NephyrS wrote: I like pets as a small part, but I think the Ranger should be functional without it. More flavor/interest than core abilities.
Ulfynn wrote: Part will depend on how much it seems like it's me & my pet killing crap, vs. me micro-managing the pet (and not really doing much myself). How fiddly is the pet stuff vs. how fiddly the other Ranger abilities are. If I need 37 hotkeys to play it, then I will be less enthused.
Numbuk wrote: I never cared much for pet classes in MMOs.
If the ranger's pet is more like a minor DoT (how I viewed EQ shaman pets, my warlock pet, and my DK pet), then I'm fine with it. If all their powers and abilities revolve around maintaining the pet and the pet does an extreme portion of the damage, then I will like it less. Rangers should be the center of the dps attention.
Anything else and you're just a glorified dog trainer.
All of this. The mere notion of a pet doesn't offend me for a ranger, particularly if it's pitched more as "the Ranger is attuned to nature, and attracts kindred spirits to keep him company in his primarily solitary life in the wilds" than "the Ranger seeks out, subdues, masters, and trains wild predators to aid him." The former feels like a ranger, the latter (which is how the Hunter class always struck me in my viewings of WoW from afar) feels, exactly like Numbuk said, like a glorified circus trainer.
Likewise, I don't like classes where the appeal of the pet is to essentially act as a proxy, executing your abilities for you, etc. I want it to be fire and forget, not developer-sanctioned and client-integrated dual boxing. The smarter the pet AI, and the fewer abilities that need to be micromanaged to get the best efficacy out of them, like stuns, taunts, etc., there are, the more I'll be okay with it. Short cooldowns and smart targetting and autocasting (and the short cooldowns set the requisite "intelligence level" of the autocasting lower) are necessities for what I would deem acceptable in a ranger pet.
Vanguard gave rangers pets, and they worked for me there. They were literally like a DoT with a few HP. SWTOR does a passable job with damage and healing pets; you do your thing, and they do theirs. The nature of healing classes in SWTOR makes me find the pets less attractive there, because you end up having to babysit them as a significant amount of your work -- they're doing as much or more damage than you are, and taunting off you, so you need to keep them alive. Thus, my interest in playing Sawbones on my Scoundrel plummeted when I switched him from a grouping character to a solo one, and I respecced him to a DPS tree because I didn't want to play healer for Corso.
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