Guild Wars 2

Well, what gives me hope is this line from Colin, “but it really should feel like you are playing a new version of your old profession.”

How different would a Druid feel from a Ranger if the Druid is tied to a pet? My guess is not very much. Would just feel like a Ranger with a staff.

Elendur.9342:

TheFantasticGman.9451:

If Druids still have the pet mechanic, what’s the point of calling it a Druid?

I will admit here that I am not reading all the devs say about what’s new on HoT, but I assume the specialization will end up like improved versions of the old classes… Otherwise, if they are really getting all new mechanics, they could just add them as full new classes, like the Revenant.

This is why I think Druids will still have pets, though I believe they will get some significant improvement.

If I am correct on that much, what we can do is hope the improvement won’t end up in using two pets at the same time, or getting a few new pets…

I have read/heard Anet Devs every bit on Specializations that they have put out and that’s why it is still up in the air.

Just look at the wiki for it: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Specialization

“Specializing keeps base profession skills and traits in addition to the new ones provided by that specialization, while offering new profession mechanics or changing existing ones²”

From the interview:

PCG: Another thing you announced was profession specialisations. The one you revealed was the Druid. That the Ranger was getting a staff weapon. Beyond having a different weapon, how different will the druid specialisation be from a ‘standard’ Ranger?

Colin: We’re really trying to make it feel like it’s almost a sub-profession or a secondary profession if you will, and not just a new set of a couple of skills. It’s not just opening up the capacity to use a staff. When a ranger becomes a druid, they have an entire new set of skills and traits that come available to them. And their profession mechanic changes as well. That’s true with all the specialisations. You actually play the profession differently, not just in skills and traits, but in the core mechanics of those professions. Some of them will change an existing profession, some of them might give them entirely new profession abilities and remove other ones. It really varies specialisation to specialisation, but it really should feel like you are playing a new version of your old profession. And players can actually mix and match a little bit. If you are playing as a Druid you will be able to use a lot of the Ranger’s skills, and you can actually slot them in to make a lot of creative builds. But a Ranger can not use any of the stuff a Druid has unless they become a Druid.

So, going by what Colin said… It’s going to change, but he doesn’t spell out specifically how. He was speaking in generalizations across all professions, not just Ranger. I also think the Druid is going to be, unfortunately, tied to a pet. I’m expecting a future Specialization that does away with the pet.

If Druids still have the pet mechanic, what’s the point of calling it a Druid?

“the end of the night. Offense seems to be the way to go in organized matches – with no thought toward defense.”

That’s pretty much what I saw.

Yeah, guess I should’ve said “…know WAS a Ranger.” But, yeah, we don’t know. Kind of hard to imagine that the Devs and blogs keep saying that the Specialization will replace the class mechanic when they should have been saying “it will only replace parts of the mechanic.”

The sword doesn’t require a skill rotation either for max DPS. They just need to reverse the nerfs to shortbow and it’ll be usable again. As of right now I can’t justify it over the longbow no matter the range to the enemy.

Elendur.9342:

TheFantasticGman.9451:

Elendur.9342:

lukejoe.1592:

I’m not sure why people who want to play a ranger without a pet are playing a ranger at all. It’d not like there are not other bow wielding, trap setting professions out there. I think that if you say, this professions mechanic is to play with pets—you can assume that the players who choose that profession want to play with pets!!!!

And since we know they are getting a Druid who will use a staff and probably focus on magic and not on melee, I think those of you hoping to shed your pet are going to be very very disappointed as…I’m kind of guessing that Ranger who are Druids will still be using pets!

Now…we could stand to get rid of those useless nature spirits. Or at least give them models that don’t all look identical, and stop making us spec into them just so they can walk around on the legs they clearly have!!!

Agreed.
I also don’t get why people want to get rid of the pet on the class that is basically the pet-using class.
It is the same thing as if I started complaining that i want my warrior to have a pet.

However, I do hope we get some improvements on pet mechanics / control / AI, or at least a trait that improves our skills or stats when our pet gets killed…

Well, if the AI was perfect, no one would be complaining, but it’s not, so people are complaining…. They’d probably complain anyway. I do, however, see a future Specialization getting rid of the pet we have now in favor of a petless mechanic. When will it happen? Don’t know, might take some people leaving Anet for it to happen, but it could.

Agreed, the AI IS bad.
My point there is that what defines the ranger as a ranger, are the pets. If you want to play with a bow, you can go thief or warrior, so I don’t get why people want to get rid of the pets.
Personally, I want them to fix the AI. Give us some proper control of our pet, get rid of that BS where we have to use our utility skills to control pets, make improvements so the pets are actually helpful and a good mechanic.
Though I will admit that getting rid of the following pets and using them as some sort of summons could be cool (you set buttons f1 to f4 with skills involving pets and you can call a moa to heal, a wolf to howl, an owl to chill, a bear to clean conditions, or something like that)

The bolded part. That is why I think a Specialization will come out with a mechanic that replaces pets completely. When you Specialize as a Druid you’re no longer a Ranger. Ranger gets to keep their pet. We don’t know if Druid gets an option out or if the pet mechanic stays exactly as it currently is. I remember Colin or somebody with Anet saying the Specializations get a new mechanic. Or if the Druid has pets at all the the video shown at PaX just had the pet there so we would all know it’s a Ranger. We just don’t know… People at Anet know but we don’t.. That’s why they get new names, utilities, trait line, etc. they are different from the original profession. As I have said on other threads, the pet AI can only improve if mob AI improves and that’s not going to happen. They’ve stopped short of flat out saying it’s not going to happen but feel free to read back through the Ranger CDI to see where John Peters said its not going to happen because of the massive amount of work it would take… Like the amount of work it would take to make a Specialization…. So, the only out we have so that current Rangers get to keep their pet and people that want a Ranger that is pet less, is through a Specialization. And no,

Sebrent.3625:

If our pets could simply move and attack at the same time, they’d be leagues ahead of where they are.

I can’t think of any creature in the game that actually attacks while moving at the same time. Can’t think of one. All stop moving to start their attack animations. I don’t think it’s an option the code. What they’ve done is make them move faster than you and/or given the NPC attack range more

Would love these minor traits instead of the ones we currently have

I guess I should’ve said that what I would think it would take to make them better is strictly PVE related as I do not WVW outside of EOTM and pretty much zero PVP since I got the armor piece I wanted.

So, that being said, PVE mob AI could be better. They’ve already said that they use the same code so they general mobs are NOT going to get any better (like Orr was 2+ years ago). They’ve all but flat out refused to do any major changes to mob AI, up until HoT, revamp mob AI that is… But, I ain’t looking to buy ocean front property in Arizona. We will have to see if by revamp they mean pets finally get their own code or if they’re putting down new/much improved mob AI so by extension pets get better AI. Depending on how good the revamp is will obviously influence the general opinion of pets…. But honestly my pet won’t be good enough until the AI knows what I want it to do when I want it to do it (since I don’t have the controls to tell it).

I didn’t play GW1 GvG and not sure how anyone could see this as GvG.

Not fond of this mode because doors and guards are currently worthless.

I’d really like to see more death match maps like Courtyard.

Played a couple of games last night and with the guards being worthless all the games I played were just a matter of who could zerk Rush the other door the fastest. Skritt were 5x longer to take down than the guards… Wow. Worthless NPC guards.

Also, map was WAY smaller than I expected. Don’t know how anyone could think this is “GvG” at all.

1] Option out of pets. Mob AI means our pets will never be good enough for some of us, mainly myself. Personally, I see this coming through a future Specialization that gives 100% DPS to the Ranger.

2] Better utilities. Meaning shouts that instant cast like on my warrior and guardian. Also need utilities that aren’t pet based. I pretty much just use LR, QZ, FS, and SOTW now-a-days.

3] Better traits. Need more Ranger centric traits. Again, I think this can and will be addressed in a future Specialiazation that drops the pet as the mechanic.

4] Keybinds. Since we got a keybind for passive/aggressive it gives me great hope that we can get more Keybinds for stow/unstow and maybe even for pet skills one day.

Once those things are implemented I think Rangers, or whatever the future Specialization is, will be in a fantastic place.

Still not sure why the might buff pet isn’t an instant buff like any other non-Ranger shout.

Elendur.9342:

lukejoe.1592:

I’m not sure why people who want to play a ranger without a pet are playing a ranger at all. It’d not like there are not other bow wielding, trap setting professions out there. I think that if you say, this professions mechanic is to play with pets—you can assume that the players who choose that profession want to play with pets!!!!

And since we know they are getting a Druid who will use a staff and probably focus on magic and not on melee, I think those of you hoping to shed your pet are going to be very very disappointed as…I’m kind of guessing that Ranger who are Druids will still be using pets!

Now…we could stand to get rid of those useless nature spirits. Or at least give them models that don’t all look identical, and stop making us spec into them just so they can walk around on the legs they clearly have!!!

Agreed.
I also don’t get why people want to get rid of the pet on the class that is basically the pet-using class.
It is the same thing as if I started complaining that i want my warrior to have a pet.

However, I do hope we get some improvements on pet mechanics / control / AI, or at least a trait that improves our skills or stats when our pet gets killed…

Well, if the AI was perfect, no one would be complaining, but it’s not, so people are complaining…. They’d probably complain anyway. I do, however, see a future Specialization getting rid of the pet we have now in favor of a petless mechanic. When will it happen? Don’t know, might take some people leaving Anet for it to happen, but it could.

Well, now that pet passive is fixed it’s going to be great having this toggle.

Let’s look forward to getting that stow/u stow keybind!!

scerevisiae.1972:

Ardid.7203:

I think it would be nice to have pets that don’t forget their names.

It would be nice to have pets that were either optional or didn’t feel like a handicap.

This 1,000,000 times

Been that way for 2+ years

Of things to complain about this is extremely low on my list

Yup, this is intended.

/thread

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

While I also do not care about meta or speed runs, I do like efficiency. That in mind, it would seem that celestial should not take my fancy, but ranger….

If you care about efficiency then you should be running the meta. If not, it’ll take much longer.

My ascended zerk+scholar gear is already ready to go for my Rev, which is my sober armor. I’m currrently getting together my wupeup+travelers gear, my drunk gear, by running lvl 50 fractals.

It wasn’t in the patch notes.

It’s infinitely easier/faster to use a keybind than click it with a mouse, especially when you using gaming peripherals like a Naga or Nostromo like I do… and I also play with quick-cast so I need my cursor to be on the scene not clicking icons. And I’ve been playing with quick-cast for over nearly two years so I love getting me some keybinds.

I’m hoping stow/unstow gets the F5 slot for the Ranger… or just another keybind slot.

1.) Opinion

2.) Opinion

3.) Opinion

4.) Opinion

5.) Opinion

Without any actual data to back up these opinions that is all they are and will ever be.

Darkness.9732:

That s why we should quit this game

Looking through your post history, I’m not quite sure why you are still here posting on the forums or playing the game at all… Do you still play?

If you haven’t noticed already there’s an additional pet control now in the options.

Options > Control Options > Miscellaneous > Ranger Pet Combat Toggle

I don’t know about y’all but I’ve been wanting this for years. I’ve been super stoked that it’s been added! It also gives me hope that we’ll get a keybind for stow/unstow!

I would love auto loot to automatically loot an area for me.