Guild Wars 2

I ranted in an earlier post about how your pet always attacked your target, and you couldn’t sic it on a different target than the one you were attacking. I stumbled onto a solution tonight:

Put the pet in passive mode (avoid combat).

Apparently passive mode doesn’t just mean the pet avoids combat if it’s attacked. It also means it does not respond to your attacks. It’ll just keep doing what it was doing before. If it wasn’t attacking anything, it will continue to not attack anything even if you attack.

But if it was attacking something, it will continue to attack that target even if you choose and attack a different target. This is probably a fortuitous bug – in passive mode your attacks do not send an “attack my target” command to the pet.

I’d prefer it if the aggressive setting worked the same way – being able to pick the pet’s target and having it auto-select its next target by itself when the first target dies is a lot more useful. But I’ll take what I can get.

It would be nice if we had a few more options on pet behavior “stances”.

1) Stick with your target.
2) Stay by my side and attack nearest to me w/ 600 (not my target)
3) Attack my target
4) Passive

Be nice if each “stance” would give us a bit of a bonus to the ranger.

Interesting find, thanks for pointing it out.

I ranted in an earlier post about how your pet always attacked your target, and you couldn’t sic it on a different target than the one you were attacking.
…
I’d prefer it if the aggressive setting worked the same way – being able to pick the pet’s target and having it auto-select its next target by itself when the first target dies is a lot more useful. But I’ll take what I can get.

Just keep it in guard and not avoid combat.

Engage (attack) the target you wish the pet to attack, hit F1, and then change to the target you wish to attack. Regardless of which target(s) you hit, your pet will remain locked onto the initial target until called away or swapped.

The issue is that pets will change targets when the Ranger enters combat. So, if you are out of combat and begin by locking the pet on Target A and then enter combat by attacking Target B, the pet will change targets and attack Target B.

Thus, the Ranger is required to be in combat first for the pet to stick to the desired target when using Guard instead of Avoid Combat. This grants passive target selection for when the pet defeats the desired foe.

Lunchbox.9543:

Thus, the Ranger is required to be in combat first for the pet to stick to the desired target when using Guard instead of Avoid Combat. This grants passive target selection for when the pet defeats the desired foe.

This doesn’t sound as good to me as OP’s workaround, which lets him pet target and then engage his enemy afterwards. For me at least, I would find it easier to do all the F1ing and target switching before you get aggro rather than after.

Still, it’s great that you figured this out. Someone else may like this way better.

Well, if you prefer the passive method, just remember to switch your pet back to Guard instead of Avoid Combat if you want him to attack the next target on his own. He will stay locked onto the desired target provided you are in combat when the change is made. This however requires a mouse click as opposed to hot keys, but tomato, tomato. I don’t think that works well in the written word.

I just press F1 on the target i want my pet to attack then choose the target i want to attack, and the pet continues attacking said target till target is out of range or dead no matter which stance my pet is in.

Suddenflame.2601:

I just press F1 on the target i want my pet to attack then choose the target i want to attack, and the pet continues attacking said target till target is out of range or dead no matter which stance my pet is in.

This. F2 however will make the pet attack my current target instead, which is fine by me. I don’t really understand the issue, care to elaborate?