Limited Renegade Summons Receiving Boons from Party... Questionably Bad Design.

Today, I noticed that Legendary Renegade stance summons can receive buffs from other people and the Revenant themselves (thus making them stronger and tougher). My question to the developer is: why is this a mechanic? These are limited summons that only last 6-10 seconds and are often dying faster than they should verses other players, not permanent ranger pets (which do have boon-share with their pets).

These five summons are (and should be) an extension of the Summoner, and thus they should be sharing/receiving any boons (and All Stats) that the Renegade had before the summoning, and any boons granted to the Renegade while the summon is active. It's no wonder they are so squishy and weak, they are being considered as an extra player and aren't benefiting from the revenant's boons properly. Asking your raid to buff them or for you to buff them yourself via Orders from Above, Heroic Command, or any other means is selfish and undesirable. Party buffs should directly be going to you and your party, not your summons (only copied to your summons, the limited summon should not be able to directly receive boons unless it's linked to the Summoner).

Revenant Developer, this isn't just wishful thinking. This is a Broken Mechanic which needs to be addressed for the sake of making the Renegade Legend viable, not just in WvW where it's needed most, but also in PvP and PvE as well. Not copying buffs to the limited Summons and having one's limited summons _'steal' _boons from your allies is a severe and undesirable limitation placed on the class elite specialization, and possibly the source of the Renegade Legend's weakness in the first place.

If the developer disagrees with my inquiry above, I would appreciate an explanation behind their reasoning.

Thank you for Reading.

~Tenjou

TL;DR:Renegade LIMITED summons should be sharing boons with their Renegade master, not stealing them from party members who need them more. This is one of the several reasons for the summons' offensive and defensive weaknesses, it's not sharing or properly receiving the revenant's boons which are essential for sustainability in large-scale WvW environments. This is bad design, undesirable, and needs immediate attention.

Boons won't save summons, nor will exempting them from boons change anything significant..... the fundamental problem is the mechanics of what happens when a target takes damage from an AOE bomb it can't move out of. This issue with minion management is so old, and so deeply rooted in how AI is treated by the Devs, that they're only half way successful measure was giving them 95% damage reduction in PvE, because they're too afraid of removing counterplay from PvP by giving them any kind of blanket immunity. Unfortunately, WvW suffers from this, due to having the same rules as PvP with most skills (thus no immunity/damage reduction); but contends with 50 times the damage output between zerg blobs, and roaming teams reliably having a full comp that PvP ranked queues don't see.

Ranges Boon sharing with pets is another failed attempt to make their mandatory existence "less crappy"..... but it could had been leveraged for a competent build, had the duration not been limited to 4 seconds max of what it copies. This is on top of the basic problem of Ranger Pets being hard to control; and what little control is offered is slow to respond to player commands. Gyros suffer from the CC issue, because their abilities are skills being pulsed at regular intervals. Necros can't control minions at all beyond some target priority and flesh golem's active skill..... and necro minions are squishy, and their cool downs are long.

So by a wide margin, boons are the least of the Renagade's problems.

Did you guys know that after the patch on May 8th, the summons had the same resistance in WvW that they did in PvE. I tested this against members in my WvW raiding guild and they were unable to do much damage to them. One of the Patches between then and the 5th of June removed this toughness, making them die in 1-2 hits again and thus unsustainable in any WvW/PvP situation.

I do not know if giving the summons this resilience in WvW was a bug, or if removing the resilience in WvW recently was a bug. Either way, some form of this needs to be reapplied to the summons verses players.

In response to your post Starlinvf. Boons are one portion of a major problem going on with the renegade summons at the moment. I just made this thread because I realized that when my summons were boon buffed, they survived really well. These things, while being summons, are not true pets. They are place-able, limited abilities with health bars. They are an extension of the Revenant and should be considered as such with terms to boons and player stats. A player with Protection and Regen will survive better than one without, this goes for summons and pets as well.

In response to your mentions of other pets: At least Necro pets do something harsh when they die and explode, and gyros follow their masters and are considered highly viable in WvW currently. The renegade summons are the base of the renegade's toolkit and are locked to a legend (which I don't mind) and should not be hot garbage in a pvp fight. They are balanced enough by simply being stationary. Just moving out of them negates their CC/damage. Guardians have similar abilities to this via their tomes with very similar duration and range width. How useful would their waters, fire fields, and oasis be if a kill-able book was the source. It wouldn't be useful at all, and no one would want a fire brand for support in WvW.

These Summons, while really awesome in their support and potential functionality, just were not fully thought out and properly coded. Half the time you cannot even place the summons in locations that should not be locked to placement. As friends have pointed out in my guild, this class is clearly still in beta. This is clearly obvious to anyone who tries to play it.

It sounds like the devs need to take Wow's approach and make the summons/pets part of their masters stats and buffs, rather than a henderince that takes boons away from the raid. This is a bigger deal than you make it out to be. A knowledgeable raid leader or WvW commander will not want something like this that takes guardian and mesmer buffs away from their party randomly. It's just poor design that gives people a reason to shun Summon/pet specializations.