Currently, all pets in the game scale very poorly with content. As the game moves away from basic PvE and starts requiring effective positioning and dodging of telegraphed attacks pets, who lack the ability to avoid damage, become increasingly less viable.
This limits build options for professions with temporary optional pets (Necros, Guardians, Engineers, Eles, etc) and significantly effects professions with built in pet mechanics. Namely Rangers, but Mesmers* too a bit.
Typically MMOs resolve this issue by giving pets extreme AoE damage reduction. However, in a game where every swing is potentially an AoE that makes them very potent, and pets already do well in lower-end (smaller hits) PvE.
Therefore, you need a solution that gives pets the ability to take some big hits in Dungeons/Fractals without making them considerably stronger in easier content. The solution? Give them Endurance.
First off, pets currently don’t have Endurance and so gain no benefit while under the effect of Vigor, this changes that and opens up several avenues for traits (I.e. Grant your minions vigor when you crit, etc).
Of course, pets still can’t anticipate and dodge an attack, and adding a special button to make them dodge adds an extra degree if complexity. The idea is to make pets more viable, not force you to dodge for two.
By giving pets Endurance and using it as an extra pool of health in some manner to avoid damage you could make pet classes and pet builds once again viable in harder content.
For example, here’s one way to scale it:
-Give pets Endurance, a varying amount based on the type. For example, a Necro Minion may only get one segment (ie a half bar or one ‘dodge’) while a Ranger Pet or Elite Pet would get more.
-Any time a pet with endurance would take more than 90% of their current health from an attack they consume a segment of their endurance bar and Evade the damage (or maybe a turret absorbs it and visually appears more battered as if its armor is being broken down). Possibly extend the ‘evasion’ for 0.5s to account for barrages that a dodge when normally avoid.
-This still wouldn’t do much for Agony, since it’s not upfront damage. But that is addressable by telling the AI to attempt to avoid any attack with Agony attached.
-For pets like Necro minions you’re essentially giving them the ability to always withstand 1 attack, the same goes for Phantasms – though I’m honestly not sure if Mesmers would need this. It sucks to have your Illusions die to AoEs as soon as you cast them, but that could probably be more easily addressed by giving them a 0.5s Distortion when summoned instead of the free hit, I’m mainly focused on Rangers with this concept though.
The important fact here is that because this triggers based on current health it causes the mechanic to scale with content. In normal PvE where a Ranger pet is taking less damage the evade condition will not trigger until their pet is low on health (ie with 2000 max health and 200 damage taken per hit, the pet wouldn’t evade until down to 180 health). Whereas in a dungeon the pet will be able to avoid large hits and Vigor would allow Ranger pets to evade more often.
Just an idea, something really does need to be done to make these builds/professions less prohibitive in higher tier content.