Guild Wars 2

This is about pets in PVE mainly dungeons and bosses.

I have seen some posts on pets problems in PVE and a lot of these problems can be avoided by keeping an eye on your pet and commanding it properly to save the pet. yes i agree as ranger you have to care of 2 chars yours and your pet. In dungeons it becomes 3 you, your party and your pet.

But i have 2 serious problems that i couldnt solve,

First: is the red circles on the floor there is no means to command your pet to go out of a red circle and his AI doesnt even make it move from them which kills the pet very quickly (quicker than the time I have to switch between pets). The game shouldnt penalize my toon by killing my pet if it dont give me a way to save him in such situation.

Second: problem is sometimes i call my pet to return to save him and if i use his F2 skill while he is on return command he directly engage again as if its the F1+F2 skill even if the F2 skill is a buff like jungle stalker might or bear shake it off. F2 should be just F2 if the skill is not an attack skill or doesnt need a target. If i want him to go back to combat i would press F1

While the second problem seems easy to fix, the first one should be fixed somehow as well. i thought of these

• Like make a pet in PVE invulnerable to red circles only.
• Or Add an AI that makes pet run out of red circles to nearest safe spot.
• Or pet take no damage from red circles if the master dodged or evaded these red circles

Anyone that might have possible solutions to these (other than go dungeons on different class than ranger :/ ) please share your opinions. Its a shame that most of the fights a ranger is followed stupidly by a dead pet that he has no control to save.

Please Anet consider these in your next patches.

There have been hundreds of suggestions on this already, but ArenaNet are too afraid of making the Ranger overpowered, to change anything. The most ideal thing would be to balance the pet differently, depending on whether you’re playing in dungeons, open world PvE, WvW, or sPvP. But ArenaNet simply aren’t putting enough focus on balancing professions, so the chance of us seeing such a big change anytime soon, is very small.

Jon Sharp has already stated in one of the SotG interviews that we shouldn’t have too much control over our pets (seriously, why is there not an option for hotkeying the guard/attack function!?) because it scares away new players from the class. And had I known before hand that I had to have a pet I wouldn’t have rolled a ranger in the first place… even after I learned I have foolishly held hope that Anet Devs will change their stance and allow a perma-stow option. Anet is very very slow in putting out AI improvements for the pets. So the best solution I have come up with until Anet improves they AI is to macro a dodge function and put it on my naga for ease of use. “F3 – wait 3 seconds – F1” and after about two weeks of use I’m thinking about changing it to a 5 second wait. Of course, they die quickly because I’m not traited for Beast Master (which is what this class should be called, not Ranger since we have no option but to have a pet)… but they still last longer than before I made my dodge macro for my pet. Even though I have a lvl 80 war I still prefer my ranger because it is just more fun to play.

Oh, and I specifically made that lvl 80 warrior for going into dungeons because in the end until there is a severe reduction in AOE damage to the pets or something to that effect it’s just pointless to have pets in the dungeons…

Another side note, the pet dodge macro I have made isn’t of much use to melee rangers. I guess it could be if you’re using sword/X because you can use #2 and then use the dodge macro, but other than that I haven’t gotten much use out of it. When I’m using a bow, be it short or long, the dodge macro is very handy.