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Druid, ranger, pets, AI and you.


Razor.6392

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This is a topic that might scream L2P or even be joke worthy but, I feel like nobody talks about pets and AI.

Yes, everyone knows the AI is wonky and subpar, but what no one mentions are the extents at which the pet should remain a threat in a fight, and what counterplay do they have (if any). Basically if you engage a druid you must expect to get slapped by a ridiculous AI pet for the entirety of the fight.

Let's get some facts out of the way:

  • Pet will always do the same damage, regardless of the ranger's base stats. You can build bunker and still have your pet doing respectable dps.
  • Pet packs automated abilities that inflict hard CC.
  • Pet is practically unkillable. Having your pet die is simply not something that a ranger should ever be afraid of in pvp, and the swap makes this concern disappear even further. They usually have over 25000 health and high toughness.

In a battle of attrition against a class with subpar sustain, the ranger (or should I say, the AI pet) will always win. Even if their arrows do 1k damage, pets will continue to hit 2-4k hits, score knockdowns and smoke assaults.

My proposal is, make pets actually possible to be killed if focused. Someone going out of their way to get it killed, with a strong power build, would probably take around 7-10 seconds to bring it from full to zero. Obviously no ranger will let that happen. My suggestion is to increase their resistance to aoe damage by 50%, and make them more vulnerable to single target attacks by 200%. I think it's time to add some actual risk to druid builds that rely on spamming one button and CA off cd by making the source of 75% of their damage have at least a TINY chance to be killed.

Tl;dr: Add counterplay to pets in the sense of letting players realistically be able to kill them in a reasonable timeframe.

Edit: I'm in favor of giving the player more control over pets if it means doing a rebalance act. Damage pets should be for damage, not tanky. Ranger stats should matter too.

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@Aeolus.3615 said:That would be to hard for the gw2 crow target.... since it would have to affect pve as well.

I think it's fine. As a ranger there's simply no risk in having your pet die, even in pve (unless you have it eat a world / raid boss huge telegraphed hit). A pet profession should put extra care in keeping its partner alive, as opposed to just turning their brain off and let it tank for days with no threat whatsoever.

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Pets are useless in teamfights, they just melt.

Once a pet dies, the Ranger has nog secondary mechanic to fall back on, unlike any other profession.

Pets can have weird pathfinding, and quite often they dont hit their targets.

A lot of utilities and traits rely on a pet. When you nerf the pet you gotta buff all those utilities and traits.

People complain about that the amulet choice of the ranger does not impact the dps of a pet. If you make it so, they have to introduce reliable and worthwile supportive pets, otherwise you don't have a pet that matches with supportive amulets. At the same time, when a ranger equips berserker amulet, the pet should hit hard then as well. I'd expect new complains there.

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@HeadCrowned.6834 said:

  1. Pets are useless in teamfights, they just melt.
  2. Once a pet dies, the Ranger has nog secondary mechanic to fall back on, unlike any other profession.
  3. Pets can have weird pathfinding, and quite often they dont hit their targets.
  4. A lot of utilities and traits rely on a pet. When you nerf the pet you gotta buff all those utilities and traits.
  5. People complain about that the amulet choice of the ranger does not impact the dps of a pet. If you make it so, they have to introduce reliable and worthwile supportive pets, otherwise you don't have a pet that matches with supportive amulets. At the same time, when a ranger equips berserker amulet, the pet should hit hard then as well. I'd expect new complains there.
  1. Correction, they melt to aoe.
  2. Then it should be in the ranger's best interest to keep it alive. It's not hard. Why should it be fine for druids to remain immortal? Add some risk to that high reward please.
  3. I know this. This is not what the thread is about though.
  4. The pet themselves aren't getting nerfed. Maybe you could add a defensive mechanic when you press the key to tell your pet to retreat (does anybody EVER use this?)
  5. I'd be fine with this. It makes sense. If you want damage, you build damage. If you want tankiness, you build tankiness. Building tanky and getting damage (or viceversa) is bad design, much like anything warrior related, but I digress.
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Pets melt to conditions, if you kill them both they have to wait like 45 secs without any pets

If you stand on top of a pillar or a no port with no path to location you are immune to pets

pets mindlessly follow a enemy unless told otherwise, jumping up jump puzzles forces them to go all the way around, by the time they reach you, you can just jump back down and waste their time running back (with the exception of the smokescale, they can port)

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@Razor.6392 said:

@HeadCrowned.6834 said:
  1. Pets are useless in teamfights, they just melt.
  2. Once a pet dies, the Ranger has nog secondary mechanic to fall back on, unlike any other profession.
  3. Pets can have weird pathfinding, and quite often they dont hit their targets.
  4. A lot of utilities and traits rely on a pet. When you nerf the pet you gotta buff all those utilities and traits.
  5. People complain about that the amulet choice of the ranger does not impact the dps of a pet. If you make it so, they have to introduce reliable and worthwile supportive pets, otherwise you don't have a pet that matches with supportive amulets. At the same time, when a ranger equips berserker amulet, the pet should hit hard then as well. I'd expect new complains there.
  1. Correction, they melt to aoe.
  2. Then it should be in the ranger's best interest to keep it alive.
    It's not hard
    . Why should it be fine for druids to remain immortal? Add some risk to that high reward please.
  3. I know this. This is not what the thread is about though.
  4. The pet themselves aren't getting nerfed. Maybe you could add a defensive mechanic when you press the key to tell your pet to retreat (does anybody EVER use this?)
  5. I'd be fine with this. It makes sense. If you want damage, you build damage. If you want tankiness, you build tankiness. Building tanky and getting damage (or viceversa) is bad design, much like anything warrior related, but I digress.

  1. They melt to condi, which is what you'll be facing on a point as a druid mostly, condi mirage.
  2. It's not hard to keep a pet alive when the only ui option to is to force it back to you? So let me get this straight, you want them to keep the pet a live when druid is FORCED to be a far point bunker , so I would need to leave the point because the game doesn't want to give pets a dodge mechanic and just mindlessly walks through aoe , condi burst setups , etc and the only other option is to call it back to you? Your comment doesn't make sense and you've obviously never played druid/ranger at a high level against people who know this pet's weakness.
  3. Then you would know it's easy to manipulate this especially in places where even the smallest ledge is , because you'd then know that you can loop around it , forcing the pet to go the opposite way of you JUST TO GET TO YOU. There's tons of videos and top players who stream who do this.
  4. What does the pet having a retreat mechanic have to do with 50% of the traits in all of ranger's lines going to the pet? He's referring to needing to adjust basically the entire class for your proposal on 4. The 2 don't even match and your point makes no sense.
  5. You do understand dmg coefficients on all ranger weapons are lower by default for the very reason of your point #5 right? Ranger doesn't have the option you're referring to ... If we even wanted to go FULL glass damage , it still wouldn't be what every other class, and this is fine for the most part because there is a pet that helps with damage, but most importantly, cc - the dmg is near redundant - good rangers only want the smoke field and the cc - it's good for play setup. Ranger is one of the only classes where you can actually attempt to go full glass, not do nearly as much in terms of #'s as other classes but you also lose 90% of your survivability by doing so, you have to give up pretty much everything for that - condi removal, the only survivability lines you have, etc while also still having a lower dmg coefficient on weapons. Hence why bunker druid is the only role it has ever had after HoT pets got nerfed about 4-5 times. This is something complained about by rangers themselves for many years now.

Please, just please try and play ranger/druid at a top level against actually good players before making a forum post like this or at least duel good players with it. You'll find you'll hardly kill many people which is the point, it's an annoying point bunker setup which is the ONLY role druid provides especially with Firebrand's existence - you'll also most likely find in doing this, better ways of handling druid as opposed to just coming to the forums asking for flat nerfs and nothing in compensation because you barely understand the class as a whole.

I can ask you though, do you think most druid players wanted a point bunker? Probably not, in fact most of the people who play point bunker don't even main druid to begin with , it's just an effective annoying spec especially with spellbreaker nerfed and scourge basically. Most actual ranger top players wanted SB to be something worth playing at a meta level , but it's not and scourge exists and far point exists and anet's mentality towards druid as a whole is a bit close-minded - hence druid exists.

Nerfing ranger's pet will do nothing for you to change this reality, which is why your post is just irrelevant and not properly thought out.

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@Razor.6392 said:Let's get some facts out of the way:

  • Pet will always do the same damage, regardless of the ranger's base stats. You can build bunker and still have your pet doing respectable dps.
  • Pet packs automated abilities that inflict hard CC.
  • Pet is practically unkillable. Having your pet die is simply not something that a ranger should ever be afraid of in pvp, and the swap makes this concern disappear even further. They usually have over 25000 health and high toughness.

There's another one you should have on your list:

  • Despite all of this, pets still aren't that powerful or meaningful.
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@ZhouX.8742 said:

@Razor.6392 said:

@HeadCrowned.6834 said:
  1. Pets are useless in teamfights, they just melt.
  2. Once a pet dies, the Ranger has nog secondary mechanic to fall back on, unlike any other profession.
  3. Pets can have weird pathfinding, and quite often they dont hit their targets.
  4. A lot of utilities and traits rely on a pet. When you nerf the pet you gotta buff all those utilities and traits.
  5. People complain about that the amulet choice of the ranger does not impact the dps of a pet. If you make it so, they have to introduce reliable and worthwile supportive pets, otherwise you don't have a pet that matches with supportive amulets. At the same time, when a ranger equips berserker amulet, the pet should hit hard then as well. I'd expect new complains there.
  1. Correction, they melt to aoe.
  2. Then it should be in the ranger's best interest to keep it alive.
    It's not hard
    . Why should it be fine for druids to remain immortal? Add some risk to that high reward please.
  3. I know this. This is not what the thread is about though.
  4. The pet themselves aren't getting nerfed. Maybe you could add a defensive mechanic when you press the key to tell your pet to retreat (does anybody EVER use this?)
  5. I'd be fine with this. It makes sense. If you want damage, you build damage. If you want tankiness, you build tankiness. Building tanky and getting damage (or viceversa) is bad design, much like anything warrior related, but I digress.

  1. They melt to condi, which is what you'll be facing on a point as a druid mostly, condi mirage.
  2. It's not hard to keep a pet alive when the only ui option to is to force it back to you? So let me get this straight, you want them to keep the pet a live when druid is FORCED to be a far point bunker , so I would need to leave the point because the game doesn't want to give pets a dodge mechanic and just mindlessly walks through aoe , condi burst setups , etc and the only other option is to call it back to you? Your comment doesn't make sense and you've obviously never played druid/ranger at a high level against people who know this pet's weakness.
  3. Then you would know it's easy to manipulate this especially in places where even the smallest ledge is , because you'd then know that you can loop around it , forcing the pet to go the opposite way of you JUST TO GET TO YOU. There's tons of videos and top players who stream who do this.
  4. What does the pet having a retreat mechanic have to do with 50% of the traits in all of ranger's lines going to the pet? He's referring to needing to adjust basically the entire class for your proposal on 4. The 2 don't even match and your point makes no sense.
  5. You do understand dmg coefficients on all ranger weapons are lower by default for the very reason of your point #5 right? Ranger doesn't have the option you're referring to ... If we even wanted to go FULL glass damage , it still wouldn't be what every other class, and this is fine for the most part because there is a pet that helps with damage, but most importantly, cc - the dmg is near redundant - good rangers only want the smoke field and the cc - it's good for play setup. Ranger is one of the only classes where you can actually attempt to go full glass, not do nearly as much in terms of #'s as other classes but you also lose 90% of your survivability by doing so, you have to give up pretty much everything for that - condi removal, the only survivability lines you have, etc while also still having a lower dmg coefficient on weapons. Hence why bunker druid is the only role it has ever had after HoT pets got nerfed about 4-5 times. This is something complained about by rangers themselves for many years now.

Please, just please try and play ranger/druid at a top level against actually good players before making a forum post like this or at least duel good players with it. You'll find you'll hardly kill many people which is the point, it's an annoying point bunker setup which is the ONLY role druid provides especially with Firebrand's existence - you'll also most likely find in doing this, better ways of handling druid as opposed to just coming to the forums asking for flat nerfs and nothing in compensation because you barely understand the class as a whole.

I can ask you though, do you think most druid players wanted a point bunker? Probably not, in fact most of the people who play point bunker don't even main druid to begin with , it's just an effective annoying spec especially with spellbreaker nerfed and scourge basically. Most actual ranger top players wanted SB to be something worth playing at a meta level , but it's not and scourge exists and far point exists and anet's mentality towards druid as a whole is a bit close-minded - hence druid exists.

Nerfing ranger's pet will do nothing for you to change this reality, which is why your post is just irrelevant and not properly thought out.
  1. Alright then, make them more resistant to condi. What I'm saying is that IF A PLAYER WANTS TO GO OUT OF HIS WAY TO KILL IT, HE SHOULD BE ABLE TO.
  2. You can also swap pets btw, maybe you didn't know this. It's fine, I understand.
  3. Smokescale. The pet that every single ranger will use.
  4. Nothing needs to be adjusted if you play it properly. Why is it assumed that the pet will die everytime? Is it so out of this world to ask a tiny bit of awareness and skill from druid players?
  5. "Ranger is one of the only classes where you can actually attempt to go full glass, not do nearly as much in terms of #'s as other classes but you also lose 90% of your survivability by doing so." That's funny, I thought that was like, literally EVERY SINGLE CLASS THAT GOES FULL GLASS (except warrior). Also apparently 10k mauls and 10k rapid fires are low damage.

ranger/druid at a top level

I'm sorry, but I honestly can't tell the difference from a bronze or a legend druid.

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druids tilt me more than anything else in the game. stupid healbots who tank eveything and heal to full after that. run around shoot stupid beam while pet is eating you. basicly pet is more usefull than ranger himself.ps ranger is not a real class.

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@Nix.3152 said:druids tilt me more than anything else in the game. stupid healbots who tank eveything and heal to full after that. run around shoot stupid beam while pet is eating you. basicly pet is more usefull than ranger himself.ps ranger is not a real class.

You sound like a person that just like looking at big numbers and as soon as a support class suffocates that, you cry.

If ranger is not a real class.Your main is not a real class either.

Lemme guess?ThiefGuardianEngieWarriorNecroRev

The only reason why I'm not saying ele is because every ele main that I know doesn't complain about druids.

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I can understand somehow the annoyance of pets. Even more when you have two of them following you everywhere on the map, also giving ranger a tactical advantage. Anyway, they melt to condis and aoes, though much slower than the average ele, and they tank direct damage much better. I hate pets, I hate clones and phantasms, I hate minions, I hate everything that mess with my targetting. Luckily they have awful pathfinding, so i'm fine with it. On point, I fight the pet, I just ignore the druid. It's more entertaining & satisfying.

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@Rezzet.3614 said:Ranger pets should be killable in 1 v1 s if focused right now this is impossible why should ranger be the only profession with unkillable ai units? Engineer turrets got nerfed because they were tanky despite not doing damage and those took utility slots

They are. Should a bunker build really be able to kill them easily? If so warriors/cronos would one shot them. Name one other profession where its entire secondary mechanic can be put on extended cool down?

Pets can easily be kited. Their DPS is significantly reduced by just moving. Throw in moving around obstacles and they produce virtually no damage.> @Nix.3152 said:

druids tilt me more than anything else in the game. stupid healbots who tank eveything and heal to full after that. run around shoot stupid beam while pet is eating you. basicly pet is more usefull than ranger himself.ps ranger is not a real class.

You have problems if you can't deal with a ranger on a holosmith. You should hard counter them with your hard cc and burst. Not to mention you have the tools to disengage and heal to full just as easily as a ranger without having to spec at all in healing power.

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@Lilyanna.9361 said:

@Nix.3152 said:druids tilt me more than anything else in the game. stupid healbots who tank eveything and heal to full after that. run around shoot stupid beam while pet is eating you. basicly pet is more usefull than ranger himself.ps ranger is not a real class.

You sound like a person that just like looking at big numbers and as soon as a support class suffocates that, you cry.

If ranger is not a real class.Your main is not a real class either.

Lemme guess?ThiefGuardianEngieWarriorNecroRev

The only reason why I'm not saying ele is because every ele main that I know doesn't complain about druids.

druid is not a real class.

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@Faux Play.6104 said:Name one other profession where its entire secondary mechanic can be put on extended cool down?

Name one profession where its entire secondary mechanic is tankier than the player himself, can burst damage for free, can cc you automatically, can taunt you if traited, can provide a variety of different abilities that complement you.

I'm still unsure on why everyone instantly assumes it will be put on extended cooldown. A good druid won't let that happen, unless a team actually focus fires the pet, in which case there are still many things you can do to avoid the damage (I reiterate, recall pet could be used as a defensive mechanism).

Right now there's zero risk for your pet to die in 1v1s and 2v2s unless you're AFK and actually see as your 20-30k hp pet slowly dies to conditions and collateral damage. All I want is to have some more options for counterplay. Druids are used to just turn their brains off and spam staff 1-2-3-4-5 until they have CA, repeat. Is it really unthinkable to add some depth to this class?

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@Razor.6392 said:

@"Faux Play.6104" said:Name one other profession where its entire secondary mechanic can be put on extended cool down?

Name one profession where its entire secondary mechanic is tankier than the player himself, can burst damage for free, can cc you automatically, can taunt you if traited, can provide a variety of different abilities that complement you.

I'm still unsure on why everyone instantly assumes it
will
be put on extended cooldown. A good druid won't let that happen, unless a team actually focus fires the pet, in which case there are still many things you can do to avoid the damage (I reiterate, recall pet could be used as a defensive mechanism).

Right now there's zero risk for your pet to die in 1v1s and 2v2s unless you're AFK and actually see as your 20-30k hp pet slowly dies to conditions and collateral damage. All I want is to have some more options for counterplay. Druids are used to just turn their brains off and spam staff 1-2-3-4-5 until they have CA, repeat. Is it really unthinkable to add some depth to this class?

It is no better than any other classes secondary mechanic. The bottom line is they are forced to play with them, so they need to be useful. If the pets are "tanky" it is because the ranger is forced to trait for that. Players that can move and activate skills at the same time shouldn't be dying to a pet in 1v1 if the ranger is specked to tank period.

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@Lighter.5631 said:

@Lilyanna.9361 said:

@Nix.3152 said:druids tilt me more than anything else in the game. stupid healbots who tank eveything and heal to full after that. run around shoot stupid beam while pet is eating you. basicly pet is more usefull than ranger himself.ps ranger is not a real class.

You sound like a person that just like looking at big numbers and as soon as a support class suffocates that, you cry.

If ranger is not a real class.Your main is not a real class either.

Lemme guess?ThiefGuardianEngieWarriorNecroRev

The only reason why I'm not saying ele is because every ele main that I know doesn't complain about druids.

druid is not a real class.

That's nice, I'm sure the l33t scourge and Firebrand is not a real class either, so this is a pointless statement.

So which do you want? A class that does virtually nothing (which was ranger before PoF and HoT) or a class that's helps the team out?

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@Morwath.9817 said:Ooo, Quaggan agrees to disagree. Let pets die easier, but let also Rangers shout once again - I WILL AVENGE YOU!

To be fair, it also depends on the pet too. For some reason smokescale is not only somewhat beefy, but can actually dish out quite the damage.

But let's take a bird for example, and they die very fast even in a 1v1 situation.

Or even better, the Iboga or Jacaranda are incredibly beefy, while they both dish out very vital condis. I can't say it is ALL of the pets, it is specific pets. The newer ones, I will agree, are definitely power creepy.

The older ones? Eh, unless you are running bear's they aren't really tanky at all tbh.

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too bad there isn't mu> @Rezzet.3614 said:

Another problem with pets is they are succeptible to boons and heals and guess what druid does? Thats right fart aoe heals non stop.

And as previously pointed out its the new pets that are bringing the power creep.

Too bad there isn't a boon corrupt mechanic in the game.

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I play ranger quite a bit and yes, those pets are insane and need to be nerfed big time. When playing druid, you can basically just kite everything and let your pet do the work. Rarely do I have a pet die even in team fights. Nice having a pet that does 2k-4k dmg and pumps out the CC like crazy.

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