Yes, more Pet Suggestions...

The main thing I hate about pets is resing them and being disabled. It just dies before I can heal it, then I have to res it again. It's pretty stupid, that's why I just bring charm animal along and don't worry about healing it. If it dies, it can go to hell.

That's my policy for stupid people when I'm playing healer.

Really!? That's where I got my policy for pets in the first place. Stupid people run in and just die, and I noticed pets do the same thing pretty much. Well yeah.

/signed

Put me in for the combining of Comfort/Charm. Effectively, Charm becomes Comfort once the pet is charmed, and I agree, changing pets would mean you need to buy a new charm skill, using a skill point, with maybe the exception of pre-searing, as there is a good variety of pets to try there before committing to one.

I would not change the level of heal on comfort, and would leave the skill disable feature as a penalty.

All other comments concerning better AI and commands.. agreed. When I did the bonus mission where we awaken the druids, my group had three rangers with pets, they had to let them die as they continually attacked the jungle guardians.

What sense does that make?

I'm not happy with the elite idea though, as this should be something we have access to much earlier on. Already too many of the most useful skills are at the end of the game, lets not make something that effects all rangers and their reasons to pursue beastmastery so difficult to obtain.

If I'm going to go beastmastery, I want to be practicing the skills and learning my timing before I get to the jungle.

I miss my cat a lot, but I just don't see bringing down a coop mission because I have been rendered useless when my cat dies and I'm engaged in a mob and can't res him.

-Phoenix

At level 20, you have 480 health, with no runes or upgrades increasing it. I think sacrificing a skill slot for hundreds of extra health on another target is worth it.

Comfort Animal is already Orison of Healing and Resurrection for a pet, making it also take up the skill slot penalty for having a tank would be too unbalanced.

The skill disable-penalty is a good one, in my opinion. If you bring a pet, you should have primarily pet skills anyway, so its death should mean you cannot use them anyway. In addition, it prevents you from instantly resurrecting a fallen pet, and encourages you to use it for something other than a distraction.

To comment on the original post, the Doppelganger fight often requires people to drastically change targets. If you bring all pet attacks, you get a pet, then your Doppelganger is reduced to using regular attacks, making it much too easy for Beastmasters. My Monk had to change to a build using all Mesmer skills to beat the Doppelganger, it should be no trouble to switch builds for a single fight.

Beastmasters have as much health as any other Ranger. Using an Interrupt build, I have only three bow attacks, and the rest are all skills to keep me alive. If you brought two skills to keep you alive, Comfort Animal and Charm Animal, you still have four spots for skills. People have to devote time to kill your pet, which you can heal, and time to kill you, whom you can heal.

On an eralier suggestion reguarding WoW's pet control...

Having actually now Played WoW I do agree that it's method of pet control would be a godsend.

So many times in the Tombs we've tried to biat out a camping team with arrow fire only to see our pets rush in. Nothing short of running an entire compass legth of the screen get's them to stop their assult.
A tiny pet bar abouve the skill bar with attack, Withdraw, agressive and defesive would be so so welcome.

My minions have little to no effect on Mursaat. Should they be infused too?

Try using bone feinds instead.

totally against that!
i got 3 chars and each of them has exactly zero skill points, untill i come to UW or FoW every week once...
and when i have 1 or 2 points, then i mainly use them to cover up some more missing skills, that i need for the one or other new pvp build...
so investing a skill point to switch pets would be the worst solution ever for me!
in addition to that:
that was not my idea at all!
the normal charm animal skill still exists, and can be used to *only* charm an animal and take it with you.
with the combined form of charm & comfort, you cannot charm anythink but take the pet with you!
that was my idea, just a little bit different but it matters, when you thought about buying a new skill for a new pet...


i was (as many times) mostly thinking about pvp.
anyway, once upon a time...
you could get healing hands right after LA, so why not be able to get that new elite as well in such an "early" part of the game.

1st: i have plenty of builds where i only need 1 or 2 pet attacks, instead of "primarily" pet skills
2nd: it's not the death-disabling of skills, that we're talking about, but the rez-disabling! it is logically, that when your pet dies, you become unconzentrated for a matter of seconds, so that you cannot use any skills, but when you rez your pet, it's not you who should be unable to use skills, but the pet. that's why i think, only pet attacks should be disabled after rezzing a pet.

Well I disagree with not having all your skills disabled when your pet dies, aside from the ability to rez that pet.

If you bring a pet to battle, you should lose your skills for a time when it dies, because that pet is an extension of you and you are responsible for it's well-being. I do agree that at least your pet rez should work though, to at least get your pet back as quickly as possible, since you are bringing skills that are pet only. Losing your pet in battle while you have a bunch of pet skills in your bar is like losing an arm in battle. It's something that no other class in the game has to suffer.

I also do agree that Charm Pet should be a one time skill, and that your pet should join you whenever you have any pet only skills in your bar. Obivously if you are using pet skills, you'll need your pet to use them, so why not make all the skills linked to it?

did i say anything different?

i cannot agree.
being able to rez your pet immediatly with a percentage of health (as it is now), you would like instant-heal him for like 250hp while rezzing him.

that's why no other class has an extra 500hp sweeping around them and doing as much dmg as a warrior (if skilled properly) while the ranger himself can still shoot around with his bow. (or use his secundary profession, whatsoever)

The pet infusen is welcome, having not used my pet for a awhile can someone tell me if its automatically done when you infuse your armour or is there a seperate option when you talk to the seer?

Makes no difference. 1-2 hits on a lvl 18 bone fiend and they are dead.

I'm against combining Charm Animal and Comfort animal because it's such a powerful combination. That said why not combine Charm animal with an extra attack slot for your pet?
When you equip charm animal you get the option to pair it up with one of the pet Attacks.

And Thanas, Every minion that cops a blow instead of you has done it's job.

Yes, you did. I said you should still lose ALL your skills, you are only talking about pet skills. The ONLY skill that I don't believe should be disabled is the ability to rez your pet. You would still have to wait for the recharge on everything else before you could us it


Wouldn't you want your arm back and working a well as possible as quickly as possible? If all your other skills are disabled anyway, how effective would a pet be when first rezzed? You would have to work damn hard to get him clear of a fight to get him healed so you wouldn't lose your skills AGAIN, so how over powered would that really be?


Too bad that "kite" has extremely poor AI. All it takes is getting within attack range and it pretty much goes off on it's own... best you can do at that point is run your commands and hope you can kill your target quickly, before it takes out your pet and kills all your skills.

Truth is, Beast Mastery as an attribute line (I'm talking the line as a WHOLE, not specific skills), is a bit weak. Since we only get 8 skills and one of them has to be Charm, and it's silly to NOT bring Comfort if you expect to use your pet the entire time, you're already investing 25% of your bar to a pet. Then , you'll need about 2 or 3 skills to increase his effectiveness. Now that you've invested over half your bar to your pet alone, try finding enough other ranger skills AND get some from your secondary.

Most of the time, Beast Mastery is more novelty than anything else.

But not all the time. *Cough* Pet build *Cough*

regarding the AI, we all hope that to be fixed (looking at the other former posts here)
at this moment, it is quiet difficult to make up a good pet build, but it is at least possible!
with the future improvements, that are said to be made, it should be easier then... i hope... HURRY A.NET

I've just recently started a Beast Master ranger and I'd like to second the suggestion to do away with the useless charm animal skill just to have the pet around. Confort Animal is simply a must if you don't want your pet to be just a disposable curiosity and you need at least two pet skills to make the pet more or less useful. That's a whole half of the skills for a single ranger attribute line, leaving just a mere 4 slots for the rest of your ranger and whatever you chose as secondary profession. IMHO, the best solution would be to limit Charm Animal to just charming and to make any pet skill automatically bring the pet. That would free up one slot that provides a very welcome breathing room to make the ranger something more than a dumb NPC's puppeteer.

Another main gripe, which has already been mentioned, is the lack of automatic revival of pets and, perhaps more annoyingly, that pets are not ported together with you at cutscenes: they just stay wherever they were at the moment, usually meaning certain death and, in many circumstances, an inability to go back to revive it, which renders the Beast Master almost useless for the rest of the mission (as happened to me yesterday at Thirsty River. Pets are NOT disposable minions that can be left behind! To a Beast Master, they are as important as a weapon. How would a warrior feel to find out that after a cutscene (or an automatic revival) their hammer was left behind where they were/died?

Also, I want to second the suggestion, nay, plead to have the pet's AI improved so that they don't get stuck at stupid places or become a damn liability for coordinated gameplay. Some simple "stay"/"attack" commands would be enough.

Finally, I'm okay with with the skill disabling with the pet's death/res, even if it can be quite annoying (especially at mid-skill, urgh). It's a fair price to pay to have a whole other character at your command (well, more or less ). Considering that Comfort Animal is instantaneous, the 8 second disabling is not bad at all. Compare that to an 8 second "Restore Life" which leaves the character unable to attack or run and begging for interruption. Just use apply poison or some other preparation before ressing your pet and poison/bleed/interrupt/whatever while you recover your skills.

I suppose you right Thomas. Just seems pointless taking them later on in the game, especially when each fiend costs you 25 energy and maintaing them is such a difficult job. I mean I'm sorta glad that I don't use them anymore, cause it gives me space to experiment. Ah nevermind.

yeah, but if you have 2 or 3 beast mastery, you pet is basically useless, as it will hardly do any damage.

i agree with all the suggestions in the original post. i want to be a beastmaster since it seems pretty cool, but there are too many disadvatages of being one. heck, if they fix all that stuff, ill get rid of my bow to put more points in beast mastery, that way i can use a staff to get more energy.

I love Pets more pets smarter AI I like it! more of Teh pets please

and maybe be able to have Necros summon pets too PLEAZE pretty PLEASE

They already do. Check animate bone horror/fiend/minions.

Thanks Anet for the pet boost. It wasn't exactly what I was hoping for (to save a skill slot) and the nature of the buff will possibly discard the possibility of it becoming true in the future (if you can have a 80 AL tank that can be ressed with no DP with bringing just ONE skill it would probably be exploited by any /R/ without points in BM just to use them as damage sponges, which is not what they are meant for); however it is a very welcome aid for Beast Masters to take more advantage of our pets.
I haven't checked if the ressing behaviour of them has been changed to automatically res with the ranger at res points/cutscenes/GvG/arenas, but at least it wasn't reported, so, if this is so, IMO they are still lacking a fix to make them viable for PvP outside of specialized pet-heavy builds (which have in fact been strengthened) and annoyance-free in PvE. C'mon, if pets still need two separate skills to come and be ressed, at least they should get the automatic res every now and then! (Hey, if you want you could even give DP to autoressed pets or make autores "Confort Animal"-dependant, if you think it would get unbalanced!).

Thank you Anet! With the removal of Natures wipe and the return of enchantments and hexas combined with the speed and armour buff our pets are now a force to be reckoned with!
It took us over 5 hours to work it out but the pet build is now Smite ready! We're steamrolling over the smiters and We're soaking up the faction! THANKS!

i love how a-net pays attention to pets and gives em upgrades i can see how running a pet as a smiting rod could work increased speed by 20% use call of haste for 25% boost making total of 45% cast balthazars aura on it and ya got a
health eating pet that can outrun anyone

Lol we probably should try that.... But we hate smiting so much we refuse to be a part of it

well...ive noticed that rangers can also be a scout profession too.
so to make them more efficient...how about you can ride a pet as transportation(once your pet reaches reasonable size....like level 20. im not too sure about this if you have a spider or dune lizard as your pet)
it will create few benefits and penalties along with few new strategies.

==benefits and penalties while you are riding on your pet as transportation==
benefits:
-you travel faster
-you get combined health(your health + pet's health)
-you are controlling the pet(no more suicide missoin for pet)

penalties:
-all of your 8 skills/spells are disabled...but you can still attack enemy with your bow.....bow only(so that primary warrior cannot take advantage of extra health and go melee with their sword).
-any knockdown skills will get you off the pet

couple of new strategy
-quickly travel behind enemy line and set harmful spirits or traps
-quickly secure important location(by setting traps and etc)

what do you think?

no real reason to be riding around guild wars....the maps are pretty small

Best suggestion: Using dyes on pets.

using dyes sounds weird i'd rather have some kind of exhange or different possible colours from something like a pet palour for a reasonable price

Well PvP weekend is over. The pet buff is great but there is still one thing that irks me about pets. The lack of control. All I want is a key to get my pet to attack my target and a key to get him to come back. The speed buff is great.... with call of haste nothing is getting away from ur pet.... Too bad once he's hit something he'll be reluctant to let go of it until it's dead or off the compass.

my 1 and only pet suggestion... make wolves look more like wolves... i meen, i like to have a pat and all, but i only want it if it looks cool...and wolves dont look that realistic in GW...lol, thats the only pet suggestion i could think of.

They need to bring out more pets into the game...it's too limited imo.

lol this is like a WoW hunter pet topic =P

Pets are off tanks/Cc not damage dealer...i do agree with some of the ideas for you beastmaster Rangers but still some of the sugestions are very over powering ...and this is comming from a ranger =)

Great idea. Also, anyone in the guild can add a pet to the pen and anyone with pet skill can take one out.

What if you could find pet specific dyes that would do things like add dark fur to a Lynx and also change the spot configuration....

errrg wrong topic sorry

I think having charm animal as a passive skill where you only get to have the animal WOULD be fine, if pets were better.
If pets become something truly worthwhile to put points into, i think one skill slot to have them is just fine. Also, I think the skills reset when they die would be ok if they were good.

Both of these things would be fine if they were worth the skill slot and the annoyance.

Alright, this is my suggestion. It doesn't help anyone in any way but it would be fun. I say if you don't have your pets equipped on you, they should wander your guild hall. I think that would be cool. You go the hall and you have bears , wolves and the occasional warthog just wandering around.

That would be great, and I don't know why.