Guild Wars 2

Some AI controlled pet skills are not useful in PvP for various reasons. Mostly because they have too long of an activation time or require the target to stand still for some time to be effective.

I think it would be better if some of these skills were disabled in WvW and sPvP as they are best used in PvE by the pet. The disadvantage to the families that have these skills lowers their utility in PvP, form the starting point of the more balanced PvE. Disabling these in PvP would raise the utility of the pets and result in a balance that is closer to better PvE levels.

Here is my opinion of the ones that are not useful in the fast moving environment of PvP:

Ursine

Brutal Charge

Activation time is too long and it does not track targets.

Devourer

Devourer Retreat

Currently is used when ever an enemy enters melee range causing the devourer to stop attacking for some time and often results in the pet being out of position. It would be useful if it was only used when the devourer was taking a lot of damage.

Drake

Tail Swipe

Activation time is too long enemies just move out of range when they would have been hit by the auto attack.

Moa

Frenzied Attack

The moa stand still as it attacks and also pauses before attacking requiring the target to stand still to be hit.

Spider

Poison Gas

Requires the target to be stationary for some time for the spider to do more damage than it would had if it had been using its auto attack.

Anyone have a view on this?

In my own opinion pet skills should be instant, you need them in that instance when you need them, not in 1.5-2s especialy in a game where even 0.001s makes a difference between being downed and healing.

Pet skills in general need 0.5 second or less cast time to be useful in any form of PvP because of how quickly players can move out of the way, OR pets must be able to keep moving while they cast and execute their maneuvers because rooting them in place before their attacks makes them useless against anyone who knows how to use a keyboard.

Pets also need a larger range on their melee and ranged attacks to compensate for their lack of smarts in following people as they move. That applies to everything they do IMO.

I think that if rangers weren’t 50% ranger 50% pet as far as overall damage/utility ws concerned, I could see them lacking a bit, but most of the time they are very unreliable, and this is coming from someone who manages my pet very well, like playing 2 characters at once, and it’s still difficult to get the results I want.

The best time to use most activated pet skills is AFTER a CC such as immobilize, chill, cripple, daze, or stun. If you’re not doing this I would suggest a Fern Hound for the regeneration howl and one of the Spiders (as a LB ranger I prefer the Immobilizing Venom). Most other pets need to be setup for their activated skill and for that, timing is everything. It’s a high skill ceiling to master, I myself am still learning, but “I can’t do it, so it obviously needs a buff” thinking only ruins game balance and takes away the fun of the hard-to-master classes.