Guild Wars 2

Pets have issues hitting moving targets and they die easily under pressure… This screws over our builds pretty badly, especially in wvw. When does this become a priority to fix?

If Thief Steal mechanics were intertwined in every build, missed moving targets and had issues since before launch… I’m sure it would be fixed by now… Sooo, not trying to be rude, but it’s not professional to leave a class, and main class mechanic, in this state. You are failing to provide your customers a fully working, enjoyable and competitive class… and have for a long time now.

It’s been 6 years and 3 months and these issues are not yet resolved. This is a major class issue that causes larger gameplay implications… You designed our class to have subpar damage, that was supposed to be balanced upward by pets, yet we get screwed in both the damage and core mechanic departments. Soulbeast doesn’t resolve anything either… it’s still poor damage and brings nothing special, to any team or mode, compared to other professions. This is not good. It really lets the players down.

Edit- And obviously a bunch of devs are into gaming, and have experience with other games… so wouldn’t they want their characters to function in a proper, balanced, fun and competitive way?

From 6/10/2011

http://tap-repeatedly.com/2011/06/exclusive-interview-arenanets-jon-peters-and-jonathan-sharp/

“Ginko (GW2G): The ranger is supposed to be the pet profession, and bringing a pet is always supposed to improve the performance of the ranger. In all of the demos so far, most rangers didn’t bother to have their pet with them during combat; they either died quickly or didn’t seem to do much when they were around. Considering the ranger class was intended to be the class that specifically focuses on playing with a pet, what does the design team want ranger/pet gameplay to be like at launch? What kinds of gameplay is ArenaNet trying to foster for the ranger so that the pet and ranger work together instead of the pet simply being similar to a random melee ally?

Jon P: I think the ranger pets are terrible right now, no one would argue with that! If you wanted to talk about least played profession, the ranger would probably be it. We’ve been making A.I changes which are slowly propagating to the pets right now, while we’ve also been looking into more radical things with the pets.

Right now the pets feel like this thing you have, rather than a part of your character. Like those other professions that have undergone some radical changes, I’m hoping by the next time we show the game, or certainly before we ship, the ranger pet will have that synergy. That’s one of the biggest failings we have right now. For those that are concerned, we are also concerned but we aren’t concerned that we won’t fix it, just not right now. We are going to make it feel synergistic, but it just takes time."

While I agree with your sentiment I really don’t think the pet AI is as simple a fix as other mechanics. It was related to me before that the pets are somehow tied to the PVE mobs. I don’t know if this is true but it would certainly add complexity to the fix if it were, as it could increase the difficulty of a lot of zones unintentionally. However, I do think they are trying to make some improvements. The changes that have been made I believe are somewhat overly conservative but that has been an issue plaguing rangers for a while now. Ultimately at this stage of the game’s life I don’t think we can reasonably expect a complete tear down and rebuild of rangers or ranger pets. Its simply a matter of diminishing returns to unravel that ball of problems and to redesign them. It wouldn’t bring in any new players in and Anet’s stance has always been one of encouraging players to move around in classes to follow whatever flavor of the year they develop.

I do find it interesting that no one’s ever thought that maybe ranger players buy gems as well as other classes and if they are so behind the curve in terms of mechanics and playability they just might not, you know, buy gems. Or log in. Either way I’ve given up trying to figure the balance team out.

If the AI for pets is tied to PVE mob AI, then perhaps the pets need to have their own separate AI, which could also make it easier to balance them out. Obviously that would take time to create, but it may be worth it.

It’s already been proven they won’t buff pets any. They’ve nerfed them a few times because of player outrage…whether it be leash range nerf because rangers were using pets in PvP to hold points or general power nerfs because people were getting wrecked by pets in WvW.

The soul beast is really a test at what happens if pets go away altogether. It’s a pretty cheap way out, basically giving direct power to the player while eliminating the problem of pets dying super fast in group situations.

But yeah, no real huge recoding needed for pets. Just make them invulnerable, give them full leash range back, and give them their power back.

I don think the problem is the th ai. The problem are the high skill activation times, the stop/attack/go mechanic, slow movement and the low range of melee attacks of pet skills.
In my thread suggestions for pet/beastmode I tried to fix these imo main problems