Guild Wars 2

So as we all know these traits were introduced a while ago. The core problem that always existed was high variety of pet F2 skill cooldowns which in the end required arenanet to slap different ICDs on those traits.

Now before I continue I completely get that you can somewhat get used to the whole thing, chose pets for which the cooldown is similiar anyway etc. Does this make it good design? No. There is always the chance that you need the taunt but the ICD still runs and due to that the ability fails.

My suggestion:

Go For The Eyes/Wilting Strike/Beastly Warden
The first use of your pet’s command F2 ability after swapping pets causes blindness/weakness/taunt to foes around it.

Yeah… no.

You literally could have gone about this proposal in smarter ways:

1) Have “Go For The Eyes” and “Beastly Warden” function like Wilting Strike, so foes that are affected by or within range of the pet’s F2 are blinded or taunted, respectively.

At least then, there’s no ICD restrictions to contend with since only a handful of pet F2 cooldowns with Beastmastery fall below 12-15s. Pets can also be more strategically taken if the user needs a single-target, low cooldown pet, or a higher cooldown pet with an AOE skill to taunt/blind/weaken.

2) Reduce the cooldown of various, older pets or have their effectiveness increased to justify large cooldowns (such as the Polar Bear’s).

These traits are meant as augments. You are not only reducing effectiveness of Wilting Strikes on low cooldown pets such as the Eagle, Hawk, and Tiger, but you are also placing the CD on a much more variable level.

Think about it. A 12s and a 15s ICD on these traits doesn’t sound so bad when you are looking at a 16s CD with a forced pet swap, and worse, a 48s CD because your pet was defeated, which can erratically happen depending on the situation, pet, and game mode.

Really, think about it.