Guild Wars 2

If I understood correctly, everything depends on the rangers HP, thus as long as the rangers HP is above 90% the pet will take 50% less damage.

Did I understand it correctly? If so this is huge for both PvE and WvW content

Yes. I’m taking it with a grain of salt, though. It’s good, but I can’t help but feel that the new Bark Skin was Anet’s solution to give that -50% AOE damage we wanted for our pets when sending them into a zerg or bosses that spam deadly AOEs.

It’s a step in the right direction. In a realistic situation I’m not sure how much this changes things though. In PvE your pets should never, ever die unless they get hit with something that would kill them no matter what kind of damage reduction they get (lupi for example). A WvW melee zerg ranger’s pet is still going to explode in a fraction of a second, and a LB ranger’s pet isn’t sent into a zerg fight to begin with.

add it all up for the pet

50% less damage while above 90% hp (which i think should be 75% hp for the pet) 90%s only going to work on drakes , hounds , a defo bears others are too low hp pool to make any real use of it.

but still

50%+33% and 5% from oakheart while they have regen.
87% damage reduction for the pet. while above 90%
37% while below 90%
considering we will clearly have enough regen going around if you do use fortifying bond.

87% reduction while skirmishing is going to be huge , even on a zerg where you as a ranger will be Protecting flanks alone with thiefs and mesmers alike, with DH comming to we could see some healing.
defo a right step.

Zenos, what i understood is that as long as the ranger is over 90% pet will always take 50% less damage

Last I checked, the -5% damage reduction from Oakheart Salve only applies for the Ranger.

Oakheart Salve: Gain 5s of regeneration when you suffer from bleeding, poison or burning. While under the effects of regeneration you take 5% less damage. This trait has a 10 second internal cooldown.

Throwing this out here for those who didn’t watch the stream: the developers made a point about the new bark skin. The specifically stated that it halves any incoming damage while active. That is to say, if you have 10k health and someone wallops you for 5k, you will only take 2.5k. This system extends to the pet.

They said that example in relation to the ranger himself and not the pet specifically. Ah well we will see next tuesday.

Can that really be true?

I like the new bark skin and I think it will make a huge impact on pet survivability, especially with insta-cast guard now you can flag the pet on the fly out of the heaviest fire. However, I will miss old bark skin, can’t count the number of times it has saved me in 2v1’s so I wish they would combine the two. Have the new effect only work on the pet using the new function, then the old bark skin will only apply to us at the old threshhold. That way, we are rewarded with a tougher pet by keeping ourselves healthy, then we get some tankiness when we are closer to going down (and when our pets would most likely be dead anyway)

If nothing else, it is a step in the right direction as it reduces the chance a pet will be insta-gibbed. Whether or not it is “enough” will be seen through playtesting and number crunching once everything has settled after the big patch and the likely balance changes that will follow in its wake.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Last I checked, the -5% damage reduction from Oakheart Salve only applies for the Ranger.

Oakheart Salve: Gain 5s of regeneration when you suffer from bleeding, poison or burning. While under the effects of regeneration you take 5% less damage. This trait has a 10 second internal cooldown.

ok then 83% for the pet xd its still huge.

It’s a pretty neat buff to pet in “open world pve” since if you’re using LB, you’re more than likely stay at 90% hp range

Chokolata.1870:

Zenos, what i understood is that as long as the ranger is over 90% pet will always take 50% less damage

yes while above 90% you won;t be anywhere near heavy combat , and to get the most use out it , trait Heal as one + some healing power for a strong regen it will negate a lot of incomming damage to you though to successfuly use this Axe is perfect it close enough but not too far away , this will work mostly with proper beastmaster builds , Power, toughness , condi + some healing specs no crit damage for the ranger because the pet provides a lot of the crits when your going to be buffing it into a juggernaut.

just make sure to balance your hp pool so you have a good 2k buffer above 90% hp so i’d guess 22-26k is perfect for this and HaO will easly bring it back up to above 90% MDG will kick in if you get focused hard thoug you’d heal it back up quite well.

ignoring a pet that is buffed like this will quickly lead to a targets death because they are chasing its master only increases the pets power.

in gw1 most beastmaster builds where only beatable by ether fully focusing the pet/ pets dead or dualing damage vs both master + pet to have better pressure.

though back then it still heavly relied on Heal as one just as it will Now in gw2.

its going to be awsome.

This will be great for Mai Trin, Archdiviner, Land Mossman, ect. Even though you can already park a group behind a double bear tank for easy lightning stacking, this will make them extremely hard for her to kill and the swapping a lot more fluid.

The other 2 are already bosses that prefer targets in their tunnel vision, now you can just stack behind them and lolol to the bank. (Except Mossman’s double axe attack, that is random target)

RaO, Remoseless, GS is going to be aoe vuln city for Rangers, might not even need Quick Swap double GS shenanigans.