Guild Wars 2

Sorry if someone has come up with these a long time ago feel free to delete this thread if that is the case.

suggestion 1 (ok that’s a really obvious one): add an F5 ability to the pet that functions like a dodge or perhaps simply grants evasion (.75 sec similar to that of a player dodge) without an actual animation. The command could be called “watch out!”.

The pet should stop attacking for that short time but should not otherwise disengage or run away from the target. Obviously the command would have a reasonable cooldown rather than giving pets an endurance bar. Perhaps a beastmastery trait would reduce said cooldown. One could optionally keybind F5 and player dodge to the same key and have the “pet dodges same time as ranger” effect if they want to but I personally hate the idea of my pet dodging when I do since I am ranged and typically way far away from my pet. I guess pressing F3 could also give that .75 sec evasion and then you could press F1 to get your pet to attack again but I’d rather it was a separate command.

Suggestion 2: Master/Grandmaster beastmastery trait Feline Reflexes: pet cannot loose over 15% of max hp in a single blow at a cooldown of 8 seconds.

That would ensure that pets kinda dodge most of a massive attack once every 8 sec without the ranger micromanaging them. Obviously it would benefit med-low hp pets more than tanky ones and work better against single dungeon bosses than in WvWvW where ppl are nuking left and right.

Suggestion 3: Stay close! shout that forces the pet to stay near the player (120 radius) granting it protection similar to guard. The pet can attack nearby targets normally and should move out of red circles if the ranger does. Probably works best with ranged pets. Kinda like F3 except the pet doesn’t just stand there scratching itself.

Been discussed many a times, most notably in this thread

I’d suggest adding your post there

Honestly I rather have Guard added to the f5. It can be used for postioning as well as damage reduction. 15 second cd with 10 seconds of protection. With protection on dodge you really only have to be without it 1 second.

I like guard over dodge because I rather have my pet continue to do damge and not be taken out of postion by the dodge. I also hate having to give up a skill for it when it really should be a class mechanism.

Well.

IMO the best solution would be to give the pet 0.75 second evasion every time you dodge yourself.
SO if there is a huge AoE burst in PvP or high damage ability in PvE you can use your own dodge to save your pet. Maybe even keep the pet alive those extra 1-2 seconds to get your swap pet of cooldown every now and then.

Short evasion every now and then does not feel like pushing it overboard.
Also its simple as well as easy to manage.
No extra abilities, resources or hotkeys needed.
You just have to keep eye out for your pet and depending on situation make a decision of “do i want to use dodge to save the pet or save it for myself”.

Can you guys post this stuff in the above linked thread? The discussion is a little old but none of the issues have changed. The vitality buff to pets didn’t change things for the most part and all the suggestions and discussions on this kind of mechanic already exist there. Repeating it in another thread is pointless.