Making Pets Viable

I've never heard a worst reason for not balancing something.

By way of reminder:
Thanks.

So IWAY, WE and mind blast are fair and balanced?

Edit: I'm all for a PvE only buff

Fine. Except they're still making new content for GW1-- that's why Chthon started the thread. If they have time to do this, then why not re-work beast mastery? And blood magic, while they're at it.

I like these ideas a lot-- ever since the game came out I've wanted pets to be useful and I was disappointed when I found out that they weren't.

Pets are already viable as is. Investing 2 skill slots for essentially doubling your attack rate and damage is worth it. And as the topic creator even pointed out pets are treated as a 17-29 weapon so they have a better attack range than bows plus pet attacks don't have flight time. As for the attacks kills being weak bows may have more skills that deal higher bonus damage but most of the bow attacks that spike have a 10 energy cost, have conditions for getting full power or are elite. Plus pet attacks are usually more energy efficient for the amount of damage you deal and they have easier conditions to meet. For instance the only non elite energy attacks for both marksmanship and beast mastery need a condition but the pet attack works for any condition while the bow attack needs cracked armor which a ranger can't even apply plus the pet attack does more bonus damage and gives more energy. Plus pet buffs can't be removed and are easily maintained. The only real thing pets are weak at is interrupting and knocking down. But knocking down isn't something rangers were ever meant to do effectively and interruption can be done well with practice. So really pets could use a nerf if anything else.

The only thing the pet corpse change did to PvE was make B/P a bit harder to run in some areas. Giving pets their corpses back won't suddenly make all the rangers out there go "omg pets r awsum again squeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!" They'll still suck, except for the occasional builds using them as corpse engines and nothing more, and I really don't think that's such a good idea, especially with this pet menagerie update coming, which will let all PvP chars charm lvl1 pets continuously.

I don't want to sound condescending here, but pets are exceptionally weak on a level that you don't seem to be playing the game on just yet. At the top end, PvE is about how quickly and efficiently your team kills off high-end mobs. To earn a spot on a team, any given build needs to fit into the efficient-killing machine well enough to substitute for the builds that are already there; or it needs to fit into the keep-the-party-alive machine well enough to substitute for the builds that are already there. There's nothing you can do with a pet that even approaches meeting either of those goals.

To help you see how why this is, I want you to try a little exercise. Start by looking over the team build in this thread. You may have to do some searching around the forums to understand how each of the builds works on its own. Now read the thread again and see how the builds work together with each other. Now, try to remove any one of those builds and replace it with a pet user without making the team weaker overall. You can't do it.

Why is that? Because pets are fundamentally weak. The only worthwhile thing they bring to the table is some extra physical his that can be buffed. But the cost you pay for those hits -- 2 skillslots and a ton of attributes -- is so high compared to other ways of getting extra hits -- minions, multi-hit skills -- that it's never justified. My suggestions are about changing that unpleasant truth.

My level 11 imp is way more powerful than my Level 20 Strider in pre-searing.

Pet is a joke. I suggest that pets (The Pet, not the mini pet) should only be displayed in towns/outposts and not to be allowed outside. I think this Zaishen Menagerie fits well for them.

MM's 10 minions is way better than Level 20 pet even if i have +12 BM.

I wonder how many players run BM in PVE. They bring pets but they are not BM (like 3 points in BM).

I wish they will give my pet in presearing "rabbies" (a degen condition) without adding skill to my bar. At least it will make me happy to bring my pet outside town.

Ad bar cost of pet: Issue is that pet related stuff was balanced with two slot cost. One freed slot can send us no nerf/buff spiral because izzy reaction would be to mildly nerf everything pet related to make up for gained slot.

Ad resses: If you add it to few selected resses, and especially touch-based non-combat ones, they will not see much usage, because basically only ranger would have reason to bring them, and noone else as other would be better off with normal combat resses, and outside pet res, they would be only usefull for critical failure recovery (and maybe not even that, rebirth, sigh ...). Ranger could as well just bring comfort, free his secondary and be done with it.

What about consumables? Res scrolls could also res pets. Or new, cheap (think, "pet first aid box" with 20 charges costing 100g) consumable available from new zaishen menahowdoyouspeelit.

Ad damage equation: but pet even at zero point does something, it is physical trigger, it is still vessel for weapon spells, it is still warm body with 80 al and tons of health, it be used to abuse ai ... (i learned to like "pet pulls", neat way to let enemies waste their first volley on one target without ever having to worry about cleaning up hexes/conditions)

Ad imba: ranger is not buff profession. But they excel at manipulating environment to suit party needs. What you want is to tamper with beast mastery spirits or traps. Symbiosis could, for example, give out health bonus not only for enchantments but also for shouts. Make BM spirits require pet within range to function and you are set.

HaO is used extensively in HB, as is Charm animal (R/P packhunter rangers are a very popular splitter) buffing both heal as one and other pet builds would make these guys virtually unstoppable.


(Hey, I'm all for it if it makes my heroes more powerful - I use 2 of these guys - but I can imagine the crap-storm that would emerge if they were buffed too much).

This. Is why pet AI needs retooling. At least hench/heros follow call. Pets are slow as mofos and tend to get stuck. Pets should die at the exact same time their owner dies and rezz at exactly the same time so that they dont get 'lost'.

Maybe a dumb idea, but what if they added more skills that added the pet to the party, besides charm animal, and maybe add something to the functionality of charm to compensate. Like all the skills with the "As One" and never rampage alone bring the pet with you.

Or just have it set that when you put points in beast mastery the pet shows up, since the thing's damage scales with it's attribute investment...

Well, I did forget about adding a clause for "you lose 10 energy and this stance ends if you use a non-ranger skill," but I think it could work. The fact that it is a stance denies the character access to an IAS and balances it a bit. Probably the 25% skill reduction is dumb, but I couldn't think of a good benefit akin to MoM's +2 e-regen. All I'm suggesting is a weaker but broader form of expert's dexterity to remove the cry for BM and WS weapons. What penalties would you give it to balance it?

In terms of rezzes in PvE, I guess I just don't see why all rezzes shouldn't affect pets.

Aside from the few rezzes with obvious drawbacks ([resurrection signet] needing morale boost to recharge, [death pact signet] coming with 120 second window of possible death, etc), all rezzes have the drawback of taking the rezzer out of combat for 3-6 seconds (or being elite). I would think that would be a significant enough drawback to allow any rez to affect pets.

If a pet dies, you've lost a damage source, and the pet's owner has all his skills disabled for 3-10 seconds. If another character wants to use 3-6 seconds during that period taking himself out of battle to rez the pet, that seems fair to me, at least in PvE.

First of all I play in hard mode a lot and do elite areas. And saying the entire point of PvE is to do things the fastest most efficient way is BS. For me at least a game is about fun I don't have to use the top meta builds that make the game ridiculously easy. And if that's all you care about why do you care if pets get buffed? If there are already so many uber team builds at your finger tips than use those, if you want a new way a playing then use the overlooked pet. And the fact that people complain about an attribute line requiring skill slots and attribute points is ridiculous, having to use a major or superior rune is not a valid argument for buffing an entire mechanic and skill line to oblivion just so people can have a new meta.

And no build with "way" in it is impressive. I'm not impressed that you're the 10 millionth person to agree that mms, 100 extra armor, curses, infinite energy and spikes are good. And It's certainly not going to get me to agree with you on a completely unrelated topic. Also I'm positive a beast master could replace the warrior easily, you'd just be trading aoe damage for spikes. [marauders shot] and [enraged lunge] can deal 100+ damage a piece and if you're not hitting for enough damage it's called cracked armor and -20 armor increases damage by 41% then if you're hitting twice as fast that's 82% more damage than you would be doing with just a bow. Still not doing enough damage? The put a weapon spell on your pet, put balthazar's aura on it, strength of honor, judge's insight possibilities are endless. There are so many skills for a reason so people can be creative and adapt to situations not use the same metas for everything and turn your nose up at everything else.

And I mean come on you're hitting twice constantly with a 100% certainty save for blocking and blindness. Pets are the only way to do this that alone makes them powerful. And even if I have no idea what I'm talking about and they are weak maybe they're supposed be. Some skill lines are always going to be weaker compared to others in some ways but that doesn't mean they're useless. Fire magic deals the most damage but does that make earth, water or air useless? Water can snare, earth has defensive skills and air has armor penetration. Bows may hit harder and interrupt better but pets can knockdown, spread conditions better, manage energy and gives you access to some very powerful nature rituals and buffs.

The thing is, it's not balanced at the two-slot cost. It's badly underpowered at the two-slot cost.

I was sticking to the bad rezzes to keep a certainly level of cost involved there. I'm looking to reduce the cost from 2 skillslots to one-and-a-half. If any rez at all could rez a pet, that would essentially reduce the cost all the way to one skillslot, since every team carries a hard rez somewhere.

Now, given a choice between a skillslot cost of one or two, I think one is a hell of a lot better; but I still think one-and-a-half is most balanced.

This is an excellent idea. I'm going to add it to OP.

Yes, it is a physical trigger, and a meat shield. The problem is (a) that's all it is, and (b) it costs a hell of a lot more than any other "naked trigger" you can add to your team. For pets to be viable, they either need to cost the same as other naked triggers (minions, vanguard assassin, an extra multi-hit attack on the skillbar), or they need to become al lot more than just naked triggers, or some combination thereof.

Rangers aren't a buff profession, but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be. A pure BM ranger doesn't do anything worthwhile, so a-net has a pretty free hand in restructuring them into something useful. Now, I'm not saying that buff has to be the direction they go, but they do have to go in some direction away from what they are now.

Forgive me for being curt, but HB is a joke. We shouldn't balance around HB and more than we balance around RA, TA, or AB. Now, show me buffed pets unbalancing GvG, and that might give me pause.

1. Stop. Just stop.

2. If you think a beastmaster could replace the warrior in that build, take another look at what happens when HB+WW meets MoP. The beastmaster can't replicate that.

Your bow damage will be pretty pathetic since you'll need at least 13-14 expertise to keep that combo up.

And Enraged Lunge is 16 DPS if it hits on recharge. Does that really make up for a pet's crappy damage?... Even with Feral Aggression and Great Dwarf Weapon, your pet will be doing 60ish MAX, and that combo gives you negative net energy you can't use anything else. Dragon Slash does 70-80ish DPS and powers a ton of utility. MS/DB is 110+ DPS. Sorry, but pets fail.

Pets need to attack faster. Once every 2 seconds is just fail. I would put it at 1.5 at least.

i may be adding something that doesnt belong but on the topic of pet effectiveness. AI. it really eats hard. Pets are the companion equivalent of Zhedd. horse parks his arse in front of ya the entire time.

there must be a way to make the pets lock and attack more effectively. they seem to spend alot of time just kinda chillin.

i like bringin my stalker BeefnCheddar out once in a while but for all intents and purposes hes just a meat shield.


Cronk

Working through the OP's points:

1) Agreed. Personally, I've thought for a while that carrying ANY skill that requires a pet should bring the pet with you as well. (This, incidentally, still allows Heal as One to serve as bar compression, as it then combines Comfort Animal with a self-heal.)

2) Doesn't seem to be necessary - requiring a split seems a fair trade for having two weapons on the field.

3) As has been suggested, I'd be inclined to go the other way - make party buffs apply to the party's pets as well. This could even be taken to the level of making pet attacks count as attack skills for the pet for the purposes of anthems.

4) On the whole, I think the pet attacks are actually fairly decent... or, at least, there are enough decent ones to use. I'd agree with pet attacks that are intended to be used as interrupts having a shortened attack time - it should be possible to use them as interrupts, after all, rather than it simply being luck if one connects unless used against Meteor Shower or the like.

5) Unnecessary. As has been said, the beast is a weapon. Having to split attributes is the price you pay for having two weapons on the field - and if you use a caster secondary, you can use the appropriate caster weapon for the attribute you're using and remain perfectly effective. Heck, trappers have been using staffs (that might have the Inspiration requirement filled, but then again, might not...) pretty much since release.

With the upcoming addition of the Zaishen Menagerie, there is incentive and opportunity to give more viability and fuctionality to the Beast Mastery line. Pets, in general, aren't too useful in PvP, except for a few specific builds where the pet is used simply for the elite skill. The required skill slots limit viability in PvP, and in PvE, they are too fragile and inefficient to be worthwhile. Here are a collection of desire changes to help solve these issues.

General:
- In PvP, all pets are set to level 20
- Pets no longer have a short delay when adjacent to a targeted foe, before they start attacking
- The Pet command window now remembers where it is placed and remains open after zoning
- Pets cannot body block, and aren't body blocked by other caracters

Increasing viability

The functionality previously exclusive to Charm Animal is now available in a small handful of skills. Simply equipping one of these skills will allow you to bring your pet along, however, Charm Animal will still be used to initially capture your desired pet. The skills have also been changed in functionality. The skills included for the new functionality are listed below, and have been updated to reflect the change. Skill stats are shown as Energy/Activation/Recharge, with instant-activation skills like shouts as 0 activation. Changes are in Bold.

Companionship - 5/2/10 "Skill. Your animal companion travels with you. If you have less Health than your pet, you are healed for 30...102...120 Health. If your pet has less Health than you, it is healed for 30...102...120 Health. If your pet is dead, it is revived with 3.19..23% health."

Heal as One - 5/1/10 "Elite Skill. Your animal companion travels with you. If you or your animal companion are below 75% Health, you are both healed for 25...121...145 Health. If your companion is dead, it is resurrected with 50% Health."

Comfort Animal - 10/1/5 "Half-range skill. Your animal companion travels with you. Your pet gains 35...151...180 Health. Resurrects your pet (10...48...58% Health.)"

Revive Animal - 5/2/10 "Skill. Your animal companion travels with you. Resurrects all nearby allied pets (10...77...94% Health). For 5..20 seconds, these pets move and attack 25% faster and have +1..8 health regeneration. Pets dying under the influence of this skill aren't effected by Death Penalty."

Strike as One - 5/0/10 "Elite Shout. Your animal companion travels with you. Your animal companion instantly moves to your target and inflicts Bleeding (5...13...15 seconds) with its next attack. The next time you hit with an attack, you inflict Crippled condition (5...13...15 seconds). If your pet is dead, it is revived with 25% health, and your skills are disabled for 10 seconds."

Never Rampage Alone - 5/0/20 "Skill. Your animal companion travels with you. For 18..25 seconds, you and your pet attack 25% faster and have 1..3 Health regeneration. If your pet is dead, it is revived at your location at 50% health."

Other Skill updates

Run as One - increase duration to 5..17..20 seconds

Tiger's Fury / Beastial Fury - also gives you pet a 25% IAS

Call of Protection - New Functionality - 10/0/15 - "Shout. For 5..13..15 seconds, your pet deals weakness (5..13..15 sec) when it hits moving and attacking foes. Ends when you use an attack skill."

Symbiotic Bond - Changed functionality - 10/2/45 - "Skill. For 30..60 seconds, while your pet is alive, all non-elite skills that affect your pet in the Beast Mastery line cost -5..41..50% less energy" and you gain 0..1..2 energy each time your pet hits with an attack."

The goal here is to give players the ability to use pets in a secondary profession.

And a just for fun bonus:

Heket's Rampage - New Functionality - "Stance. For 2..8..10 seconds, you attack 33% faster, but your attack skills cost 75..51..45% more energy and you cannot gain adrenaline from attacks."

1) snip? stop? Is that supposed to be a joke? You start a thread then someone disagrees with you and you don't want to talk anymore. The only reason for that is you can't really defend your stance.
2) You're basically saying an entire PvE and PvP attribute should be buffed because PvE only skills can do things better. That's a dumb argument not to insult you though.
3) You're a hypocrite. You bash pets for taking up too many skill slots and attribute points yet you praise those builds which devote 3 or 4 skills including elites to do one thing like spam a single shout. And then the mm had 16 death magic I believe.
4) You are very condescending. You gave me an "exercise" like you're my teacher or something. Now you're trying to tell me what to do. So it leads me to believe that you think you're so great a game and that makes you better than me. And if that's the case it's pretty pathetic and it doesn't matter how often your bros call you to hang out, how hot your boyfriend/ girlfriend is or how many parties you go to. It's still pathetic to be so high and mighty about something that doesn't even matter. Again I'm not insulting you just like you're not being condescending.
5) But fine I give up you're the man, you're better at Guild Wars than me, you're smarter, prettier and just better all around. Also I now agree with your arguments including giving rangers a whip (or whatever) that needs a requirement in an attribute for which there are currently no weapon attack skills for.

1) I manage with just 9 or 10 expertise, maybe I use a skill that gains energy or maybe I use a zealous bow with [rapid fire] or maybe I do both
2) You have no idea what my attributes are set at or what my other skills are so I find it amazing that you can analyze a build which I have yet to give you.
3) I don't even use great dwarf weapon I'm a purest/traditionalist kind of player. I don't use PvE only skills in general.
4)60 damage max? enraged lunge clearly states the max bonus damage is 80 and bonus damage from attack skills ignore armor and I can get around 100 damage easily without feral aggression or a weapon spell of any kind
5) I hate when people tell me my damage is bad, I'm the only one who can see how much damage I do so who are you to tell me especially from just 2 skills and even if it is pathetic how much damage does 1 person have to do? Enemies don't usually heal well and there are already several other people dealing damage. And the idea behind Guild Wars is to work together with your team so maybe my build is incredible with the right team.


And finally a shocking revelation, Guild Wars has been out for 4 years if there was such a major problem with an entire attribute and game mechanic it would have been addressed long ago. So you're wrong about pets the developers know what they're doing and what they want and if they agreed with you this topic wouldn't exist because pets would have been buffed to hell already. The developers aren't stupid, their puny brains weren't waiting for some amazing insight from a random person on a forum before they could realize pets suck. Just accept you're bad with pets and move on, I can't smite to save my life but that doesn't mean it's not powerful. I'm sure there's someone out there who makes great use out of [word of censure].

And you'll be glad to hear (or read rather) that I'm not going to ruin your topic anymore. So you can continue to attack me for having a different opinion or play style if you want but you'd just waste your time.

Thats a fairly decent written out proposal, cannot comment on balanced (never used a pet before) but it look like it would make them useful, the pet bring along skills particularly.

I don't like the idea of giving pvp thumpers or packhunters another skill slot or two, and I don't like the idea of making these all pvp/e split either. The "easy" solution would be to just apply it to NRA and maybe the elites. The harder solution would be to somehow reduce the degenerate aspects of pets while improving their other abilities. Alot of the potential pet "utility" is hurt by being conditional and not having enough control over timing to take advantage of the condition- so I'd look into adjusting/reworking those or improving pet response, and then neutering the self-IAS buffs.

The compression thing is a nice start but more work is needed. In PvE pets don't attack often enough and have no AoE abilities. [Melandru's Assault] for example could stand having the conditionality removed. But yeah otherwise, even if you have the slots to spare for a pet, you still have to justify the beast mastery investment somehow. And [Enraged Lunge] is about the only skill out there that even comes close pve wise.

That might be a little overpowered.

Not many people seem to like this idea. I think maybe I should just scrap it.

1. Good.

2. I'm not attacking you; I'm dismissing you out of hand.

Leave the pets alone! They are just fine. I only like the idea of the skills auto-bringing your pet with you.

Urgh, can't read all the posts of this thread, but here are my 2 cents on how to make the pets more viable.

• pets should be considered as party members
• make pets flaggable
• compress the beast master bar (suggestions were already given: rez into charm)
• make pets leave corpses again
• lessen the skill downtime once a pet dies or even remove it completely for primary rangers. (There should be a difference between primary and secondary rangers)
• implement more useful skills. Here's a suggestion ...
  Animal Division. Elite skill (Expertise). For ... seconds your pet divides into 2 equal copies. Both copies deal 50% less base-damage and are affected by skills and effects like your normal pet. (cast time shouldn't be more than 1 second)
  

Implementing these changes, you'd actually see groups looking for Beastmasters. Oh, how I'd love to make some use out of my pet.

There are many interesting comments and suggestions made in this thread. My opinion is that pet usage is widely dismissed as less effective than other options, and rightly so. I'm sorry that this is the case, as I love the pet concept and thoroughly enjoyed my various pet builds before so many more powerful builds emerged.

I was shocked to see that Anet spent so much time and effort in creating the Menagerie in an attempt to boost interest in pets when pet usage is so minimal. That time and effort could have been much better spent toward making BM's a viable team member on a high damage output party. How exactly to accomplish that is discussed in great detail in this thread and I agree with many of the suggestions here. Make Comfort Animal cause your pet to come with you, use Charm only for charming. Boost some skills, tweak the attack AI, no delay on interrupts, have pets leave a corpse again, how about make a BM staff so you can have decent energy and still do max (staff) damage? All the details could be worked out, and the things that would degrade PVP unfairly could be made PVE only. How much effort would all this take? Less than what the Menagerie did, I imagine. Who cares about pet evolution - there isn't enough of a difference between Healthy and Dire that I need a choice when I'm deciding NOT to take a pet because I don't use them.

Maybe after reading this thread Anet will take on some of these issues and make pets worth using again, especially after spending so much effort on the Menagerie. We can only hope.

JD

Hm... many things could be done, like making the pet natural weapons work like real weapons.
Now that PvP players can get and unlock multiple pets, each pet can have separate features.

For example, bear pawns could count as a hammer, deal blunt damage, and you'll be a able to apply upgrades for hammer to bears by opening the pet panel and applying them to a slot having the icon representing the pawn.

Then, if you add a 'fire damage' upgrade to the bear, you could allow Conjure Flame to target allies and use it to make the bear deal more damage.

Skills are better when they can be used in different ways.

It would be really cool to have different pets have stats like different proffessions, i.e. a black widow spider having the same damage and attack speed as a sin and speccing in beast mastery being like speccing in dagger mastery - increased damage AND possibility for double hitting

Currenlty, the only differences betwen pets are the following ones:
- Flying birds, reptiles and spiders deal piercing damage.
- All the rest seem to deal slashing damage.
- Bears have brutal mauling, which make them slower, and is useful just for 3 paragon anthems. The rest either don't work or that or are useless for a pet.

But if you make each animal have a different damage, as if they had a weapon and the same rank on that weapon mastery as the rank you put in Beast Mastery, you can have Black Moas hitting with their beacks and talons as if they were using daggers, crocodiles attacking as if they were scythes, bears attacking like using hammers, or spiders attacking like using bows or spears.

Before the menagerie this would be very unfair for PvP players, but after its addition, and since they can be unlocked with balthazar and Zaishen coins, why not giving each one a little quirk of its own?

I figure the easiest way to implement something that enhances the utility of a pet & at the same time create some incentive for all classes while simultaneously making it relatively fair to all classes (except the ranger) would be to reduce the cost of ALL BM skills by 1E for every 3-4-5 ranks in BM (min cost 1E). Might be useful for warriors with only 2 E pips. Anyway, all melee classes get the benefit of close range pet attacks. Might not help casters much cept for the Ele. & Rangers would have almost free attacks (moderately effective as they are) at high Exp & BM (with NO available weapon that supports either attribute) while other classes would have the ability to manage pet damage thru less expensive heals & revive pet etc...

i like this
Suggestion for compressing the beast skills would be to put them on a separate skillbar.. like the the hench heroes .

The player would only need to have charm animal on his, all the rest of the beast skills concerning the pet can be placed on the pet

Whatever skills were put on the pet's bar would have to take up skill slots on the PC. Otherwise it would be super imba.

or for each two put on the pet. naturally it needs to be looked on the balancing, like all things. or it could be made for PVE only.

But many of the beast pet skills are weak, and could be made weaker (should they be considered to powerful as "extra" skills. Also if the ranger has put high points into beast, he will have less points to use on the other skill attributes.

One more thing I really miss since I once started playing Ranger and added pets to it;

Why's there no exp-bar for pets. I'd like to know how far it is to reaching a new level, just like I am for my character.
Together with that bar, a balance-bar showing if it's leaning more to elder/hearty/dire would be nice. Now it's guessing or make strict use of certain guides. Instead I prefer to play and if I notice my pet isn't heading the way I like I can change my way of playing, instead of death levelling or strict builds. It happened quite a few times I thought i was playing a good dire-level build (animal did way more dmg then i did) and ended up with a hearty anyhow.

/signed to make pets more usable. Especially more usable for second-profession rangers. It would for example be nice that the functionality of charm animal and comfort animal would combine into one skill.

Pets should be treated like weapons. They should have an inscription slot, attack mod and health mod.

Make it collar mods or something... "Dog Tag of Fortitude"

That way pets can have customizable damage. So you can give them a +33% poison duration mod etc.

I remember suggesting to add to both heroes and pets a green bar that takes 33% of the health bar of a pet or a hero, until they get to level 20.
Once they hit level 20, the green bar would vanish and the health bar would take the whole space again.

As for pets, some things would help for them being used more:
- Direct them like heroes, by adding flags, since they already have the lock target, defend and do not attack modes. But saving those modes would be nice too. It's a bit annoying having to set the mode every time I enter an area.
- Queue pet attacks. Currently, you have to wait for the pet to perform a pet attack until you can order the next. Otherwise the new attack replaces the one waiting to be performed. Pets should be able to remember 2 attacks instead of one. That way, you could order 2 attacks, and they will be waiting to be performed and shown in the Effects monitor of the pet like enchantments. Activate again an attack that is already in the queue, and it moves to the end of the queue.
- More interaction with other profession's skills. It would be interesting to be able to target your own pet with any skill that can usually target only yourself (it can be done already in the rules of many pen&paper and videogame RPGs), as long it has some restrictions. For example, with each rank in beast mastery, your pet gains 2% of the benefits of skills that you activate upon yourself. With rank 15 it would be 30%, and by activating Troll unguent with Wilderness Survival 9, your pet would get activated upon itself Troll unguent with Wilderness Survival 3.
- Now that PvP characters can have different pets, the door is open to allow different pets to have different properties other than different types of damage (currently most deal slashing and a few piercing). But since they are so many, it would be enough to make the differences by groups. They could have an inherent condition dealing depending on the rank of Best mastery. Every 2 ranks in Beast in beast mastery would grant 1% chances to deal a condition for a fixed amount of time. 8% with BM 16.
* Bears. Blunt attacks that may deal 3 seconds of cracked armor.
* Flying birds (Eagle, Raven, Phoenix...). Piercing. 3 seconds of blindness.
* Walking birds. (Moa, Crane, Flamingo...). Piercing. 1 second of Dazed.
* Spiders. Piercing. 4 seconds of poison.
* Reptiles (Lizard, Crocodile, Iguana...). Slashing. 2 seconds of deep wound.
* Crabs and pigs. Slashing. 3 seconds of crippling.
* Cats (Lynx, Tiger, Lion...). Slashing. 6 seconds of bleeding.
* Dogs (Wolf, Hyena). Slashing. 3 seconds of weakness.
* Rats. Slashing. 2 seconds of Disease.
The numbers are just examples. But imagine the 'fun' when that single second of dazing a Moa could deal every 12 attacks coincides with you starting to cast Meteor Shower. Yay!
One skill could be added, called 'Release Hidden Power' that makes the next pet attack always deal its unique condition for 3 times the usual duration.

To play devil's advocate: Balance. Every quirk is one more thing they have to figure out how to balance. (This doesn't mean yours is a bad idea, just that there is the issue of balance.)

Another thing I'd like to see is more transparency of what damage type each pet has - the wikis still have a lot of "unverified" in them, especially for EOTN pets. The Menagerie doesn't help because it's filled with "pet X naturally deals damage type A but can be trained to use damage type B"...what does this mean? Do they switch from one type to another automatically as they level? Do they switch if they gain the right evolution? Do they switch over entirely, or do such pets pick a damage type randomly with every attack?

Yup, I tested some myself using Assasin armors, shields and damage, type skills, and found that all flying birds seem to deal piercing damage but it's still hard to remove the 'seem' from the phrase by counting and averaging the damage of 1000 hits.

It's better if they just tell us.