Guild Wars 2

It didn’t hit me until now that I realized if all Professions have the ability to dodge and roll at their own will and control to evade attacks, why not introduce something similar with pets. Specifically for Ranger’s and their pets.

A unique system (or rather a skill) that allows pet’s to execute an ‘evasive animation’ which allows a couple seconds (roughly 2 seconds at most) of evasion.

There’s two ways to approach this. Either by pure percentaged chance or an assigned key button.

By chance:

• This would all be determined by a percentage of chance to succeed or ‘initialize’ when the pet is in combat, either being attacked or attacking a target.
• The maneuver will be merged with the ‘F1’ normal attack ability, as a passive ability determined by pure chance.
• To increase the chance of success that the pet performs the ‘evasive animation’, a new Trait must be added under ‘Beastmastery’ to increase the chances by atleast 10% maximum (debatable). 20 Beastmastery points is required to unlock this trait.
• Without the new trait, the pet has a base chance of 30% of performing the ‘evasive maneuver’ either being attacked or attacking a target.
• The new trait could be called Beast Agile Stance. (feel free to expand on this)
• Immediately after the animation is over, the pet will return to its attacking status.
• The maneuver cannot be performed more than 3 times. After 3 times it must have a cooldown of 30 seconds. (debatable)

By control:

• Assign a new F- key to instantaneously control the pets ‘evasive maneuvers’.
• No cast-time.
• Immediate initialization.
• Immediate return to attacking target(s) after use.
• Interrupts all current actions of the pet to perform the ‘evasive maneuver’.
• Reasonable Cooldown after use (up to Anet)
• A new trait to correspond with this would be to add 5 seconds of swiftness to the pet whilst performing the ‘evasive maneuver’.
• Trait name? Beast’s Athleticism.

Now ofcourse, when an animation is involved with an ability, the duration of the animation must be smooth and most importantly quick. Especially for this case its an ‘evasion’ so its only reasonable that the animation be swift and fast at no more than 2 seconds. 3 seconds max even. During that time interval evasion will be 100% active.

A couple ideas on the evasive animation would be to show the pet swiftly pouncing left and right, as if side-stepping in rapid motion. Arguable ofcourse but feel free to expand on this imagination.

These are just raw ideas, but the main idea here is giving the pet some versatile defence capabilities WHILST it is on offensive. Share your ideas and feel free to expand on them. If you don’t like this idea, simply say so and just move on. No harm no foul.