Guild Wars 2

The amount of time a pet is actually able to attack and hit a target has to be one of the largest issues when it comes to the pet. This is affected by the amount of time it to reach the target, the amount of attacks that connect, and how long pets are on cool-down from going down.

Players have gap closers to reach the target easier and can attack while moving whereas the pet has no gap finishers and stops in place whenever it uses an attack. This slows down the amount of attacks a pet gets on a moving target.

From testing in the mists it’s easy to tell the massive effect this has on a pets DPS. When attacking a stationary heavy golem a feline will get 10 attacks in around 13 seconds. However, against a moving heavy golem a feline with 25% increased movement speed will take 20-30 seconds to make those 10 attacks depending on how well the pathing went.

A simple act like the opponent moving can basically halve a pets damage by reducing the amount of attacks it can make. Then you have the attacks that miss due to the slow projectile speed and cast times that decrease a pets effectiveness even further. With the recent changes to guard you will also have situations where your pet can’t help you at all, such as if you are shooting enemies from a tower in WvW.

Pet survivability and upkeep is equally if not more of a problem. Whenever a pet goes down you must switch it for another, and that other pet must now reengage the target costing time. If this second pet goes down quicker than the cool-down, you will be without a pet for what can be most of the fight.

In more difficult places like dungeons the pet is just too fragile. It goes down in just a few attacks and unlike the players who can dodge and use positioning to avoid damage, the pet can only be recalled which often isn’t enough.

But recalling your pet causes another problem. Whenever you recall a pet to pull it out of AoE or make it avoid an attack, it takes time to walk back to you, then you need to send it back in. This management not only takes attention away from the player character, but cuts the amount of time pets get to fight compared to a player. Players can use precise movements and dodge roll to avoid attacks, all while still attacking their target, while pets have to run back to their master, stand there for a while because their master is busy with other things, then run back once told to be sent back in.

Throw all this together and you have a pet which isn’t able to reliably fight because it’s either running around or dead most of the combat time. But why is all this an issue? Well because in order to balance the ranger, ANet weakens the player character to account for the pet.

But unlike other classes where they are happy to have their class mechanic, many of us find ourselves wanting to get rid of the pet as we would be better off having a stronger character than an unreliable pet following us around.

Something needs to be done about this. Players should be glad to have a pet with them in every situation, not wanting to get rid of it because of how unreliable they are.

+1 for your post.

It’s really sad that my pet doesn’t evade anything in combat.
If i recall it, it takes a LOT of time, mostly too much to get out of an Attack or even an AoE
It doesn’t evade with the player, which is extemely bad, especially in the ice fractal or similar ones.
The only reason I still use felines is that bears do less damage and die almost as fast as felines due not evading or coming back faster.

I’ve had a lot better luck now that I bound every pet action to my keyboard

I use the return to me button as a sort of makeshift dodge. If I see the thing winding up or an obvious aoe I just pull him back until it goes off then send him right back in. If the pet switch isn’t on CD then you can use that as an evade as well.

It doesn’t take all that much micromanagement once you bind them to friendlier keys, after awhile it’ll just be second nature.

I think also playing wvw and using pet switch for the haste buff really helped me learn to maximize my pets.

I run fern hound/wolf both of which have aoe skills, so I found there attacks are much easier to control if you just make him stick to you. Then you can hit the action whenever you want and it’ll activate near you, negating the problems of the pet not catching his target.

Not perfect fixes by any means, but we have to make do with what we have.

In all honesty, I would expect a flying pet to be able to assist in a case where your at the bottom and your seiging a location. Someone is all safe like on the top. A pet that flies behind you and to attack should be able to fly on up there and put pressure on their defenses.

The issue with pets mostly is if you tab target in a fight, or as you mentioned. the attack animations. Perhaps buff their damage a bit more near the end, where they share a little more of your stats. (I don’t think they do. But they should a little bit at least. given if your a ranger that trains all the time to hit a targets weak spots, your pet would have picked up on weak areas as well. So a high crit build would also increase pet crits)

Another thing to consider is that some pets seem to move and be there more then actually attack. Birds are the worst at that. Try to have them use their skill, and you have to time it out just right since they fly like bees. They have great synergy if you run a bleeding build yourself as the stacks would stay pretty high.

There are not so many great options in terms of depending on them for burst or yourself. Now a maxed traited pet is able to keep you alive if you afk and an undead stumbles by. But even then. Our elites have rampage as one. And I know that give me a little group of guys. Pull out my drake and his chaining lightning. Well then… 25 stacks of might is certainly where the fun is at. And that I would use an aoe of sorts to spread the love right back.

But theres one thing in skirmishing. Where critical hits grant might to your pet. Unless your chaining crits fast enough to stack anything. You need to attack in time for the half second might stack to allow your pet to attack. Maybe if surrounded and you use whirling defense, or barrage. Then you would be fine to stack em.

Pets are great, except they are not exactly reliable in the moving department. Since players tend to move around a lot more instead of pew pew or smashie smash. Making pets far more ideal in a pve environment in my final opinion. Great buffs and I am sure that if you wanted to be support, you could keep groups alive with some of the healing ones+compassion training. (which would work great with lick wounds or ‘search and rescue’ to bring someone back up.)