Guild Wars 2

Hello,

I’m a returning player after a long absence, more than three years, looking for a casual pve guild to get back into the swing of things. I work full time so I’m usually only on during the evenings between 7pm-12am for a couple hours.

Ideally looking to get back into dungeons and fractal progression and work my way up from there. Also they have guild halls now? What a country!

Give me a shout in game or send my a PM.

Cheers

Hello,

Returning player, looking for a casual PvE guild that tolerates inactivity from real life happenings (full-time student in September!). Looking for all walks of PvE, from dungeons to missions and hopefully raiding.

Currently on Tarnished Coast and would prefer not to move.

Please message in game, cheers

It really depends what you’re trying to do with it.

As a quick and (somewhat) easy way to apply might stacks via blast finishers, dual drakes with Flame Trap / Bonfire and Hunter’s Call, you’ve built 10 stacks of might on your party.

If you trait for increased boon duration on pets, drakes can effectively maintain their stacks. If you trait for reduced off-hand cool downs, so can Hunter’s Call when combined with boon duration increases – however the single stack applied by Hunter’s Call will, at best, last 20 seconds without investing heavily into boon duration for the Ranger itself, and therefor is not a reliably maintained source.

The perks: sharing boons with your pets negates the loss of might stacks on when swapping from drake one to drake two (if five party members / player characters are not in range) means that – with a little luck – your Drake has between 7 and 14 might stacks on him at the start of combat to help boost the lackluster damage from drakes attacks and make the F2 from River Drake pack more.

The downside: you’re burning that pet swap for 3 stacks of might on a 30-second cool down that cannot be micro-managed without attention to detail and good reflexes to either put up the fields or recalling the pet before it’s animation is complete. Combine this with the party members overlapping combo fields, and it can become troublesome. Bonfire is great with it’s 8-second duration to sit there as the oldest initiator, but takes up an offhand slot with the ineffective torch. Flame Trap, conversely, has short duration and requires quick reflexes and proper placement during pet swap.

Also, as the Ranger, you’re also putting a lot of weight into boon duration to make it effective, inevitably sacrificing something else along the way, either in traits, runes or gear. The question is: does this sacrifice, combined with the necessary skill to use the strategy effectively, outweigh the potential benefits?

I think any one that posts a thread with constructive criticism deserves a mention on that list.

Whenever using Sic ’Em, ensure that you activate it last. The buff will be removed otherwise.
So, in this case, it would be best to active Signet of the Hunt before combat (the active effect lasts a long time) and then Signet of the Wild followed by Sic ’Em.

If you are intending to use it with an F2 skill, begin the activation of that skill before casting Signet of the Wild so the pet will que and begin the long animation.

Hello!

I’m a returning player looking to get back into the game on a casual basis. Looking for a PvE, North American based guild of casual, easy going and mature players. Not really concerned with size and scope, just fun people.

Send me a message / in game mail if you think your guild would be a good fit.

Take care,

Lunchbox.9543

kyubi.3620:

you do know that if you run dual bow as a 20 in skirmish you get to have perma fury/swiftness permanantly on your longbow anyway? So whats the fuss about

That requires investing into Skirmishing, which conflicts with other trait choices available in Wilderness Survival or Marksmanship depending on your build. Assuming most people opt to put 30 points into Wilderness Survival to help manage conditions, that leaves 40 points, meaning you can either choose between a 15 point investment to get fury on swap and only have access to one major trait in Marksmanship, or put 30 points into Marksmanship to gain the choice between mixing Spotter, Piercing Arrows & Eagle Eye – or Remorseless, if you so choose. So it limits your choices between having either passive condition removal, on-swap five seconds of fury, or sacrificing increased longbow range and damage, piercing arrows, or an aoe precision buff.

Azreell.1568:

Casey.9687:

Coarr.3286:

Casey.9687:

This build is the new meta?!? rofl! come fight me on my trap ranger and ill show you how terrible greatsword still is =D Please stop using longbows and greatswords….they are useless weapons and you silly rangers thinking they can actually help you are just lieing to yourselves. Anet looks at you silly ones and sees that your still running them and thinks oh they must be ok but their not….stop lieing to yourselves guys.

lol you still play trapper? i use my sword/horn + axe/torch wvw roaming build and did beat down a trapper + spirit ranger pretty easy in spvp ( my first 3 matches ever yestarday. havent died a single time )

You clearly haven’t fought me yet =D

4,293 hours on ranger 4,326 across all characters. All I ever run is trapper all other builds like this one are just crippling ranger they all still suck. Longbow is still horrible dps. Greatsword can’t hit the broadside of a barn. Spirit Ranger is alright but its the most lazy build I have ever witnessed next to signet warriors….Tired of rangers getting on here and lieing and trying to make the greatsword and longbow into somthing their not….they need fixed, bad. Stop trying to make them work on a build its just down right disappointing

Gratz?

Taking into account the three-day head start weekend, if this person played since launch, then that is 9 hours on the Ranger per day.

To put that in perspective, using the current minimum wage in Ontario, you would have made a little over $44.000 before taxes over the past one and quarter year as an adult or $41,200 as a student.

Regardless, if Action 52 has any lesson to impart. quality > quantity.

Zorby.8236:

Solandri.9640:

They said 80% of 2v2s had a ranger in it. So 0.8 * 0.25 = 20% of players were rangers, which is pretty close to what their 1 year anniversary stats said (19% if I remember).

What the H is this? 80% of the 2v2 were rangers and they constitute 1/4 of the playerbase -> 20% of players are rangers? That makes no sense…

Alright, using the example provided:

If 80% of all 2v2 had a single Ranger, then 25% of combatants were a Ranger. Therefor, 20% of players were Rangers.

0.8 (80% of 2v2) * 0.25 (25% Ranger profession) = 0.2 (20% total Ranger population.)

Whether this is accurate or not is up for debate, however it does parallel with the previously stated population percentage released by Anet at the end of August.

These threads are all too prevalent. Posting them in the correct forum would improve the chances of them being read by the appropriate individual, although I wouldn’t hold my breath.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions

Well, if you prefer the passive method, just remember to switch your pet back to Guard instead of Avoid Combat if you want him to attack the next target on his own. He will stay locked onto the desired target provided you are in combat when the change is made. This however requires a mouse click as opposed to hot keys, but tomato, tomato. I don’t think that works well in the written word.

I ranted in an earlier post about how your pet always attacked your target, and you couldn’t sic it on a different target than the one you were attacking.
…
I’d prefer it if the aggressive setting worked the same way – being able to pick the pet’s target and having it auto-select its next target by itself when the first target dies is a lot more useful. But I’ll take what I can get.

Just keep it in guard and not avoid combat.

Engage (attack) the target you wish the pet to attack, hit F1, and then change to the target you wish to attack. Regardless of which target(s) you hit, your pet will remain locked onto the initial target until called away or swapped.

The issue is that pets will change targets when the Ranger enters combat. So, if you are out of combat and begin by locking the pet on Target A and then enter combat by attacking Target B, the pet will change targets and attack Target B.

Thus, the Ranger is required to be in combat first for the pet to stick to the desired target when using Guard instead of Avoid Combat. This grants passive target selection for when the pet defeats the desired foe.

Hypocrisy is defined as: “the practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness.”

Irony is defined as: “incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs.”

Verbal irony, loosely defined as the use of words other than their literal intention, is not same as irony. It is often mistaken because of the way people neglect to preface it colloquially.

If a thief should kill unprepared players and is instead caught unprepared and complains, then this satisfies the incongruity between what is expected and what actually occurs and, therefor, is ironic.

This would only be hypocritical if the person in question was insincere about their complaints after being caught unprepared.

Your logic is more than sound, I think that I just looked at it in a reverse sense that no other skills on the longbow or harpoon gun were having their condition duration shortened by the trait and therefor was a specific change to the weapon skill itself.

Chopps.5047

Have you tested it? And has anyone tested Nature’s Voice? I’m bored of doing QA because I got better thing to do with my time.

If I have time later this evening I will, but I’m going to presume there are other, more capable people out there to ascertain this before I can.

jcbroe.4329

I’m not forgetting it. That’s more of a bug fix related to an unintended function of a trait than an actual weapons # change. But I am glad they fixed Eagle Eye.

It still affects a weapon skill, regardless of how minute or inconsequential, in the grand scheme of things it would still fit under the umbrella of “weapon # changes.”

Besides, what you and I define as such may not fit what the developers choose to label them under either.

There was supposed to be: “# changes to some of the Ranger weapons.”

I can only find notes pertaining to Maul, and I just figured since this was a big balance update and all, there had to be more since that wasn’t the only problem.

You’re forgetting the fix to Barrage’s condition duration when traited with Eagle Eye.

And Spirit corpses produce their effects until is disappears (roughly another 15-18s, depending on time of death during pulses.)

It’s not hypocritical, it’s ironic.

Looks like fun, I’m not much of a PvPer so I can’t really give you much more than that. However, I’d work on editing the sound levels in your videos a little more, the background music from the game didn’t quite mix with the volume level from your voice at parts. Maybe turn it down / disable it in sound options?

Keep up the good work though.

@Lunchbox
Ok i’m sorry, I won’t reference Alpha anymore. How about we talk about how good ranger pets are in fractals then? I mean they do great on Maw when half the time the pet is targeted. Regardless of what others say, rangers are passable in dungeons but they are on the lowest rung of effectiveness imo. As I’ve stated before, I wouldn’t kick one from the group but I sure in hell wouldn’t cry if he left and even better yet, if the ranger just didn’t join. And this is coming from someone who has a ranger, played it for a long time and even made a legendary on it.
And regardless of pet HP or toughness, they still pretty much get 1 shotted by bosses and possess no way to dodge or stay behind the boss(unless the ranger manually pulls it and moves and then sicks it back in etc etc).
Don’t get mad at me cause I call it as it is. Blame Anet for a year of not fixing ranger pets and pet AI. Like I said, I love playing my ranger in open world but in dungeons I feel i contribute much more on my guard or even my necro than i do on my ranger.

I would also appreciate if you didn’t support your knowledge of a class upon which weapons you’ve given to it. However, I am not upset nor angry with you, the OP was asking about information pertaining to the Ranger in different formats, and your comments about pet health were incorrect. Therefor, to help build better Rangers, I posted the correct data.
As for pets getting one-hit ko’s by bosses, it happens. If you want to drop a utility slot, it’s better to just use guard and have the pet run farther in front of you when the AoE circles obstruct its path. I guess it all comes down to how well you know the content you’re facing, what skills you have that get around the hurdles, and how to use them effectively. Sad part about this extra health buff they plan on adding, Signet of the Wilds unintended bonus passive affect when the pet is dead will be weaker.

As for the more HP to pets, Anet do you fail to understand that unless you give pets like 20k HP, they will still get one shotted. Unless I am completely off here, pets have no armor or toughness and can not dodge so just slapping a couple thousand HPs on them still wont help them against a boss like Alpha which will basically 1 shot it.

All of that up there is completely false and wrong. Canines, Felines, Birds, and Devourer pets currently have 14.8k health. All other pets (excluding Ursine, which has 29,982 health) have 22,425 base health.

Birds, Felines, Moas, Shark, Jellyfish and Spider pets possess the lowest base toughness rating of 1374, Devourer and Armor Fish have toughness rating of 2748. Canine, Drake, Ursine and Porcine have base toughness rating of 2061.

All of this information is available here: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pet_attributes

As an addendum, please stop referencing Subject Alpha as a bane to pets, he is far from it. If the group engages him in melee and stacks, then pets, minions, elementals and any other summons will be effective and live their full duration during the encounter when positioned in melee.

I get rewarded for when they die (and note, they WILL die)

They can be fragile, but they can survive Subject Alpha as well. All depends how you use them.

Lower CD when killed! HOW IS THAT BAD?

I only play PvE, so my opinions do not reflect how this affects other areas of the game.

This is a poor update to the skill because it creates a play-style that focuses on a spirit needing to be killed a certain time to be considered at peak efficiency. As stated above, this plays into Nature’s Vengeance which is only truly effective if you plan on letting your spirits die. I have always considered that to be a counter-productive idea.

A skilled player in the past could keep the spirit in range and hidden in a safe spot, or if they chose to, invest and give the spirits movement. In easier encounters this led to spirits being very effective in PvE since the ai will ignore them with direct attacks for the most part, only cleaving or hitting with aoe. With these new updates, there is a distinct disadvantage in any encounter that lasts more than 60 seconds (which many mechanic fights will).

This, combined with the internal cool-down on Sun Spirit, Stone Spirit and Storm Spirit proc effect, the fact that Stone & Storm Spirit will not apply buffs to players that are already under the affect of Protection and Swiftness respectively, creates a very unreasonable amount of constraint on something that really should only need to act as a party-wide buff with a bonus skill for the Ranger.

With these changes there is no reason to run spirits if you cannot kill foes with in the 60-second lifespan, if you can, then to have them available as soon as possible, swapping the utility slots to different skills triggers the cool-down. This is the only time 25 seconds seems nice. The harsh reality: just one step forward, two steps back.

TL;DR: If you’re skilled enough to keep it alive for 60-seconds, its got a 25-second cool-down. If it was in a bad spot or ate an aoe, its got a 25-second cool-down. There is no reward for keeping a spirit alive for the full duration. If spirits had a lifespan similar to minions, this change would still reward skilled use. Obviously a mechanic like this would need exclude the elite spirit, which would be balanced around its fixed duration.

Lack of precision will hurt it if you’re after the on-crit bleeds, pet might stacks or sigil on-crit effects. Still, might be a good mix with rabid.

Good day,

I’m an easy-going, fun-loving, hassle-free player coming back to the game after a bit of a break this summer and would like to find a guild with the same attitude that does dungeon runs outside of the boring and mundane CoF path 1. Willing to hop servers.

If this sounds like your guild, send me (Luncbox.9543) a message in game.

Have a good one eh.

The first step to improving the ranger is by giving the ranger all his power and reducing it on the pet appropriately.

This is short-sighted and wrong. Please consider the simple fact that making this change will eliminate build competition and make it unwise to run anything with a pet, reducing the effectiveness of the Ranger’s utility, support, and condition damage builds all for the sake of increased power, and therefor only a dps increase. This is a very selfish suggestion that does nothing to help solve the issue with pets and is not a step forward. Buffing the player does not fix the pet and means that players who want to use this mechanic are still handicapped.

Step two is to allow us to buff the pet through traits and through advanced settings in the pet menu. At the cost of the stats of the ranger perhaps.

You had previously suggested shifting stats off of the pet to the Ranger, however now you want to shift them back to the pet at the cost of attribute points and Ranger stats? That sounds awful. These two suggestions are directly contradicting each other.

We can already buff them through traits as well: 30% critical damage, 50% boon duration / condition duration, 350 healing power / condition damage and a 30% speed increase all from adept-level traits, not to mention might stacking via Companion’s Might, Master’s Bond and the unique effect from Beast Mastery. While it may not be the most desirable way to boost pet stats, it’s all we have. It would be better to condense these traits to make it have better synergy with pets. Boon duration & healing power and condition duration & damage should be combined in my opinion.

The issue with the pet is survival and the break down in communication between profession balance with dungeon design & balance, resulting in encounters that are ill-suited for pet classes. Molten Facility was atrocious and punishing towards pets, minions, and people with no endurance regeneration. Combined with unwieldy skills like “Guard” being required for protection in hard-hitting encounters, Rangers have to sacrifice skill slots and traits because the loss of their pet is a greater overall drop in their dps than trait and skill changes will ever be.

I have been dreaming of Maul as a blast finisher as well. You’d need to keep a close eye on Healing Spring though, since with the GS cooldown trait, you’d be able to have at least two Area Healing (Maul) and two Healing (Swoop) combos without problem. That’s +2k and +2k aoe heal. Still, it’d be an interesting way to support your group.

You would have two Swoops, two Mauls untraited and two Swoops, three Mauls traited. The finishers both have the same base (1320 blast, 1300 leap) but their coefficients are different. However, in order to reach a +2k blast finisher, you would require 3400 healing power. (1320 + (3400*0.2)) = 2000.

If Maul were to have a blast finisher, the cool down would have to be increased significantly. Between two drakes and three Mauls, you could get five finished off in one Healing Spring. I think this would be a case of the cure being worse than the disease and then the Greatsword would lose what little damage it has, or Healing Spring would changed and be weaker in any builds without the Greatsword.

Does anyone have anything to say about Warhorn skills?
It keeps on boggling my mind why the 4th ability – Hunter’s Call does so extremely little damage. It’s a visually fantastic ability, yet what’s the point in visuals if you don’t ever use it?

It’s only benefit I’ve ever found arises in the fact you can use skills while it is dealing damage. This is makes it a great choice to use to quickly build might stacks on a pet for Companion’s Might & Rampage as One or to trigger the bleeding from Sharpened Edges. These are not necessarily good, however, it does hit 16 times and therefor has the opportunity to trigger those effects multiple times, and you open yourself to reliable applications of fury to make the on-crit traits trigger more.

Thanks for posting the videos, very much appreciated.

If you cast it, it uses your stats.

So, if you cast Healing Spring, whomever receives the regeneration buff, it will be calculated using the caster’s (you) healing power. If anyone activates a combo finisher, like a blast finisher, inside your Healing Spring, it will calculate the effects based off of your stats. This applies to fields that cause burning, poison, bleeding etc. as well.

So, if you cast Flame Trap, and I fire an arrow through it to trigger a combo finisher to apply burning, it would use your condition damage and not mine.

What I wonder is, if we have a trait that grants pets protection on dodge why not make it ageis?(just for pets)

Both have their pro’s and con’s. Versus a single hit attack, aegis is superior, however against multiple hits from AoE fields, protection would reduce more over time. As the PvE game is heavily mired with AoE, protection serves more in my opinion.

Guys, it’s not broken, it’s just very, very lazy.

Personally I opt to have my spirits be stationary. I’ve been quietly compiling bosses and dungeon instances and locations that keep the spirit in range and out of combat, but of course there are still instances where that is not feasible. It’s still a work in progress.

Forgot the Jellyfish with their Chilling / Immobilizing Whirls and Dark Water. But not like underwater combat is a major part of the game.

I’m basing this on the assumption that if boon duration and condition duration increases applied to the Ranger affect the duration of affects applied by spirits, the condition damage would be applied as well.

if you wish to join a guild, solely cuz the name is awesome, then you may be missing something.

Tired of being a faceless number in a guild that only wants you to represent them and farm influence for a small clique of tight-knit friends that never care about or help their drones?

Come to nWo then, where we assign you a letter!*

Disclaimer: letters may be refurbished, please clean before use. Do not leave unattended around children under three years old.

Personally i’d swap sharpened edges for companion’s might to boost the burn damage from sun spirit procs that the pet will be applying.

if I recall correctly, the burning damage is calculated using the Ranger’s condition damage, not the pet or other players, npcs etc. that are triggering it. I know it is affected by the duration increases from the Ranger.

I don’t really understand how pets are a “liability” in dungeons..I mean I know there are certain fights and things where they can cause problems, but then you just turn them on peace mode. I find my pets to be helpful for a lot of fights, too. And actually when I do pugs, most problems I have are things like other members not listening or doing a lv 12 fractal and people having like, never been to fractals before. Not generally people going “ew ranger you suck get out”.

I agree with you, but most of the reasons you find pets to be useful is because you have adapted your game play to care for the needs of the pet.

Most of the time the pet is a liability because people don’t care. I’m not making a broad generalization of the Ranger community, I’m just talking about the mentality some people have towards their pet and their expectations for and of the pet. While it would be nice for the pet to be a set-it-and-forget-it mechanic, it requires constant micro-management. To be truly effective at managing your pet you need to get used to anticipating when you’ll need to swap the pet. It is a pity Zephyr’s Speed has been moved to a grand master trait because it would provide the reward incentive for using your pet swaps as a quickness cool-down. It also becomes easier when you’ve gotten used to the content with your ranger, you’ll know to use a ranged pet instead of a melee pet, you’ll be able to avoid most of the attacks from bosses by dodging and use your heal for the pet, etc. and it will start becoming less of a chore to keep the pet alive.

It is also a matter of understanding the pro’s and con’s of which pet you choose for which areas of the game. For the most part, canines are the best utility pets (cripples, kd’s, access to unique skills that AoE immobilize, fear, or grant regeneration) – this makes them very effective in a dungeon run where the players stack up to cleave mobs by keeping foes together. For melee dps, drakes are preferred because of their aoe attacks, blast finisher, and funny looking walking animation. They are also very good tanks. For ranged pets you’ve got bleeds & poison from devours or cripples and immobilizes from spiders.

All that it honestly needs is for “Guard” to behave like a shout and cast instantly. Then it would become a very, very viable build.

Honestly, I hate the fact that you need to run around spamming a slow cast, semi-useless shout to keep regen/swiftness up from the trait.

The weakest part of the build indeed, and practically dead weight. I use “Guard” to position my pet, not to keep up boons in combat. One second hurts.

I’m not entirely sure how you calculated it, but would you be able to narrow it down to a base damage-per-second stat from those times?

I have to say I do most of the stuff you suggested at the moment and it was very much a braindump on how to make our quality of life better and like I said to lower what is currently a very high skill floor for the class.
I would point out that I’ve been using guard a lot recently as I started using nature’s voice and I have to say the perma protection my drakes end up with mean they haven’t died for ages in dungeons especially combined with the regen and sig of the wild.

Yeah, pets aren’t really for the faint of heart. I’m still not sure if they’re like cats; do we own them or do they own us?

And drakes are just good all-around pet, I can’t say a bad thing about them – even their waddle makes having them worthwhile.

I’ve gotten 15stacks of bleeding from 1 split blades so many times that i’m not really seeing the bad side of SE…

If you’re stacking 15 bleeds off a single Split Blade it is not from Sharpened Edges, and if it were, it would not be upon a single target. Getting all five attacks to be critical hits, and all five to proc Sharpened Edges and getting a single stack from Sigil of Earth (remember it has a two-second icd) would only add up to 11 stacks on your target.

If you meant to say you can hit three people clustered together with all five piercing projectiles to get 15 stacks, then yes, it is achievable, and Sharpened Edges did nothing to help reach it, but it is not putting heavy condition pressure on your desired target.

If you meant to say stacking sufficient condition duration increase allows you to keep up five stacks of bleeding beyond the 6 second cool down of Split Blade, then Sharpened Edges still only increases it beyond 11 (13 if lucky) stacks, 5 from Split Blade, 1-3 from Sigil of Earth, 5 from the second Split Blade. Sure, now it can reach 15 stacks, but it only proc’d twice, and they only ticked once.

The only possible way to reach 15 stacks (and maintain it) via Split Blade, Sharpened Edges and Sigil of Earth is to invest into condition and bleed duration boosts to increase it to 100%. Again, it is not Sharpened Edges that is allowing you to reach these points.

And finally, if you’re really, really trying to get the most of out Sharpened Edges, use the Warhorn. Fury to increase proc rate and Hunter’s Call that doesn’t require channeling that allows you to continue using the Axe while hitting your target multiple times.

The nice thing about sharpened edges is that it doesn’t have an ICD so it actually can stack up a few times but even so the ridiculously short duration still makes it terrible and even on the highest of critchance the bleeds will sometimes fall off to 0, it should be reworked to last longer and be given a balanced ICD instead so you can gain from things like condition duration and such.

Second.
Make it work like Companion’s Might and I will love it.

Edit: clarified some points.

Sharpened Edges is a terrible, terrible trait. It’s (42.5 + (Cond *0.05)) damage at level 80, and will only tick once. You’re better off taking Pet’s Prowess regardless of pet choice, Agility Training if you don’t put swiftness on your pet, or Companion’s Might to stack Condition Damage on your pet, which will trigger 1/3 more than Sharpened Edges, and depending on weapon selection, can stack the pet’s condition damage close to or over even 1000 if you use Expertise Training.

If Sharpened Edges always provided a stack of bleeding on critical hits instead of the roughly 66% chance, it could be worthwhile. Instead, compared to the same traits in the adept level, it falls extremely short.

Good points, going to play Devil’s Advocate for a moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D44YUfi92ls

• 1) The f1 command is finicky. I’ve found you can get your pet to lock onto a target providing it and you are in combat. Basically, if I want my pet to focus on target B, I have to engage it as well, lock him on it, and then switch targets. A good place to try this is in CoE versus the common-boss of the golem and five support cannons. (Sidebar, if you target the Cleansing Turret and stand between the boss and the Protection Turret, GS will cleave to hit both the boss and Protection Turret. But that’s a story for another day.) It’s times like this I wish they kept the hero control panel from GW to help control out pets. A quality of life upgrade for pet control would be nice down the pipeline.

• 2) I used to think f2 skills were fine, I would take advantage of quickness on pet-swap to get off the high cast times, however with the changes to the BM tree, the f2 skills need to be re-balanced around the loss of quickness during the pet-swap being unavailable in most builds. This could also encourage people to spend the 30 points to have faster activating pet skills to get that trait.

• 3) I rely on swap or heal instead of movement to keep my pet alive in those AoE’s. It is also a good idea to understand when and where you can break aggro to stow-revive the pet. It would be nice if I could flag my pet to run to a specific area (much like “Guard,” except without wasting a utility slot.)

• 4) Another quality of life upgrade that could help players move away from needing to use snares to make their pet have the chance to hit. At least we have decent access to snares to overcome this problem in the mean time. If you’re really having trouble, try to get more chills and immobilizes to help.

• 5) A pet dodge would be nice, I’d just prefer a nice simple change to our minor BM trait – your pet evades for 1 second when you dodge. Alternatively, the implementation of a better version of “Guard” that would reduce damage taken by a large percentage (example, 50%) but would reduce the damage the pet is able to do for its duration (again, let’s say 50%). Give it 2s duration, 8-10s cooldown. Of course, just thinking out loud here, it has got to have some major problems I’ve not considered. And it would have to be on the pet command bar, not in a utility slot.

• 6) Pathing can only be solved by swapping right now, so, getting used to stowing the pet out of combat before traversing ledges and falls is a good idea. When not possible, save the swap until you’re at the bottom. If the pet is going to aggro, lock him on a target so you won’t have him drag them back to you (hint: really helpful in dungeons when running by things), then either stow it when it dies and you break aggro, or swap it when you think you’re far enough to break aggro. I’d like to say #6 could be fixed, but I think that one is a case of player skill < skills.

Of course, that’s just me trying to suggest tools we have right now to help alleviate these issues until something from the developers is introduced that either helps or exacerbates it further. Hopefully the former.

Easy way around it? Start the PUG group yourself. It helps.

If you can, launch the explorable mode on your character. If the party kicks you, they are all kicked from the instance. It could be a painful lesson in humility and show them the error of hubris. Of course – don’t try to get kicked.

Best way to resolve the issues with pets…
Allow rangers to put them away and get a damage bonus equal to what the pet is supposed to provide.
Problem solved.

This is neither a solution nor resolution to the problems at hand. All it would serve to do is sweep the issue of pets under the rug without addressing or solving the problems perceived to plague the companion mechanic and instead further supports the idea that a direct damage increase will solve all of our woes.

This proposed direct damage buff will do nothing to increase utility, support, or condition pressure and will further limit the availability of build choices because of the way power and critical damage can be affected by such an unbalanced change of allowing a flat damage bonus because of being able to ignore the pet.

I understand that you feel your pet is dead weight and that this change could greatly improve certain aspects of the classes damage output, it would be a monumental disaster to diversity and capabilities the class currently possesses. In other words, the cure would be worse than the disease.

While it is nice to see people continuing to suggest changes to the class, I wish people would suggest changes to the pet that are for the pet and the Ranger, instead of only the Ranger.

Why doesn’t the spirit elite resurrect dead pets?

because Scooby didn’t “Search and Rescue.”

But in all fairness, trading 60 (48) second cool down for a four-minute one is a very, very bad gimmick.

That makes more sense than a standard resurrection.

[Quote]if healing not working then why signet of the wild tick work just fine ? i try againnst the ogre chieftain in pvp and some monster in frostgorge and fireheart rise, it doesn’t seems work to me, now the only regen my pet had is signet of the wild[/quote]

The traits are working just fine, how it displays on the HUD is different. My bet is they removed pop-up number packets that come from affects from the pet, (i.e. the lack of condition damage being visible, the traits not popping up) because, while the source of the buff comes from our traits, it isn’t coming specifically from our character, and therefor isn’t displayed. This must be a recent change as before it would display these numbers.

Signet of the Wild, however, is equipped only on you and applies a shared buff between both you and the pet, which is why it appears on the screen.

At least, that’s how I understand the distinction between the skills.

Well, this thread has all the tropes for a cliche pet thread:

• Mentions the 60/40 split (which no one ever fully explains as traited, untraited, build or pet choice) with suggestions to front-load Ranger damage and reduce pet.
• Put more damage into the Ranger and less into the pet
• Have pet stats scale with gear
• Comments about pets dying frequently in PvE encounters
• Remove the death penalty cool down
• Give pets an active dodge, AoE reduction or immunity
• Allow pets to be resurrected
• Make f2 skills faster or instant activation
• That a baseline vitality / toughness increase isn’t enough
• That dead pets in PvE instantly negate our effectiveness versus every other class in the same situation.

Honestly, these are old ideas and it’s beating a dead horse with a dead horse sewn together from dead horses that were fed dead pets. At least we’re being polite though, which is a step in the right direction.

What I propose is that they make it so rangers deal ~90% damage, and they make it so a ranger deals anywhere from 110%-120% damage while their pet is up, this way the rangers pet becomes a scary thing the enemy wants to bring down. Not only that but the ranger also isn’t totally shafted if the pet does and can still fend for themselves.

This, like communism, sounds good in theory. The problem is that the Ranger, and not the pet, receives the benefits of these changes which wouldn’t solve any problems with the pet mechanic other than increasing the Ranger dps and inspiring lazier pet management, leaving the pet in the current or an even greater state of disdain. The pet would not be the scary thing to take down as you’re suggesting, it would still carry the same damage output or less as it had before while traited and much less while not, the Ranger would be much more important to target since pets will still carry their previous flaws.

I would also at the same time like to see a way to hit 110-130% via traits that would affect the Ranger more as well, but I would be satisfied with a 90/10 split with the potential for 90-30

I have the opposite view, however, if you’re reducing pet dps and increasing player dps, I’d like traits like Hunter’s Tactics, Peak Strength and Steady Focus to affect myself and my pet, like Bountiful Hunter can, allowing me to be able to increase both.

I think we should have the option of ressurecting our pets again via the F buttons in the same manor we would a player we have to stop everything else during that so it’s a choice to make when it is most beneficial but atleast you would have the option of bringing your pet back rather than just waiting for a timer.

This was an unintentional ability that was in the game at launch and was quickly removed in a patch update not long after (with-in a month of launching I believe). It was not very effective since you were resurrecting a dead (not downed) ally which takes longer than necessary and wouldn’t be a high priority by party members. In the end. 60% (if we can trust that metric) is still better than 0%, and if you can kill something in less-than a minute, you’re better off waiting to get out of combat to stow-revive it. If not, swapping is your best answer. And finally, if it is already dead and on cool down, reviving it won’t help it stay alive longer because the encounter and /or pet choice is not ideal.

Edit: apparently you can’t put has and hit beside eachother without getting hakitten

For Frost Spirit use target dummies in LA with Main-hand Axe. All three bounces will have the same base damage for each shot, and each attack is calculated separately for frost spirit allowing you to see if one (or more) stacks affect it.