Guild Wars 2

Pets that are not bristilback and smoke scale need a rework period.
Not only do they have issues hitting moving targets but they also die in 2 seconds. I am fine with a glassy pet such as a tiger dying easily if it gets focused (compared to bb or ss) what i am not ok with is it dying because it gets cleaved down by random aoe not targeted at it. In this situation (teamfight) you are playing without a class mechanic, and if you have 1 pet that can participate in a team fight (basically only bb or ss) you are forced to not swap from it because the other one will die instantly.

I don’t expect every pet to be able to blink to a target or to have the same survivability as smoke scale but i am not fine with this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIQZb-iuLmk&feature=youtu.be
the wyverns are the worst offenders when it comes to actually hitting moving targets but all other pets suffer from this in some capacity. The only pets that come close to being useful are the feline and birds (they are not free from this issue, they also end up running in circles after targets not hitting anything) but like mentioned they die in 2 sec.

A easy solution to this would be to give pets the pve buff which makes them take 90% less dmg if they are not targeted by the source of damage (this way they will never die to aoe unless the opponent locks on to the pet while the aoe is ticking), and making the 30% increased movement speed trait from bm baseline while replacing it with supper speed (so it reads your pet gains supper speed when you swap it ~5sec and increased ferocity). This way non smokescale melee pets would be able to actually participate in fights.

If none of these changes happen (or similar changes) then every ranger in the game will always use smoke scale and bristilback in pvp (and wvw) no matter what you do to them, you could nerf their damage by 70% and they will still be the only ones used because they are the only FUNCTIONAL pets.

Been playing WoW lately as a hunter and it made me realize how bad the pet mechanics of Ranger are. WoW’s not perfect either, but here’s what I wish GW2 could also pull off:
1) Make all pets equal DPS. In WoW, the only difference with pet performance is their utility skills. This gives a lot more flexibility in being able to choose a pet companion based on flavor/aesthetics instead of just how well it performs. In a game often called “Fashion Wars”, I’m still floored that you get punished for taking a pet because of how it looks.

2) Pets in WoW are optional for one of the specs. I don’t expect this to ever happen in GW2 since the devs think that a pet is integral to the class, unfortunately, but it would be nice to have this option.

3) One spec allows for 2 pets at once and there’s castable spells that summon temporary pets. I really wish there was more done to the Beastmastery talent line to make it actually feel more like you were a “beast master”. For a class that’s distinguished by it’s reliance on a pet, it also just overall feels like just having 1 beast to ever assist at once that plays such a small role undermines the whole point of having a pet in the first place.

I think there’s a lot of ways how to go around pets.

One of our fellow forum members had an amazing idea that pets would not deal damage but would work as a utility-oriented feature.
Dogs could sniff out stealthed
Birds could peck eyes for blind
Pigs could spawn consumables like now
Cats could cripple or make vulnerable
Spiders immobilize
SmokeScale provide stealth
Wyverns knockdown

I mean, there’s a lot of brainstorming around pets that has already been done. Most of ideas were brilliant. They are just afraid to implement them because I think they are aware of possible failures themselves. This way – it kinda works so they do not want to touch something that is not broken (even though I think they should risk it).

People are used to have one single glassy pew pew build and dont cafe to adapt pets to the situations at hand

The way i see it there many kinds of pets with different abilities.

If im about to go into a large pve boss witn tons of aoes and mobs i wont use a bird or a cat and send it directly in… i would use ranged pets or pets that can use ranged aoes.

some pets like spiders offer venoms on your weapons, can be more usefull in some situations than sending a squishy pet atack once before it gets obliterated.

Dahkeus.8243:

Been playing WoW lately as a hunter and it made me realize how bad the pet mechanics of Ranger are. WoW’s not perfect either, but here’s what I wish GW2 could also pull off:
1) Make all pets equal DPS. In WoW, the only difference with pet performance is their utility skills. This gives a lot more flexibility in being able to choose a pet companion based on flavor/aesthetics instead of just how well it performs. In a game often called “Fashion Wars”, I’m still floored that you get punished for taking a pet because of how it looks.

2) Pets in WoW are optional for one of the specs. I don’t expect this to ever happen in GW2 since the devs think that a pet is integral to the class, unfortunately, but it would be nice to have this option.

3) One spec allows for 2 pets at once and there’s castable spells that summon temporary pets. I really wish there was more done to the Beastmastery talent line to make it actually feel more like you were a “beast master”. For a class that’s distinguished by it’s reliance on a pet, it also just overall feels like just having 1 beast to ever assist at once that plays such a small role undermines the whole point of having a pet in the first place.

Look, I loved hunter in WoW when I used to play it but I stopped playing that game for a reason and, looking at how they are gutting the class, I don’t want the Ranger anywhere near what Hunter is right now. While making pet DPS equal is not a bad idea, I absolutely couldn’t stomach Ranger to be even remotely like the current incarnation of WoW’s Beastmaster because, even though it was my favorite spec, they have since yanked most of the fun things out about it including gutting its utility and crowd control because “hurrdurr you gots lotsa pets” and Hati the idiot second pet gives you “all teh extra DPS”. Trust and believe that you don’t want all of your DPS balance being around having a Necromancer-level crowd of pets that you can sic on folks and don’t forget that it will also multiply all of our pet pathing problems.

As for giving the option to take away the pets entirely, while I sort of understand this, it seems odd considering this is one of the few games where you have multiple classes that don’t have a pet but let you use a bow and arrow. It really shouldn’t surprise you that the devs aren’t willing to remove a core mechanic to a class (one that it was stated upfront the class would have from the beginning) to appease people who, to them, have other options.

Tragic Positive.9356:

I think there’s a lot of ways how to go around pets.

One of our fellow forum members had an amazing idea that pets would not deal damage but would work as a utility-oriented feature.
Dogs could sniff out stealthed
Birds could peck eyes for blind
Pigs could spawn consumables like now
Cats could cripple or make vulnerable
Spiders immobilize
SmokeScale provide stealth
Wyverns knockdown

I mean, there’s a lot of brainstorming around pets that has already been done. Most of ideas were brilliant. They are just afraid to implement them because I think they are aware of possible failures themselves. This way – it kinda works so they do not want to touch something that is not broken (even though I think they should risk it).

My idea for dogs was that you could detect and target stealthed foes within a certain range. As long as the pet is alive you can consistently hit the stealthed target. Thieves would think twice before attacking a group with rangers in it. Rangers would be in demand in WvW as anti-gank hunters. Hell, if they made it a trait I’d begin using it immediately.

Pets in general are the rangers bane. They miss far too often, killing our artificially lowered DPS due to having a pet in the first place. It would be one thing if we weren’t penalized for having said pet. But we are and the pet combat mechanic sucks.

One idea is a perma store pet option that returns our DPS to what it should be. Yeah, you have no pet, but you do the DPS you were meant to do.

Heibi.4251:

My idea for dogs was that you could detect and target stealthed foes within a certain range. As long as the pet is alive you can consistently hit the stealthed target. Thieves would think twice before attacking a group with rangers in it. Rangers would be in demand in WvW as anti-gank hunters. Hell, if they made it a trait I’d begin using it immediately.

I actually really like this. This is the kinda thinking I wish anet came up with, instead of players.

Heibi.4251:

Pets in general are the rangers bane. They miss far too often, killing our artificially lowered DPS due to having a pet in the first place. It would be one thing if we weren’t penalized for having said pet. But we are and the pet combat mechanic sucks.

One idea is a perma store pet option that returns our DPS to what it should be. Yeah, you have no pet, but you do the DPS you were meant to do.

This has been stated almost verbatim by countless players over the years, myself included. It’s been argued to death by both players for stowing and players against stowing, yet the argument has been almost completely ignored by Anet. They prefer to try to fix pet/ranger damage balance issues by ignoring the pets existance and buffing ranger slowly, subtly and very rarely so that no pvp-ers notice and cry about it. Druid for example has preciesly 0 weapon skills designed around the pet, unlike core-ranger weapons and has only one trait which affects the pet, but doesn’t actually affect the pet’s behavior, skills or stats in any way, unlike the core traitlines. In other words Druid was designed without any thought whatsoever to the pet, with only one trait created/changed as an after-thought.

The last time they made an effort to address the serious flaws of the ranger/pet design was when they added the PvE only AoE resistance to pets. They’re still broken in other game modes of course and it wasn’t soley an effort to make the ranger pet less awful, rather the gyro’s which they created for Scrapper. That’s right, the only time they tried to fix ranger pets was when they realised that their short-sighted and generally awful Ai designs would impact an HoT elite spec.

So maybe in a year or two when(if) the next expansion comes and if Anet make the same mistake yet again and put minions on another E-spec, ranger pets may get another “fix”. Vicariously of course, just like last time.

I like the solution other pet-based games take. The master and the pet have the same HP pool and attacking one damages the other, thus, the pet lasts as long as the master but is still useful to target, and you can CC it to get rid of it for a while.

The problem with this solution is GW2 is all the AoE damage …

Hannelore.8153:

I like the solution other pet-based games take. The master and the pet have the same HP pool and attacking one damages the other, thus, the pet lasts as long as the master but is still useful to target, and you can CC it to get rid of it for a while.

The problem with this solution is GW2 is all the AoE damage …

Let’s talk about untargetable and immortal pets.
OP? Why, tho?

You can’t kill elementalist’s Fire Attunement, either. The ranger dies – the pet disappears. The only other class with kill-able Class feature is a mesmer and – let’s take a guess who is the only class worse in DPS than we are.

Hannelore.8153:

I like the solution other pet-based games take. The master and the pet have the same HP pool and attacking one damages the other, thus, the pet lasts as long as the master but is still useful to target, and you can CC it to get rid of it for a while.

This is actually a concept that I’ve considered but never heard of a game implementing. What games and classes are these? I’m genuinely curious.

foste.3098:

Pets that are not bristilback and smoke scale need a rework period.
Not only do they have issues hitting moving targets but they also die in 2 seconds. I am fine with a glassy pet such as a tiger dying easily if it gets focused (compared to bb or ss) what i am not ok with is it dying because it gets cleaved down by random aoe not targeted at it. In this situation (teamfight) you are playing without a class mechanic, and if you have 1 pet that can participate in a team fight (basically only bb or ss) you are forced to not swap from it because the other one will die instantly.

I don’t expect every pet to be able to blink to a target or to have the same survivability as smoke scale but i am not fine with this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIQZb-iuLmk&feature=youtu.be
the wyverns are the worst offenders when it comes to actually hitting moving targets but all other pets suffer from this in some capacity. The only pets that come close to being useful are the feline and birds (they are not free from this issue, they also end up running in circles after targets not hitting anything) but like mentioned they die in 2 sec.

A easy solution to this would be to give pets the pve buff which makes them take 90% less dmg if they are not targeted by the source of damage (this way they will never die to aoe unless the opponent locks on to the pet while the aoe is ticking), and making the 30% increased movement speed trait from bm baseline while replacing it with supper speed (so it reads your pet gains supper speed when you swap it ~5sec and increased ferocity). This way non smokescale melee pets would be able to actually participate in fights.

If none of these changes happen (or similar changes) then every ranger in the game will always use smoke scale and bristilback in pvp (and wvw) no matter what you do to them, you could nerf their damage by 70% and they will still be the only ones used because they are the only FUNCTIONAL pets.

As the video show it would seem bad. But what you fail to realize that each pet offers different play and you have to work with and combo with. Pets are not meant to carry you. Sad thing is druid trait and bb/ss pets have made influence HoT ranger/druid players to overlook the different gameplay each pet brings and these players assume the other pets should carry like bristleback and smokestack brings. It’s not the pets it the players. With wyverns it’s not meant for its auto but for knock back and it’s f2 aoe pressure (fire+might blasting)/knock back (lighting aoe for swift blast or leap stun).

As for pets dieing fast. The HoT pets have more health which make them more unique. So, they could up the health for core pets; other than that watch your pets health. You can call them to you if they take to much heat if you’re a vet ranger pre you would know this. So part of the pet dieing is you kitting and leaving your pet behide; it’s you letting it die most of the time.

Dahkeus.8243:

Been playing WoW lately as a hunter and it made me realize how bad the pet mechanics of Ranger are. WoW’s not perfect either, but here’s what I wish GW2 could also pull off:
1) Make all pets equal DPS. In WoW, the only difference with pet performance is their utility skills. This gives a lot more flexibility in being able to choose a pet companion based on flavor/aesthetics instead of just how well it performs. In a game often called “Fashion Wars”, I’m still floored that you get punished for taking a pet because of how it looks.

2) Pets in WoW are optional for one of the specs. I don’t expect this to ever happen in GW2 since the devs think that a pet is integral to the class, unfortunately, but it would be nice to have this option.

3) One spec allows for 2 pets at once and there’s castable spells that summon temporary pets. I really wish there was more done to the Beastmastery talent line to make it actually feel more like you were a “beast master”. For a class that’s distinguished by it’s reliance on a pet, it also just overall feels like just having 1 beast to ever assist at once that plays such a small role undermines the whole point of having a pet in the first place.

I totally agree. The pets are unique to rangers, we definitely need to improve the mechanics. I think that a lot of people play the ranger because of the pet in the beginning. It’s nice, adorable, it makes fun to discover the world with it. But in pvp, wvw, fractals and raids you have to be highly specialized and cannot just wander around with your most loved pet and a tune on your lips.

I always wish there would be a elite-spec for a real “Beastmaster” with improved pet handling, more than one pet or some elite-pets, special skills like a stampede (summoning more pets for a short period of time), better boonshare for groups and so on. Just take a look in pen and paper rpgs with beastmasters as a profession…there are a lot of options anet could develop and implement. I don’t want another weapon or just be most of the time a healer in a group, I really like to have more use out of my pet.