Comprehensive Pet Improvement Thread

This is my (a little bit late) 4th part of my comprehensive improvement threads. This time i will look at pets and the ranger core mechanics. I also will give suggestions to improve Petskills and how to make them more viable. Sometimes if needed i will make comments which will refer to my other threads, if interested you can read them here:

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/28776/comprehensive-core-ranger-skill-improvements#latest

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/29106/comprehensive-ranger-elite-specialization-improvement-thread#latest

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/28656/comprehensive-core-ranger-specialization-improvement-thread#latest

Constructive criticism is welcome, so stay constructive and make your own suggestions if needed.I will comment on my suggestions so there is some mutual understanding.

Base Mechanic*

I will start of with the base mechanic which doesnt have much use nowadays. Of course many skilled rangers know how to use the mechanic and do so but its implementation feels lackluster and sometimes unflexible. First i will look at all Options available on the command panel later i will look at pet customization options.

F1 : Attack my TargetNew idea how tgis could be improved.First: Pets needs to be classified as ranged or melee (Note: Jacaranda should be ranged, Iboga too, so should be there AA).Melee pets now Shadowstep to the respective target when commanding to attack. Ranged pets behave like now and attack the marked target. A visual indicator for the ranger which enemy is currently targeted by the command would be nead but not mandatory. Some trait interactions may be possible.

F3: Return to MeThis should work in the exact opposite way to F1. So the pet shadowsteps near the ranger when activated. Some trait ibteractions may be possible.

Sidenote:Add the possibility to stow your pet via keybind.

Petswap:The mechanic itself is fine but i am not that fond of the CD penalty of petswap. Not completely remove it but reduce it. So it still is a punishment to let your pet die but not a flat out deathscentence to your next pet.In PvE increase it by 33% and in PvP/ WvW by 66% so it will be 26ish or 33ish seconds respectively without traits. ( Numbers can be debated, i tried to hit a reasonable middle ground).

Pets

I will look at the pet families and i will look at certain pet specific skills that needs improvements. I start with the terrestrials and at the end i will look at the pure aquatic ones.Fisrt of all though i want to specify some things to provide better customization and more consistent dmg output from pets.

Stats, Boons and Formulas

This is probably the most important part for me in this thread.First of all i suggest, that pets still have base stats depending on their pet family, but i also want to change some of these base stats.I want to standardize the amount of health and armor similar to that of the professions. I will standardize the precision calculation to match it that of all the professions in the game. the percentages i write down are based on the current pet stats regarding precision.last but not least i want to standardize power to 1000 base.Additional stats will be provided through the archetype of the pet which i will explain later on.

Bear: High Armor, High Vitality. 33% crit chance. Bump up condi dmg to 700. Will give arctodus and murrelow more use.Bird: Low Armor Low Vitality. 66% crit chance. 200% crit dmg. Crit dmg compensates for low health and armor.Bristleback: Medium Armor, Medium Vitality. 25% crit chance (i actually gave it more crit chance it would actually have >.>)Canine: Medium Armor, Medium Vitality. 66% crit chance. Additionally 500 Healing power base because of the "Regenerate" F2 (may need a look into the healing factor).Devourer: High Armor, Medium Vitality. 33% crit chance.Drake: Medium Armor, High Vitality. 33% crit chance. Bump up condi dmg to 1000.Felines: Low Armor, Medium Vitality. 66% crit chance.Iboga: Low Armor, Medium Vitality. 33% crit chance.Jacaranda: Medium Armor, Medium Vitality. 33& crit chance. Give it 500 healingpower base (also here may need a look into the heal scaling)Moa: Low Armor, High Vitality. 25% crit chance (reduced the crit chance for more stats). 300 healingpower base and 30% increased boon duration (may can be higher, i played it safe)Porcines: Medium Armor, High Vitality. 16.5% crit chance. Bump up condi dmg to 1000 and give it 30% increased condition duration.Rock Gazelle: High Armor, High Vitality. 33% crit chanceSmokescale. Medium Armor, High Vitality. 41.25% crit chance.Spider: Low Armor, High Vitality. 33% crit chance.Wyvern: Medium Armor, High Vitality 33% crit chance.

Armor Fish: High Armor, High Vitality. 22% crit chance. Additonally give it 300 healingpower base and 30% increased boon duration.Jellyfish: Low Armor, High Vitality. 22% crit chance. Additionally give 500 healing power base.Shark: Low Armor, Medium Vitality. 22% crit chance. Additionally give 30% boon and condition duration.

Archetypes and additional Stats:

Archetypes should work in a similar fashion to PvP amulets. They provide the additional stats and give your pet more customization options.in contrast to that you can build a glassy pet which deals a lot of dmg but dies fast and vice versa.

Stout: Stat wise reflects the Sentinel stat.1200 vitality.900 toughness.900 power.

Deadly:Stat wise reflects the Sinister stat.1200 condition dmg.900 precision.900 power.

Ferocious:Stat wise reflects the berserker stat.1200 power.900 precision.900 ferocity.

Supportive:Stat wise reflects the magi stat.1200 healing power.900 vitality.900 precision.

Versatile:Stat wise reflects a totally new stat combination with 4 stats.1050 power.1050 condition dmg.560 consentration.560 expertise.

Archetypes will be unlocked when you capture the corresponding pet and all remaining ones will be unlocked for the specific pet family when you found all of them (excludes hall of monument pets). They will be interchangable between pets and basically reflect their stat choice similar to your armor.My suggestions that would comes into play with soulbeast depending on the stats you get from the archetypes is in the Elite Spec Improvement thread i posted above.

Petskills:Generally i think that the F2 should be interchangable with other F2 skills in the same pet family.For example you can use a fernhound with the Hyena F2 and after activation you will spawn an additional Fernhound. Or you can use the fear on the alpine wolf etc.

Here i will improve petskills, mainly in regards to CD, dmg and sometimes effects or usability.Note: Aquatic skills will have the same effects/changes as their terrestrial counterpart.Note 2: i will not list pets i think are fine.

Bears:General Skills are fine regarding effects and CD. But for consistency i would give the skill regenerate on bear a flat out heal instead of regeneration to give it the same functionality as in beastmode.

Arctodus F2: Increase bleeding stacks from 2 to 4 to bring it in line with the F2 of lynx.Black bear F2: Reduce the CD from 40s to 30s in PvE only and replace the weakness with taunt for all gametypes. Taunt duration is 5s in PvE, half this duration in competitive modes.Brown Bear F2: Reduce CD to 20s. Increase numbers of conditions removed from 2 to 3.Murrelow F2: Reduce the CD to 20s.

Birds:General skills of birds could need some tweaking. Mainly to make birds more aggressive and a bit more evasive to bump up their survivability.Swoop: Does now evade attacks for the duration. (Maybe could also be implemented into beastmode if not to OP).Quickening Screech:Does not provide much except some additional mobility. the mobility is basically obsolete in PvE and maybe has just some slight use in WvW.My proposal. Does now summon birds that attack foes and deal multiple strikes of dmg ( similar to Hunters Call of WH).

Eagle F2: Now renamed to Concussive Slash: New CD is 18s. Effect: Stuns Target for 2x 0.5s ( this will hit twice so it will strip 2 stability)( I changed this to prevent the same skill multiple times for the sake of diversity)Other F2s are fine.

Canine:General i want to improve the CC capabbilities of canines and reduce some of their F2 skills to give them more availability.

Brutal Charge: Half the CD from 30s to 15s, half the Knockdown duration from 2s to 1s.(may differ in PvP)

Alpine Wolf F2: Reduce CD from 30s to 20s in PvE. Increase the chill duration from 3s to 5s.Increase the dmg from 49 to 490. (i mean it has no other use than soft CC and does no dmg, so i gave it atleast some dmg which should have a reasonable power coefficient)

Fernhound F2: Regeneration now calculates with the pets healing power instead of the ranger's.Wolf F2: Reduce CD to 30s doen from 45 ( maybe just PvE only, would need testing).

Devourer:General i want to improve the AA and the overall ranged cappabbilities of devourer. This also leads to a change of soulbeast skills.

Change the AA so it will always apply poison. Poison duration may differ from PvE to PvP.Tail Lash: Changes to Siege Lash.Siege Lash: Throw a boulder at your target and knock them back. Same functionality as Tail lash but with 900 range.Soulbeast Siege Lash: Is now ranged and you throw a stone at your target with the same effect it has now except the additional 900 range.Devourer Retreat: May increase the range to 600. 200 units seems rather small.

Carrion Devourer F2: Changes the F2 from "Poisonous Gas" into "Carrion-Field".Carrion-Field: The devourer is the center of a poisonfield and steal health per target afflicted by poison. The duration of the field is 5s the number of targets is 5 and the number of pulses is 5. The heal is a flat out heal similar to soulbeasts "predators cunning". ( as mentioned before this is skill is also used underwater)

Lashtail Devourer F2 : I changed the mechanic of this skill to its underwater version or basilisk venom of thief. Reduce CD to 40s. Stun duration is still on 1s, but the venom will now be applied to up to 5 allies. Venom Duration is 20s. May has different behavior in PvP.

Whiptail Devourer F2: Reduce Cd to 20s and remove the cone. Devourer will now shoot 5 barbs in quick succession.

Drake:Genreally reduce the cast time of the breath attacks to 0.75 seconds down from 1.5s.Otherwise drakes are fine IMO.

Feline:Felines have good overall skills and are reliable pets, i wanted to improve their F2 abbilities to bring them in line with the Tiger F2 (which is still the best feline IMO atm).Note: Still confused why the "Jaguar" has an F2 which is named "stalk" and the jungle stalker does not. But this is off topic here.

Jaguar F2: Overall duration of stealth is now 3s down from 6s but it now also applies to ranger. The effect will now count as stealth and no longer as stalk, so you become visible again after striking. The crit chance and ferocity chance will still be granted for the full duration of 6s for both.

Jungle Stalker F2: Reduce cast time to 1.5 down from 3s. Reduce CD from 25s to 10s. Might duration is now 10s instead of 15. This skill is also a leap attack now and works similar to the Tiger F2 and has also similar dmg and coefficients.Snow Leapord F2: Reduce CD from 30s to 20s.

Cheetah F2: Does now activate the F2 traits after initial hit not after initial cast. ( So you dont see enemies chasing air when you equip beastial warden). The cheetah will now provide swiftness and vigor.

Lynx F2: Reduce CD to 20s.

Sandlion F2: Change the functionality of this skill to a similar version of stalk and thus i change its name to sandcloak.New Skill: Sandcloak: Summon a blinding sandstorm arround the pet and the ranger for 3s which blinds foes in melee range and destroys projectiles. Duration 3s.blind duration 0.25s, blind intervall 0.25s. This behaviour may change in competitive modes.

Iboga:Good condi pet but has weirdly enough all ranged attacks except the AA.So change the AA to Range Attack. this way it can hit targets at all distances it can use its other skills.Also fix the dmg of the AA if this is still a thing.

Jacaranda:Same as Iboga. A ranged pet but has a melee AA. Additionally it has a slow projectile on its F2 which could use some improvements to.AA is now ranged at 900 units. Everything else is kept the same.Jacaranda F2: has now a higher projectile speed.

Moas:Moas are good support pets and have some good uses but often they have to long CD for minor effects and in 1 case there is even an inconsistency in skill. Additionally i want to adress that there is no supportive Moa pet and that a deadly archetype has no big use for soulbeast users when merged with a moa.

Pink Moa:Has now the same functionality as the black moa. 3 times 1s of daze instead of 1 time of 2s. The numbers may change in PvP but mainly this is aimed for PvE so every player can have a moa that does 300 defiance bar dmg.

Blue Moa: Is now a supportive Pet on default.F2: Protection duration is increased from 4s to 8s in PvE and to 6s in PvP.

White Moa: Is now a stout pet on default.F2: Reduced CD from 24s to 20s.

Porcine:Porcines have general good skills but they severly lack in their F2 abbilities. Additionally i want to change the accesability of Porcine CC to be used more often.

Brutal Charge: reduced Cd to15s, knockdown duration is halved to 1.5s . May differ in competitive modes.

Porcine F2:After initial cast the F2 is replaced by one of the foregable items, so it works similar to thiefs steal. The item disappears if it is not used after the initial F2 goes of CD. The forage skills are now labeled so you can distinguish which of them is which.Forage Food (Pig).Forage Junk (Warthog)Forage Scrap (Boar)Forage Dust (Siamoth)

Spiders:For spiders i want to improve their versatility and active gameplay. In addition to that i want to improve their performance with soulbeast and the controlability of the poisonfields. their current F2 work similar to a skill bristleback has as a passive so i wanted to address this to and make the "Venom Skill" passive and the Poisonfields the active component.

Poison-Gas: All spiders have now a new F2 that work in similar fashion to this original skill.On the position of Poison-Gas is now the former forest spider F2 "Deadly venom" it now has 5 charges instead of 3, its base duration is decreased from 12s to 8s to compensate. Its CD is now 20s instead of its former 30s.

Cave-Spider F2:Weakening Gas: Spiders spits a poisonous gas that inflicts poison and weakness to foes in the targeted area.Ground target skill. Poisonfield duration 6s, intervall 1s , poison duration 6s, number of poison stacks per pulse 1, weakness duration 2s. Number of targets 5. CD 24s.

Jungle-Spider/Black Widow F2:Paralyzing Gas: Spider spits a poisonous gas that inflicts poison and immobilizes foes in the targeted area.Ground targeted skill. Poisonfield Duration 6s, intervall 1s, poison duration 6s, number of poison stacks per pulse 1, immob duration 1s. Number of targets 5. CD 24s.

Forest-Spider F2:Deadly Gas: Spider spits poisonous gas that severly poisons foes in the targeted area.Ground targeted skill. poisonfield duration 6s, intervall 1s, poison duration 6s, number of poison stack per puls 2. number of targets 5. CD 24s.

Hope you had a good read, as i said above good criticism is welcome and keep in mind this is more or less theoretical and i didnt quenched the numbers that hard.Good suggestions will be put in and discussed.

Cheers.

Having the archetype bonuses apply towards that pet is a step in the right direction. White Moa & Blue Moa archetype switches are also something that should happen. Keeps most of the ice pets in Stout. Maybe swap Black and Polar Bear, too. Maybe.

The idea of interchangeable F2 within the same Pet family is a really nice idea. I still think you should be able to select stats for the pet.

@Wondrouswall.7169 said:Having the archetype bonuses apply towards that pet is a step in the right direction. White Moa & Blue Moa archetype switches are also something that should happen. Keeps most of the ice pets in Stout. Maybe swap Black and Polar Bear, too. Maybe.

Yeah they could but its not necessary. Woild give more consistency though.I tried to get pets a similar stat values as players have which would lead to more consistency. The normalized crit chance would also lead to better pet dps and trait interactions.

Your posts are so long that I have to type my response in a different window before replying. lol

Anyhoooo, some interesting ideas in here.

F1 - I'm not sold on making the primary pet target command being ground targeted. How does the pet AI decide what to attack? That's important if you're splitting damage onto specific targets. What happens if your intended target leaves your pet radius, like during a chase event or PvP?There's an certain ease of use for selecting target and hitting F1 to lock the pet.F3 pet stow - I've never been in the "we need a combat pet stow" camp. Outside of something like soulbeast, I don't see the point.

Counter-proposal:F1: Attack + Return - I could get behind combining Attack and Return, as they are now. Though, this does pose a problem that I'll get to in a second.F2 is F2F3: is now the designated pet-stance button. I bound this to a key years ago but moving it to a default keybind would make it feel more like a mechanic and less tacked on.Stances cycle in this order:Attack : as it is now.Defend/Stay: Based on the pet's current position; pet is locked to an area to defend it. Radius is between 450 and 600 and has a white AoE line for allies and a red AoE line for enemies. Reset if you go out of leash range, if you specify a target with F1, or cycle to passive.Passive/Heel: as it is now.

Now the annoying thing here is Return is hidden behind other skills. For both yours suggestion and mine, if the pet is attacking an enemy you attacked with it's default behavior, how do we retrieve it? Double-hit F1? Triple-hit F3? A new keybind? It's a tricky problem to be sure.

Pet stats:Yes to standardizing pet precision calculation and base power. If the change is separate from a pet rework that makes pets hit more often and/or reliably, this would be a nice buff but not OP.The rest of the stats feel a bit much? Particularly on families with one-off pets. Healing power would be nice on Moa but is pretty useless on all but one canine. (Unless you take Invigorating Bond, which could be interesting?)Are the Archetypes visible to non-soulbeasts? I would be very happy if a pets archetype increased its stats to fit its role. This could be shown on the pet panel as a set of green + numbers next to the base stats.

Now call me a stick-in-the-mud but I'm completely fine with F2 skills, archetypes, and SB F3 skills being hard coded based on pet. I can see the argument for customization, but I feel it would come at the cost of pet flavor and might get annoying to balance. Unique pets would still be locked to one F2 skill anyway.Related question: would you prefer pets that are never used or pet skills that are never used?

Pet skills:Generally good or decent ideas all around. Yes please on Supportive Moa whyisntthatathingcomeonAnetMy only concern would be devourer always applying poison on AA. As a ranged pet, devourers hit their targets more consistantly. Even without condi-damage, poison still reduces incoming healing by 33%. I could see that getting called out as OP. Or the return of "Carry Devourer". Maybe just increase it from 10% to...30%?

Cheers.

@Chrury.4627The pet attacks the target nearest to the center.Or the chosen target inside the round target.

Retreat and attack are basically in one skill so you can organize the the pets exact position if you want to.The pet stow is not just for convinience, the way i described it gives an opportunity to use it in combat, so its basically a petswap without changing the pet and you can use it to recall your pet without swapping to another pet.

The bonus stats are more or less estimated nothing really fix, just an orientation point.Reason why all canine get healing power is because i want to swap the F2.

My idea on the archetypes is that they should be visible for core rangers and that you can take an archetype for your chosen pet to cuatomize its stats and its corresponding soulbeast skill.

The F2 should only be interchangable between pet family members. Just for customization sake so you can choose the pet that appeals visual to you and the skill you want to use it. So no balance issues whatsoever.

Devourer apply once poison per AA was the idea. So not for each hit just for the first one.Its not that OP when you think avout how often you can apply poison. Keep the duration short so its just a nice way to debuff foes and still do some useful dmg. Its the only pet attack that has an implemented probability which reduces its dmg and reliability. Poison could be interchanged with bleed, i dont mind ,but i want the percentage to be a thing of the past.

Thx for your concerned input. Hope i could elaborate some stuff.

Savannah strike on the Cheetah needs a radius improvement, 240 radius makes it so you will never get the swiftness if you are running alongside your pet. Pet stop to execute the command you are out of range by the time it cast, very useless IMO. either improve the radius to ~600 (not sure what the rational why its 240) also give it a radius similar to how the birds give swiftness or make it so that the ranger always get the swiftness once Savannah strike is activated.

@Chrury.4627 said:Your posts are so long that I have to type my response in a different window before replying. lol

Anyhoooo, some interesting ideas in here.

F1 - I'm not sold on making the primary pet target command being ground targeted. How does the pet AI decide what to attack? That's important if you're splitting damage onto specific targets. What happens if your intended target leaves your pet radius, like during a chase event or PvP?There's an certain ease of use for selecting target and hitting F1 to lock the pet.

I agree with this. The idea from the OP, while I fully understand your reasoning, would make this simple mechanic a whole lot more problematic and frustrating to use. Ground targeting is something I personally am not a fan of at all, with the exception of Ancestral Grace.

Stances needs to stay so that you can still have your pet always auto assist if you want to, and aggressive should still be in their as well to let your pet attack any target that's attacking you.

@OGDeadHead.8326 said:

@Chrury.4627 said:Your posts are so long that I have to type my response in a different window before replying. lol

Anyhoooo, some interesting ideas in here.

F1 - I'm not sold on making the primary pet target command being ground targeted. How does the pet AI decide what to attack? That's important if you're splitting damage onto specific targets. What happens if your intended target leaves your pet radius, like during a chase event or PvP?There's an certain ease of use for selecting target and hitting F1 to lock the pet.

Ground target could just return to me into a positioning skill. But i have to admit it could get to complicated. Stow keybind still would be nice for mono petswap. So you could stow it to travel and get swap traits when entering combat.But mainly i want to have better and clearer pet stats and modifiable stats and ofc just better petskills. Anything else is not that important IMO.

Edit: I changed the F1 and F3 suggestion, so it will be more like now but with more mobility involved.