Guild Wars 2

• Pet AoE skills don’t prioritize the Ranger
• Pet AoE skills don’t prioritize the party either
• All pet traits require the pet to be in combat
  ( worthless traits if pet is on “Avoid Combat”-mode )
• Pet skills with a cast time of more than 1s are borderline worthless on the move.
  ( Jungle Stalker might be the worst with 3s. Brown Bear(0.5s) and Red Moa(1s) should be the norm. No pet skill’s cast time should take longer than 1s. )
• Brown Bear tries to get into range of the target before using its condition removal. It shouldn’t do that.

Pet system is bad. Maybe 6-10 more months and they will do something
Or not

Just give my pet an evade command with visible endurance and I’m happy.

The long cast time ain’t bad, although some are a little too long. The problem is they don’t even help out that much. It’d be nice counterplay if the pet had some heavy heal or AoE spike but could be interrupted having a noticeable cast time from the enemy. That way if the pet gets it off its actually rewarding, instead of pretending 1000 is a noticeable heal (2982 if fully traited) from the fern hound.

Pets need a complete overhaul. In even small groups the random AE is too much for them. In WvW and the zergs you find there? Useless is an understatement. On top of this, the fact that the pet abilities don’t even attempt to track the opponent makes a lot of them nearly useless as well. Drake breath for example.

They need to give 50% AE reduction in WvW.
They need to make all F2 skills have a uniform .5 second cast time.
They need to make it so pet traits outside of the BM line provide benefit to the Ranger as well.

These aren’t big requests for a game that has been out for 2 years with nearly no progress being made.

50% damage reduction isn’t enough. Dunno what server you play on or how your GvG is like, but I’ll state now that in T2 and higher – in order for pets to survive, they basically need to no longer be combat entities with the lack of synergy/interaction they have and the lack of active defenses. And even then, the responsiveness is so poor on the latter that it’d just be impossible.

Eh. What they instead need to do is remove some of the long pet idle animations. This is especially apparent in birds, where the bird will not move (even if commanded) until it finishes its very lengthy flourishing idle animation.

They’re working on that with signets. How far they’ll go? Likely not very. They want the ranger to play with the pet. So I doubt we’ll see them justifying rangers not needing to have their pet pull weight (albeit the fact they can’t in most combat situations).

They really just need to overhaul the class. There’s only so much they can “tweak,” and the community knows what it wants (as does ANet).

I mentioned before in a previous forum post is have the pets base speed increased so it doesn’t go off running around and missing auto attacks handicapping your dps or take my suggestion and link agility training and pet’s prowess to one trait line in the adept tier.

I switch between wow and GW2 both a ranger/hunter main and what helps alot sometimes is that the hunter in WoW has a command /moveto button which is basically the utility skill Guard, but without the protection or stealth and no cast time. Its just used to move them to that specific location by targeting an area.

However with this, a new hotkey is needed f5 maybe. But seeing the trends in all classes in gw it never seems to get pass f4. Having this implemented would add a little more control to where your pets cast its f2 skill so it doesnt get instagibbed, or waiting for your pet to get to a close enough distance being kited away and than stop…cast…and miss.

F3=dodge-like evade in your direction [while in combat][if the pet has enought endurance]

What makes me mad about pets in GW 2 is they made combat pretty fun, redid a lot of stuff and made it more fast.. then they take the generic starting pet system from vanilla WoW and add it to the game. Seriously WoW and a few other mmos had pet issues for yeeaaarrs.. yet they don’t even bother to overhaul it in GW2.

What they should have done is these things for starter..

When you dodge your pet gets a dodge buff for a few seconds technically dodging attacks, allowing your pet to avoid boss damage.

No family only abilities, these are stupid, as if a bear is supposed to do less damage than a crow? Come on. Players should be able to mix and match pet abilities like their own skill bar.

Reduced NPC aoe damage and a trait to reduce AoE damage in pvp/wvw

Pet skills should be faster, some should be instant.

Pets should be aesthetic, you pick where to put their points, want a tanky bird? Max armor points, want a dps bear? Max strength etc, some pets can keep their natural starting atributes over some pets, like bird can have higher crit and stuff than a bear but you can still make your bird tanky.

There is also no real connection with pets, only a few skills buff pet damage and it’s all generic. Should be activating sword skill 3 makes your pet do poison damage on next attack, longbow 5 makes pet attacks aoe for a few seconds. GS maul makes your pet do extra damage and stack vulnerability and bleed etc..