Guild Wars 2

Ok, I’ll admit to playing (and LIKING) my Ranger to Lvl80 and beyond. There are a few nuances that I’ve still trying to figure out.

Pet “F2” – how do you change it? The Brown Bear has what appears to be a awesome ‘bite’ which sounds like some free health but I’ve never been able to change whatever the default F2 is on my pets is.

The Drakes have a ‘chomp’, Bears have ‘bite’ both of which seem to be examples of our in built ‘regeneration’ skills.

The ‘defy pain’ looks like it could be a great SOS button – how do I get it on F2?

I’ve recently been running with kitten Horn and Axe/Torch combo. When I picked up the items all but the Axe (has Superior Sigil of Corruption on it) had empty upgrade slots so while shopping for upgrades I came across these:

Superior Sigil of Leeching
(Your next attack after swapping to this weapon while in combat
steals some health. Has a 10 second internal cool-down.Heals
the player for 975; unaffected by healing power.)

Superior Sigil of Blood
(+30% chance to life steal on critical. This effect cannot
trigger more than once every 2 seconds.Heals for 453 at level
80, and an additional 1 health for every 10 Healing Power.)

To try them out I went to a low level area, placed my Pet in non-combat state and got something to start attacking me. After waiting for my health bar to go down enough to notice a change I switched to a SSoL weapon. Sure enough my heath bar went up a bit – but there was no animation (such as you get when an NPC does this to YOU). I then tried the SSoB and the NPC was dead before I could notice anything.

Granted the SSoB appears to have very little chance at happening. I wonder if its worth bothering with at all. The same could be said of SSoL, while I did notice my health increase its likely not enough to make much difference in a fight.

Of course in many open world situations there’s always retreat but I was looking for another way to gain health when my Spring was on CD.

Current stats: At-2772, CrC-18%, Armor-2606, H-18552, CD-0%, HP-667, BM-30

Any suggestions?

I’ll answer your first question for you: F2 skills can’t be switched out. The other skills you see on your pet box are their default skills which they use on their own. Lets say you want a bear but don’t like the F2 on it, you would have to choose another F2 skill that suites your liking.

Peter.9406:

I’ll answer your first question for you: F2 skills can’t be switched out. The other skills you see on your pet box are their default skills which they use on their own. Lets say you want a bear but don’t like the F2 on it, you would have to choose another F2 skill that suites your liking.

Thanks Peter, I understand that some of the pet abilities they will do on their own but the question remains how do I change the F2 skill? (to more my liking?)

For the Brown Bear it remains “shake it off”. I can bring up the pet management menu and see the other 3 ‘F2’ abilities listed and have LEFT/RIGHT (with and without ctl) clicked on them to no avail.

Each pet has one and only one F2 ability. To change the F2 ability, you have to choose a different pet from the pet management menu, or swap between the two aquatic or terrestrial pets you currently have slotted with the F4 button.

He means choose another Bear who already has an F2 you enjoy more.
Each Pet’s F2 is indeed fixed.

For what it’s worth, Bears and Drakes are ‘tanky’ pets.
So they tend to use Chomp and Bite and Defy Pain in an SOS way already, when their HP reaches a certain point. This is actually one of the few cases where the parameters for a pet using a skill automatically ends up working out really well most of the time.

I think he means that he wants to slot the F2 with one of the basic pet skills, which you can’t do. Your pet automatically uses his basic skills (eg. the canine leap), the only skill you can use on command is the fixed F2 skill.

Controlling the pet’s basic skills is more complex, you have to recall them to your side with F3 and send them in to attack with F1 once their basic skill is off cooldown and they will usually execute that skill first. If you just leave them in attack mode, they will execute those skills as and when they are off cooldown. (obviously this info is for the OP, not you Vox )

Is that what you were asking, OP? If not, sorry for misunderstanding you.

Peter.9406:

I’ll answer your first question for you: F2 skills can’t be switched out. The other skills you see on your pet box are their default skills which they use on their own. Lets say you want a bear but don’t like the F2 on it, you would have to choose another F2 skill that suites your liking.

I meant to write, “… you would have to choose another BEAR with an F2 skill that suites your liking.” Sorry for that.