Pet balance is not a numbers game

To the devs, please understand what is actually going on with high damaging pets before nerfing them

So pets were designed to have tradeoffs in the beginning. For the longest time, felines/birds were supposed to be high damage pets but easy to kill. On the other side of the spectrum, you had bears that did low damage, but were tanks. Felines/birds were easily countered simply by killing the pets as they died very quickly, punishing the ranger to have a longer pet swap cooldown. As a result, birds/felines were not popular in core ranger or druid builds for the longest time. This counterplay no longer existed when Soulbeast was introduced as you could maintain a high damaging pet that essentially never died. With the recent damage nerfs, you've fixed this problem for Soulbeasts, but those pets will be even more useless for core rangers and druids.

The current post-nerf birds now hit slightly higher than bears, but has no change in vitality or toughness. The trade-off between pet damage and pet tankiness is way off-balance at the moment. There is no point slotting a glassy pet that does low damage that is going to die fast and penalise your pet swap cooldown.

Please re-think your method of re-balancing pets! The current method is killing pet diversity and non-Soulbeast builds

Anet’s balancing/ nerfs are based on the noise in the pvp forum, so there little to no chance Anet will actually see this, let alone do anything about fixing the majority of the pets that are just trash in all game modes.

GW2's balancing philosophy is a number game... The issue is the direction in which those number tweaks are implemented. And I'd say that Abyssis is spot on about the "noise in the spvp subforum".

Inb4 all pets end up being as useful as a Mesmer clone. Dealing 0 damage and having 0 health...

Just because ANet can't be bothered to properly balance pets in PvP.

That and Soulbeast continues to be Ranger+++ because Merging and thus being able to fully heal/revive a pet in 10 seconds no matter what will mean that they can utilize glass pets more effectively.

At this point, I think it'd be more interesting if SB couldn't have a pet and was always merged (Except for when using Down Skill 3) but could swap between pets in combat to access 2 different sets of F skills. Which would allow ANet to focus on balancing pets for the builds that have to deal with using pets properly including the 1 minute resummon cooldown on pet death.

Changing numbers is the easiest approach therefore the approach that will be taken with regards to gw2 devs, have u not noticed this thru the years?Class focusednerfs are 100% dictated by niose these days as it iterate's the notion that instead of the balance team doing what they're paid for they just use forums and threads to do their job for them for the most part due to the fact the have zero clue what their doing.

I wouldn’t mind anet balancing by the numbers if they actually looked at buffing/fixing stuff that rangers have been complaining about for years while they are nerfing what the big mouths are complaining about in the pvp forum, because it doesn’t matter if it’s OP/UP, the most noise gets something changed. Anet should change the way they balance by “Giving a little, taking a little” but unfortunately they are solely focused on nerfing.

All Anerf Devs know for balance is nerf nerf nerf, because it's easiest, and quickest to apply.

It just takes a very vocal community on the forums to keep crying nerf in order for a nerf to happen.So far, Mesmer is dead, Warrior is clinging to life but might as well be dead, and Ranger has been slowly getting cut every other patch.

When Ranger starts being inconsistent and weak, then people will find the next thing to cry nerf about, which is probably gonna be Guardian or Rev due to how strong the Condi sustain meta is.

Then after that, Necros, and after that, possibly Thief.Or they could do us a shocker and just neuter Thief before all other things happen.

Just another of their 6-month-balance-curveballs.

Pets just really need to be looked at. We still got things like jungle stalker who’s F2 skill is a 3s cast time for 5 stacks of might.

@Taril.8619 said:

At this point, I think it'd be more interesting if SB couldn't have a pet and was always merged (Except for when using Down Skill 3) but could swap between pets in combat to access 2 different sets of F skills. Which would allow ANet to focus on balancing pets for the builds that have to deal with using pets properly including the 1 minute resummon cooldown on pet death.

I would have loudly disagreed with you a long time ago, but ever since in-combat pet swap was removed from soulbeast, this actually seems highly practical thing to try out in terms of separating pet performance from merge performance.

High damage pets useless if not going to hit anything. Or dead. Tanky pets pointless if everyone ignores it.

@voltaicbore.8012 said:

@Taril.8619 said:

At this point, I think it'd be more interesting if SB couldn't have a pet and was always merged (Except for when using Down Skill 3) but could swap between pets in combat to access 2 different sets of F skills. Which would allow ANet to focus on balancing pets for the builds that have to deal with using pets properly including the 1 minute resummon cooldown on pet death.

And then there's the AI aspect, plenty of comments on the forums over time saying things like just kite the Ranger to make the pet completely useless as it endlessly follows you around and never lands an attack.

Perhaps the real problem is that unlike Gw1, Gw2 has almost no real Beastmastery skills..We have a few commands true, but they are nothing like Gw1 beastmastery skills.Sic Em is used either as a Reveal counter to Stealth players or as a personal damage buff..Search and Rescue has some use for a support Ranger but that's it.. plus very long CD considering it does the same thing as Necros transfusion but just not as good and requires more sacrifice to have access to.Guard again.. support skill for allies mostly.Protect Me.. another support skill.

Back in Gw1 your pet had commandable offensive skills, defensive skills, healing skills and a few others that would interupt or inflict condies or other effects like give energy.

In Gw2 we get 1 F2 pet skill, some offensive, some defensive and a few command skills that largely focus on support.The actual useful pet skills like lunges and CC etc we have no control over at all.. we have to leave that upto the pets largely stupid AI instead which is far too easy to confuse for anyone who knows how to fight Rangers.

This is largely why SB has become the dominant way to play Ranger in Gw2..Ranger needs more control over their pets offensive abilities and pets in general could use a significant mechanical rework rather than just buffing or nerfing things all the time.Either that or add more command skills that cover for the flaws in pet AI but I highly doubt that is ever going happen lol

I'm just using Jacaranda now full time...until they decide to gut it as well. It has amazing cleave for 3's, extra heal, and immob. Bird f2 now hits like a wet noodle, so owl --> Jacaranda. only reason to slot a bird now is for the swoop (Soulbeast only).

@mistsim.2748 said:I'm just using Jacaranda now full time...until they decide to gut it as well. It has amazing cleave for 3's, extra heal, and immob. Bird f2 now hits like a wet noodle, so owl --> Jacaranda. only reason to slot a bird now is for the swoop (Soulbeast only).

I’ve only just came back after a 2 years break. Can you tell me why Jacaranda is good? I can’t seem to land the lightning bolts most of the time. But I play wvw where holding a point isn’t as important. Do you think it would be good in wvw as well?

Do you guys think Anet will give us 10s cool down for core ranger and Druid pet swaps? And/or reduced/no pet death cooldown penalties?

They need to rework all core pets completely for a long time now.Mechanically pets are just underwhelming since release.

NO one wants rangers.BUt hey ho we will nerf you anyways.Sick of the in game hate we get which isn't helped by the hate we seem to get from the developers.

Again> @kiwituatara.6053 said:

Do you guys think Anet will give us 10s cool down for core ranger and Druid pet swaps? And/or reduced/no pet death cooldown penalties?

Just thought a long time about it. It's not the best solution, but the easiest and fastest solution would be getting rid of pet death penalty and reducing pet swap cooldown to 15s (untraited). That way anet can continue to fiddle with pet numbers for pvp balance, and we won't be running around with a dead pet with no class mechanic, especially in WvW.

Wish we could all agree on one thing and push it forward for the devs to see~

@kiwituatara.6053 said:Again> @kiwituatara.6053 said:

Do you guys think Anet will give us 10s cool down for core ranger and Druid pet swaps? And/or reduced/no pet death cooldown penalties?

WvW zerg just isn't minion friendly. Whether ANet change the pet death penalty or not won't change this fact. The Penalty is balanced around small scale pvp fight and is pretty fair in this context.

The ranger's pet mechanism (or any minion mechanisms for all that matter) itself is a failed mechanism. The developpers tried to translate the way GW pets work into GW2 but ultimately failed to take into account that there is a big difference between the 2 games "environments". An AI just can't keep up with GW2 game "environment" like it could in GW because AIs in GW had basicaly the same range of option than players, while AIs in GW2 are limited to their own range of option (A good example of such difference would be the ability to dodge).

It's unfortunate but the only way for the ranger's pet mechanism to matter in WvW zergling is to remove the "minion's factor". It is something that is done via the SB merging mechanism in what I'd qualify as a clumsy attempt the patch the issue (clumsy because there is still the glaring issue of the downstate relying on the pet).

NB.: On a side note, I doubt the pet mechanism is the reason why rangers are unpopular in WvW zerg. Along the years, the players approach of the game have leaned more and more toward making the most out of each individual available for each "game environment". This has led to classe discrimination as some classes end up being less effective than other in some "game environments". WvW zergling offer an environment saturated with every kind of effect (and in particular hard CC, projectile hate, boons and conditions) and thus favor classes that strive the most in this kind of environment. The ranger wither in this kind of environment, he is low on Area of effect, rely on AIs (pet and spirits) and isn't an especially effective source of counter effects (cleanse/stab/heal/hard CC). To put it simply, as long as it's AIs can be killed he will be an ineffective choice (a benchwarmer) for the gamemode.

While I agree with everything you said, this is a lost cause. Haven't touched the game in months, and have less desire than ever before to do so. Kudos to you guys for still hanging in there.

@Yasai.3549 said:All Anerf Devs know for balance is nerf nerf nerf, because it's easiest, and quickest to apply.Actually I generally support nerf instead of buff policy.Remember how terrible the game was before the giant damage nerf happened.But yeah mesmer is kinds shit currently, warrior and ranger are in bad situation too.Still while they should start sometimes buffing some of the specs(as mentioned above mesmer and druid for example) I still think in most cases nerfing is much better than buffing.

@Sznurek.8791 said:

@"Yasai.3549" said:All Anerf Devs know for balance is nerf nerf nerf, because it's easiest, and quickest to apply.Actually I generally support nerf instead of buff policy.Remember how terrible the game was before the giant damage nerf happened.But yeah mesmer is kinds kitten currently, warrior and ranger are in bad situation too.Still while they should start sometimes buffing some of the specs(as mentioned above mesmer and druid for example) I still think in most cases nerfing is much better than buffing.

It's not always a case of buffing or nerfing though.

Sometimes what is required, is the rework of a particular mechanic because it fundamentally cannot function in a balanced state.

For example with Rangers, it's the pet mechanic as a whole alongside Soulbeast. Soulbeast makes pets good by having a low cooldown full revive/heal that also prevents them from having any downtime of their "Pet" (Since it's either available and hitting things, or they're Merged). But balancing around Soulbeast makes pets utterly useless for non Soulbeast builds, such as Core Ranger, Druid and presumably any future Ranger E-Specs (Unless they all end up getting a "Merge" mechanic)

In this instance, it's not really a case of nerfing Soulbeast or buffing Pets, since either option ends in failure where some build ends up on the short end of the stick.

It's similar to the rework of Mesmer Phantasms from their past iteration where they took up a Clone spot (Thus you could maintain 3 permenant Phantasms at the cost of not being able to Shatter since Phantasms would shatter) to the way they work now where they're Phantasms for one attack and then turn into Clones, which fits more into the gameplay set up by the core class mechanic of shattering.

The problem is, it's far too easy to simply change a few skill coefficients for a buff/nerf and call it a day, all the while not really doing much except annoying the playerbase, while reworks require a lot more resources.

There is some misinformation here. Just trying to clear up things:

1. The build that overperformed in pvp was core ranger with any combination of bird, bird, tiger, smokescale; not soul beast.
2. birds staged a comeback because everyone else’s damage was nerfed, thus pet survivability was indirectly buffed and so was their damage (it wasn’t touched while other damage was reduced), which resulted in the over performance of ravens, owl and tiger. Bird damage was already busted in core gw2 days but the kit of the ranger itself was trash so it didn’t matter.
3. Pet damage was nerfed because they it was ridiculously high compared to the damage skills of other classes (let’s just pretend rev doesn’t exist) after the general damage nerf.

Ranger critters seem like they would do well to be touched up ability wise.

It seems like the creatures that have survived in competitive PVE and PVP content have a gap closer (Smokescale's smoke assault, or the pouncing cats, or the iboga's pull), potent CC (like blinds or chill, which ravens & owls hit on, or knockdown which Smokescale has), or breakbar damage (as in rock gazelle, or electric wyvern, or canines, or once again smokescale; this one is closely tied to potent CC). All of these must be easily executed; Entangling Web should have brought spiders into play long ago, but their projectile speed is laughably bad. Smokescales have that nifty smoke field on top of all that. No wonder they survived an avalanche of nerfs to damage they took some years ago.

Most pets are functionally trash mobs scaled to player stats. But they still have trash-mob ability behavior, and are still balanced around launch-day principles.

It would be nice for drake breath attacks to be blast finishers, and for them to be able to turn in place while channeling their spell ala bristlebacks. Knockback on the tail-swipe would be nice, too, since their big brother electric/fire wyvern has that on wing buffet. Or for hyenas to not have a 50% base damage penalty to offset the packmate they can summon; that balancing feature seems out of touch with the whole point of summoning the packmate! Or for spider's entangling web hit to either hit 3 targets or behave like a miniature of Muddy Terrain. Or for canines and pouncing cats to have a leap finisher.

Creatures granting swiftness to allies seem to be out of touch; if it was super speed or quickness that'd be a different story, super speed doesn't seem to have been devalued as much as swiftness has and quickness is always welcome. Jungle Stalkers would be fine if it weren't for the 3 second cast time. Pigs have always been out of touch with reality. Devourer's retreat is also incredibly out of touch with how the AI uses it.

Most of the pet abilities (Forage & Devourer's Retreat excepted) seem conceptually fine, just that they need a shot of steroids; better casting properties, a more liberal application of combo finishers, numerical buffs here and there.

I'd also like to add that the CC balance patch hit some pets disproportionately hard.

For example, the Juvenile Electric Wyvern—where its hardest hitting abilities also had CC components—got nerfed into uselessness. Now half its abilities deal no damage, with incredibly long animations/telegraphs, that rarely hit anything.

It would be ideal if pets like lost damage from the CC balance patch had that damage shifted to their non-cc abilities.