Guild Wars 2

This could be a trait or it could be just given to all wvw rangers to help them with large scale combat:

Instinctual evasion:
Every time the ranger or rangers pet receives damage from a source if damage the pet gains 1 stack of Instinctual evasion for 5 seconds. Damage from the same source renews the stack of Instinctual evasion and damage from additional sources apply additional stacks of Instinctual evasion.

Instinctual evasion: grants the pet. 10% chance to evade damage from any source (including AoE, PBAoE, and GTAoE).

The rangers pet isn’t very helpful at the best of times but it dies far too quickly in wvw. This change will quickly add up in a large scale fight to allow the pet to stay alive and contribute for much longer. Hopefully with this change it will no longer be in its instinctual calling in life to seek out and bathe in every stray AoE there is on the battlefield.

A change like this would make it so that the pet doesn’t become godlike in fights where the rangers isn’t fighting lots of enemies but can at least become helpful if big fights, like those in wvw, happen.

I felt it needed to completely evade damage and not just reduce damage because the stacks require damage to be topped up and if the pet is no longer sitting in the middle of aoes after the 5 seconds (like if the ranger has sent it to the enemies back line to cause trouble) it shouldn’t be able to keep up the high evasion unless the ranger him/herself is taking heavy damage.

Opinions?

Awesome, I send my pet into a group of 10 players, they all hit it, and it will evade every single attack for the remainder of the fight?

(10 stacks of Ins.Ev. = 10 * 10% = 100% chance to evade dmg from any source)

So that means that if I send my pet solo into a tower where 10 players are standing at the lord room for defense, my pet will simply solo the tower? Awesome

Pet’s need some loving, true.. But this would be a little bit over the top..

There are 2 problems with pets as I see it.

The AE problem where they die to random stray damage (which is mostly what’s going on in WvW). Then there’s the lack of a dodging mechanism which makes pets less than useful in the majority of PvE content.

The second issue is easy to resolve. You simply give the pet aegis every time the Ranger dodges or uses a skill with an evade on it. While there could be some issue with the evade on GS#1, a simple internal cooldown of 5 seconds would resolve that issue.

The more pressing issue is with stray AE damage. Short of giving pets a passive reduction in damage they receive from AE (upwards of 90% is probably what would be required, but at least we know they can do WvW only changes), the only other way I can see resolving this is giving all AE’s in the game 2 different states. State one is the damage it does to the target you have selected. State 2 is the remaining 4 targets it hits. Simply making pets take no damage from State 2 would resolve all the problems. Pets couldn’t tank bosses in PvE because the AE would 1 shot the tanking pet. They wouldn’t die in PvE DPS roles so the class’s damage handicap can be justified, and in WvW, where pets have half the HP as they do in PvE now, they’ll only go down if directly targetted. Alternatively to all of this, we know they can prioritize targets when dealing AE damage. Why not have it prioritize players over pets? Does it already do this? No idea…

The problem with pets is pet put them in situation they don’t want to be in. You the player would rarely (unless you had invulnerbilty or dome type of damage reduction or thought you could make it to your keep entrance)charge the enemy zerg. Yet this is what our pets do and we wonder why they die.

What would help:

having range pets that could fight at1200 range.

Having flying pets that could attack players on the ground while the ranger was in a tower and vice versa. (this is a mixed bag having a pet with more range would remove the need for this.)

The Ranger loses a lot of damage in various ways.

Pets not scaling with gear.

Pet death (heavy aoe or running in to the center of a zerg)

pet unable to engage target due to different heights

I am not in favor of unkillable pets in pve. Anything that downs a player should kill a pet. It’s the ranger’s responsibility to not put his pet in a situation that he can not survive. With that said there are situation when we have no other choice and that’s the real problem.

I like the idea, but I think it could further use some work, because even if the pet was made un-targetable and given perfect accuracy, that would make us on par with every other class.

How about this, a stacking Killer Instinct buff that stacks up to 25×. With each stack, your pet gains 10% increase in damage, defense, accuracy, quickness, swiftness, crit strike, and evade. So if you can manage to keep your pet alive during a skirmish to the point it has 25 stacks.. it could literally be a zerg killer; the one shot wonder.

This could provide an additional element for players to think twice before they drop AoE in a battle.

I mean, we constantly hear that retaliation isn’t OP, and we just simply shouldn’t drop AoE on a zerg.. ok, well don’t drop AoE on a zerg if there is a pet in the fray.. simple. Or do it and suffer the consequences if the Ranger keeps them alive..

Just let me stow my pet and keep him stowed regardless of whether I’m in combat or not. And for the love of all that’s sacred and created equal… let me have a kitten key bind option for stowing/unstowing and passive/attack mode.

But the above is too much to ask from Anet, so I’ll settle for just giving my pets the PvE HP boost in WvW. Maybe then while he’s following me around in passive mode, he won’t get constantly killed by AC and AOE fire.

Passive stow and not break our cond removal maybe the only solution to fit zerg war. In other words , ranger’s pet should get some symbol like “Red target sign” to allow player locate his pet while zergs merged together.