Wish gw2 had a PET class...
But it doesn’t. Instead we got “animal” class – the ranger.
So what’s this about pet vs animal? It’s the feelz man, it’s the feelz.Recent days i moved over to Blade & Soul and am playing summoner. And kitten , that’s a pet class if I ever seen one. He may have only one cat, but you care about the cat. The way his skills are performed (adorable and balls to the wall cat themed), the skill icons, the emotes, the sounds, even his looks customization – everything it does and you do makes you care about that adorable furball and love using him and his skills.
In gw2? Well you go to nearby pond, “charm” (read whack with a mace on it’s head) nearby scaled monstrosity that even it’s own broodmother wouldn’t love and call that a pet. Rinse and reapeat for most of them. I don’t feel like i have a pet, i just feel like part of my dps grew 4 legs, got some fleas onboard and whoopee-dee-doo, you got a partner for life. Which sorta sounds like most rl marriages save the 4 legged part anyway…
At any rate i’d love to see in gw2 future the moment when i’ll yell “NOOO! My hawk/cat/hound/whatever!” and not “Noooo! My dps!”
I know exactly what you mean. Came to GW2 from WoW and started up a ranger. I also had a ranger in GW1 back when that launched.
Boy, was I disappointed. Bad controls, no taming mechanism, no evasion or blocks. Zero customisation. A short, embarasing list of entirely boring tameables. I’d like to say that it got better, but ranger in GW2 continues to be disappoiting in so many ways. Some of the problems have been slightly alleviated, but most are still as glaring as they were on day one.
Even druid, which should have been brilliant for me, found numerous ways to be disappointing. The fact that the pet was completely ignored in the druid traitline, didn’t change the way the pet played, despite the cdi and countless suggestions threads. The fact that the team managed to badly mess up their own druid lore as described even in HoT by adding completely unrelated canthan magic to the class, for no apparent reason. The aesthetic of the spells is just wrong, the management of the duct-taped on life-shroud-celestial form garbage, has been redone several times and is still counter-intuitive. Even the HoT pets, while vastly superior to the old ones, are still objectively bad and just shine further light on the failings of the vanilla pets.
You’re absolutely right, GW2 doesn’t have a pet class. At best it’s got a slightly naff bot-class with fragile dps and, thanks to HoT, a healer mode awkwardly shoe-horned in and held in place with staples and bits of old chewing gum.
This, despite the fact that, by thread count, having the pet be optional (so we could at least be functional without it) is the single most requested thing on the forums, ever.
Its still a pet class.
I agree wholeheartedly that there’s very little connection to the pets themselves and the pet system itself is completely bland and uninvolved, though. I loved the heck out of my Creature Handler back in Star Wars Galaxies. So much variety, having to actually go out and find the pets which were all randomly generated and the process of carefully taming them without getting eaten by their mothers, then actually training them as they grew, even being able to sell them… ‘twas amazing. GW2 doesn’t even compare.
It ain’t gonna change, though. System like that is too complicated for a game like this, especially to try and add in after the initial development phase when the engine is settled. Not to mention all the massive cries of Ranger favoritism that’d be going up if Anet dared to spend all the time needed to develop it. I’ve seen some people who already complain about Ranger’s getting new pets since other classes don’t get anything like that.
… now I want to go and check out SWGEmu again. See if they got Creature Handler working yet. If I only had the time to devote to an MMO like that nowadays.
This, despite the fact that, by thread count, having the pet be optional (so we could at least be functional without it) is the single most requested thing on the forums, ever.
Unfortunately, that’d require a full class overhaul, so it’s unlikely we’ll ever see it happen.
I mean it; go through the different weapons, utility skills, and traits, and count the number that have some component that requires you to be rolling with a pet. It’s staggering, and you might not immediately realize how prevalent it is. A rework of the magnitude it’d take to put together a petless ranger would be far, far harder to do than just making a stronger pet.
Well, I think you’re looking at it the wrong way. Actually the issues of the ranger’s mechanism (the pet) open a lot of possibilities for futur elite spec. Each elite spec can try to correct these issues in their own way.
For example, Druid tryed to correct the issue by making the ranger usefull for a party while still ignoring the pet. Isn’t it awesome?
No core profession should be balanced around an optional elite specialization.
agreed, when i think of a pet class i think of Beastmaster Hunter from WoW
you could tame almost any animal in the wild, even rare and unique ones that only spawn once a week.
they all had unique abilities, and when you specced beastmaster they became your main source of damage, and very strong, you felt like a real beastmaster!
Yeah, I’m hoping that’s a thing soon.
They actually have an opportunity for a full beast mastery setup if people are right and we’re going to the Crystal Desert, as Siege Devourers, Junundu Worms, and Hydras will all be in the desert. Then, of course, Drake Broodmothers are also available, as are megalodons.
Its still a pet class.
I agree wholeheartedly that there’s very little connection to the pets themselves and the pet system itself is completely bland and uninvolved, though. I loved the heck out of my Creature Handler back in Star Wars Galaxies. So much variety, having to actually go out and find the pets which were all randomly generated and the process of carefully taming them without getting eaten by their mothers, then actually training them as they grew, even being able to sell them… ‘twas amazing. GW2 doesn’t even compare.
It ain’t gonna change, though. System like that is too complicated for a game like this, especially to try and add in after the initial development phase when the engine is settled. Not to mention all the massive cries of Ranger favoritism that’d be going up if Anet dared to spend all the time needed to develop it. I’ve seen some people who already complain about Ranger’s getting new pets since other classes don’t get anything like that.
… now I want to go and check out SWGEmu again. See if they got Creature Handler working yet. If I only had the time to devote to an MMO like that nowadays.
A fellow CH, those were the days… I miss my Bantha combat pet + mount, he was fairly common but he was my first and favorite =(
@OP personally I’m a huge fan of the summoner archetype, where your pet is your main source of damage, and you CC it’s victim and buff your allies/your pet, but that’s an extremely Asian archetype, and it’s very rare to ever see that archetype in western games. I do think anet may do something close to that with a ranger elite spec though, especially if they bring in the pack hunter or bunny thumper.
As for going out and having the awesome taming and training experience found in other games? It won’t happen, that stuff has to be in the game from the getgo, and as cool as it would be to add, it wouldn’t be a smart use of resources for anet to try to rework a system that only one class will use.
They sing dark, delicious notes about power and family.
As their mother, I have to grant them their wish. – Forever Fyonna
As their mother, I have to grant them their wish. – Forever Fyonna
Its still a pet class.
I agree wholeheartedly that there’s very little connection to the pets themselves and the pet system itself is completely bland and uninvolved, though. I loved the heck out of my Creature Handler back in Star Wars Galaxies. So much variety, having to actually go out and find the pets which were all randomly generated and the process of carefully taming them without getting eaten by their mothers, then actually training them as they grew, even being able to sell them… ‘twas amazing. GW2 doesn’t even compare.
It ain’t gonna change, though. System like that is too complicated for a game like this, especially to try and add in after the initial development phase when the engine is settled. Not to mention all the massive cries of Ranger favoritism that’d be going up if Anet dared to spend all the time needed to develop it. I’ve seen some people who already complain about Ranger’s getting new pets since other classes don’t get anything like that.
… now I want to go and check out SWGEmu again. See if they got Creature Handler working yet. If I only had the time to devote to an MMO like that nowadays.
I still play SWGEmu from time to time and the Creature Handler is vastly improved from where it was two years ago. Taming is much better and I’m pretty sure they have most of the creature abilities and commands back in the game.
On the subject of pets in GW2, I agree that they aren’t as exciting as going out and taming pets in SWG or WOW – although WoW Legion has ruined the majority of pets and abilities and the hunter class is in an uproar over it – but I don’t think they are completely unusable either. They have improved the responsiveness of pet F2 abilities and I play off my pets field abilities (like firing arrows through a poison field from my devourer) more than I ever did in WoW.
I’m also happy that pet names are finally saved so you can make them a bit more personal. However, I do wish the taming mechanics and pet sfx’s and movements were more in depth to make them feel a bit more alive and old pets could do with more buffs so we aren’t shoehorned into specific pets based solely on when they were introduced into the game.
This, despite the fact that, by thread count, having the pet be optional (so we could at least be functional without it) is the single most requested thing on the forums, ever.
Unfortunately, that’d require a full class overhaul, so it’s unlikely we’ll ever see it happen.
I mean it; go through the different weapons, utility skills, and traits, and count the number that have some component that requires you to be rolling with a pet. It’s staggering, and you might not immediately realize how prevalent it is. A rework of the magnitude it’d take to put together a petless ranger would be far, far harder to do than just making a stronger pet.
Unfortunately for ranger and ranger players, Anet have pretty much admitted that they are both unwilling/hesitant to make the pet stronger and unable to give it better AI which would alleviate some of the problems. They said this during the CDI a couple of years back. Thanks to the slap-dash, cut and paste, mix and match, zero testing approach to the creation of ranger (clearly the same approach they took for druid) they only have three choices;
1.A full class overhaul.
2.Buff the pet and ignore the stream of hate from PvPers
3.Continue to ignore the pet and power creep the ranger til no one notices anymore.
1. Anet just will not do. Resources etc.
2.We’ve seen elements of 2 in HoT, the result of which was nerfs to the HoT pets because of PvP.
3. Is druid. Behold the future of ranger, power creep while ignoring the pet.
I wouldn’t even call Druid power creep, really – it has a buffs that it can’t really make use of itself making it only good for a raid or dungeon group, and in dungeons/fractals it’s often better to just take another damager. When solo, or in other content than raids, playing druid I always feel like it simply would have been better if I didn’t bother, and to this point I haven’t been proven wrong.
If we got really powerful but slow moving pets coupled with a slight weakening of the ranger themselves, I could see the issue being alleviated completely, since in pvp you could just target the player to take out the pet, and in PvE you’d be at about the same level. I doubt it’ll happen because there’s rarely anybody willing to minmax like that, but I’d personally love the hell out of it. I play Ranger because i want to be a beast master; If I wanted to be a marksman, I’d be playing pistol thief (and then probably upgrade to rifle whenever that comes out for that class) or Dragon Hunter for the bow and traps. What i got out of the Ranger instead is a class that spreads itself too thin; the ranger needs to have the ability to focus on a particular thing, and if that was the case it’d cease to be an issue.
The thing is … Ranger’s pet is nothing but a mere Open World NPC.
And in order to change that, they’d have to recreate the pathing system itself anew.
Well, the truth is… Nothing but Ranger class is affected up to a noticeable level. And there is no way they’d set their developers team into this task that brings no money when they have several other dragons (expansions) to do.
People do not pay to play. They pay for the expansion that has nothing to do with Rangers and never will.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
The fact that the pet was completely ignored in the druid traitline
It wasn’t. In fact, the only change I would do to the traits regarding the pet is to make Natural Stride affect the pet aswell as the player.
And even for an elite spec not focused on pets, the pet and the druid still compliments eachother a lot. If you were to set your nose inside the pvp enviroment, you would realize that.
As for the druid’s unrelated canthan magic? Dude, you’re way off.
(edited by Lazze.9870)
Being able to heal your pet does not constitute it benefiting from druid, Lazze. The only trait in Druid that affects the pet is the one that makes you and the pet burst heals out whenever you use a heal skill, and that’s not so much “affects the pet” as it is “oh yeah, and there’s a pet here too”. Staff doesn’t have any skills that affect what the pet does, and the glyphs don’t either. The Pet was completely unchanged by druid so that they could tack on something new.
The worst part about druid to me is that it’s not even useful outside of raids. In open world PvE, the pet doesn’t take enough damage to justify popping over into a pure healer setup to heal it. In dungeons, a good team has self-sufficient individual members. In Fractals, there’s a bit of use on the very high end, but by that point, once again, your party should be largely self sufficient. Druid was built for raids, which are only played by a fraction of the people in the game at best. the only other place that Druid is useful is PvP, where it’s used as a bunker setup; can’t even handle burst because it’s a bunker that relies on being able to heal damage it takes rather than negating damage in the first place.
Druid does not help the pet. It does not make us a better pet class. It makes us a healer that has a pet. For the pet class, and with the idea that our profession mechanic should have been changed with the elite spec (which is what the Devs said they’re supposed to do), we should have seen some change, and we didn’t.
I play ranger because I want to be a beast master, but that’s not really a thing that’s been made available in the game.
(edited by Harnel.6810)
Being able to heal your pet does not constitute it benefiting from druid, Lazze. The only trait in Druid that affects the pet is the one that makes you and the pet burst heals out whenever you use a heal skill, and that’s not so much “affects the pet” as it is “oh yeah, and there’s a pet here too”. Staff doesn’t have any skills that affect what the pet does, and the glyphs don’t either. The Pet was completely unchanged by druid so that they could tack on something new.
The worst part about druid to me is that it’s not even useful outside of raids. In open world PvE, the pet doesn’t take enough damage to justify popping over into a pure healer setup to heal it. In dungeons, a good team has self-sufficient individual members. In Fractals, there’s a bit of use on the very high end, but by that point, once again, your party should be largely self sufficient. Druid was built for raids, which are only played by a fraction of the people in the game at best. the only other place that Druid is useful is PvP, where it’s used as a bunker setup; can’t even handle burst because it’s a bunker that relies on being able to heal damage it takes rather than negating damage in the first place.
Druid does not help the pet. It does not make us a better pet class. It makes us a healer that has a pet. For the pet class, and with the idea that our profession mechanic should have been changed with the elite spec (which is what the Devs said they’re supposed to do), we should have seen some change, and we didn’t.
I play ranger because I want to be a beast master, but that’s not really a thing that’s been made available in the game.
Ive been playing as a pure healing ranger for as long as the game has been out, trust me, these forums know all to well about me advocating it’s viability long before Druid was even conceived as an elite spec idea.
Being a “healer” is always useful in high end fractals, especially nowadays, and in open worlds because when you’re a healer you’re a tanky mother kittener whose going to need to take a significant amount of punishment before you break to the enemy, and that allows you to run pets like cats, with little to fear about their well being and inherent squishyness because you’re keeping them alive. That was kind of the idea behind bunker ranger back in the day too.
Druid has a lot of synergy with the pet because of the inherent flaws healers have to their kits, they’re generally tanky and provide support and buffs, and excel in group situations but normally suck alone. But being a ranger, and thus having a pet, we ALWAYS have something to buff, and something to take advantage of us locking down an enemy. The only reason Bristleback and Smokescales are able to be run in sPvP is because the Druid is capable of keeping them alive, because they’re really squishy pets (especially Bristleback).
Just because you want a true beast master doesn’t mean there’s no pet synergy in Druid, but you don’t need to like Druid, if I were you I’d hold out until “Bunny Thumper” or “Pack Hunter” inspired elite spec come in, those were two popular versions of GW1 ranger that utilized the pet a lot, and if/when are brought to GW2 would have tons of pet oriented things to synergies with.
They sing dark, delicious notes about power and family.
As their mother, I have to grant them their wish. – Forever Fyonna
As their mother, I have to grant them their wish. – Forever Fyonna