Guild Wars 2

Just a quick suggestion to improve the quality of life on this trait.

Track Master’s Bond independently on all four pets in the swap rotation, and cause swapping a pet to halve the number of stacks. If a pet is taken out of the swap rotation, zones, or dies, it loses all stacks.

One of the harsher things about Master’s Bond, is that while it keeps you from using Swap aggressively to take advantage of the player buffs/circumventing pet cooldowns in exchange for giving your pet a powerful buff…it also keep you from using Swap defensively to avoid pet death which is something you’ll need to do in harder content just to maintain a constant pet presence on the field.

By giving pet swapping a more forgiving penalty that removes a percentage of your benefit, I’d hope to maintain the basic drive of the trait while creating a more forgiving middleground. That is to say, people who excel in keeping the pet alive would still be rewarded the most, and people attempting to swap often would still find little benefit, but people who can manage to keep their pet alive enough to swap infrequently due to average player skills or demanding content would often find themselves fluctuating in the middle with a moderate number of stacks.

I have to agree with this to some extent. At a minimum it needs to be looked at. I mean, why do I lost the bond when I’m forced to go into water that’s just deep enough to swim, but not deep enough to fight, but I still lose my bond? Depending on where I’m at, what I’m doing; I’ll avoid content, rezzing, etc. just to not lose my bond.

+1 for this suggestion.
I hate going into water or even switching pets unless one is about to die. At least make the master’s bond for water pets separate from land pets, tho I would love to see keeping at least some of it when you switch pets. As it is, it rewards you for playing in a more rigid, less reactive way. Master’s bond should only completely be removed if the pet dies as a punishment for not paying attention to your pet.