Guild Wars 2

Currently, the F2 (activated) skills of many companions either:

a) Do not work instantly and can have up to a 5 second delay

b) Only work after several attempts at mashing F2

c) Will cancel themselves and go on a cooldown without using the skill if F2 if mashed too much trying to get the skill to activate

This is a major issue for myself as a level 80 Ranger, and has been a thorn in my side since i started at level 1. Patch notes from several days indicate this should be fixed. It is not. I’m posting this here in hopes other Rangers will share in my pain.

*Note: some pets do have instant activated skills, such as the shark or jaguar, most others however do not.

Definitely a confirmed problem across the board… Disheartening when you smash F2 in combat for 2-3 seconds and nothing happens.

yes this is serious issue pls look at it

From my post on reddit about the issue:

“I think it’s an animation problem. Most of the f2 abilities go through this long animation sequence before the ability triggers. I’m thinking if the pet is already in an attack animation when you hit f2, it wont register. Also I have issues where if you hit the ability multiple times it will interrupt itself and the ability will lock out for a short time.

They really need to rework pet attack mechanics. My pet has a very rough time landing hits on moving targets because it stops to go through an attack animation every time it swipes and the target has already moved out of range before the attack lands."

The lack of responsiveness is because if you hit F2 and your pet is already casting another ability, it completely ignores the F2 ability like you never pressed it. This is a big problem for reliability in PvP, because taking several seconds to spam F2 while neglecting other abilities can be the difference between life and death.

If nothing else, the F2 ability should queue behind whatever ability is currently casting and cast immediately after. Ideally, imo, it would override any other abilities being cast and be given priority whenever F2 is pressed.

Another issue is that pet abilities can’t be cast on the move, and have a long cast time. I understand the willingness to give players a chance to react to pet abilities, but the combination of immobilizing the pet and the long cast time makes it very difficult to land the ability with any degree of consistency.

In my opinion, the ideal fix is to keep the cast time (and possibly reduce it slightly) but ditch the immobilization and allow it to be cast on the move. This is particularly relevant when trying to use abilities against fleeing opponents.

Amen. Huge issue with Rangers. I hate pets to begin with, but when the only useful ability they give me doesn’t work when I need it to, I get really upset.

At the very least pressing F2 should queue the skill to fire off once the current animation is finished. It’s plainly buggy the way it is now.

If it’s possible for a ranger to interrupt casting something like Rapid Fire (longbow) in order to use another skill, why should it not be possible for a pet to cancel their current animation or skill and perform the requested F2 activated skill? This would help tremendously and create a lot more usefulness to the pet mechanic. At this point, I’m done even try to use F2 skills of other pets, and will stick to ones I know are instant. This means I won’t be using 90% of the pets, which is a shame, as I’d love to give all my pets some playtime.

Ryand.8419:

A fix for part b) is in the works. This should also help mitigate the issues of part c) since you won’t have to mash F2 so much, though I am also aware of this issue.

Part a) varies depending on each pet, so perhaps a list of the ones that are particularly troublesome could help to get them looked at =)

I’ve noticed this to be the biggest issue with the brown bear’s “Shake it Off.” I’ve gotten to the point where I replaced the pet with a different bear, because by the time the ability finally went off, whatever condition I was trying to remove had already fallen off by itself.

I figured out that when You have shark as a pet he don’t have F2 problem and act quickly but another pets still have problems

I get this issue mostly with my Jungle Stalker pet.

Eagle is a big offender here for me. I like to imagine I am shouting at him and he’s ignoring me.

I’ve found the UI overall to be sluggish and slow, its extremely pronounced with the Ranger pet F2 ability. But I find myself many times spamming a key to get an ability to go off. I love the game, but the UI is very slow.

The AoE chill applied by the Alpine Wolf often takes about 5 seconds to actually go into effect from the time I hit F2 (20 times, because the first 19 did nothing), to the time I see the chill effect get applied to my opponent. This is extremely frusterating because the lack of responsiveness makes the pet ability unreliable in pvp, as well as when fighting veteran/champion mobs.

I have had the same issue with the leap from the snow leopard. Takes about 20 attempts to make him actually use the ability, and then takes about 5 seconds for him to actually leap at the enemy.

I’m aware that Anet wants to make the pets have an ability animation, but these animations are often affecting the reliability and usefulness of the pet simply because they take too long, or they apply their effect far too late.

For example. I open on a warrior with Barrage and my pet runs in. As the warrior leaves the pulsing aoe slow field, I want my pet to apply his chill. In the following 5 seconds, the warrior has used bolas, bull’s charge, hundred blades and eviscerate. As I die, I see chill applied.

Woopdee freaking doo.

When I tell my pet jump, I want him to jump, not stretch out, growl, think about why he should even listen, then jump. When I say attack, he attacks right away. When I say retreat, he retreats right away. Why when I say “USE YOUR ABILITY” does he take 5 seconds to decide to use it? I yell LEAP AT THE WARRIOR, I want him to be taking that warrior out immediately, not once the warrior is already on top of me.

I find my biggest trouble is with the underwater jellyfish. At times I can go through na entire event without thekittenskill triggering.

it happens with my jungle stalker, polar bear, and shark. basically, if it is a ranger pet, then you can see this exact behavior.

oh yea, also, my hyena.

I’ve noticed it some, but I’ve also noticed on f2 plus other abilities the bar begins to flash a kind of sucked into a wormhole effect that I’ve come to understand that the ability is next in queue waiting on another ability to finish. So I’m 50/50 on things working as intended and actually bugged.

It is also somewhat of an issue with the Spirit slot abilities. When you try to use a spirit ability it take about 3 sec for the ability to actually go off.

The casting time on F2 for Pigs ends up bothering me for an unusual reason. I actually don’t mind how long it takes, but it bothers me that the pet doesn’t root itself in place to complete the cast. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve shifted ever so slightly and the Pig’s interrupted itself to madly dash in front of me.
Annoying in PvE, crazy irritating in PvP.

Ryan Diederich.8179:

A fix for part b) is in the works. This should also help mitigate the issues of part c) since you won’t have to mash F2 so much, though I am also aware of this issue.

Part a) varies depending on each pet, so perhaps a list of the ones that are particularly troublesome could help to get them looked at =)

Thanks for the reply Ryan. I find my most affected pets are the Jellyfish, the Brown Bear, and Jungle Stalker. These should be compared to the Shark and Jaguar, which are both pretty much instant.

I wish the pets were something we could chose to not use. Their overall ineffectiveness and constant micro-management are a burden. I wish they were a Trait we would spec into, similar to GW1.

Trimethicon.7405:

I wish the pets were something we could chose to not use. Their overall ineffectiveness and constant micro-management are a burden. I wish they were a Trait we would spec into, similar to GW1.

It’s our profession specific mechanic, so I doubt that will happen.

Arrowstorm.3941:

Trimethicon.7405:

I wish the pets were something we could chose to not use. Their overall ineffectiveness and constant micro-management are a burden. I wish they were a Trait we would spec into, similar to GW1.

It’s our profession specific mechanic, so I doubt that will happen.

I understand that, but that sums up my feelings.

I second the eagle.

@Ryan, in response to asking which pets have the most severe delay or issues, I know this is going to sound whiny, however I’ve played 120 hours+ as Ranger and have played with all the pet varieties and none feel as responsive as you NEED them to be.

I play a lot of spvp and the fact that pet abilities do not act like any other profession abilities (for example the engineer, whose profession abilities all activate immediately) is very frustrating. As an example, when an ally is downed and is about to be finished by an enemy what I would like to do is have my wolf fear them away from my downed ally. However what happens is my ally gets downed, the wolf howls, but the enemy is already out of range. This is a common occurrence across many situations and abilities.

I will still continue to play Ranger as I love this class, but the pet abilities are such a vital and important part of the Ranger that they really need to be fixed. Personally I would like them to be insa-cast and perhaps increase the range on some pet abilities (I’ve been having a lot of trouble with the arachnid abilities).
Thanks!

As much as I hate pets in general, I actually liked that we were able to use them as an F2 abuse button. I didn’t care to micro-manage them so if they died, they died, but at least I was given an extra ability that I could actually use.

That’s why I play Ranger in Gw2. We have the option to use their abilities to synergize with our own play. Its really annoying when I get myself killed because my Pet was stubborn and wouldn’t use their ability when I asked them to.

The polar bear’s F2 is really slow. It seems paired to the stand-up animation which seems to play in slow motion when F2 is hit.

Ryan Diederich.8179:

A fix for part b) is in the works. This should also help mitigate the issues of part c) since you won’t have to mash F2 so much, though I am also aware of this issue.

Part a) varies depending on each pet, so perhaps a list of the ones that are particularly troublesome could help to get them looked at =)

frankly, b) wan’t fixed properly I’m afraid, for example, jelly fishes’ whirl skill always have no response at all, you have to always count on your luck whenever you press f2 for its skill.
and for a), too many pets have their skill delays, like stalker’s mighty roar, it takes 3 second for buff works, and drake’s breath takes 4 seconds, fern hound’s regeneration takes 2 seconds, etc.

Ryan Diederich.8179:

A fix for part b) is in the works. This should also help mitigate the issues of part c) since you won’t have to mash F2 so much, though I am also aware of this issue.

Part a) varies depending on each pet, so perhaps a list of the ones that are particularly troublesome could help to get them looked at =)

So far I’ve encountered this issue with the following to a severe degree:

All birds (Haven’t checked Moas yet)
Both wolves
All drakes

I’ve not tested any others yet, but I will shortly. The pets listed above all took several seconds and several prompts to even begin casting their skill, and if I would swap to one and quickly try and use the skill then it would simply go on a shorter cooldown without doing anything, but the opportunity for which I swapped for will still have passed.

The Polar Bear also takes a few seconds (3’ish) for Icy Roar, and the animation which stops him in his place, to work, at that point the player is too far away to be affected. I stopped using it.

Just adding in here that I’ve been having the same issue. For me, running around in PVE it’s the river drake (and could actually be any F2 ability where the pet needs to stand still and the F2 ability has a cast / charge up time).

In PVP? I never use my pets’ F2 ability, that’s how bad it is.

However, I know for a fact that these pet issues will be fixed by you guys, and when that happens, jumping into a PVP battle with a pet I can rely on is going to be absolutely awesome! ^^

Good luck guys.

About the particularly troublesome ones:

Lynx or other pouncing cats: goes through a short crouching animation before pouncing. Not that long, but the target can often have already moved from its location by the time it actually executes the pounce attack.

Jungle Stalker roar takes about 3 seconds being stationary before the roar goes off. Same with dog howls. I think moa’s screeches work ok.

Those are the main ones I use. I’m sure others would like to contribute.

Also one of the biggest problems with the ranger class and pets is that they are stationary on every attack. This makes attacking moving targets very difficult and is particularly a problem in PVP. Please see this quick video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccHupZ-j_wk

Notice that the pet is frequently missing attacks on this mobile training dummy. Are there any plans to address this attack animation issue and let pets attack and move at the same time? My pet is missing too many attacks to be an effective partner in PVP.

Edit: Here’s another video with the pet both traited for movement speed and given the swiftness boon so you know its not a movement speed issue either: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVjCGsg3LpE

Ryan Diederich.8179:

A fix for part b) is in the works. This should also help mitigate the issues of part c) since you won’t have to mash F2 so much, though I am also aware of this issue.

Part a) varies depending on each pet, so perhaps a list of the ones that are particularly troublesome could help to get them looked at =)

First and Foremost is the Jellyfish family… my god it takes them freaking years before they finally use their F2 skill and by the time they get it off the moment of wanting it used is long gone…

Drakes -can- be bad but are usually fine…

I TOO have encountered this problem a vast amount of times..

This is kind of a nuisance, but I’ve noticed a workaround:

If you pet swap often, then the pet’s f2 skill often isn’t up before it’s changed out. When the pet first comes out, before it uses another skill, tell it to f2.

Although it’s not always at an ideal time and it’s still a little finicky (like bears need a target before you f2 or they’ll just swing at the air), at least I can get at least one f2 skill off with ease on each pet swap. Something to try while we wait for a fix.

The problem is the priority of a) for the pet ITSELF. Here, let me paint you a picture of my everday problem:

I send my White Raven… sorry, I meant my Eagle because I can’t use the White Raven due to lack of stats… into the fight by using F2. The enemy is far and wide, I do not attack, only put the target up and press F2. To make sure every tests runs the same I wait 30 seconds to have every cooldown of my pet reset:

Sometimes my Eagle does “Quickening screech” when I press F2. Sometimes it does not.
Sometimes it immediately starts to attack the Enemy with the F2 skill, in this case Lacerating Slash. I can see this because it applies Bleeding onto the enemy. But sometimes, instead of the anticipated bleed, I see a stack of Vulnerability from the skill “Swoop”, and THEN comes the hit from the F2 skill.
I know, sometimes a pet gets interrupted before it can execute its F2 skill. This is something people often forget. But since I know that, this is why I tried this against monsters that HAVE no interrupt to observe the lack of the execution from “Lacerating Slash”

So whatever goes bonkers here, is clearly that the pet does not get the top priority of doing things once the player hits F2. I am as far as to say that it should interrupt ANY action the pet currently does, and put it on the interrupt cooldown of 2 or 3 seconds of failed execution.

I tend to have the biggest issues with these with the pets that attack quickly like cats and birds. However all pets are guilty of this, it just doesn’t override the auto-attack or whatever intrinsic skill is being used by the pet. Mashing happens about 90% of the time for me currently.

Wolf (Terrifying Howl) F2 ability does not activate sometimes during combat while hes chasing someone. Maybe my wolf could have his knockdown or cripple ability qued up to use when it is chasing a target and delays the use of his f2 (just an idea). Sometimes I need that ability to start casting immediately. I think my f2 commands to my pet should cancel his current command, then cast the ability, then reengage. Ideally this would happen seamlessly but realistically i just need the f2 to go off when i hit f2.

Have this problem with my Moa Birds all the time.

You should also take a look at cone targeted ability’s like the drakes lightning one or moa’s screech they miss 100% of the time because the enemy just walks past them or to the other side which makes them miss or just cancel the ability.

This is even more of a problem in Spvp, maybe you could make the pet lock on to the enemy when they cast it and turn to face them constantly while casting it.

Ryan Diederich.8179:

So perhaps a list of the ones that are particularly troublesome could help to get them looked at =)

Blue Jellyfish + Rainbow Jellyfish: Chilling Whirl

You either have to start the combat with F1 then F2 (F1 first or they don’t use their special on your target, and just go spinning off into the water on a random angle instead wasting the skill anyway and agroing everything else in the area), or it is almost impossible to get them to use F2 at all during the fight.

ituhata.6830:

I’ve noticed it some, but I’ve also noticed on f2 plus other abilities the bar begins to flash a kind of sucked into a wormhole effect that I’ve come to understand that the ability is next in queue waiting on another ability to finish.

I’ve also noticed that flash – I have been looking for it specifically – and for the Jellyfish most of the time the ability still doesn’t activate despite that flash going off. The UI shows that I tried to queue the skill…but it seems that the skill queue got dropped.

The only thing I can think is that my Ranger activating their skills seems to be cancelling the pet’s queued skill. If I stop activating anything myself (just leaving the auto-attack going), the Jellyfish seem a little more likely to actually activate their F2 in combat. Any time I hit the harpoon gun skills 2 or 3 after asking the pet to do it’s F2 skill, the pet skill never goes off. (Skills 4 and 5 are more situational – I don’t activate them anywhere near as often).

The Jellyfish have a long auto-attack animation…if the pet skills are being put into the same skill queue as the player’s next skill activation so that the player’s skills are overwriting the request for the pet to use it’s skill in the skill queue, it could explain some of the unresponsiveness of the pets. If that is the case, it desperately needs to be fixed – the pet is supposed to be in addition to the ranger, not instead of the ranger.

Murellow often requires a bit of button mashing before he’ll let one loose.

I am in full agreement with everyone here. I mainly use wolves and terrifying howl is ridiculously unresponsive.

I noticed this on most my pets, so in all honesty i think they should all be looked at, seeing that this would take considderable time i think ‘we’ as a ranger community should wait for this fix for b) and see if this will fix issues on the pets we use …

I can say that for the pets i use now: white crow, crow, hyena, red moa … the issue of slow response and having to order my pet multiple times, to the whole ‘skill just goes into recharge without doing anything’ happens to all of them… as for water creatures, same thing, the rainbow jelly and the armored fish suffer from the same thing…

F2 is completely broken on the Stalker. I try to use it to buff and 8/10 times it doesn’t work. The pet would go through the animation but I would get no buff but yet the F2 go into refresh mode. I actually think hitting F2 twice will cancel the buff…

Other times, it wouldn’t even do an animation and it just sits there. This often happens if you’ve called the pet back with F3 or if you’ve swapped the pet a few times.

- Polar bear can be very slow.
- Raven is slow but not nearly as bad.
- Marsh drake is ridiculously slow to the point of me giving up on that pet entirely

The Eagle and Hawk are the two worst in my opinion. Even if I do mash F2 they still don’t like to cast their skill.

Our pets suck unless you have a bare minimum of 15 points spent in beast mastery. with 15 points at least you can use them as buff bots. They are completely useless in everything except solo game play. At 30 in beast mastery, my bears will take a dirt nap in dungeons before the 15 sec swap timer is up and this is while I am actively controlling it to avoid big hits.

In Pvp they are EASILY (did I mention EASILY) avoided by just side stepping. They can not touch a moving target and the ranged pets can not hit a moving target because the projectile speed is so slow. This is assuming your pet lives longer than 5 secs in a mass battle.

In a 1 on 1 fight the pets have some semi usefulness be it PvP or PvE. otherwise they are best used as quicking buffers and set to non attacking stance.

Add all the above AND the f2 skill problems and you get a crappy class mechanic that we have been “balanced” around twice in beta.

I think they need to do away with the cast time on pet abilities. Especially with the AOE ones, this can make it impossible to get off on a target you’re aiming for in PvP.