A pet is a pet is a pet...

Unless we could have some diversity among the types of pets, just as we do among our weapons. Such as:

Felines have slashing attacks + crippling
Avians have piercing attacks + deep wound
Crustaceans have blunt attacks + weakness
The Phoenix has fire attack + set targets afire
Arachnids have piercing + poisoning
Bears have slashing + increased chance of critical (x2) damage
Canine pets have slashing attacks + bleeding

The chances for their secondary effect would be level based, such as .5% for each level of the pet, maximum 10% chance. Any skills that incorporate a condition would then boost the animal's inherent one.

Creating pets that have speed modifiers or damage amount differences may not work well considering all pets should be classified as a single weapon since it requires only one skill to use, as opposed to say an actual sword vs. a hammer (where there is a difference in swing speed and damage) and thus requires a change in entire skill sets. Your thoughts or comments? I'd like to keep this thread specifically about the pet's mechanics, rather than we need more kennel space, or we need to be able to dye our pets. Thanks!

I would say this was overpowering, adding conditions to pet attacks spreads conditions way more faster. Think about a party bringing "felines" crippling all over without having the need of a crippling ranger, "avians" deep wound all around without an eviscreate.

Taint necro or a crip/apply ranger with a pet, conditions everywhere.

I think it would be great to have some diversity among the pets. I see very little problem with speed and damage modifiers for pets. Any negative views can be easily remedied.

What classification would you put the Warthog?

http://www.gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Pet

Some pets already do have different damage types. (the * about the incorrectness of the Prima Guide is in reference to the fact that Warthogs supposedly did blunt damage).
Every other suggestion does seem overpowered.

PvP toons are only able touse Elder Wolf, so I'd say "No".

Also, we'd see less diversity in which pets people use because everyone would just move to the most "l33t" one. Not to mention this suggestion is overpowering.

There are already conditions available for pets and they are applied with skills, just like everything else in the game. To balance this you'd have to have weapons that caused these same effects for each profession without using skills. Not good.

Actually, I like the idea but with a modification:

Each type of pet does get a different type of attack like blunt, piercing, slashing etc. However, the pet can also do the suggested "condition" attack but only if you have a special call/lunge type skill on your skill bar.

This new skill would have a cost (to be determined) and a recharge time (to be determined). In that way it wouldn't be super spammable, but it would allow some differentiation between pets. Currently there is a Canthan skill called "Poisonous Bite" that basically poisons your foe. This could easily be switched to "Enraged Attack" where the pet's special skill was applied to the foe. I think this would be balanced.

EDIT:

Dean, I think my modification would address your concern.

It would be an option for pets to be like prefix mods on swords etc. It would be devastatingly unbalancing for certain animals to cause crippling (for example) outright, but not so rediculous for certain animals to "Increase Crippled Duration by 33%" when using a pet skill.

This difference in pets fits in better with the ability to tame multiple pets, because otherwise you might find your pet's particular strength preventinmg you from modifying your build, and changing your build is what makes GW different.

You can USE skills that actually inflict conditions

That might be a fair idea, giving pets inherent "weapon mods", especially since that is sacrificed by using a pet as a weapon in the first place. For pretty much every mod except zealous, it seems pretty simple to just slap that ability on a pet and call it a day. For example:

Spider: 5/1 vampiric (bloodsucker) +7 vs. physical (exoskeleton)
Moa: 20/20 Sundering (pointy beak) not sure for suffix,maybe a -2 second to the skill disabling time?
Bear: 10% chance that owner gains adrenaline on hit, +30 health (it's a big bear)
Dune Lizard - +33% bleeding duration (pointy teeth) and +5 armor (thick scales)
Stalker - +33% crippling (ankle biter) and +7 vs elemental (warm coat)
Lynx - +33% poison duration (bad dental hygiene) and 20% chance of +1 beastmastery when using a special attack.

you still can use your weapon if you have a pet...

In beastmaster builds using the pet to deal damage, it is very rare that you will concentrate on both pet attacks and weapon attacks. Yes, bunny thumpers, I know. It gets really tricky to use your weapon effectively when you've put 12 points in beastmastery and expertise in order to use the pet as a damage source. Not to mention the strain on the skillbar.

I would hate to have to get a new Level 20 pet every time I want to run a different build calling for a different type of condition or modifier. Especially since it was so much trouble for me to raise my pet as dire.

Unless what?

There already are different damage types for pets, there are only 3, and there are pets for all 3 damage types unless at some point they removed some. As well, I think that pets have different attack speeds, but I am not certain of that.

As for making alternate status effects and new ways for them to trigger, this is a simple imbalance in skill efficiency, there are already skills which deal certain amounts of conditions, and they are balanced based on attributes invested in Beast mastery, not including unbalanced additions of diverse conditions based on personal insterest instead of balance.

They could change Beast mastery, but it is balanced, and there are several builds which exploit the use of pets, so assuming there should be an improvement is a bit unjustified. They can make new skills to improve or alter the way beastmastery is used, but expecting them to make blind additions so something that is balanced (whether you agree or not) is wishful thinking and not a legitimate suggestion. Anet has decided it is balanced, and even if you disagree, they will not add a rainbow of improvements to a function which they have decided is balanced.

Beast mastery can at maximum only take 97 points of your attribute pool, you can either deck your expertise for extremely cheap beastmastery skill use, or use a combination of wilderness survival or marksmenship with beast mastery. You can easily place 10 points in 3 different attirbutes for the cost of 2 less max on 2 attributes in order to build a multi attribute class. You can put points in to beast mastery as well as another weapon or attack type and a healing attribute, or Expertise for energy managment and a weapon or healing attribute, or max Beast mastery and Marksmenship for 2 max power attack attributes and leave the healing to another class. As a warrior and assassin player I often have to put points in 2 attributes just to do damage, and save some points for another attribute to cover healing, why rangers think their one beast mastery attribute should match Critical Strikes+Dagger Mastery or Strength+(Weapon) Mastery in effeicency is beyond me, they obviously don't recongize balance nor cost.

All physical classes require 2 attributes to deal competative attack damage, and most casters require points in 2 attributes to make efficient use of effective attacks, and most of those classes require another attribute to cover healing no different then Ranger, so whether you putting your extra points in Expertise to make your pet attacks cheaper, or putting points in Marksmenship to gain more attack output, your not liable to any more constraint then any other job, it is different, yet balanced, whether you accept it or not.

All pets, except for the spider and moa, do slashing damage. The spider and moa do piercing. All the pets deal the same amount of damage. The bear has the slowest attack speed and is thus the worst pet. Other than that, all the pets are the same.

there are several builds which exploit the deaths of pets

There, fixed that for ya.

When was the last time you saw a pet attack build in a serious PvP match? They're fun to screw around with in PvE, but not that effective. Just because it's in the game right now doesn't mean it's balanced.


Pretty much any ranger build without expertise pumped up is worthless. Spammiing out those attack skills like any good ranger will make your energy run dry faster than an ele with no energy management. Usually the way is works out, you can put 12 in beastmastery, 12 or 13 in expertise, and then around 9 in marksmanship. Bow attacks are taking a major hit in attributes here, let alone that you can't use WS.

No one thinks a build with only points in beastmastery should match weapon mastery + strength, or dagger mastery + critical strikes. However, a build with expertise and beastmastery with a few point in a another area for support should be equal to that, no? I'll say it again, any ranger build without a significant number of points in expertise is broken.

Finally, you forget the skillbar burden. After adding in charm animal, a pet rez, and a people rez, you have 5 spots left to work with. Let's throw in one self heal for our fearless beastmaster so he doesn't get eaten. We'll leave out an evasion skill for now and hope for the best. That's 4 left. Let's be conservative and say 2 pet attacks. Now we have 2 slots left, although it's not a terrible idea to use 3 attacks here if you can fit it. We'll use call of haste to increase our pet's damage, call of protection or otyugh's cry to increase it's tanking ability. It would be nice if we could use both, but we're already running low on slots here. So even with a conservative estimate, we have one slot left for a bow attack, which would be best used for energy management, not wasting more energy that we don't have. There's just not room to be both an effective marksman and an effective pet attack build.

what if the pets offered a boost to you in some minor way instead of causeing/dealing more damage/conditions.

like: the bear = armor
the warthog= life
the spider =lengthen posion
the moa bird =range to bow
wolf =attack speed
phionex=energy
ect.ect.

/notsigned - balance issue. Plus there are pet skills for a reason...


However if you want to suggest tamed bears no longer have a skill like Brutal Mauling that's totaly worthless and screws your other pet attacks, I'd sign that.

I know you are referring to built in attributes but

It costs 5 energy, has a 0 cast time and recharges in 5 sec. Granted the damage delt is minimal but that is not why I use it, I use it for the interrupt. If everyone is on the same target and if anyone else is using an interrupt as well, your pet dosen't need to deal much damage. At least IMHO.

I like that. Each bonus would have to be very minor though.

I had similar thoughts a while back.

Pets should have special attack types to add diversity and meaning to which pet you choose to charm, for example the spider could poison foes.

Such conditions would have to have very small durations so as not to cause any major imbalancing issues and the chance of your pet performing such an attack successfully should depend on that pets level and your level of beastmastery.

PvP characters should be able to select their pet from a dropdown menu when creating a character or in game using and emote '/changepet crane'.

That has to be the worst reason I've ever heard to disagree with a suggestion. Let's never add new weaponry to the game, 'cause PvP characters only have access to PvP weaponry. Let's never add new areas to the game as only battle areas are available to PvP characters.

There's no point for the PvP snooze-fest to drag PvE down with it.

I like the idea of different kinds of damage, but the conditions would be a little overkill.

Not if those weapons are imbalanced/have anything better than a PvP character aside from looks.

Irrelevance does not help your debate.

Biased, irrelevant opinions do not help your debate.

Balance is what A.Net wants in the game. They will not add anything like this if it is not available to PvPers, period. Like it or leave it.

I don't do any PvP myself, but you can not unbalance anything that is useable in PvP just to satisfy PvE, that is the nature of GW. As long as you can go and do PvP with a PvE Toon the PvE weapons have to follow the PvP weapons(pet is a weapon) in dmg. and mod's.

Although having pets do specialized damage (which is somewhat already the case) I can see a total problem with balancing this. Rangers are pretty much a strong class (2nd highest armor, evade skills out the whazoo, high penitrating attacks, 2nd highest damage per second output, etc...) adding pet's that do additional strike values would pretty much tip the scales to the point where rangers with pet's would rule the system. If your going to go down the diversity of pets avenue, i think the suggestions of individual rideable pet's might be better. Each class has it's own ridable pet might be pretty fun and be a little more balanced.

Hi everyone Thanks for the replies! I merely start a suggestive thread purely for the responses, both positive and negative (and everything in between). It's always nice to get feedback that keeps growing and growing, it's how we'll get things noticed constructively, and maybe even get things we'd like to see without having to make a big deal out of it.

Thanks for staying on topic everyone

P.S. - As far as how I use my pet, I use the Disruptive Lunge about 99% of the time as well. If you ever watch your pet attack, the attack speed is roughly that of a hammer (I believe it's a tad longer). If you use Dis. Lunge, it can take as long as 3-4 seconds to go off (compare this to the axe attack Disruptive Chop). Dis. Lunge isn't as spammable as you think. If your pet is in mid stride to the target, be careful, the skill icon goes off as if it's a stance, however the actual effect won't if the target is too far away or has an obstruction in its path.

Woah... yeah pve has alot more to offer, skill wise, weapon wise and pet wise already as well as armor choices and class switching (without rerolling). Not sure how this invalidates the suggestion by saying it's not available to pvp characters? Tons of stuff is unavailble to pvp players. Perhaps they COULD add it as an option in pvp character creation?

Want it for a pvp character? Make a pve one, play it to level 20 and bring the pet to a friendly neighborhood pvp arena of your choice! Already, there are different types of damage dealt by different type of pets, blunt/slashing. Sorry that pvp characters only get one type, yet another reason for pvp only people to pve!

Pretty much PVP players are stuck with the standard mix available with character creation.

Not entirely new features like pet mods. If you add selectable pets to the PvP creation screen, you'll hear hundreds of PvErs screaming about how another PvE only item is available to PvPers, in the same way they'd whine if 15k armor was available for unlockingto PvErs.

How does PvE offer more "skill wise"?

Let's make PvErs PvP to get Superior Runes for their ranger, OK? OK!

Ok onw way to make pet differet, they should have speical abilities. any bird pets should fly, cats should be able to climb trees,pigs should be fast runners. Lizards should have sort of ability can't think of what. that is how a pet should be different.

I'd think it would be a pretty simple matter to add a pet selection screen to the PvP interface if they chose to do this.

I would agree but the pets pve players had to work for shouldnot be on the list. All the other pets should be there. Like the fow or end game pets.

Just like the weapons and armor PvE people had to work for shouldn't be available to a PvP character? The whole point of a PvP character is that you don't have to grind to have competetive gear and skills.

There are alot more ways to exploit pets than just their deaths, there are skills like barbs which will expound extra hits, and some very powerful pet skills which can improve entire groups of pets by large amounts, as well there are several other builds which exploit the added number of attackers and health of pets, these as well as having bring your own corpse pets for death skills.

Not every skill, or even skill groups, are effective in PvP, Raising Minions is nearly impossible in the wake of a necro using corpses for nearly anything else, DoT skills are mostly useless because they do not ensure enough damage on several targets since they will flee the effect, and using solo pet builds is not uber. Solo Monks die in seconds if enemies bring proper counters, and Pets are second rate damage by themselves.

Expertise is an energy management catagory which allows Ranger to make any energy skill cheaper, it allows you to use the power of your pets skills more often, even using them more often does not prove that the damage should match other classes. Your using a seperate creature to attack enemies, that creature is much more expendable, in the same way a bow allows you to attack at an advantagious distance, a pet also allows you to attack enemies without making yourself vulnerable, the amount of damage a pet can take is rather significant, compared to Assassin who is an actual character, Pets have more natural armor, and are not even significant targets of attack. Add that on with the use of powerful skills like call of protection and revive animal, any group of pets can gain an unparallelled defensive bonus for a vast amount of time, and all pet raises can be covered by one character in that group if only one of the beast masters brings these skills.

The fact that it is more difficult to cover healing on an extra permenant creature in your party and that they only excel in proper builds doesn't make them useless or underpowered, the fact that you don't use them properly doesn't mean they are broken. Pets have the potential to be used for very effective combat techniques, whether or not they are used or appreciated doesn't matter, it is, at its best, strong enough to balance with any other build, and that is why Anet chooses to keep them the way they are.

You don't have to agree with me, I agree with Anet developement staff, feel free to continue to tell them that they don't know how unbalanced and broken pet builds are, they know you are wrong and will not break the balance just because you don't understand.

Pets work different then other damage types, it is the cheapest, least contact damage source in the game, made even cheaper by Expertise, which doesn't need to be maxed to be effective, they will never equate to a Warrior or Assassin for peeling out melee attacks or any other class who is spending more energy, more skill slots and attributes, and is at more risk, for damage.

Elementist maxes points in an element, high points in energy storage, and often points in some sort of support for more energy or healing skills, spends at least 2 slots just to cover energy management, one for health management, one for rez often one for healing support, leaving only 3 or 4 attack skills, 5 at best. Tell me how it is unfair for Ranger to spend high points in Expertise to make the cheapest attacks in the game cheaper, then bank on charm animal, Rez animal and rez for normal support, leaving 4 or 5 skills for pet attacks is suppose to match Elementist. The elementist has less armor, must be in range to cast, and is 10 times more likely to get shutdown by interrupts and hexes. Pumping points in energy storage and bringing at least 2 energy management skills to even consider continous spell casting is exactly the same amount of skills and attribute that it takes for Ranger to bring a pet, rez pet and provide energy management for an already abismally cheap skill pool wile dealing damage with the least priority creature on the battlefield allowing for ease of evasive maneuvers.

Blindness isn't justification for improvment, I won't say that there arn't any skills and costs which could be improved in Beast Mastery, but this suggestion is blaitently and obsurdly unbalanced, no matter how you spin it.

Also, Warrior only has 2 types of Damage, Slashing and Blunt, Assassin only has one, but also includes some spells, Ranger has use of Piercing with bow, and Piercing or Slashing with pets, that is plenty fair, you shouldn't be able to do any kind of damage you want with any setup. There were reports in the past that there were blunt pets too, even though they may be false, it wouldn't put Beastmastery at a disadvantage, it just matches others in damage options. You can't have everything, balance revolves around abilities and limitations, you expect to get everything with one attribute line in one class.

Barbs isn't very effective with pets because of their slow attack speed. With pretty much any build they show up in, pets are meant to die, IWAY and B/P being the classic examples.

Pet calls have been shown to *not* affect groups of pets. The issue at hand is not pets as mobile corpses and meat shields, but pets at useful attackers.

Most skills have at least some use in PvP. Raising minions is useful for MF builds, and extremely useful in the mass carnage known as 12v12. DoT skills are useful for driving an enemy from wards or forcing them to kite, blocking a chokepoint in 12v12, or just nuking the bejeezus out of NPCs. 55 monks are not useful themselves, but every skill on their bar has a use in PvP. Beastmasters on the other hand...

When using damage skills and an unwieldy weapon like a pet, shouldn't damage be improved? Anet agrees, pet attacks generally provide higher damage for less cost than comparable bow attacks, the tradeoff being less flexibility


Call of protection only affects one pet, revive animal is totally worthless now with the buff to comfort animal. The pet may be a very effective tank, but kill the squishy ranger a few feet away, a ranger that has few defensive abilities because of the emphasis on pets, and that pet becomes worthless in short order, just like a powerful weapon on a warrior becomes worthless if you kill him.

It's actually easier thanks to their insta-rezzes.

Name one, mobile corpse/meat shield doesn't count

If it's balanced, why are they not effective weapons? Just because something exists in the game doesn't mean it's balanced. Heck, Anet rebalances skills every season in an attempt to maintain balance

Skill slots are at a premium for beastmasters. Expertise needs to be high for most ranger builds unless some other source of energy management is provided. Everyone is at equal risk for damage in PvP since there is no such thing as aggro.

Comparing beastmasters to elementalists in efficacy hardly helps your point.


My suggestion was not not have condition spamming pets, but to have pets have innate weapon mods since they are used as weapons. This would add a balanced change to pets as well as making the different varieties of pets a little more interesting

Wrong, all other classes have the option of fire, air, earth and water damage through the use of mods. Quite honestly, there is very little difference between the three forms of physical damage.

Is this really such a bad thing? Beast Mastery is not a very popular attribute, and when used it almost never utalizes a pet. So.. I'm gunna have to say.

/half-half signed

/signed

btw, i LOVED the Diablo 2 "pet"

the NPC following you, you can buy her weponss, armor. would be nice to be able to modify the pet, such as.... idk, sharpen claws, feed whatever to personalise it.

and ya, to the OP, i love that idea

just a small note on my opinions of pets. i've posted somewhere else about the "skill bar for pets" (find the thread "pet-bar" i believe) and see a small change to what i origionally said. i wont repeat that post, so to fully understand what i'm about to say, please search the other thread and read it there. If they added the second skill bar as i noted before.. any attacks in the bar shouldn't be commandable by the player, those will be the attack skills that the animal itself uses on its own. give the pet its own energy pool as well. now, for instance, say you want to use "well timed skills" then lets give the option of placing a pet attack skill on the players skill bar, to enable the player to decide when the pet uses that skill, like it is now, however, leave the pet with its own attacks to use as it would see fit (like henchmen). Before closing, i'd like to say, please read the other post and this will make more since to you.

I wouldn't whine if they were unlockable to pvp'ers. I honestly think pvp only characters get the short end of the stick to pver's as far as customizing, alternative pet's, weapons, armor. Skill wise, a pve person can spend a few short hours in game to earn a nice compilation of skills and even a few elites tossed in. As most pvp players say, pve is much easier. I'd have to agree.

Not starting out the game fresh with a pvp only character, i really don't know how many skills a pvp person gets at the begining. <shrugg>


hrmmm... I think if your not taking advantage of the pve enviroment as well as pvp then your just not getting your money's worth. Pve has some pretty challenging areas and offers a good amount of fun. I don't disapprove with the plight of the pvp only folks, but pve has (statisticaly) a larger player base then pvp. A great deal of whining for change comes from both ends me thinks.

If you look back through the archives on guru and other sites, you'll find that not too long ago beastmaster builds were quite popular. This before I-way, BP rangers and MF became the rage.

I think a new way to deal with pets and having access to new pet types isn't such a bad idea. Although currently touch rangers are all the rage and typically rangers make a decent well-rounded class as they are, having a wider arrange of damage types and pet variety might rekindle the beast masters just waiting to be "unleashed"

As far as having a second skill bar for pets, nah, if a minnion master is worth anything he's not thinking if only i had a second bar just for minnions, if your going to be a beast master, you only need one skill bar.

what if perhaps the mostly useless charm animal skill was put into use? like have the pets do conditons, but turn Charm Animal into their special little skill. Just some thoughts.

Why do pet's need this buff? Any experienced 'true' beastmaster (not those scum who use them as meat shields. Sorry, it irks me) will know how powerful these little tanks can be.
A good example of this was Shiro in Factions. We had 1 warrior and my little howler. I kept him poisoned and crippled so he couldn't get to the softies (without teleporting) while he was dying slowly. As soon as he reached <50%, game done. Thanks to the Godliness of Brutal Strike, my pet was dealing 80 damage every 5 seconds. Sure, he died a few times (Shiro noticed the little tank sinking his teeth in a little too deep) but he was back to full effectiveness in no time.

Basically, when used properly, pet's are rock solid. Very good weapons. Not really in need of any kind of buff (though Zamial's suggestions are quite cool ).
The only buff I would like to see would be the merging of Charm and Comfort. However I must admit, that even that is just a greedy desire of mine .