Guild Wars 2

Escorting dolyaks is quite difficult and fairly unrewarding to the player(s) doing the escorting. You could have a party of 5 escorting a dolyak and a single warrior on a mission could still annihilate it. With the upcoming importance of dolyaks in the upgrading of towers and such, dolyak [escort] mastery should become a thing.

Random ideas:
->Have dolyak hp scale with players around it up to a certain point.

->Dolyak mastery gives dolyak iron hide.

->Dolyaks give wvw xp every few seconds to people who remain within a radius around it. The radius should probably be big in case attackers need to be chased off or some sort of tagging system should be in place.

They actually said in a previous blog post that in the expansion, yaks will gain a defensive ability (and be extremely hard to kill) whenever they are guarded by an allied player:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/essential-elements-of-the-new-borderlands/

…and there will be temporary med kits available at sentry posts to cure/heal/swiftness yaks. Dolyak Mastery could improve the caravan buff you give the yak, or give you extra skills with the med-kit.

They will probably not grant bigger rewards just for walking a yak. I could imagine if they added a yak-defense event when it actually gets attacked and you actually kill enemies (like defending a camp). Or the yak-walking could contribute to the 20-40 minute long “Tower Defense” upgrade event. We don’t know if that “event” will have rewards.

Oh sweet, thanks for letting me know that. Didn’t see those. That’ll solve most of that issue then.

That’s a nice idea.

misterdevious.6482:

…and there will be temporary med kits available at sentry posts to cure/heal/swiftness yaks. Dolyak Mastery could improve the caravan buff you give the yak, or give you extra skills with the med-kit.

They will probably not grant bigger rewards just for walking a yak. I could imagine if they added a yak-defense event when it actually gets attacked and you actually kill enemies (like defending a camp). Or the yak-walking could contribute to the 20-40 minute long “Tower Defense” upgrade event. We don’t know if that “event” will have rewards.

It would be great if escorting somehow rewarded you better, but I think most people who were playing early in the game’s life cycle know exactly why ANet should be hesitant about increasing escort rewards. =(

Vegito.3048:

With the upcoming importance of dolyaks in the upgrading of towers and such, dolyak [escort] mastery should become a thing.

Aren’t Dolyaks becoming less important with the upcoming changes? Structures will still upgrade with no Dolyaks, it’ll just be a lot slower.

I agree that they should be harder to kill though, right now it can be nearly impossible to save a yak even with a significant numbers advantage.