Feedback:User/Ilr/Ranger: Pet Integration

This Following page is a result of large amounts of in-depth discussions and careful reading of Topics about pets from the Vigil Academy (Guru Forum). It is not intended to represent every viewpoint but it will condense the majority of concerns raised about the relationship itself between the Ranger and its pet rather than the raw "Stats" of each pet. For those reasons; this a Player-Interaction solution rather than just a PvE or PvP solution.

Survivability
First and foremost, the complaints about pet survival were blown out of proportion by the fairly low levels of the pets and the complete lack of micromanagement of those pets by most players. This does not however means that there aren't survival issues to be concerned about as the Pet is still an A.I. controlled entity and will often lack the ability to recognize when its positioned itself in danger and is about to be "damage spiked". For GW1, the Live Team's solution to this was giving them a base damage resistance. This was an Inarticulate solution that I feel could be improved upon without just making the pets into straight up Meat Shields:

Survival sugg. 1
The ideal reaction time of most players (not-including Lag/Latency issues) is 400 milliseconds. A little less for First-Person view and a little more for 3rd person view. Which means the reaction time for just selecting/clicking a minion's controls is easily double or triple that. ...and up to another 800ms if 2 or 3 options must be clicked. To address this slower reaction time, the Pet needs some kind of "Buffer zone" between the time it starts taking really heavy damage and the time the player has instructed it to avoid damage. A good example of such a buffer zone would be the Paragon skill:. And it only needs to last about 2 seconds to give a distracted player enough time to have noticed the problem and regained control of their pet. After that buffer period, the pet could return to taking full damage again. (cooldown time on this effect should exist as well but could be fairly arbitrary too and wouldn't need a precise value yet)

Survival sugg. 2
To reduce the amount of micromanagement required, there should be a "Pet Behavior" toggle that compliments the above suggestion by automatically recalling ("Heel") the pet to the owner anytime it's receiving a large number of damage packets either before or after that initial 2 seconds have ended. Or if the owner is somehow even dumber/more-suicidal than the pet, and standing in an area already bombarded by damage, the pet should path to a safer location on it's own.

GoTo / Movement
Exactly like Heroes in GW1. A player who can't tell their pet exactly where to stand, is at a massive disadvantage nomatter how good the Pet's A.I. might be. So manual positioning is a must-have. And unlike GW1, the command should allow more direct-input options such as Keyboard "Modifiers" coupled with mouse Clicks. Example: Allowing user macros/binds that activate the command when a player use SHIFT+Mouse1 at the same time. Instead of placing the outline of a flag on the mouse pointer like the Flagging command in Gw1 does, it would instantly place the GoTo flag wherever the player clicked while holding Shift and shave a few hundred milliseconds off the whole response time.

Additional Waypoints
An additional keyboard Modifier (being held down while clicking) should allow the ranger to set a series of points the pet will path to while observing it's normal AI routines along the way ... similar to a "Patrolling" function in RTS games.

Anticipating Positioning
GW2 is a very active and positional game. For this reason GoTo commands won't always be the best solution. In some cases the Pet will need to "Hold Formation" to a Ranger who is frequently repositioning themselves. This is especially important for "Support" Pets who may be applying Buffs or Controls instead of simply focusing their attention(functions) on 1 location. To enable this behavior, calculations of the Owner's average velocity and movement key frequency may be needed to shake up the Idle time between a pet's Target Affinity and functions. In other words; the more active the Owner's movements appear, the shorter the cycle time between a pet's Attack Functions and the more time it should spend Repathing out of areas with danger/damage in them.

(still under development... will continue soon)

Lyssa Roots
You or your Pet perform a rite that summons both of you to a point halfway between eachother's original locations. Can be used when one of you is "downed".

Melandru's Vigor
You and your Pet individually gain increased Criticals when the other catches a foe off-guard (positional/orientation/KD bonus??)

Grenth's Cerberus
If a trap is in range of your MELEE pet, it gains the strength of Grenth's servants and drags up to 3 targets into the nearest trap (3 second cooldown before it drags them to the next trap??)

(more ideas to come soon!)