Guild Wars 2

With the recent buffs to pets, particularly porcines, I thought it’d be interesting to look into them again. From a PvP standpoint that is.

First of all, the reduced cooldowns are nice.

But why is it that the stuff they forage show up on the ground and are available to anyone to pick up? Even the enemy? Can’t they make it at least similar to ele conjure weapons so your enemies can’t pick them up? Obviously it’d be great it the items just ended up directly in your hand without needing to pick it up, but come on! At least prevent the other team from being able to take it.

Also, the consume plasma you get from the siamoth doesn’t apply resistance. It’s essentially the same moves as when thieves steal from mesmers right? Was this just an oversight? It’d be great if rangers could get even an RNG chance to gain resistance.

There is just so much wrong with Porcines that the only major change that has to happen to them is Forage working life the Thief “Steal” mechanic. Just have the F2 flip for use when the player wants to.

You’re spot on about Consume Plasma not being updated with the Thief and the open-world version that players can find on the ground.

As for the Forage itself, the cooldown reduction is OK at best. It needs further refining than what I already mentioned above. We have 2 Porcines that can forage the same type of items and the Siamoth that forages 3 objects with 2 functioning the same.

Having the RNG items narrowed to 2 and tweaked so each Porcine can provide certain items focused towards a specific attribute would help tremendously. Seriously, updating the loot table can have a greater affect but it just wasn’t implemented.

An example of what focused-Foraging should be:

• Boars – CC items: Bone Crack or Skull Fear
• Pigs – Defensive items: Healing Seed or Drink (the Egg is half worthless since we don’t use initiative, unless you want to buff an enemy Thief – but as I suggested how Forage should work – kitten them)
• Siamoth – Unique items: Consume Plasma and Blinding Tuft (since Throw Feathers is the same, there is no need for it)
• Warthog – Condition items: Throw Gunk and Throw Scale (both items inflict multiple conditions with one being the only way Ranger can create an Ethereal field)

If Anet can rework Forage and the loot tables to that degree; they would be in a much higher place in terms of utility and effectiveness. Simple and smart tweaks that go a long way.

At the least they need to change up consume plasma and the way you get the items.

Such a shame. I was thinking consume plasma plus the boon duration amulet in PvP would be amazing. You could stack up to 17ish seconds of protection and on yourself…but it’s too unreliable if you have to pick it up as well.

Can we talk about how they miss their charge in PvE and throw themselves completely out of combat? I’m sure you could micro your pig to land it in PvE after you CC locked that river skale, but at what point does this become just stupid? Any point. At any point is this stupid. Is the correct answer.

Yeah, Brutal Charge has a huge downside. A 2½s wind-up with an overly-obvious visual tell. It could at least have 1s shaved off so by the time it’s ready to roll, whatever it was targeting isn’t halfway across the field.

A range increase would also help. Currently, it’s 300… Double that or increase it to 1200 like the Necromancer’s Golem Charge. It would gain a really fun niche in WvW zergs with Porcines mowing down a line of the opposition.

Huh, is the brutal charge of pigs not the same as dogs? I have to admit I haven’t really paid attention to their other skills outside of the F2 xD

No the pig brutal charge is ridiculous. It’s the same one the PvE boars use that are so common in HoT. They load up for several seconds and then charge in the direction you were in several seconds ago. It’s just awful. It effectively removes them from combat. Not only do they have a wind up, they have the “cool down” of returning to the fight. In open world PvE there is a roughly 0% chance that your pig will land a single hit.