Curse

J I L T · Apr 16, 2009, 03:21 AM // 03:21

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Originally Posted by J I L T View Post
-snip-
1. Stop. Just stop.

2. If you think a beastmaster could replace the warrior in that build, take another look at what happens when HB+WW meets MoP. The beastmaster can't replicate that.

1) snip? stop? Is that supposed to be a joke? You start a thread then someone disagrees with you and you don't want to talk anymore. The only reason for that is you can't really defend your stance.
2) You're basically saying an entire PvE and PvP attribute should be buffed because PvE only skills can do things better. That's a dumb argument not to insult you though.
3) You're a hypocrite. You bash pets for taking up too many skill slots and attribute points yet you praise those builds which devote 3 or 4 skills including elites to do one thing like spam a single shout. And then the mm had 16 death magic I believe.
4) You are very condescending. You gave me an "exercise" like you're my teacher or something. Now you're trying to tell me what to do. So it leads me to believe that you think you're so great a game and that makes you better than me. And if that's the case it's pretty pathetic and it doesn't matter how often your bros call you to hang out, how hot your boyfriend/ girlfriend is or how many parties you go to. It's still pathetic to be so high and mighty about something that doesn't even matter. Again I'm not insulting you just like you're not being condescending.
5) But fine I give up you're the man, you're better at Guild Wars than me, you're smarter, prettier and just better all around. Also I now agree with your arguments including giving rangers a whip (or whatever) that needs a requirement in an attribute for which there are currently no weapon attack skills for.

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Your bow damage will be pretty pathetic since you'll need at least 13-14 expertise to keep that combo up.

And Enraged Lunge is 16 DPS if it hits on recharge. Does that really make up for a pet's crappy damage?... Even with Feral Aggression and Great Dwarf Weapon, your pet will be doing 60ish MAX, and that combo gives you negative net energy you can't use anything else. Dragon Slash does 70-80ish DPS and powers a ton of utility. MS/DB is 110+ DPS. Sorry, but pets fail.

Pets need to attack faster. Once every 2 seconds is just fail. I would put it at 1.5 at least.

1) I manage with just 9 or 10 expertise, maybe I use a skill that gains energy or maybe I use a zealous bow with [rapid fire] or maybe I do both
2) You have no idea what my attributes are set at or what my other skills are so I find it amazing that you can analyze a build which I have yet to give you.
3) I don't even use great dwarf weapon I'm a purest/traditionalist kind of player. I don't use PvE only skills in general.
4)60 damage max? enraged lunge clearly states the max bonus damage is 80 and bonus damage from attack skills ignore armor and I can get around 100 damage easily without feral aggression or a weapon spell of any kind
5) I hate when people tell me my damage is bad, I'm the only one who can see how much damage I do so who are you to tell me especially from just 2 skills and even if it is pathetic how much damage does 1 person have to do? Enemies don't usually heal well and there are already several other people dealing damage. And the idea behind Guild Wars is to work together with your team so maybe my build is incredible with the right team.

And finally a shocking revelation, Guild Wars has been out for 4 years if there was such a major problem with an entire attribute and game mechanic it would have been addressed long ago. So you're wrong about pets the developers know what they're doing and what they want and if they agreed with you this topic wouldn't exist because pets would have been buffed to hell already. The developers aren't stupid, their puny brains weren't waiting for some amazing insight from a random person on a forum before they could realize pets suck. Just accept you're bad with pets and move on, I can't smite to save my life but that doesn't mean it's not powerful. I'm sure there's someone out there who makes great use out of [word of censure].

And you'll be glad to hear (or read rather) that I'm not going to ruin your topic anymore. So you can continue to attack me for having a different opinion or play style if you want but you'd just waste your time.

Kerwyn Nasilan · Apr 16, 2009, 04:07 AM // 04:07

Thats a fairly decent written out proposal, cannot comment on balanced (never used a pet before) but it look like it would make them useful, the pet bring along skills particularly.

FoxBat · Apr 16, 2009, 04:21 AM // 04:21

I don't like the idea of giving pvp thumpers or packhunters another skill slot or two, and I don't like the idea of making these all pvp/e split either. The "easy" solution would be to just apply it to NRA and maybe the elites. The harder solution would be to somehow reduce the degenerate aspects of pets while improving their other abilities. Alot of the potential pet "utility" is hurt by being conditional and not having enough control over timing to take advantage of the condition- so I'd look into adjusting/reworking those or improving pet response, and then neutering the self-IAS buffs.

The compression thing is a nice start but more work is needed. In PvE pets don't attack often enough and have no AoE abilities. [Melandru's Assault] for example could stand having the conditionality removed. But yeah otherwise, even if you have the slots to spare for a pet, you still have to justify the beast mastery investment somehow. And [Enraged Lunge] is about the only skill out there that even comes close pve wise.

Chthon · Apr 16, 2009, 04:48 AM // 04:48

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Originally Posted by draxynnic

Working through the OP's points:

1) Agreed. Personally, I've thought for a while that carrying ANY skill that requires a pet should bring the pet with you as well. (This, incidentally, still allows Heal as One to serve as bar compression, as it then combines Comfort Animal with a self-heal.)

That might be a little overpowered.

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5) Unnecessary. As has been said, the beast is a weapon. Having to split attributes is the price you pay for having two weapons on the field - and if you use a caster secondary, you can use the appropriate caster weapon for the attribute you're using and remain perfectly effective. Heck, trappers have been using staffs (that might have the Inspiration requirement filled, but then again, might not...) pretty much since release.

Not many people seem to like this idea. I think maybe I should just scrap it.

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Originally Posted by J I L T

And you'll be glad to hear (or read rather) that I'm not going to ruin your topic anymore. So you can continue to attack me for having a different opinion or play style if you want but you'd just waste your time.

1. Good.

2. I'm not attacking you; I'm dismissing you out of hand.

Archress Shayleigh · Apr 16, 2009, 09:47 AM // 09:47

Leave the pets alone! They are just fine. I only like the idea of the skills auto-bringing your pet with you.

Patron_of_the_Wild · Apr 25, 2009, 08:23 AM // 08:23

Urgh, can't read all the posts of this thread, but here are my 2 cents on how to make the pets more viable.

pets should be considered as party members
make pets flaggable
compress the beast master bar (suggestions were already given: rez into charm)
make pets leave corpses again
lessen the skill downtime once a pet dies or even remove it completely for primary rangers. (There should be a difference between primary and secondary rangers)
implement more useful skills. Here's a suggestion ...
Animal Division. Elite skill (Expertise). For ... seconds your pet divides into 2 equal copies. Both copies deal 50% less base-damage and are affected by skills and effects like your normal pet. (cast time shouldn't be more than 1 second)

Implementing these changes, you'd actually see groups looking for Beastmasters. Oh, how I'd love to make some use out of my pet.

Jimmy Dean · Apr 25, 2009, 05:10 PM // 17:10

There are many interesting comments and suggestions made in this thread. My opinion is that pet usage is widely dismissed as less effective than other options, and rightly so. I'm sorry that this is the case, as I love the pet concept and thoroughly enjoyed my various pet builds before so many more powerful builds emerged.

I was shocked to see that Anet spent so much time and effort in creating the Menagerie in an attempt to boost interest in pets when pet usage is so minimal. That time and effort could have been much better spent toward making BM's a viable team member on a high damage output party. How exactly to accomplish that is discussed in great detail in this thread and I agree with many of the suggestions here. Make Comfort Animal cause your pet to come with you, use Charm only for charming. Boost some skills, tweak the attack AI, no delay on interrupts, have pets leave a corpse again, how about make a BM staff so you can have decent energy and still do max (staff) damage? All the details could be worked out, and the things that would degrade PVP unfairly could be made PVE only. How much effort would all this take? Less than what the Menagerie did, I imagine. Who cares about pet evolution - there isn't enough of a difference between Healthy and Dire that I need a choice when I'm deciding NOT to take a pet because I don't use them.

Maybe after reading this thread Anet will take on some of these issues and make pets worth using again, especially after spending so much effort on the Menagerie. We can only hope.

JD

MithranArkanere · Apr 25, 2009, 05:25 PM // 17:25

Hm... many things could be done, like making the pet natural weapons work like real weapons.
Now that PvP players can get and unlock multiple pets, each pet can have separate features.

For example, bear pawns could count as a hammer, deal blunt damage, and you'll be a able to apply upgrades for hammer to bears by opening the pet panel and applying them to a slot having the icon representing the pawn.

Then, if you add a 'fire damage' upgrade to the bear, you could allow Conjure Flame to target allies and use it to make the bear deal more damage.

Skills are better when they can be used in different ways.

Xx Confuto Xx · Apr 25, 2009, 07:38 PM // 19:38

It would be really cool to have different pets have stats like different proffessions, i.e. a black widow spider having the same damage and attack speed as a sin and speccing in beast mastery being like speccing in dagger mastery - increased damage AND possibility for double hitting

MithranArkanere · Apr 25, 2009, 08:47 PM // 20:47

Currenlty, the only differences betwen pets are the following ones:
- Flying birds, reptiles and spiders deal piercing damage.
- All the rest seem to deal slashing damage.
- Bears have brutal mauling, which make them slower, and is useful just for 3 paragon anthems. The rest either don't work or that or are useless for a pet.

But if you make each animal have a different damage, as if they had a weapon and the same rank on that weapon mastery as the rank you put in Beast Mastery, you can have Black Moas hitting with their beacks and talons as if they were using daggers, crocodiles attacking as if they were scythes, bears attacking like using hammers, or spiders attacking like using bows or spears.

Before the menagerie this would be very unfair for PvP players, but after its addition, and since they can be unlocked with balthazar and Zaishen coins, why not giving each one a little quirk of its own?

doomfodder · Apr 27, 2009, 11:57 PM // 23:57

I figure the easiest way to implement something that enhances the utility of a pet & at the same time create some incentive for all classes while simultaneously making it relatively fair to all classes (except the ranger) would be to reduce the cost of ALL BM skills by 1E for every 3-4-5 ranks in BM (min cost 1E). Might be useful for warriors with only 2 E pips. Anyway, all melee classes get the benefit of close range pet attacks. Might not help casters much cept for the Ele. & Rangers would have almost free attacks (moderately effective as they are) at high Exp & BM (with NO available weapon that supports either attribute) while other classes would have the ability to manage pet damage thru less expensive heals & revive pet etc...

Roupe · Apr 28, 2009, 01:52 AM // 01:52

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# make pets flaggable

i like this

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# compress the beast master bar (suggestions were already given: rez into charm)

Suggestion for compressing the beast skills would be to put them on a separate skillbar.. like the the hench heroes .

The player would only need to have charm animal on his, all the rest of the beast skills concerning the pet can be placed on the pet

Kattar · Apr 28, 2009, 02:16 AM // 02:16

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Originally Posted by Roupe

The player would only need to have charm animal on his, all the rest of the beast skills concerning the pet can be placed on the pet

Whatever skills were put on the pet's bar would have to take up skill slots on the PC. Otherwise it would be super imba.

Roupe · Apr 28, 2009, 04:05 AM // 04:05

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Whatever skills were put on the pet's bar would have to take up skill slots on the PC

or for each two put on the pet. naturally it needs to be looked on the balancing, like all things. or it could be made for PVE only.

But many of the beast pet skills are weak, and could be made weaker (should they be considered to powerful as "extra" skills. Also if the ranger has put high points into beast, he will have less points to use on the other skill attributes.

Faure · Apr 28, 2009, 09:08 AM // 09:08

One more thing I really miss since I once started playing Ranger and added pets to it;

Why's there no exp-bar for pets. I'd like to know how far it is to reaching a new level, just like I am for my character.
Together with that bar, a balance-bar showing if it's leaning more to elder/hearty/dire would be nice. Now it's guessing or make strict use of certain guides. Instead I prefer to play and if I notice my pet isn't heading the way I like I can change my way of playing, instead of death levelling or strict builds. It happened quite a few times I thought i was playing a good dire-level build (animal did way more dmg then i did) and ended up with a hearty anyhow.

Hyper.nl · Apr 28, 2009, 10:43 AM // 10:43

/signed to make pets more usable. Especially more usable for second-profession rangers. It would for example be nice that the functionality of charm animal and comfort animal would combine into one skill.

Raccoon · Apr 28, 2009, 10:48 AM // 10:48

Pets should be treated like weapons. They should have an inscription slot, attack mod and health mod.

Make it collar mods or something... "Dog Tag of Fortitude"

That way pets can have customizable damage. So you can give them a +33% poison duration mod etc.

MithranArkanere · Apr 28, 2009, 11:14 AM // 11:14

I remember suggesting to add to both heroes and pets a green bar that takes 33% of the health bar of a pet or a hero, until they get to level 20.
Once they hit level 20, the green bar would vanish and the health bar would take the whole space again.

As for pets, some things would help for them being used more:
- Direct them like heroes, by adding flags, since they already have the lock target, defend and do not attack modes. But saving those modes would be nice too. It's a bit annoying having to set the mode every time I enter an area.
- Queue pet attacks. Currently, you have to wait for the pet to perform a pet attack until you can order the next. Otherwise the new attack replaces the one waiting to be performed. Pets should be able to remember 2 attacks instead of one. That way, you could order 2 attacks, and they will be waiting to be performed and shown in the Effects monitor of the pet like enchantments. Activate again an attack that is already in the queue, and it moves to the end of the queue.
- More interaction with other profession's skills. It would be interesting to be able to target your own pet with any skill that can usually target only yourself (it can be done already in the rules of many pen&paper and videogame RPGs), as long it has some restrictions. For example, with each rank in beast mastery, your pet gains 2% of the benefits of skills that you activate upon yourself. With rank 15 it would be 30%, and by activating Troll unguent with Wilderness Survival 9, your pet would get activated upon itself Troll unguent with Wilderness Survival 3.
- Now that PvP characters can have different pets, the door is open to allow different pets to have different properties other than different types of damage (currently most deal slashing and a few piercing). But since they are so many, it would be enough to make the differences by groups. They could have an inherent condition dealing depending on the rank of Best mastery. Every 2 ranks in Beast in beast mastery would grant 1% chances to deal a condition for a fixed amount of time. 8% with BM 16.
* Bears. Blunt attacks that may deal 3 seconds of cracked armor.
* Flying birds (Eagle, Raven, Phoenix...). Piercing. 3 seconds of blindness.
* Walking birds. (Moa, Crane, Flamingo...). Piercing. 1 second of Dazed.
* Spiders. Piercing. 4 seconds of poison.
* Reptiles (Lizard, Crocodile, Iguana...). Slashing. 2 seconds of deep wound.
* Crabs and pigs. Slashing. 3 seconds of crippling.
* Cats (Lynx, Tiger, Lion...). Slashing. 6 seconds of bleeding.
* Dogs (Wolf, Hyena). Slashing. 3 seconds of weakness.
* Rats. Slashing. 2 seconds of Disease.
The numbers are just examples. But imagine the 'fun' when that single second of dazing a Moa could deal every 12 attacks coincides with you starting to cast Meteor Shower. Yay!
One skill could be added, called 'Release Hidden Power' that makes the next pet attack always deal its unique condition for 3 times the usual duration.

draxynnic · Apr 28, 2009, 01:08 PM // 13:08

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Originally Posted by MithranArkanere

Before the menagerie this would be very unfair for PvP players, but after its addition, and since they can be unlocked with balthazar and Zaishen coins, why not giving each one a little quirk of its own?

To play devil's advocate: Balance. Every quirk is one more thing they have to figure out how to balance. (This doesn't mean yours is a bad idea, just that there is the issue of balance.)

Another thing I'd like to see is more transparency of what damage type each pet has - the wikis still have a lot of "unverified" in them, especially for EOTN pets. The Menagerie doesn't help because it's filled with "pet X naturally deals damage type A but can be trained to use damage type B"...what does this mean? Do they switch from one type to another automatically as they level? Do they switch if they gain the right evolution? Do they switch over entirely, or do such pets pick a damage type randomly with every attack?

MithranArkanere · Apr 28, 2009, 02:19 PM // 14:19

Yup, I tested some myself using Assasin armors, shields and damage, type skills, and found that all flying birds seem to deal piercing damage but it's still hard to remove the 'seem' from the phrase by counting and averaging the damage of 1000 hits.

It's better if they just tell us.