Guild Wars 2

Just read post where contributor referred to rangers getting a condition known as “pet down” and losing 25% of damage when the pet dies.

What if the death of a pet made the ranger “enraged” for a period of time (20 seconds which is 1/2 of the cool down when the pet dies if memory serves right) where they would do 25% more damage. This would be like enlargement but without the speed and stability and looking like the Jolly Green Giant if playing Sylvari.

So you can’t just stow the pet, but if the pet dies, you get a damage boost until you have time to summon another.

The issue here, is it would encourage players to actively kill their pets, which I don’t think Anet wants. This goes against the entire concept of relying on your pet for utility. Managing the pet is part of the class.
The only builds that wouldn’t utilize sending you pet in a blender to get it killed would be BM builds.

^ This. Unintentional consequences in game design are a pain in the butt. While killing your pet and leaving it dead forever would be valid, from a min-max point of view, it really does go against the theme of the class.

If pets are required, then the game design should support us trying to keep our pets up and active for as long as possible, and encourage us to rez/swap them when dead. This is where the design still needs some help.

(even if the boost was 5-10% in damage, people would still kill their pets for it, because it’s 5-10% guaranteed damage, rather than the RNG component of the pet.)