Pet AI

Yeah, i'm sure there are other threads on this but 1) search is broken, and 2) it's unlikely they actually mention HOW to fix the AI.

Alright, so my compressed backstory on this thread comes from yesterday, when i was farming some totem axes for my caster chars. It went well (got 3) albeit slow - i decided to farm on my ranger, using a beastmaster spec. About halfway into farming i thought back a few months to when i tried playing WoW, and remembered how much more fun it is having your pet actually help you out. It's not because WoW has better pet AI, it's because you have control over your pet's actions. Your pet has it's own mini-skillbar, that you control by pressing CTRL+1 through CTRL+8.

I'm not suggesting a blatant ripoff of WoW's pet system, but GW should have something like this. For example, bind these keys to your pet's actions:
F5: Attack my target (this means attack it now, not wait 5 seconds or so - stay on this target until it dies or i tell you to attack something else)
F6: Stay (just sit there - could be an awesome lure for pve trapping)
F7: Come/Follow (gotta break stay or attack commands somehow)

Even just those 3 commands would make using a pet in pve or pvp so much easier and much more useful, not to mention fun. Since it seems like everyone's suggestion of combining comfort/charm animal into 1 skill (which i am still hoping for btw) is being ignored or unnoticed, at least put in some form of control to make it worth losing a skill slot for charm/comfort? I doubt it would make an imbalance in pvp, and maybe you'd see a lot more rangers bring their pets along - maybe even see some beastmasters being used.

I do agree that the pet AI isn't great, responding slowly to attacks or charging blindly into enemy bases in AB, and thus rendering them unressable until you yourself are killed.

I think perhaps some simple commands like that would suffice, although I think the keys you mentioned already have functions - but I'm sure they could easily use differnet keys.

Well 9 and 0 don't have functions.. Perhaps

9 - Attack my target (Pet runs to target and attacks)
0 - Come to me (Pet runs to you and releases itself from aggro)

If you think about it, a "stay here" button would be nice. But most groups outside the trapping community would not take advantage of it, thus only an attack and retreat are needed.

Pet commands have been requested before, I'm disappointed that A.net still hasn't added any.

That's a great suggestion. Even those 2 simple commands would help Beastmasters tremendously. It's so hard to make your pet break-off. Especially annoying when your pulling a tactical retreat, and your little buddy is happily getting himself killed _-_.

i was yust thinking bout this how bout having these simple commands used with a little speech bubble on top of youre char (can be turned off ofcourse)

example

i tell my fluffy to attack nagga this would appear: Fluffy attack Naga!!

/signed exept for the stay command, would make pulling to easy