Guild Wars 2

For goodness’s sake, it’s not the kitten HP that’s wrong with spirits/pets/minions. What makes them dead on arrival is the fact that your dungeons and WvW contain lots of hardhitting constant AoE that they cannot dodge/block out of! On top of being prioritized for attack by mobs!

How hard is it to give minions/pets AoE damage reduction/avoidance?

I don’t think Ranger Pets should get flat reduction. What I wouldn’t mind seeing is a Trait that would have a pet dodge when you dodged, or something that would enable a controllable pet dodge, or at least a much more responsive “Return to Me”.

Other battle companions (minions, spirit weaps, etc.) that don’t have a control mechanism should get reduced AoE damage, however.

That would make that trait mandatory for any ranger build, Ast.

It should be available as a vanilla skill.

Dodge on return (F3) would be a decent start, which have been suggested several times already. It should not be a trait, that’s for sure.

Making it a trait would, as Agadar stated, make it a mandatory trait for pretty much any ranger build.

One way they could go about it would be to just add the 2 seconds of protection from a dodge roll to all evade and blocking abilities for the pet. I have all these other great evasion skills, and yet if I don’t just use a normal dodge my pet is screwed (actually, in dungeons the pet is screwed either way…).

Pets need to just inherently be able to recognize a threat and have the sense to avoid it and move out of range or something.

The 15 pts into survival protection on dodge roll is pretty significant especially paired with a BM roll.

I have found when I am good at timing these the pet will survive the AOE spike for swap. Typically by time next AOE spike comes the swap is again on cooldown. Again, this is the dodge trait, (the closest we currently have to pet dodge) when paired with BM.

probably a different story for none BM pets, which are by in large trash in everything, dungeon and enviroment alike.

AOE damage mitigation is the common sense approach. My pet shouldn’t explode automatically in WvW. Somebody should have to target it and spend a couple seconds at least to take it down. As it is, nobody needs to actively work to kill a pet (or spirit) because they instantly die to AOE EVERY time.

neverborne.4736:

AOE damage mitigation is the common sense approach. My pet shouldn’t explode automatically in WvW. Somebody should have to target it and spend a couple seconds at least to take it down. As it is, nobody needs to actively work to kill a pet because they die to AOE EVERY time.

Funny thing is if you work towards flanking from the sides, your pet will go to town on people because they are so busy watching out for red circles they fail to notice the wolves, birds, whatever running amidst their ranks. Once the pet is on the other side they are scot free to do as they please.

And even when players see the pet they are much more interested in lobbing AoEs across no mans land than to deal with some pet that won’t even net them a bag. Add in guard to stealth it into position, all sorts of fun can be had. I rarely ever have both my BM wolves downed at any given time.

If you charge it down the center, no kitten its going to die. That’s how Lee lost Gettysburg. start thinking like a ranger, not like a warrior.

It would be nice if the spirits were not so obvious in their animation to get interupted since it is impossible for the spirit to have stability (without the use of another player on your team to grant it to them) Perhaps “stability while casting” could be a trait for spirits?

Zenith.7301:

For goodness’s sake, it’s not the kitten HP that’s wrong with spirits/pets/minions. What makes them dead on arrival is the fact that your dungeons and WvW contain lots of hardhitting constant AoE that they cannot dodge/block out of! On top of being prioritized for attack by mobs!

How hard is it to give minions/pets AoE damage reduction/avoidance?

Ummm yea its all about the HP dude….just went into spvp earlier with 30 points with double spirit HP and a thief comes into attack me not even targeting my spirits and gets 2 hits on me and the small aoe range from his daggers kills 2 of my spirits…..in just 2 hits….

Edit: AoE range of weapons isnt counted as AoE damage its just the swing of the weapon itself and is base weapon damage.

even if spirits had 12k HP (double of what they have now), that wouldnt be enough to survive a single d/d ele’s burst. further, even if they had 24k HP each, there would be absolutely no reason to slot them. even with 30 in nature, boons dont last long enough, theyre still RNG, and theyre still weak. no cleanses, no might, no fury, no regen even lol. who cares about stinking burning damage, swiftness and a few secs of protection? and the actives have a 2-3 second animation time. u for realz?

look at traps, or even signets. look at what they do devs: they make a difference. shouts and spirits do not make a difference. almost half of the ranger prof is not applicable to real pvp scenarios, or advanced pve scenarios where you need more bang for the buck.

for the love of god, if youre not sure what to do, just look at the dozens of good suggestions from the players, plop one into the game for kicks, and take it out next patch if needed. atm, nothing is being achieved. youre killing me here.

/signed ranger.

p.s. please enable ptr, you guys are lost, understaffed, and we’d love to help.