Guild Wars 2

This skill confuses me. I know it is used to get permanent regeneration and swiftness with nature’s voice, but on it’s own what purpose does it serve?
What were the devs thinking when they made this skill?

‘’Command your pet to aggressively guard an area. Your pet gains stealth and protection for the duration of the skill.’’

All i can see is a glorified ‘attack my target’ button that takes a skill slot. If it gave your pet x amount of bonus dmg for a few sec upon breaking stealth i could get behind that, but this is just… i realy do not get this.

And it’s not like your pet is capable of defending a point in pvp with this skill if that was what was intended for it.

Also why does it take 1 sec to use this skill? it is a shout, do you need to take a deep breath to yell at your pet to go and stand still? In all seriousness all other shouts ingame are instant cast that can be used while disabled, but this one takes 1 sec to cast… is it uber powerful or am i not seeing something?

I guess in the dev’s mind it was there to buff up your pets defence so you could take a DPS pet and still have it survive…

As for the cast time, maybe they thought it would be too confusing / OP if we could make our pet stealth instantly? Who knows.

Originally our pets attacks crit from stealth AND not break it (prolly due to coding similar to Jaguar F2 “stealth”), but that was nerfed fast so it clearly wasn’t intended… So idk WHY the skill has a cast time…

Also, “Guard!” Is the shortest, fastest to say, shout in the game yet it’s the only one with a cast.

Guard is one of those ‘l2p’ skills. The skill does have its purpose. For example you set you pet to guard an area that is a flank to the target. If they inadvertently walk too close to the triggering zone. The pet will attack them. Usually most if not all players identify a ranger by the pet next to him/her. This skill can somewhat give small (albeit very small) survival chance, in that it will keep the player guessing as to where the ranger is. Lets face it, if the enemy knows ur a ranger they will charge you, cos you’re just a free kill to them. I mainly use this skill because it is the ONLY skill that has short CD out of every other utility skills (if traited correctly it is the fastest healing skill we have).

In PvE I used it to help in events where I couldn’t be in 2 places at once, so my pet got the kills for me and all I had to do is press F to collect the bags. In WvW it helps to make them invisible and not have them die needlessly + the added protection is nice for them. As a shout skill its strong in a condition-regen build, that swiftness + regen is very convenient even when you’re not in combat. What I don’t get is why pet’s don’t get a 100% critical chance as they enter combat from stealth, that would be very ideal. As to what is confusing about it it’s simple, how can your pet truly protect your flank if you’re not in PvE? The best way to use it is to be smart about it, send in your pet stealthed to create an opening on an enemy, especially if you’re into beast mastery that pet will hit hard.

This is the 3rd incarnation of the skill it once allowed your pet to scale walls as well. In eotm you can use guard on you pet and point it to one of the bridges or platform and fear upto 5 people off of it.

Even with the delay (delay it probably for targeting) you can use it for pet positioning and stability as it also give protection. You can use it to keep your pet out of your way during jump puzzles.

It’s useful in pve when you wanna go afk and still get reward for an event, like the 5 min fire elemental pre.
Funny in eotm with the wolf, use it to camp a bridge while invisible, and f2 while people walk past it. Unlikely to work due to the long cast animation and the RNG of fear, but awesome when it does (still useless, just worth it for comedic value)
Also…umhhh….used it in guild rush to keep clear from enemies 2 spots at the same time.
Never used with nature voice, a major trait just for swiftness and regen is kinda wasteful imho.

But yeah, its one of those skills you have to try hard to get uses for, but feel so smart and edgy when you find one :>

wall of flesh if you use guard with a bear as pet in a wall.

My only real complaint about Guard is that it has a cast time, if it didn’t is probably use it outside of perma regen builds.

That being said in PvP it’s really nice for giving your pet stealth so you can cast their F2s from stealth (can’t be prepared for a fear when you don’t know it’s coming), it’s also nice to use Guard against high stealth profs because your pet will remember the target, but while that target isn’t available will choose a different target.

IE: thief stealths, your pet decides to kill the warrior, thief comes back, pet goes back to eating the thief.