Guild Wars 2

I have to say that ANet has been doing a great job on improving the Ranger since launch, but one thing still bothers me and that is our F2 abilities.

I can’t speak for PvE and in Spvp but in WvW (which is what I do the most), the pets and their F2 abilities are just meaningless. Because my pet(s) are dead before I can blink, us Rangers can only rely on builds that only benefit the Ranger and never have access to the pets F2 abilities or have trouble execute them properly vs large numbers. The ranger gets penalized for dead pets because we lose 30%+ of our damage, we have to wait 60 secs for each pet to revive and have no access to our F2 abilities. This is really unfair and a major issue that holds us Rangers back.

I had an idea last night about fixing this issue (& I bet 800 other players came up with this idea too or better ones ^_-):

If the pet is on passive or dead the Ranger should be able to still use their pets F2 abilities through the Ranger. Meaning: If I have a River Drake out and if it‘s on passive or dead, the Ranger will cast the Drake’s Lightening breath F2 ability. Yes, some F2 skills might need to be tweaked such as the jaguar’s Stalk F2 but we should be able to use these skills regardless of the pet being dead.

There might be better options to fixing the F2 abilities but this is a major issue and I know I am not alone about this.

Thank you.

I do agree that a pet cannot tank that much dmg, but that’s also the reason why I have a ranged and a melee pet..

If I encounter (WvW) one or two players, the melee pet will do its magic (and since it runs towards the player and doesn’t stand next to me attacking I can easily stealth with LB#3 and keep them clueless as to where I am).
In larger battles, I mostly take out the spider (ranged + immob + poison). If that pet dies, the odds are I’m about to drop dead also (being berserker). :-)

Also (as I’m sure you are aware of, just wanted to mention it again): Switch pet before it dies, gives you a recharge of 20 seconds instead of 60..

Yeah i made a thread about our poor F abilities couple of weeks ago so +1

Seen it. The suggestion I prefered was, when the pet is on passive, or dead, the F2 ability remains deactivated, but changes to a passive buff. So having a bear, for instance would give you might while near you. A cat fury. A bird swiftness. Something along those lines. (Maybe not swiftness, cause they might upset other classes, but you get the idea.)

Kal, that suggestion could actually fix pets for WvW with some tweaking… I have seen a few suggestions along this line over the past couple months and the more I think about it the more fond of it I become.

If pets on passive became invulnerable and provided a specific buff based on pet or family it could make up for what we lose by having the pet and allow us to be competitive in situations where the pet is not usable. If bears granted protection / stability augments, cats granted condition augmenting effects, dogs might or power augments, moas condition stripping and so on and so on, this could actually make up for the near 40% of our damage we lose by not being able to use it.

The actual passives would have to be very carefully thought out so as to not be overpowered, but my (and others) biggest argument against this whole pet system is how ineffective it is in any gameplay areas where the pet has to confront an intelligence or situation that is beyond the scope of standard mob AI. Sacrificing easily 1/3 of damage and utility to something you can’t use in many situations warrants some significant buffage on passive mode to make up for that sacrifice in my mind though… I just wouldn’t want to see something implemented that would push us over some ledge and result in re-tooling of all of our other mechanics to compensate.

Either way, I’d sure love to see full control of pet abilities… even as an option. EZmode by default, crazy-micro by option.

I’ll use Howl quite often … but only right up against a Gate to fear whoever is on the other side. Or I’ll put the wolf in Stealth and run it to the back of a huddle and fear them directly towards us or sometimes off a cliff or their own tower Walls… It’s not very effective but it’s a funny WvW troll move and in WvW, there’s really no such thing as a “Score” anymore. So that only leaves Troll moves for keeping score.

Even profs that used to get Badges faster have just been upstaged by this latest AP rewards update giving so many pure PvE carebears (who gave up on WvW the instant they couldn’t finish one of its Jump Puzzles without a fight) … like 2000 Badges for collecting titles that are 90% against the dumbest A.I. mobs in the game.