Guild Wars 2

(Please do not troll this thread; this is more directed for an official answer)

trying to get an official stament on why F2 was changed

Also @anet why not just let rangers control each pet skil?
(we are beast masters, so it would seem silly that we can only make our pets 1 do specific action)

Or at the very least lets us choose what action we want our pets to perform.

Thanks.

Panda – Really not trying to troll here…. but do you honestly think they’ll answer us?

Do they ever?

Just put a trait that can only be selected on Beastmastery which allows us to control our pets skills , and also maybe make some hidden tracks of pets for us to find some new pets too? Like we rangers will have a special passive which enables us to find tracks of animals that are juvenile , so we won’t need to search in the Ranger Forum if someone has tamed someone

I think they will unless so many will complain about it?

oshilator.4681:

Panda – Really not trying to troll here…. but do you honestly think they’ll answer us?

Do they ever?

worth a shot; let’s just leave this discussion at that.

My hypothesis is that Irenio might have felt that using the Smokescale’s most damaging skill on F2 trigger meant it’d feel more rewarding to use.

If so, then he was mistaken. It merely reduced triggering the F2 skill to be a attention-tax for more damage; even if it can be triggered at the peak of shout-buffs to deliver more damage.

Smoke Cloud was a more satisfying F2 trigger because we had incentive to use it tactically, when we chose to have the Smokescale (and ourselves as well if we were meleeing next to it). Also, unlike many past pets, it triggered near instantly, which made the Smokescale feel very responsive.

Smokefield F2 rewarded intelligent and tactical play.

Smoke assault F2 I wish I could put on autocast as it is a no-brainer DPS spike that should be cast as soon as it is off cooldown for maximum DPS. Skills like that should be relegated to the AI, as they can be trusted to proc that skill as soon as it is up and in range.

The smokefield, however, the AI cannot be trusted with, due to things like the AI overwriting more beneficial fields that a party wishes to blast, and lowering the overall damage of the pet due to them using 1-2 seconds to throw a potentially useless smokefield instead of contributing to the fight in key moments where you need that little extra damage from your pet.

Giving rangers control of the field makes smokescale a highly versatile pet, with good sustained damage and excellent utility for those who can make tactical use of an on-demand field.

I think the nerf in damage was highly warranted, (12k smoke assaults on squishy players wasn’t fair at all) but the change in the F2 skill is in my opinion a misstep that only serves to spoil what was a great pet.