I’ve seen this discussion several times before throughout the history of Gw2, from pre-release onward. I’m generally partial to the beast-master archetype, Gw2 being no exception, but I also get why people would be so repelled by it. An overly long analysis of why it is, and how it could be approached.
Hunter/Ranger pets typically represent a secondary yet mandatory feature that’s fairly difficult to see the unique benefit of, with a high failure cost for mismanagement or bad positioning, and at first Gw2 pets weren’t given anything to compensate for their lowered mobility, such as the doubled health, AOE damage reduction, and the extremely recent lunging while auto attacking & cast speed buffs. The former two don’t exist in PVP when that is perhaps where it would be most important to actually have it.
Gw2’s release had a a weak and repelling introduction for the playerbase at large to the pet mechanic, especially as pets were very clearly inheriting the functionality and behavior of trash mobs with standardized attributes and abilities, and desires for tighter control (such as choosing which abilities go on auto or manual cast, rather than the existing “super power” idea of the f2 ability) have been directly rebuffed.
Even giving them a permanent name was called an impossibility until absurdly late in Gw2’s history, and they lost the growth mechanic they had in Gw1 where after achieving level milestones (11 and 15) they would get noticeably larger. Gw2 basically hit on all the usual difficulties of MMORPG hunter/ranger pets, lost some of the thematic nuances & charms of the first game which also tend to be present in other MMOs (full bluntness: WoW), and introduced its own flaws on top of all that.
Not to mention, almost all of these QoL changes came after absolute tidal waves of rage, and quite often in a too little too late manner.
My summary of the petless idea:
Assuming it’s not woefully complex to alter the properties of abilities, I don’t think it’s necessarily that impossible mechanically (but not practical.) The weapon abilities that have some effect for the pet itself to utilize could possibly be restructured so that the ranger takes that effect instead, such as Maul granting the ranger an equivalent of 2 attacks of opportunity instead of 1 (or something else to more closely represent the actual rather than theoretical bonus.)
Beast-mastery trait-line & shouts would require a more significant rework, and a rename & re-description, but even then it doesn’t seem impossible in relation to the other changes that Gw2 has seen over the years. Search and Rescue could be functionally treated as an increased revive speed, Sic Em’ or Protect Me having its effects apply to you, etc.
But depending on how easy or difficult it is to create more or less new abilities (in the case of replaced/restructured & renamed beast mastery traits and abilities) or “reroute” in the case of several weapon abilities, it probably just isn’t really practical to take on for a relatively niche issue (the ranger and the pets themselves do have places in the game & meta after all, despite their shortcomings) unless the ranger’s upcoming elite trait line is meant to be the answer to that in some form.
Ironically, I would see the most practical idea (easiest to implement with the game as we see it on live) for a “petless” ranger actually being based on a pet that’s designed explicitly as a back-line, set and forget ranged (long-bow quality ranged) with several differences from normal “pets” focused on alleviating the high-risk or tedious mico-managing without having to jump through hoops of redesigns & significant rebalances and having 90% or more of the power transferred to the player and having almost no functionality on its own, rather than a 70/30 or so split between ranger/pet.
That said, 100% of the power potential on one entity is inherently better than a split power ceiling unless there are other factors leveraged in as balance points; Gw2 has shades of this in that, two heads are always better than one for getting through breakbars, and rangers can leverage the potential of the pet for CC and survival especially since their HP and crowd control abilities are equal to a player’s, despite the cast times involved.
As a theme/archetype, the ranger is a fairly broad term, and in Guild Wars terms I would describe it as being something of a druid with closer ties to civilization than to the wilderness.
I consider part of the rage about pets (especially from the earlier days of Gw2) is that in Guild Wars 1, pets were wholly optional for a ranger. A valid and unique option in its own right, but optional. Then suddenly Gw2 seems dead-set on condensing and simplifying many aspects of the original game, and bam, ranger is stuck being the beast-master class which also held onto a lot of relic qualities of the first game, never for the better, even if the ranger has their original theme intact.
