Pet death penalty [WvW]

[kiwituatara.6053]

Can we please just get rid of the 60s pet swap penalty when the pet dies? This is basically why I am constantly going back to Soulbeast, and I'm sure others are too. Pet damage has already been nerfed to oblivion, pet burst no longer exists, there's not a single pet out there that poses a threat. At this point, pets only provide mediocre utility. Core, druid, and untamed are struggling to exist in WvW since too many traits/skills are tied to pet swap and beast skill activation which are completely shut down when the pet dies. We need more ranger diversity in WvW.

If anet feels thats a bit too op. I'm willing to compromise with

• 25-30s baseline pet swap cooldown

or

• replace Protective Ward (it's one of the worst traits ever that promotes pet death) with a 0 pet swap penalty trait

or

• 0 pet swap penalty, but apply some sort of condition (cripple? weakness? vulnerable?) to ranger for 5s when the pet dies

[Beddo.1907]

Or just make the pet not evaporate in team fights.

[kiwituatara.6053]

5 hours ago, Beddo.1907 said:

Or just make the pet not evaporate in team fights.

I think thats hard to implement. Scaling pet incoming damage taken by number of players within a certain radius? It's easier to get rid of death penalty altogether imo

Edited October 18, 2023 by kiwituatara.6053

[Thornwolf.9721]

47 minutes ago, kiwituatara.6053 said:

I think thats hard to implement. Scaling pet incoming damage taken by number of players within a certain radius? It's easier to get rid of death penalty altogether imo

Id go as far as to make the pet harder to kill in general (see white lions pet from warhammer online), which pushes the "Focus the ranger" thought process for people lol

[Beddo.1907]

1 hour ago, kiwituatara.6053 said:

I think thats hard to implement. Scaling pet incoming damage taken by number of players within a certain radius? It's easier to get rid of death penalty altogether imo

Just make the pet the lowest priority on AoE target and add heal for 10% of the owner healing received. After that, fix up some numbers and here you go, the pet lives.

[dead.7638]

I promise to kill more ranger pets in wvw.

[WastedYears.8934]

Pet have crappy movement/targeting to begin with they aren’t even worth using in wvw.

 

You can out easily displace/out move a pet a pet and easily avoid their dmg.

Edited October 19, 2023 by WastedYears.8934

[psizone.8437]

19 hours ago, Beddo.1907 said:

Just make the pet the lowest priority on AoE target and add heal for 10% of the owner healing received. After that, fix up some numbers and here you go, the pet lives.

The Natural Healing trait would be the perfect place for this. I'd even go as far as to suggest 10-20% (if not a little more) of owners healing and barrier go to the pet.

The only real time Rangers get an abundance of barrier is in an organised zerg, so that change would help the pet stay alive in zergs considerably more without it being too broken in roaming.

It would be so great being able to use your pet in a zerg more effectively and make Untamed much more sought after for the projectile hate.

[Zyreva.1078]

Additional healing wouldn't do much to keep pets alive in zerg fights. It's not like they get slowly wittled down until they run out of health eventually - pet swap as well as existing healing helps prevent that from happening already, at least for the more tanky pets and with proper pet management. Usually when pets die they get blow up within seconds, because they happen to get caught in an enemy bomb - and healing or some barrier won't keep them alive in those situations. Just think about it - would 10-20% more healing/barrier remove the need for a player to use any defensive skills, dodge and positioning in oder to survive a zerg fight? Even double healing wouldn't be enough.

I think making pets viable in grp fights requires a way for them to avoid dmg altogether. Just making them tankier, whether by extra stats, healing or dmg reduction of some sorts comes with two problems - lack of scaling and target cap issues. My suggestion therefore is to make pets invulnerable (and untargetable) while being passive. This way the players has full control over the pets' survivability, while avoiding aforementioned problems, maintaining the need for micromanagement and allowing the usual counterplay as soon the pet actually does something.

Edited October 19, 2023 by Zyreva.1078

[Beddo.1907]

3 hours ago, psizone.8437 said:

The Natural Healing trait would be the perfect place for this. I'd even go as far as to suggest 10-20% (if not a little more) of owners healing and barrier go to the pet.

The only real time Rangers get an abundance of barrier is in an organised zerg, so that change would help the pet stay alive in zergs considerably more without it being too broken in roaming.

It would be so great being able to use your pet in a zerg more effectively and make Untamed much more sought after for the projectile hate.

Nah don't dump it into traits, make it purely baseline, so you are not forced to pick between self nerf or dead pet. 10% is already more than enough to sustain the pet with target priority change.

 

[Beddo.1907]

3 hours ago, Zyreva.1078 said:

Additional healing wouldn't do much to keep pets alive in zerg fights. It's not like they get slowly wittled down until they run out of health eventually - pet swap as well as existing healing helps prevent that from happening already, at least for the more tanky pets and with proper pet management. Usually when pets die they get blow up within seconds, because they happen to get caught in an enemy bomb - and healing or some barrier won't keep them alive in those situations. Just think about it - would 10-20% more healing/barrier remove the need for a player to use any defensive skills, dodge and positioning in oder to survive a zerg fight? Even double healing wouldn't be enough.

I think making pets viable in grp fights requires a way for them to avoid dmg altogether. Just making them tankier, whether by extra stats, healing or dmg reduction of some sorts comes with two problems - lack of scaling and target cap issues. My suggestion therefore is to make pets invulnerable (and untargetable) while being passive. This way the players has full control over the pets' survivability, while avoiding aforementioned problems, maintaining the need for micromanagement and allowing the usual counterplay as soon the pet actually does something.

The healing comes with the target priority, so it would fix it. Usually the pet dies from damage chipping away the hp, before it can even be nuked. With target cap and slow heal, the pet won't die over time and also won't be pulled away from you, resulting in nuke death.

Your ideas come with some serious balance or QoL issues, that affect us outside of zergs.

[Zyreva.1078]

1 hour ago, Beddo.1907 said:

The healing comes with the target priority, so it would fix it.

Lower target priority only helps when the pet is closely surrounded by at least 5 players. Considering how volatile pet position can be and how slow they tend to react to movement, they can easily get caught outside of the stack, even in large zerg fights. Classic situation - zerg dodges backwards or fake pushes to bait or avoid enemy bomb - pet takes everything to the face  - alone and instantly dead. Nothing you can do about that in those situations and nothing that would get prevented with extra healng. And if not running arround with a zerg, target priority does absolutely nothing.

1 hour ago, Beddo.1907 said:

Usually the pet dies from damage chipping away the hp, before it can even be nuked.

If that happens, there is usually something you could have done to keep your pet alive. Pets can already be quite tanky and with good sustain, as long the don't eat the burst of multiple players. It's the "instant" deaths that are the main problem, because right now there is no way to prevent those. no matter how much you are paying attention to the pet and try to micromanage it.

1 hour ago, Beddo.1907 said:

Your ideas come with some serious balance or QoL issues, that affect us outside of zergs.

Which issues?

Edited October 19, 2023 by Zyreva.1078

[kiwituatara.6053]

Yeah there is so many balance issues in terms of preventing instant death situations between Zerg and roaming setting, I figured it’d be easier to get rid of the death penalty altogether. 

[Riba.3271]

This is bit hard to support because there have been lot of survivable ranger builds for which counterplay was to kill the pets first. If those builds had lower revive time, they would become absolute menace.

However I am all up for buffing survivability of following pet types: Wyvern, Spider, Phoenix, Moa, Iboga, Feline, Devourer, Canine, Burrowing Shark and Bird. Just because they aren't really viable due to how easily they die. 30% increased base hitpoints would be nice. Of course unused pets could use other improvements or buffs in their signature skills as well.

Edited October 20, 2023 by Riba.3271

[Gotejjeken.1267]

Pets were never meant for zerg fights--it's more than an HP balance thing, they have no useful skill there.  Closest are 5 target skills like Siege Turtle Bubble, but rest of pets are useless large scale.

I was going to type something about complaints due to lower CD on death penalty but then reply came in that said it for me lol...

1 minute ago, Riba.3271 said:

This is bit hard to support because there have been lot of survivable ranger builds for which counterplay was to kill the pets first. If those builds had lower revive time, they would become absolute menace.

This would be your common take--especially on the sPvP side of things--if death penalty were removed.  I personally don't agree with it unless we are going to make soulbeast merge at least 20s+ and/or not revert dead pet on merge.  

If soulbeast is kept as-is, then pet swap needs to be baseline regardless of pet death; basically, I agree with OP on getting rid of any penalty and leaving it at 20/16s.  

Also,

4 minutes ago, Riba.3271 said:

However I am all up for buffing survivability of following pet types: Wyvern, Spider, Phoenix, Moa, Iboga, Feline, Devourer, Canine, Burrowing Shark and Bird. Just because they aren't 

You don't want this---or won't once you meet a ranger that knows how to use one of these.  Especially Iboga, I for one am glad there are like 5 people that know how to use this because he already received a nerf on consuming bite--don't want any more nerfs here.  Seriously, I'd never need popcorn salt again if the pull actually worked right.

Anyway, if anything, all but E. Wyvern needs a rework (E. needs fixes on its F2 though not to go thru things like a dope), as well as the other ones you named because it isn't survivability, they are just useless in current game.  

[Riba.3271]

13 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

22 minutes ago, Riba.3271 said:

However I am all up for buffing survivability of following pet types: Wyvern, Spider, Phoenix, Moa, Iboga, Feline, Devourer, Canine, Burrowing Shark and Bird. Just because they aren't 

You don't want this---or won't once you meet a ranger that knows how to use one of these.  Especially Iboga, I for one am glad there are like 5 people that know how to use this because he already received a nerf on consuming bite--don't want any more nerfs here.  Seriously, I'd never need popcorn salt again if the pull actually worked right.

Well, yea, I am sure they're decent pets in 1vs1. Once I met a some kind of mix of unkillable celestial/minstrel druid that was almost entirely relying on iboga damage to kill me. I killed the pet and smashed at him killing his pets on respawn for about 10 minutes until he ran away.

But it isn't like there hasn't been damage creep in the game, pets like Rock Gazelle, Bristleback and Smokescale just feel better due to being able to take couple of hits. For example you can't claim smokescale being very tanky, but somehow Tiger is half as tanky as that while having 0 defensive cooldowns. Smokescale has CC, stealth, evades and more damage in abilities. 30% bonus hp to something that dies to 1 willbender ability, would just be fair, it wouldn't be overkill, but at least might become worth the tradeoff. After all the pet has to survive 16 (with beastmastery) or 20 seconds.

Edited October 20, 2023 by Riba.3271

[hugeboss.5432]

"YOUR PET NEEDS HELP!" 😄

You just need a little bit of "pet management" to keep them from running off and dying (u can also "stow it", or set it to non aggro). Full zerg blobs are dangerous, don't run into them & expect to live, especially not your pet. But i have noticed recently pets don't seem to be following their owners closely in large wvw zergs battles, they seem to lag out and stand still and end up far away (could be a new bug?).

Originally, many rangers & (HoT) druids players nagged for a way to merge/use pets in some way (to make them more wvw friendly). The nagging was heard, but they gave the new merge skill to the next xpac elite trait (Soulbeast) instead. So, due to xpacs (+new elite traits), things got kinda mixed up there (imo). Now, since Druids are part of many wvw zergs, a new modern solution should perhaps be looked at [merge option for all rangers?].

Or, they could make it more important to keep them alive: "When your pet dies, you have to go out searching for a new juvenile pet to charm & use as replacement." 😄

 

[kiwituatara.6053]

50 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Pets were never meant for zerg fights--it's more than an HP balance thing, they have no useful skill there.  Closest are 5 target skills like Siege Turtle Bubble, but rest of pets are useless large scale.

I was going to type something about complaints due to lower CD on death penalty but then reply came in that said it for me lol...

This would be your common take--especially on the sPvP side of things--if death penalty were removed.  I personally don't agree with it unless we are going to make soulbeast merge at least 20s+ and/or not revert dead pet on merge.  

If soulbeast is kept as-is, then pet swap needs to be baseline regardless of pet death; basically, I agree with OP on getting rid of any penalty and leaving it at 20/16s.  

Also,

You don't want this---or won't once you meet a ranger that knows how to use one of these.  Especially Iboga, I for one am glad there are like 5 people that know how to use this because he already received a nerf on consuming bite--don't want any more nerfs here.  Seriously, I'd never need popcorn salt again if the pull actually worked right.

Anyway, if anything, all but E. Wyvern needs a rework (E. needs fixes on its F2 though not to go thru things like a dope), as well as the other ones you named because it isn't survivability, they are just useless in current game.  

Yeah, I think it would be OP in SPVP.

My issue isn't even about the pet dying itself. It's more that so many of our traits/skills now is tied around having pet swap, beast skill, having the pet alive. Soulbeast is the only spec that doesn't have to worry about having half of its build shutdown due to pet death.

We all know why things like Signet of Renewal and Protective Ward are trash tier, especially when you are using things like Share Anguish, Clarion Bond, Beastly Warden, etc. Can you imagine the amount of builds that would open up if pet death penalty was not a thing?

Edited October 20, 2023 by kiwituatara.6053

[kiwituatara.6053]

I mean the alternative could be

• Pet swap still available even when the pet is dead
• When swapping back to a dead pet, it remains dead
• Dead pets slowly regen health over time (even when swapped out) and won't be active until 100% recovered (takes 60s to regen back to full)

This will at least keep our pet swap traits from getting neutered from dead pets.

 

On a side note: do you guys remember when we could manually revive our own pets at launch?

[Gotejjeken.1267]

33 minutes ago, kiwituatara.6053 said:

On a side note: do you guys remember when we could manually revive our own pets at launch?

Yes; which was a big reason why the 60s CD made sense as you could revive them faster than that should you be able to get out of combat.  Then they removed it but left the 60s in place...