640:

I just want my pet to be smart enough to avoid red circles and damage fields. Last night at Tequatl, the edge of one of those poison gas fields caught my pet. The rest of the field was between it and me so I couldn’t use F3 to get it out of the field. I managed to hit F4 to swap it out just before it died. I was congratulating myself and forgot I was auto-attacking.

The new pet walked right through the same poison gas field and died. Arrrrgh.

I had the exact same experience in every Teq encounter I’ve been in so far.This highlights exactly why the pet AI is a detriment to our class. All new “challenging content” is designed in such a way that our pet cannot deal with it. I wouldn’t want the content changed… it’s a lot more interesting than it use to be! But upping HP doesn’t change the fact that our pet mechanic essentially turns us into the one legged man in an kitten kicking contest for everything new and exciting that is introduced. So much of us is tied up in a system that isn’t conducive to the content it’s meant to be facing that we are never really going to be on par with other classes as long as it is in its current form.

What we need is a separate, spammable heal over time for our pets, like the Hunter class in WoW has. In WoW you could keep that HoT up 100 percent. Though pets were still kinda squishy, they were not two-shot wonders and you didn’t have to sacrifice your personal heal to heal them.

thefantasticg.3984:

Didn’t they nerf pet health awhile back because of PVP? Pretty sure they did. So, if I’m right now they are buffing back up again, splitting as they originally should between pvp and PVE. Sadly, as pointed out above, unless you are traited to 15s melee pet is still going to die before the ability to swap in a many situations (like before the nerf to health that I’m pretty sure about). That’s why I wanted a perma-stow option way back then. And as pointed out above, more health doesn’t make the pet less full-kitten. AI is still going to suck.

I really wish they’d suck it up, admit they suck at programming a proper pet, give us the option to perma stow and give that % of damage back to the ranger. I would literally, and honestly, send flowers to every Anet employee who has to do with that decision… And maybe a thank you card.

Yeah, if they want to make all us cynics here eat our words they could do that

yea this is huge. will basically fix pet survivability issues in wvw and pve. if f2’s are buffed and more responsive, we might be in a pretty good shape. id prefer it if pets also received a flat 30% aoe damage reduction.

and apparently, they do have a programmer working on pet responsiveness, according to the latest SOTG.

mistsim.2748:

yea this is huge. will basically fix pet survivability issues in wvw and pve. if f2’s are buffed and more responsive, we might be in a pretty good shape. id prefer it if pets also received a flat 30% aoe damage reduction.

Fix? No. It’ll help immensely, but it won’t outright fix the issue. Pets will still stand in the middle of AoE circles. Pets will still die to insta-death mechanics that require dodging or positioning. Those issues will need to be addressed before most of us will consider pet survivability in PvE to truly be fixed.

And then there are the pet offense issues…

Don’t get me wrong. It’s a great first step. But it’s only that. A first step. There are more that are needed. Keep ’em coming, ANet!

Speaking of pets, synful: “Feline pets no longer stop to attack”

If ANET did that even Burnfall would be jumping for joy lol

I hope this is a makeshift buff to pets before they figure out a way to improve the pet AI

I whole heartily believe that they cannot/will not fix the pet AI. Given the last years’ worth of patches has been nothing but band aids. There has been no noticable improvement in AI. Adding the “pet doesn’t get aggro unless player does first” was the most meaningful quality of life improvement to date, but that isn’t an AI improvement. Pathing issues are a killer and the reason it is, is because pets can’t jump. I shouldn’t have to swap pets as a substitute for better pathing or because my pet doesn’t have the AI to not stand in a red circle. No. They should do that out the box. My dog at the house knows to get away from things that hurt it, like the electric fence. My dog in the game does not. My fern hound would literally stand on the electric fence until it was dead. The fact that they cannot hit moving objects is an issue with all minions and that is a design flaw in the game itself, but it impacts us much more given how much damage the pet is suppose to be of our overall output.

I whole heartily hope that logic wins the day and we get a perma-stow option. Given the vast majority of the Ranger problems (<- forgot to put that word in there as I was saying it in my brain faster than I was typing it) are in the pet, we should be given the perma-stow option. Yeah, shouts need help, spirits are better but not worth it still, etc… but our pets are leaps-and-bounds ahead (see what I did there?) of any other issues we might have.

Also, keep in mind I’m speaking from a PVE angle. I could not care less for PVP modes such as WvW and s/tPVP with my Ranger.

thefantasticg.3984:

I whole heartily hope that logic wins the day and we get a perma-stow option. Given the vast majority of the Ranger are in the pet, we should be given the perma-stow option.

I don’t think that’s going to happen.

One thing, JUST one thing will make me quit GW2, the rubbish Ranger pet.

Chopps.5047:

Speaking of pets, synful: “Feline pets no longer stop to attack”

If ANET did that even Burnfall would be jumping for joy lol

It would be amazing if they managed to do that. Pets being able to attack while moving would allow them to actually stick on their targets and connect with all their attacks. Just this single change would improve them so much in PvP.

Moving targets aren’t even a problem. A while back there was a thread experimenting with Moa Morph on pets. If every melee pet skill had a small leap added to it, the pets ended up hitting significantly more. This alone would solve some of the rangers woes. At least when the pets are up they are contributing some meaning damage.
Source: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Moa-morph-buffs-pets/first#post2734537

Pets attacking while moving is to OP, won’t happen, you could then just kite with a pet and its over.

This game is maturing into 3 games in 1, which is often the case in my experience. It is just to difficult to balance PvP with PvE. AI with PvE necessitates pretty basic movements or no movements by the monster revolving around agro. PvP is all about target movement, dodging, rolling etc. The things that make 1500 range in PvE doable are a problem in PvP.

Obviously, Anet is struggling with this problem. Can’t make certain bosses to difficult or Rangers pets die fast thereby making rangers un desirable on that one boss fight, but if we make the ranger pet have too much HP, they’re un killable in PvP and that will suck for anyone being hounded by a pet.

I’m offering no solutions, just commenting on what I’m seeing.

NargofWoV.4267:

Pets attacking while moving is to OP, won’t happen, you could then just kite with a pet and its over.

This game is maturing into 3 games in 1, which is often the case in my experience. It is just to difficult to balance PvP with PvE. AI with PvE necessitates pretty basic movements or no movements by the monster revolving around agro. PvP is all about target movement, dodging, rolling etc. The things that make 1500 range in PvE doable are a problem in PvP.

Obviously, Anet is struggling with this problem. Can’t make certain bosses to difficult or Rangers pets die fast thereby making rangers un desirable on that one boss fight, but if we make the ranger pet have too much HP, they’re un killable in PvP and that will suck for anyone being hounded by a pet.

I’m offering no solutions, just commenting on what I’m seeing.

Then how is ranger 1h Sword not OP since it does then same thing AND applies cripple? Oh wait, we have lowered damage coefficients because we have 100% pet uptime. All is forgiven.

Also, you are correct on the division between priorities of PvE and PvP centered games. However, splitting of skills and game functions is somethign that has been available since before GW2 even came out. This is an underused feature that has the potential to solve some of the problems in the game.

Im offering a solution. Nerf pet dps so they’re nothing more than a small dot, greatly buff utility and survivability, and give each pet another active ability that we can use on demand. All problems solved.

ChillyChinaman.6057:

NargofWoV.4267:

Pets attacking while moving is to OP, won’t happen, you could then just kite with a pet and its over.

This game is maturing into 3 games in 1, which is often the case in my experience. It is just to difficult to balance PvP with PvE. AI with PvE necessitates pretty basic movements or no movements by the monster revolving around agro. PvP is all about target movement, dodging, rolling etc. The things that make 1500 range in PvE doable are a problem in PvP.

Obviously, Anet is struggling with this problem. Can’t make certain bosses to difficult or Rangers pets die fast thereby making rangers un desirable on that one boss fight, but if we make the ranger pet have too much HP, they’re un killable in PvP and that will suck for anyone being hounded by a pet.

I’m offering no solutions, just commenting on what I’m seeing.

Then how is ranger 1h Sword not OP since it does then same thing AND applies cripple? Oh wait, we have lowered damage coefficients because we have 100% pet uptime. All is forgiven.

Also, you are correct on the division between priorities of PvE and PvP centered games. However, splitting of skills and game functions is somethign that has been available since before GW2 even came out. This is an underused feature that has the potential to solve some of the problems in the game.

Which is why I use the 1 hand sword, it takes away a lot of the funky AI mechanic with pets. However, it isn’t why I rolled the class to begin with, which is the greater disappointment, like rolling an Ele to find out they’re the best PvE tank in the game, it wouldn’t be what I intended.

However, it isn’t considered as OP because even with cripples IF you’re in melee range then they can hit you at the same time, hence my … It would make kiting to easy comment (which is what I’ve seen in other MMO’s prior to GW2, until nerfs are found). The main difference is as I see it, MMO’s, not named GW2, didn’t have arrows, they had heat seeking missles. If you saw a target and loosed an arrow it found its mark no matter if the guy ran off a cliff. I can’t recall a game with the same dodge mechanic and movement mechanics as gw2, not Aion, not Warhammer, not WoW, not DaoC, nor UO.

One caveat, I didn’t always play a ranger in these games so my recollections may be off.

As long as we get our damage coefficients back up (basically we get to be 100% of our damage output) I’d be more than happy with that, mistsim.

mistsim.2748:

Im offering a solution. Nerf pet dps so they’re nothing more than a small dot, greatly buff utility and survivability, and give each pet another active ability that we can use on demand. All problems solved.

That moves away from the special nature of the class, a pet class. Without this pet, you end up with a Warrior with a bow.

However, I do agree they need to try to do something to improve DMG dealing when our pets are dead.

Nah. Warriors can uses longbows too. Still, much different using the warrior than the ranger. The warrior doesn’t feel anywhere as nimble as the ranger does. It’s those individual weapon skills that make the ranger, not the pet, a fun class to play.

NargofWoV.4267:

However, it isn’t considered as OP because even with cripples IF you’re in melee range then they can hit you at the same time, hence my … It would make kiting to easy comment (which is what I’ve seen in other MMO’s prior to GW2, until nerfs are found).

Fair points. To the first one, Ranger melee weapons all have evades built in and rangers also have a diverse range in weapon choice so we don’t have to feel completely locked into melee. To the second point. If ANet does decide to copy paste leaps into all pet skill codes, they could then reduce their damage and return it back to the ranger. We could still kite enemies to death with pets but it’d take longer. And this change does nothing to help improve survivability of pets which still plagues large-scale WvW and PvE.

NargofWoV.4267:

Pets attacking while moving is to OP, won’t happen, you could then just kite with a pet and its over.

This game is maturing into 3 games in 1, which is often the case in my experience. It is just to difficult to balance PvP with PvE. AI with PvE necessitates pretty basic movements or no movements by the monster revolving around agro. PvP is all about target movement, dodging, rolling etc. The things that make 1500 range in PvE doable are a problem in PvP.

Obviously, Anet is struggling with this problem. Can’t make certain bosses to difficult or Rangers pets die fast thereby making rangers un desirable on that one boss fight, but if we make the ranger pet have too much HP, they’re un killable in PvP and that will suck for anyone being hounded by a pet.

I’m offering no solutions, just commenting on what I’m seeing.

You know that pets hitting moving targets would simple be the same as phantasm? These hit all the time and they hit for more damage than our pets.
They need to give our pets some way to actually hit targets. It cannot be that our pets can be outkited like 80+% of the time by a good player. The only problem that I can see is if you buff your pet like crazy with the signets. They might be really powerful then.

a Dev commented in the General discussion :

Ranger
Sick ‘Em will now apply ‘Revealed” to enemies they target. We want to introduce some counter play to Stealth (players have asked for that for a while), so we thought a pet “catching your scent” might be a cool way to insinuate some anti-stealth into the game.

To help Rangers support allies, we increased the ability ranger pets have to support allies. For instance, the Bear condition removal isn’t strong enough, so we’ll be improving that. Moas and Fern Hound will also be improved.

There will also be # changes to some of the Ranger weapons.

Pet HP split between PvE and PvP
We wanted to make pets and summons more viable in PvE/WvW while making sure they didn’t become too strong in PvP.