Guild Wars 2

Now that with the new A.I. is coming with HoT i hope the devs will apply the new technology of decision tree for the pets, because if i recall correctly the pets use the same engine as the mobs.
So here are some hits that i think would be good to apply to the pets A.I:

• when inactive (not attacking or doing any actions) the pet should stay really close to the ranger. having a leash of 600 units in the pet is not good for WvW. Makeing the pet to stay at range of 60/stick to the ranger would help with most of the complains about perma hiding the pet.
• we should have 4 modes for the pet:
  -Attack: attack when i attack
  -Protect : attack to the ones that attacks me
  -Defend: Defend the area where it stands, same as shout Guard but for as long as this mode is.
  -Stand: speaks for itself. It stills uses the AI decision tree to avoid damage.

• Commands F1 and F3 will work like they do now. If i command F1 the pet will attack that target once the target is killed go back to prior state and position. F3 would allow to reposition the pet in case of Defend state or to cancel any attacks / bring the pet in the other states.

• every family pet should have a decision tree based on the skill instead cast them as soon as they can. Right now the pets behave like a noob LB ranger that hit all the buttons without any situational awareness.
  The interrupt/hard CC skills should be used when a foe is channelling an skill, having priority those focused in our ranger (a wolf could break an stomp like that).
  The healing/support skills should be used based in rangers health/ soft CC. Healing when the ranger needs it not when the pet wants, swiftness when we are affected by cripple… I wouldn’t mind if the pet stops attacking it’s target just come close and heal/protect me.
  If the pet is not ordered to attack one target (by the stance Attack or given command with F1) the pet should choose the lowest health target always.
  The Pet must have evades for AoE and be able to use it once every 5 seconds when in AoE. It has to be aware of the AoE areas and try to avoid them, even if it takes longer to reach the target. The evades should be kept only if there is no other choice to reach the target than to go across the AoE or if an AoE spawns under the pet so it can get out of the AoE area.

• the damage in the basic attack from the pet have to be instant on the melee pets. The pets have a rooting very slow animation for each attack and that is unacceptable for something that does 40% of our total damage (when lands consistently). The aftercast animation can be still there to make the pet attack with the 1/2 described but the damage has to be done as soon as the target is in range.
  The projectiles from the ranged pets must have same speed as DragonHunter longbow.

• The condition damage must be corrected in some pets.

• Some unique utility boon should be placed for each pet family. Right now all behave mostly the same so at the end we can only choose tanky or DPS. Things like spiders improve the rangers venom damage, birds improve passive speed, cats bleeding duration, bears HP pool, devourers ranged damage, canines melee damage, moas healing…

• Shouts should change to become commands instead. With the new utility skills that are triggers shoots should behave like them, one active at a time. Deactivate by changing command or pet swap/dead make they enter in 20 seconds CD.
  The idea is for the ranger that uses the shout system to give a fine grained control about the rol he wants for the pet enforced by the passive effect.

sick’em : improve speed and damage for the pet,. When activated again will apply the revealed debuff. Cd 30 seconds.

Guard: improve armor and speed. The pet can attack stealthed foes but don’t reveal them. When activated again will grant stealth for the pet 10 sec, Cd 20 sec.

Protect me: pet enter passive mode and transfer your damage to the pet.
30% of the physical damage is transferred to the pet, 1 condition every 5 seconds. Here the pet does not stay close to the ranger, but it has a leash of 1000 units to avoid soak in the same damage as ranger does. When active again full damage is transferred for 6 seconds. This is meant in case the pets is being attacked. CD 40 seconds.

Search and rescue: pet will try to revive downed players as soon as they are in range of 1000 units from the pet. Pet have as highest priority to ress the ranger in case he is downed. This shout revive a downed played at 1/3 of the real speed already so the downed skill has it’s use to make the pet to revive at full speed. If activated again get will get super speed for 6 seconds so it can move faster reach the downed player. CD 45 seconds.

We Heal as One as command: When this command is active the coping boon is in effect. Might changed to 1 stack instead of 3 per application. The ranger can still stack might but the pet would have to get 25 applications (one application can apply 5 stacks but only 1 stack will be copied to the ranger).
This makes easier also to develop the skill, only have to trigger when some boon is applied.
When this command is active it can be activated again which will cast the healing like now. 20 seconds CD.

Strength of the pack. When this command is active will do the following.
when struck will cast fury, stability and swiftness for 6 seconds. Internal cooldown 30 seconds.
When active and activated again will cast help from the pack. Another pet will spawn (same family and stats as the equipped pet) and will attack same fashion as the F2 for the hyena for 20 seconds. Cd 45 seconds.
I love that F2 but the hyena is a very weak pet, so it can’t be used.

• Trait Resounding Timbre : decrease the Cd of the active effects 20%. Apply swiftness and regen when active effect is cast.

• IT is much needed to show the active boons and conditions in the pet at all moments. They could be placed somehow, move the pet interface a little bit up and between the pet interface and the weapon skills smaller icons showing the active boons and conditions. This is must needed to have control over the pet, maybe it’s suffering of strong conditions and i want it back to cleanse them with HS. Otherwise we are playing blind.

I think this changes would make pets better suited to be in this game, also would help the ranger to be more sturdy. The trait Resounding Timbre should be reworked though.
Right now they only have buffed the pet’s damage and HP pool but solely that does not solve the issues with the pets.

Those Shout changes sound awesome. o.o Would love to have “advanced modes” for pets. Would make them all a LOT more enticing. X) Would “We Heal As One” and “Strength of the Pack” change, given such an overhaul in mechanics?

Actually those two skills weren’t shouts until the june balance patch. As the mechanics are not the same: the utility shouts only affect the pet behaviour while “Heal as One” and “Strength of the pack” affect mainly the ranger.

So actually i don’t see the need for them to change.

anduriell.6280:

Actually those two skills weren’t shouts until the june balance patch. As the mechanics are not the same: the utility shouts only affect the pet behaviour while “Heal as One” and “Strength of the pack” affect mainly the ranger.

So actually i don’t see the need for them to change.

and I wonder which “genius” came up with “strenght of the pack” instead of rampage as one.

the old name was was better and even makes more sense when converted to shout in same manner as heal as one was – “we rampage as one!” shouted on the battlefield makes a way more sense than shouting “strenght of the pack”…..

although overally I think I like those ideas in this thread

So u want the pets to become smarter and basicly have it so they react to for example when an enemy uses a skill and then interrupt it? In my opinion that would be rly bad, cause that wouldn’t make the pets more skillbased. You would just make it as ai based….. I would want to be able to activate the petskills myself and nuturally be able to see the CD of them, so basicly as long as i dont tell the pet to it wont do annything but autoattack, as long as u have “guard” active ofc. that would make pet usage a bigger part of the ranger profession, making it a more skillbased profession. Im looking at it from a pvp aspect with no thought of pve, but as far as i know this shouldnt be a nerf for rangers in pve.
-Foxfire Fenix

fenix.1860:

So u want the pets to become smarter and basicly have it so they react to for example when an enemy uses a skill and then interrupt it? In my opinion that would be rly bad, cause that wouldn’t make the pets more skillbased. You would just make it as ai based….. I would want to be able to activate the petskills myself and nuturally be able to see the CD of them, so basicly as long as i dont tell the pet to it wont do annything but autoattack, as long as u have “guard” active ofc. that would make pet usage a bigger part of the ranger profession, making it a more skillbased profession. Im looking at it from a pvp aspect with no thought of pve, but as far as i know this shouldnt be a nerf for rangers in pve.
-Foxfire Fenix

Yeah somehow you are right and an small niche of players would like to get driven crazy with the micromanaging of the pet and such.
In my experience the best way is to implement both: an actual smart pet and the possibility of micromanage if you feel ready for the task.

However i see more feasible to implement the new A.I. because the engine is already there (at least for HoT) so should be effortless to implement an smart decision tree for every pet, so it can become actually loveable.
Also Anet has stated hundreds of times that they want Gw2 to be a casual gaming interface, so the micromanaging things are not in line of an easy and intuitive interface to learn.

The changes in the keybinds interface i see them more difficult to do. As an example the community has been asking for a keybind to stash the pet for 3 years and that didn’t happen.