Leopard, leopard, dazzling white
In these dungeons scant of light,
What designer’s hand or eye
Could frame thy hopeless comedy?In those distant deeps you fought
A thousand deaths, my heals for nought.
Who struck from thee all circumspection,
And stuck me with thy resurrection?And what humour and what wit
Would make a minion such a sh…ambles?
And when thy heart again does beat,
Why bounce straight off to thy defeat?What programmer? What tool chain?
In what AI was thy brain?
What the devil? What the hell?
Dare thee pull that group as well?Will thy maker ashamed confess
This parody of newb DPS?
Did He smirk His work to see?
Did He who made the Charr make thee?Leopard, leopard, dazzling white
In these dungeons scant of light,
What designer’s hand or eye
Could frame thy hopeless comedy?With considerable apologies to Mr Blake
I’ve quite enjoyed playing as a Ranger in Guild Wars 2, but I do wonder if the person responsible for developing the various aspects of the pets (especially the impossibly fragile snow leopard) was a healer in an MMO, and harbours a deep-seated grudge against DPS classes.
“LET’S SEE HOW *YOU* LIKE HAVING TO HEAL WAYWARD RECKLESS GLASS-CANNON DPS! ‘HEAL MEH!’ ‘HEAL MEH!’ IT’S NOT SO FUN NOW IS IT?! AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
And now to take another centimetre off the bottom of the human Mesmer’s starter dress; I’ve been doing it once a week for five years, and still nobody seems to have noticed.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_zn404EpSs
Wasn’t long in changing to a bear, they are much sturdier. Pets are really susceptible to AoE, I don’t know about making them take less damage from AoEs like WoW does, which seems a cheap fix to me. In WvW I kept the pet by my side most of the time except in small skirmishes where they live long enough to make a difference and couldn’t be hit by siege.
As much as my leopard’s multiple deaths were a little bit of an irritation, that video clip more than makes up for all of them. What an awesome display of noble self-sacrifice, I hope the pet got an achievement or something!
(I bet they’d only just rezzed the leopard a few moments before, though.)
Now that my Ranger is level 30 and I’ve had a chance to acquire a fair-sized menagerie, I realize that which pet you use in what situation is every bit as important as which weapon. Probably more so.
I spent an hour or so comparison-testing different pets on the same mobs and the differences were marked, but there was one example that finally made it clear to me how much there is to learn. Like darkeye I had been trending to a brown bear, which was not only able to hold agro almost effortlessly but could tank Veteran Oakhearts without even needing to be healed. Then I ran into some Ice Elementals. They tore up the bear in seconds, every time. I couldn’t keep him alive to kill even one.
I happened to have my Jungle Cat, previously thought to be a glass cannon like your Snow Leopard, loaded as my alternate pet so I popped him out, expecting him to drop even faster than the bear. On the contrary he absolutely destroyed the Ice Elementals. Half a dozen of them mobbing him at once couldn’t bring him down and he killed them almost faster than I could get arrows into them.
As for the much-reported AI problems, though, I saw no sign of any such thing. I’ve played a gazillion pet classes over the years and I’ve seen much, much worse. My pets did pretty much what I told them to all the time.
Good to hear that you’ve had much success with your Ranger. I actually experienced a few occasions where I couldn’t command my pet to attack (not on guard, not disabled); alas I couldn’t reliably recreate the issue, so it wasn’t something I could bug report in what I felt would be a valid or constructive manner.
I think the Ranger has some great features, and I’m sorely tempted to play it come release, but with pets being such a fundamental theme of the class, it’s a shame that there doesn’t seem to be (at the basic level I’ve played to) a more engaging core mechanic than Gotta catch ’em all (then use one or two based on current circumstance). It’s absolutely fine, but I was hoping they’d come up with more of a Wow! factor to it, based on some of the other fantastic ideas they’ve had for other classes. I almost wonder if it would have been better to have had one pet, which could be spec’d however you want, and upgraded/levelled/cosmetically tweaked/programmed with basic tactics, to really make it a case of The Ranger and their Companion, rather than the more impersonal Pokéranger that exists at the moment.
That’s all personal preference, obviously, but it means that it’s just missing that vital hook –for me– at the moment, and it’s frustrating because it’s so close to being perfect.
Still, plenty of other classes to try!