Guild Wars 2

All pets, in particular ranger pets, suffer from some serious issues in several of the fractal dungeons. In the underwater fractal, the Jellyfish will attempt to eat pets, which do not struggle and result in the jellyfish healing and taking reduced damage for a significant length of time. In the Uncategorized fractal, pets cannot move within range to attack the harpies. In the Jade Sea fractal, the boss targets pets (including, oddly, downed ranger pets.) In the Dredge fractal, the boss will often turn to attack pets resulting in significant slow down.

The only work around is to not use pets, or in some cases, a halfway workaround is to not use melee pets. This is not a true solution however, as pet classes, most prominently rangers since it comprises a huge portion of their damage output, should be able to use them if they wish to.

The harpy one is probably the least fixable one but also the least severe. Likewise with the bosses in the Dredge one, it just takes some skill. The jellyfish and Jade Sea boss should simply not use those skills on pets, since they are not players and cannot possibly work around those bosses’ particular attacks.

I am not sure what one the Jade sea is but the even lvl boss my pet has saved my group more often then not by taking the hits wile i rez my team mates or giving me that extra help i need to stay alive or get a team mate up for me just because they cant attack some time is not always a bad thing . So yes there is some problems i agree but pets do have uses

that is my two cents
sorry for the grammar errors

Even level boss is the Jade Sea, sorry.

To elaborate, the problem is mainly that the boss targeting the pets there can elongate the battle. True that it can save lives on occasion, but for those who have a lot of practice with the battle, it can just drag it out longer.

There will always be people that need that safety blanket as they learn the fights lots of groups don’t have a ranger some have more then two it is just something we have to deal with

Sadly, this is why I refuse rangers from my groups. It’s certainly not fair on them but until anet decides they want to address the issue it’s not going to change.

Shelve your class Arenanet obviously dont playtest anything with Rangers to see the problems such as this one.

Mesmer’s have a similar issue with Illusions and Clones however thankfully they have Shatters giving them some element of control over how & when to remove them from the fight and with regards to the jellyfish once he eats the illusion it dies instantly meaning he quickly goes back to his non eating habits.

i still dont understand why Stow Pet doesnt work in combat.

Hell, this has been a problem for mesmers as well. Bosses need to not target non-player enemies when using abilities. This stems from something like the Subject Alpha fight but now this is just not a good thing to have happen.

I levelled a guardian and I’ve been facerolling content with him compared to when I played my ranger (I used to be a ranger main but they are constantly given the short end of the stick with dungeon design). I was in a party with a necro and a mesmer and we went a good 5-10 minutes with only two actual players getting targeted rather than the necro minions and mesmer clones. We ended up having people completely change their builds (not an option for the ranger because the pet is always there) because mechanics designed exclusively for players to counter them are targeting AI companions. This has been a known and existing problem in dungeon design for a long time and it still hasn’t been fixed.

Just to be clear I posted this here and not the Ranger forum since it affects other classes as well and is primarily an issue with Fractals and not other dungeons since many of the paths have some glaring issue that affects pets.

Also in the harpy/asura/cat one with the beams of energy coming down the staircase, Pets make it impossible to do it unless you do it perfectly, since if you get hit ur pet comes out automatically and gets hit again resulting in a definite down…

I would like an option to permanently stow my ranger’s pet regardless of combat situation, until I tell it to appear again. I will gladly forfeit my Function-key bar abilities to not be screwed over with a pet causing things that shouldn’t happen.