Guild Wars 2

I am sorry if this has been taken up before, but… I would love it if pets could try to move out of AoEs! As it is now, it is just standing there and it goes “tick, tick, tick, dead”. Every time a foe summons an AoE under my pet, I have to call said pet back to me to get it to move out of the damage circle and then send it pack at the foe from another direction so it does not run right back into the AoE.

I just call him back, wait, send him in, I rely heavily on my pet too so that not a big deal, but I do wish I could trait where he takes less aoe damage, or hell just that he takes less damage while running back to me would be great!!

Having our pets take a fraction of AoE damage would be a better idea, or else in situations like WvW or dungeons our pets wouldn’t actually do anything, they would just constantly be running away from the fight. As it stands now, they just die unless we call them back and forth or put them on passive and only use their F2.

I was thinking more of have it so they take a fraction of aoe damage, and then make a trait in BM or something where your pet takes less damage while returning to you (just tie it into compassion training since that ones pretty weak to begin with)

You could also; use a ranged damage pet (devourer or spider), force your opponent away from the AoE so the pet follows, interrupt your opponent when you can see he’s about to cast a spell, let the pet die and switch to your secondary, put the pet on passive and temporally use it to buff yourself, use the brown bears F2 skill which removes a condition, use the active ability of Signet of Stone to make your pet invulnerable for 6 seconds, or use traits that improves the pets health.

There’s a trait that improves your pets health? Or do you mean 30pts in BM and/or masters bond?

And I forgot about signet I stone… That is a very sexy signet…

Durzlla.6295:

There’s a trait that improves your pets health? Or do you mean 30pts in BM and/or masters bond?

And I forgot about signet I stone… That is a very sexy signet…

There are a lot of traits that increases the pets survivability.

• Marksmanship: Signets recharge 20% faster (for Signet of Stone)
• Skirmishing: Pets gain health on critical hits
• Wilderness Survival: You and your pet gains 2 seconds of protection when you dodge roll – You and your pet take 30% less damage when under 25% health
• Nature Magic: Any boon you get is shared with your pet – Regeneration you apply lasts 33% longer
• Beastmastery: Pet swapping recharges 20% faster – Pets recharge their skills 10% faster (some pets has a healing skill) – Increase the pets attributes on each kill – Pets heal for more – Pets F2 skill recharge faster (good for the Brown Bear and Fern Hound) – Pets have natural health regeneration

xerca.6135:

I am sorry if this has been taken up before, but… I would love it if pets could try to move out of AoEs! As it is now, it is just standing there and it goes “tick, tick, tick, dead”. Every time a foe summons an AoE under my pet, I have to call said pet back to me to get it to move out of the damage circle and then send it pack at the foe from another direction so it does not run right back into the AoE.

Your probably asking a bit much. Seems to me, the pathing is already questionable, in a lot of situations. Expecting pets to move around AOE to attack the enemy would certainly be nice but i’m not seeing that being implemented. F3 ftw

Now, I know we all like to play “Bash on WoW”, but 1 thing that game had right was pets.

Having played a Hunter for 2 years as my main, pets in GW2 seem like a step backwards. In WoW, sometime around Burning Crusade or Wrath (I don’t remember which), they gave pets AoE resistance. It was the most elegant solution, but it was the most effective. The issue with pet classes is I already have to focus on my player to dodge AoEs and the like, I can’t constantly keep track of 2 characters just to maintain a portion of my DPS other classes get to themselves.

Now I know someone is going to come in here and say “use the heel command”. That’s probably the least effective way to deal with AoE. Heel makes your pet run in a straight line back to you, so if there’s other AoE, you can kiss your pet good-bye. The best solution I’ve found so far is to just run with 2 devourers against bosses with heavy AoE and just swap between them to avoid it.

Yeah, I can’t remember pets much from WoW since I did not play hunter that often, but I do want to remember that they did not die quite as often. Sometimes, I wish the mob could keep aggro on me and ignore the pet, since I can stay alive much better than my pet can do. If it aggros on my pet, the pet goes down in a few hits (unless it is my bear) and I can’t constantly heal it either.

But if mobs can run away from my AoE circles, then it does not seem that unfair that the pet can run out of the mob’s AoE. Or just being more resistant against AoE damage.

The pet AI in general is not very impressive, but the lack of ability for them to deal with AoE is especially problematic. They also do not make any attempt to dodge or otherwise avoid enemy power attacks, such as Whirling Defense (which can be quite devastating to meleers like pets), and in group events they are generally dead before they even have the chance to use their F2 skill.

Granting pets increased resistance vs. AoE damage would certainly help, but improving their AI so that they try to avoid heavy damage would also be a step in the right direction (albeit a potentially challenging one from an AI programmer’s stand point).

And yes, we can make use of F3 and F1 for improved management. Unfortunately, that solution is not very effective, especially when you are dealing with multiple simultaneous AoEs, which happens rather frequently I’ve noticed. Additionally, managing pets in that way forces ranger players to be much more skilled at multitasking than other classes have to be to make effective use of their own class mechanics, and that is unfair and unbalanced in my opinion. Swapping pets can also be helpful, but there is such a long cooldown on pet swapping during combat, that you can only use that once for most battles, occasionally two or three times against Champion level boss targets in group events. On top of that, because you cannot then swap back again right away, it is generally better in my experience to let the pet die before swapping to the next one; that way you at least get the most out of the pet before switching it out for the next one.

However, despite the fact that I feel pets do need improvement, I do not find them to be entirely useless. A lot if it is learning to manage them properly, which as mentioned takes more interactive involvement than in most other MMOs (this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but takes practice and is difficult for people without high multitasking ability). Even in group events, you can improve pet survivability somewhat by holding them back until someone has established clear aggro from the enemy. This will save most pets from most non-AoE damage at least, but AoE attacks are still a major problem, and often will kill a pet before the master can even react and try to pull them back.

In short, I think the system has it’s good points, and there are ways to improve its usefulness through effective management of the mechanics involved. But it is not balanced, and it can be quite frustrating. As such, some improvements to pet AI and/or AoE damage reduction for pets is certainly appropriate.

One thing id like to see is that when i put my pet away, he stays put away tell i call him. So hard to keep a pet up in WvW, as he dies a lot faster then i do.