Why my Ranger (and her Lizard) is Ticked Off about Nightfall

well I certainly hope they DON'T, :P~

Ah!

Now *that* makes sense.

Can anyone direct me to this discussion with Isaac?

I really hope that Pet control / Pet AI is not too far down on the list of changes. If a Ranger wants to play a pet build (aside from Bunny Thumping), they will learn the frustrations quite quickly.

Pets have been hobbled long enough. Please change the controls so I don't want to roast my pet bird everytime it gets stuck behind an NPC or rock.

I agree with this. It's a matter of adjusting to the pet skills, since they can't be adjusted now. And in some cases the delayed target switching is just what I want- I can spread poison around, without my cat racing to follow like Thom and Stefan do. She stays on the one I want pinned as long as I come back every few seconds. I've even been getting better at timing the disrupting lunges with her. Of course, this is in PvE- a whole 'nother ball of wax in PvP, I assume.

From a RP perspective, it makes sense. Pets aren't as smart as humans and shouldn't be given controls.

This is exactly the reason why. Pets do ridiculous amounts of damage as is -- approximately 20DPS just from a pet auto attacking at 16 beast mastery. That is 20 DPS you don't have to do jack for - you don't have to spend any energy until/unless it dies - you just have to dedicate two slots on your skillbar. Pets are the real strength behind the Bunny Thumper -- not IB, which although nice, doesn't do nearly the damage or even disruption a pet does (bodyblock, anyone?).

Pets are not a huge thing in this game don't even bother. Look at their uses.
1. Dead body to trigger iway 2. Means of using ferocious strike 3. Crappy and useless beastmaster builds.

You say look at police dogs they are trained! I don't think if you ran into a hideout of a bunch of thugs and pulled out a bow your police dog would attack the guys you shoot at. Your pet already behaves unrealistically.

If they are gonna do anything to pets I'm more for them fixing their attack skills so they aren't like shouts and overwrite each other.

http://bringbacktherifts.net/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=220

Weapon of Choice #40. The interview with Izzy starts around 50 minutes in I think, but he isn't asked about pets until around 120 minutes in. Long interview.

at 16 BM pet damage is about 20 - 45 every 2.15 seconds so average hit is 32.5/2.15 is about 15 dps. You don't have to do jack for.... well if you spec'd 16 BM your other attributes are suffering making you do a lot less damage and you also sucked up 2 skills slots which also makes you do less damage... overall you basically come out even. You act almost as if pets are super overpowered and people are stupid to not use them.

Most thumpers run 16 BM, at least most good thumpers do. Or used to, since they've fallen out of the meta. Thumpers already want high beastmastery to use Tiger's Fury and have Ferocious Strike feed them all the energy they'll ever need. They lose nothing by bringing a pet with them. (And don't say expertise. Thumpers are still perfectly energy solvent at 4 expertise because of Ferocious Strike. If you don't believe me then go and try it.) The only thing balancing pets is that their AI is too dumb to use unless you are already a melee character fighting side by side with your pet which has it's own disadvantages such as using Hammers with only 12 spec and fighting up front with only 70AL. If their AI was changed to function like heros does and their damage was not tweaked, though, they would become overpowered and you would be stupid not to use them. All the sudden you would see teams with two thumpers and two bow/condition rangers (Crip and Melandrus) and a Tainted necro all over the place.

Face it: They're free, time efficient energy efficient DPS for the price of two skill slots. They provide additional bodyblocking -- ever tried fighting a team with four thumpers? You can't easily move anywhere, there's always a pet or a thumper nearby blocking your path. They happily feed death necromancers. They're the real power behind thumpers. The only thing holding them back is that they're impossible to use properly without already being a melee character. If that was changed they would then have to be significantly rebalanced.

My iguana is smarter than many people I know, so I'm not impressed by your argument.

Although I would love for pets to become more useful I can see the argument about them not acctually being a "party member". They take no drops, exp & have no DP. But with all the drawbacks I would love to see the "Aggressive" "Defensive" & "Passive" setup, along with a bar to show the conditions/hexes they are under.

I would LOVE to have pet armor & dyes(mostly for unique looks) but I can't think of how to balance out the armor.

I personally really like this idea. I think that using flags for pets as with the henchmen is less needed as a option to make your pet more or less passive/aggressive. even if there were only two options agressive(what pets are like now) and passive(have the pet stay next to you and only attack if something comes right up to it) it would result in a huge increase in diverse functioning for rangers with pets. having too many controls could make pets overpowered, but it would be awesome to be able to tell your pet to heel when you were pulling etc.

pets are supposed to be kinda stupid....

should be interesting to see builds that have every class having a /R and a pet... rofl, "lfg, 3 good heros and we all have pets!!!"

Well, pretend Koss is a lizard!

Yeah, my ranger is pissed about this too.

I think they could be pretty close to managing the pet problem. I already have a pet build that I like to use that is quite powerful, and only needs a hint of better controlling. But I still have one small complaint. It may just be one small skill ina a game filled with many, but I'm almost offended by the stupidity of the most impractical, and 99.99% unusable skill in the entire game.

Otyugh's Cry Could we...get a fix on this?

All animals in the area become hostile to your target and gain +20 armor for 30 seconds. Otyugh's Cry cannot turn charmed animals against their masters or their master's allies. (50% failure chance with Beast Mastery 4 or less.)

According to this skill's description. When i use it, all pets in the area that are either allied with me or uncharmed, will become "hostile" towards my target, because all of said pets obey the circumstance of not turning a charmed animal against it's master or master's allies. That's not what it does though.

Here are some notes from guildwiki on this skill:

>This will not cause the pet to initiate an attack: only the master's own attacks can do this. The skill is best used for its often overlooked AoE +20 boost to pet armor, which becomes very powerful in larger groups with many pets.

>This skill will make any animals without owners attack you and wont stop until you run away, then it will attack the Enemy.

That second one seems sort of strange right? It's not quite true but it's close. The pets in the area (not including my own (goddamned) pet or allied pets or enemy pets) will become hostile, but not towards my target. They become hostile in the same way a Dune Lizard becomes hostile when it gets hit with a Sand Giants "Giant Stomp". The Dune Lizard becomes "hostile" and attacks anything it feels like, including you if it wants. It's totally random depending on whatever's closest to the animal.

Ignoring the fact that this skill is 100% unusable in PvP, and 95% useless in PvE (most areas don't have many pets, and Otyugh's shout range is too small to effect any of the latent animals that aren't already right up in the action of the battle. Oh...and don't forget the pets are still level FIVE);ignoring all that, this skill description is a lie. The only truth (supposedly) is the +20 armor.

So, first off, either please fix this skill to do what it says, or fix the description to say what it really does.

After you take that step, change the skill completely so it can be used. Many of the games skills are impractical, but Otyugh's is the only skill I know of that's completely unusable. If this skill did nothing more than instantly turn your own pet against a specified target, it would be quite useful. It wouldn't be very imbalanced because a beast mastery team could only arrange a "perfect spike" with their pets would be every 30 seconds.

But even that's not the perfect answer. 30 seconds would probably end up still being too fast of a recharge, and they'd end up moving the recharge time to 45 (since Guild Wars refuses to use a 35 or 40 second recharge.) which would be too long of a recharge so the skill would again become unused :/

Not really, it's about DPS and spike damage, and beastmastery got a buff.
It's not even just taking a character slot away with the hero...
The heroes take XP, LOOT, and a slot.

The pet takes none of this and you can still be involved.
Now I hear the counter-arguments, lots of skill points and spots on YOUR bar.
But ANet's response has been to expand what lives w/in Beastmastery.

Also many classes have 'funny business' with their weapons as well.
Just a few examples...
The Monk staves are all about Divine favor
Warrior doesn't have a str or tactic weapon if they wanted to focus on those 2*
Assassin has only dagger mastery, just like the Ranger marksmanship
Paragons simply have the spear*
Dervishes simply have the axe
Most classes primaries don't have weapons associated with it (monk exception)

*yeah they have lines influencing shield usage but now that's another requirement to reach a req as well.

I get it, and I think that the BM should have some of this, don't get me wrong.
Seems like the Trapper and the Beastmaster both scream some treatment.

But I wouldn't go as far as to say your alone, I'll toss out some quick thoughts

The shadow/dark art assassin - how about a garrote or something?
And you might consider yourself lucky rather than singled out negatively-
the Elementalist can't summon elements, the Mesmer an actual phantasm
the Necro certainly gets numbers but constant degen and tougher to select individual ones
the Ritualist summons are bound to a spot, on a timer, and are ward excluded

Again I'm generally on your side.
But I also feel not expecting some rebalance as a result, a bit naive.
As I don't think ANet wants 8player/8pets devestating anything else, and if you can easily target all 8, look out (if not for the mere fact of possibly being stuck) as the teeth and bows from 16 origination points total, hit, with any beneficial spirits, chants, buffs, etc etc in tow.

ANet help my pantha (Dobby) go to school and learn new things man.
He is stupid there is almost no need for a ranger class barring running and barrage.

Heroes take up party slot. Let's make pets like heroes with controls. Then I'll start collecting bets on how long will it take for people to hate beastmastery rangers for hogging up 2 party slots.

The funny thing is, all I want is simple pet controls. Just to make life a bit more plesant for rangers. Given that the logic exists in the GW engine for heroes and henchmen, it seems reasonable that I should be able to control my pets as well.

Now people are wandering off on tangents; folks, the topic here is pet control.

And I don't understand why some people are so fixated on the "drops" thing; my pet doesn't take drops, but he does use skill slots -- while Koss takes a share of the loot, yet doesn't use any skill slots. Seems balanced to me.

As for game balance: As it stands today, pets *are* effective and useful, but certainly not over-powered.

ok, I'm gonna start off by saying that I played a Creature Handler (an entire class dedicated to controlling pets, wicked!) in Star Wars Galaxies for a long time. When SOE slaughtered their own game (/cry) I canceled my subscription and was wandering around aimlessly looking for a game I could dedicate myself to for awhile. My computer teacher was like "here try this, everybody's doing it" and handed me a free GW account.

RANGERS CAN HAVE PETS! PERFECT! I thought I would be in heaven. I was so disappointed though when my pet couldn't do shit... It would die more often than henchies, it takes forever to switch targets, it blacks out my skills, the amount of special attacks are incredibly limited and a huge energy sink. And even when my pet is in the front lines ripping those helpless grawl apart, and then the one grawl warrior decides I look like a better target, I'm a sitting duck. My pet doesn't really feel like coming back to save me. It is really disheartening to see such a great oppurtunity with so much potential just thrown away and disregarded.

Helcaraxe.

Don't overvalue pets.

You're too single-minded.

yeah, I would like to see some improvement in the pet area.....simple things like what they are giving the new heros---defensive, passive, and agressive would do it for me....that way at least I can keep kani by me when I need him there and out killin when I need him there instead......not much to ask for, I think.
With that in mind I might be more inclined to take my crab with me instead of leaving him behind......

I play a Beast Master (w/16 BM skills) a lot and I do not want pet controls...

Why?

1 I do not want DP for my pet in PvE.
2 I do not want Beast Master skills nerfed they are fine how they are.

A pet is cannon fodder, its an animal not a HERO.
/not signed

If you're using a pet as "cannon fodder", why do you care about DP and its skills?

Just what skills are you using with a 16 BM and a "cannon fodder" pet? Whne I run with a 16 BM, my pet is sure as heck more useful than "cannon fodder."

Hell.At 16 BM a pet can be both a Cannon and Cannon Fodder.

With skills like Call of Protection/Comfort Animal and Ferocious Strike coupled with 10 expertise Energy and pet healing is rarely a problem.