Guild Wars 2

Okay, so we all know by now that pets die way too easily in some areas of the game, effectively making our “class mechanic” useless; this really needs to change if Anet wants to ensure proper balance for the Ranger class.

Here are a few of my basic suggestions to amend pet survivability:

Pet survivability

• Any time a skill provides an “evade” state for the player, the pet gains 2 seconds of protection.
• Any time the player uses a block the pet gains 2 seconds of protection
• Lighting reflexes: gives 2 seconds of protection to your pet (in addition to it’s current effects).
• Pets share agony resistance with the player (why don’t we already have this one?!?)

Also:

• Pet f2’s should take priority over any other pet action; when I hit the button the next (“aggressive”) action a pet should take is to use their f2 (I shouldn’t have to feel like I need to spam the stupid thing to get it to work, but if you spam it and aren’t careful it just does some stupid reset thing…)
• Calling the pet back to you toggles the pet into “Guard” mode; commanding your pet to attack toggles the pet into “Attack” Mode (essentially streamline some of the pet commands by combining the pet state toggle and attack/heel commands)

Anyways, discuss.

I have found with 15 points in beast mastery that my pet survives well. There are situations when it falls like being badly outnumbered or facing a hard-hitting champion.

JohnLShannonhouse.1820:

I have found with 15 points in beast mastery that my pet survives well. There are situations when it falls like being badly outnumbered or facing a hard-hitting champion.

The problem lies in any situation that actually matters; 90% of open world content is cake walk… Against champions (especially in dungeons) pets often just feel useless compared to other classes mechanics.

The biggest problems lie with champion AOEs and extreme status effects like Agony. If pets didn’t just stand there and take it up the rear or act completely confused when you try to call them back, there wouldn’t be a problem.

I mean, I’ll often dodge out of an AOE that the Champion is about to use while trying to call my pet back, and my pet will pretty much run in circles for a second before finally deciding to run back; by that time the stupid thing dies from the Champions attack.

If they aren’t or can’t fix the dumb AI, then they may as well provide some survivability support for the pet based on the players own ability to play.

The majority of my pet complaints could be fixed by giving the pet evasion for 1 second when I hit F3. I need some way to micro manage my pet to dodge AoEs like players can.

I would change pets so, that they could rally whenever a foe dies. Could help in dungeons.

How about a trait which effect is that pets don’t aggro mobs? Could help a lot in PvE if you want to get somewhere quickly.