Rangers need a ranged pet

[yoshirawr]

Something like a vespid or a griffon, with multiple attacks that don't require melee range. For a pure ranger, your pet is a very large chunk of your dps, and i can't count the number of times my pet dies, only to be resummoned using the instant summon ability, only to die again because of novas, aoe, and boss cleaves (pets are too dumb to figure out attacking from behind more than 70% of the time).

A vespid darter style with 2 ranged air attacks, and a small spread aoe (hits target, can hit 2 nearby targets as well) would be perfect to place very high in the ranger soul, above 40 points.

Alternately, a griffon type (smaller of course) with 2 standard single target attacks and a limited range cone would be nice as well, if all of its attacks had a semi-short range (maybe 15 yards), to prevent it from aggroing additional mobs past your targets.

[Alto]

Rangers simply need the pet they have report their current health properly and be click-able (target-able) from the party UI. Those things both are suppose to happen but lately neither of them are at all reliable.

I think they should worry about fixing the current pets before moving on to other new ideas.

[yoshirawr]

Rangers simply need the pet they have report their current health properly and be click-able (target-able) from the party UI. Those things both are suppose to happen but lately neither of them are at all reliable.

I think they should worry about fixing the current pets before moving on to other new ideas.

Agreed, there are some bugs with pets that need to be fixed, but that has nothing to do with ranged versus melee. This game is NOT melee friendly, and there are literally hundreds of applications where pets take significant damage from a boss nova, cleave, or aoe that can only be avoided by micromanaging your pet and his location. This is arduous and in some cases impossible because of the archaic pet interface.

For example, a boss is doing a ground slam. I have to stop attacking, put my pet on passive, then spam the follow button to get him to run back to me. He takes severe damage because of how long those steps actually take. Then, when the slam is over, i have to put him on aggro or defensive, and hope he gets the hint to run back to the boss and begin attacking.

If i leave him off passive, and attack, he just runs right back to the slam and gets mauled by the boss.

Seems kind of pointless to have a ranged soul dependent on a melee pet for a huge chunk of their damage, especially when they've given other ranged souls in the game ranged pets, like mages for example.

EDIT: Another perfect example is bonehew in deepstrike mines. When he runs to the side of the stage to do his conical attack, our pets literally run with him, then stop, and attack him when he turns around. They will take the full brunt of his cone attack in the face, every single time because they attack him from the front.