Guild Wars 2

Imo most pet’s have too long of a charge time for the F2 skill. Hopefully will be addressed in today’s patch or someday soon.

I haven’t heard anything about it coming in today’s patch. Until the charge times come down a little bit (if they ever do) you can also you QZ to halve the charge and cast time. Also remember the QZ that comes from pet swap buffs pets too. If you are quick enough you can cut a pretty big portion of the charge time off with swapping and instantly hitting f2.

This is the exact reason I don’t use drakes, 2.75s means almost no chance to strike a moving target. Should be 1.5s at max.

Should be instant. Press F2, override any current action, and use that damn ability NOW!

ALL F2 options should be instantly cast. I don’t care if they still need ty cycle threw the animation afterward, but when you push F2 the effect should go off instantly.

Same with pet recall… it should recall immediately (it should probably sprint back too at 150% movement speed) and do so in a straight line…

Current system is almost as awkward as when you tried using interrupt skills for your pets in GW1 – it worked, but it wasn’t reliable, and trying to interrupt that 0.5 cast skill with your pet… well yeah, good luck with that.

It’s frustrating, but is fair considering how much defensive stats drakes have and how hard their F2 hits.

…well, I will consider it fair once drakes are fixed to actually use their auto-use skills.

Dahkeus.8243:

It’s frustrating, but is fair considering how much defensive stats drakes have and how hard their F2 hits.

mine doesn’t hit hard at all.

in fact i don’t even see damage numbers it hits so not hard.

Dahkeus.8243:

It’s frustrating, but is fair considering how much defensive stats drakes have and how hard their F2 hits.

…well, I will consider it fair once drakes are fixed to actually use their auto-use skills.

Hits hard compared to what – other pets, or other classes?

The F2 abilities are balanced considering their long cooldowns (30 secs untraited). Having an attack that is so hard to land on anything but stationary targets is, if anything, unbalanced.
In spvp, you need to be very lucky or play against really bad players to actually land their F2 attacks on anything. Heck, it’s hard to even get it to hit mesmer illusions/necro minions due to the very long activation time, lol!

It’s all pets. Most F2 skills are not very powerful, it’s just insanely long warm-up periods for no good reason.

I would be more ok with the charge up time if the pet followed its target during the actual animation. With how it is now, you can have your River Drake (which has an AMAZING damage f2) fully charge up the skill and then have it go on full CD because the opponent got behind the pet without even realizing what the pet was doing.

Send your pet out, have it turn around because the target is charging you then use the ability. Also kite infront of it so it does not have to move, it takes a lot of work to get used to but once you do it is really satisfying. The other trick to get it to use its ability almost instantly is to call it to return-then attack-then f2 in rapid succession and it will cancel any move it is trying to do. I do agree the charge up times are a little crazy but the river drakes attack is far to powerful to be instant, there are some weak abilities (such as fire, frost, and that new drake) which are just horrible in PvP as it has a large charge up and tiny cone.

Taym.8326:

Send your pet out, have it turn around because the target is charging you then use the ability. Also kite infront of it so it does not have to move, it takes a lot of work to get used to but once you do it is really satisfying. The other trick to get it to use its ability almost instantly is to call it to return-then attack-then f2 in rapid succession and it will cancel any move it is trying to do. I do agree the charge up times are a little crazy but the river drakes attack is far to powerful to be instant, there are some weak abilities (such as fire, frost, and that new drake) which are just horrible in PvP as it has a large charge up and tiny cone.

I don’t want it to be instant; I want it to follow targets properly.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Dahkeus.8243:

It’s frustrating, but is fair considering how much defensive stats drakes have and how hard their F2 hits.

…well, I will consider it fair once drakes are fixed to actually use their auto-use skills.

Hits hard compared to what – other pets, or other classes?

The F2 abilities are balanced considering their long cooldowns (30 secs untraited). Having an attack that is so hard to land on anything but stationary targets is, if anything, unbalanced.
In spvp, you need to be very lucky or play against really bad players to actually land their F2 attacks on anything. Heck, it’s hard to even get it to hit mesmer illusions/necro minions due to the very long activation time, lol!

Yea, I’m not going to defend drakes in sPvP, but I also don’t think that all pet types need to be viable in PvP either.

As for hitting hard, I’m talking about River Drakes.

Leuca.5732:

I would be more ok with the charge up time if the pet followed its target during the actual animation. With how it is now, you can have your River Drake (which has an AMAZING damage f2) fully charge up the skill and then have it go on full CD because the opponent got behind the pet without even realizing what the pet was doing.

That’s a really good suggestion imho!

OGDeadHead.8326:

Leuca.5732:

I would be more ok with the charge up time if the pet followed its target during the actual animation. With how it is now, you can have your River Drake (which has an AMAZING damage f2) fully charge up the skill and then have it go on full CD because the opponent got behind the pet without even realizing what the pet was doing.

That’s a really good suggestion imho!

TO give the River drake some credit, it does somewhat aim the lightning almost paralleled to its head. Of course it’s not consistent but better than the other drakes who only shoots in front.

It’s definitely a good suggestion though but could be OP. Just time your daze, stun, frozen, cripple and F2 right (best to pop right away on swap to reduce Charge time AND let it be by your side, not infront), wont be missing much.

Love Drake, hate the F2 execution.

1) I learned to use F2 only after I swap pets with 5 points in BM.
2) Drake F2 misses if I happen to swap/press and the target suddenly decides to move -like come after me.

are the other drake abilities actually working for you guys?
because they’re just using bite for me.

Nah, they only use Bite. Most of the drakes are useless anyways since its hard to aim their F2 and seems to die quickly when it shouldnt.

Many pets work unlogically if you look at them. Why do jellyfish have more hp/toughness than a armored fish or shark? Birds hit harder than a bear?

Himei.5379:

Nah, they only use Bite. Most of the drakes are useless anyways since its hard to aim their F2 and seems to die quickly when it shouldnt.

Many pets work unlogically if you look at them. Why do jellyfish have more hp/toughness than a armored fish or shark? Birds hit harder than a bear?

Gameplay balance. Irl, a bear will hit harder AND take more hits than a bird, so if they balanced things this way, there wouldn’t really be any reason to take a bird.

Ponts.9516:

Also remember the QZ that comes from pet swap buffs pets too. If you are quick enough you can cut a pretty big portion of the charge time off with swapping and instantly hitting f2.

This isn’t really viable, imo. I’ve noticed (at least since last patch, honestly I didn’t pay attention before that) that trying to chain together a swap to Drake + Drake F2 (At least with River Drake) fails most of the time… the Drake seems to come out facing you rather than the enemy, and if you don’t wait for it to pick up the target, the F2 skill just misses and goes on cooldown.

Leuca.5732:

I would be more ok with the charge up time if the pet followed its target during the actual animation. With how it is now, you can have your River Drake (which has an AMAZING damage f2) fully charge up the skill and then have it go on full CD because the opponent got behind the pet without even realizing what the pet was doing.

His opponent is coming after you so why are you standing behind him? You are bait