Increase the pet's attack range.

The other day I was going through a number of different builds for solo farming with my cat being used to draw aggro and I realized that there just isn't much of a way to make them very effective without drawing attention to yourself. First you can't get them to charge beyond your aggro circle, then when you do attract attention, you'll likely draw 1-3 onto yourself. Even if you manage to get this to work should some point you back off a little your pet will decide to break combat and lead the group directly TO YOU.

So here's what I'm proposing. Pets having somewhere between spirit-range or radar distance to attack, following this there should be a fix where the pet will not return unless you change the order to guard/heel as there appears to either be a bug or just some odd part of the AI they head back early.

Maybe a flag for pets, which works in the same way of that for heroes? It seems easier to me..

Pet control is still awful but that thing you mentioned must be some kind of IA issue . Falling back when master runs back or something .

Just needs better AI really/more response.

I thought this thread was going to be on how far pets can reach. But yes, better pet control is needed.

I can agree with what your asking but I think that a pet flag would be better.

Also, the thread title implies you wanting pets to spit at the enemy with deadly acid

pet flagging would be nice, but we are talking about tamed wild animals, not only that but pet skills i think are radar range you could cheese thru alot of stuff with that.

Gogo, make spiders shoot arrows like Maguuna Spiders, make polar bears chuck snowballs, make phoenixes spit fire, make cats... shoot projectible claws....

So you want a pet to be able to aggro without yourself aggroing. A pet whose death means nothing more than a few seconds of blackout and 10 energy to revive.

This isn't WoW, there is no 'hate' system and there are no pet attacks that turn them into tanks.

Yes the AI system for pets is terrible, but the OP's complaints that they can't suicide their pet with no drawback is completely missing the mark.

he doesn't want to suicide his pet he just want to make good use of letting a pet tank. Skills like call of protection protect a pet pretty well so it can be a decent tank.

/signed for the flag idea

The best tanks are tanks that can die without any drawback.

Well, the real problem the OP is addressing, IMHO, is that if you have a pet in the front line, you have to be very careful not to move too far from it, because otherwise it would break aggro very quickly. Also, it's very difficult to say to a pet: "Go and attack that mob!" if that mob is just outside your aggro bubble. You have to get near to him, and sometimes this is dangerous..

Indeed. The day that they improve pet controle would it make a lot more better.

Just give it the oppertunity that you can keep it on atack mode or avoid.
And not have to change it every time after the target has died.
That for me would be a super aprovement.

I'd be happy enough if they would actually attack the called target. Pets respond really slowly when you switch target.

Ability to flag pet would be real nice. Also if you could just call a target and thus order the pet to attack it.

hairballs

/signed for better pet AI or controll, a flag would indeed be nice

The pet comes back too soon. The range should at last be a bit bigger than long bow.

they definately need to work on the companion's ai. it would be wise for anet to test it in gw before implementing it in gw2.

i sign the idea of a longer attack range and the general improvement to pet responsivness.

/signed to increase the overall aggro range of a pet allowing pets to tank


Beast mastery is very overlooked when it comes to PvE and it's quite apparent why. Pets just can't tank. They can do very high amounts of damage (even more than a skilled warrior) and inflict many conditions while the actual pet owner stays safe from afar, but again, they can't tank. Its not that they dont have enough health or they don't have enough armor, either (Call of Protection and Comfort animal can easily keep your pet alive in even the most overwhelming mobs), no matter what you do the pets cannot tank.

Then why, you ask, can pets not tank?

It's the aggro problems. Its just annoying that pets have the exact same aggro range as the owner and the only way to get your pet to attack someone is for you to aggro them first. Not only that, but most monsters (mobs included) will completely ignore your pet just to attack you. Even if you lock your pet on a target, in order for it to attack your pet still needs to get in close enough that you have probably already taken all of the aggro. And even if your aggro bubble never touches a monster, as long as your pet hits him, he will start to chase after you as if you are the one who aggrod him when in reality it was all your pet.

So I end up bringing dodge just so I can shake off all the aggro in hopes that the aggro would attack my pet, and it ends up working... for a few seconds. The monsters leave me alone and go mob around my pet for like 4 seconds and then one of two things end up happening that completely ruin the brief moment of pet tanking: 1) The monsters "get bored" and my pet just randomly loses the aggro of them and they start running after me again as if I recently attacked them, or 2) My pet "gets bored" and decides to run out of the group and come back to me (even if I locked my target on one of the mob members) with the entire mob of enemies behind him.

This problems needs to be fixed or else we might as well give up on great skills like Call of Protection, Symbiotic Bond, Comfort Animal, etc. because if your pet can't tank then these skills are next to worthless.


They should just do this:

1) Keep the same aggro range or increase it a little just enough so that pets can attack something before they attack you, thus doing what companions are MADE to do in this game: Be loyal enough to put themselves in harms way to protect their owner.
2) Make it so that pets will automatically attack AND STAY LOCKED ON the target that you LOCK the pet on. If you lock your pets target on an enemy, the pet should just run out and attack that monster REGARDLESS of whether or not either of you have the aggro. Even if he is far away from you, your pet should be able to run out and attack any monster and STAY locked on that monster no matter where you are. Thats the point of commands. The point is for the companion/party member to actually listen to you. If you lock your target on an enemy, you would expect him to actually lock on the monster. Otherwise, theres almost no point and you might as well just have "guarded" and "flee".
3) Have a flag for your pet (much like you do for henchman and heroes) so you can actually command your pet to go to different locations without you having to stay with it the entire time. This would be useful for even more than pet tanking. Say you want your pet to stay behind you and defend an npc from a group of bandits while you go fight off a second group of bandits coming from a separate location. You would be able to work side by side with your pet because each of you would be fighting a different group of enemies. Or say you wanted your pet to aggro an entire mob of enemies while you stayed from afar and healed him/casted pet attacks so he takes all the damage while you dish it out with commands.

You really should have complete control of your pet, that's all there is to it.

*Patiently awaits update for pet controls*

/signed, increase control of pet/

Any of these would be GREAT:
* Give players a flag for pets kinda like you have for heroes and henchman
* Make it so pets DO NOT lose aggro/attention of the enemy they have been locked onto (and I mean literally locked onto using the lock target option) no matter what (even if the player is far out of the pet's range).
* Increase the pet's overall aggro range


If they did ANY of these, it would fix it completely and if they could somehow do all of these, it would be even more amazing. I like my beast master but its really stupid that you cannot use your pet to tank because you have to grab everyone's attention first and even if the pet does have everyone's attention before you do he ends up losing it as soon as you back up too far.