So many things to discuss about ranger class design. Rhyse.8179 summarized the core problem pretty well: To which I might add, a separate hit point pool that can result in us being pretty effectively crippled in a way other classes can't—and that tradeoff should be part of our class design, but seems not to be in GW2. Then again, my pets can solo veterans, which in my mind they should not be able to do. There are many situations outside of PvP where I find my pet just doesn't take much damage (or it dies within 5 seconds of course). Very swingy, context-dependent survivability. Anyhow! As Rhyse said, the "core mechanic" of the class is sorely oversimplified, and soulbeast is a late semi-fix to the problem, giving us control over 3 of the pet's abilities, but taking away the pet*. I would love to be able to tell my pet where to stay, what to guard, and which attacks to use. Sadly, what we do have is just crappy pathing and combat AI. (* Don't get me wrong; I love the design of soulbeast for some of the strategic and tactical options it gives me, but those too are probably not clear to many players, and outside the scope of this post. On the other hand, I do sometimes feel that beast mode is just a different arrangement of food on the plate.) As for confusing variety in pets, I will admit to putting together a big color-coded spreadsheet of all the pets, with their stats and special abilities. There is a general design pattern where each family shares a general "role" such as tank, high DPS, condition, etc, with the same AI skills, but differing player-controlled (F2-key) abilities for such things as even more DPS, healing, CC, etc, with of course the odd exception. The pets in each family also vary with which stats they boost for soulbeast, which gives you at least three high-level ways of grouping pets. The thing is, the pet management UI makes this very hard to find out! You have to be familiar with all your pets in order to choose the right one for the job at hand (which is why I made the spreadsheet). I would much rather see a pet management window where, instead of just being shown all the pets, you choose the category (primary this, secondary that, beast mode that), and are shown pets for that job, so you can quickly get what you need. For those who prefer to pick pets by family or just looks, the existing arrangement could remain, of course.
