Guild Wars 2

“Protect Me”: Your pet grants 5 seconds of protection and removes 2 conditions from Allies in a 600 radius. Also breaks Stuns on affected allies. 45 second cooldown

The reasoning behind this is that rangers already have Signet of Renewal and Signet of Stone as good personal defenses against power or condition spike. This change would turn protect me into a very strong team play utility. IMO, Rangers need at least a few abilities like this to increase their viability in WvW especially.

“Sic ’Em”: Your pet becomes immune to Conditions and gains 40% damage for 10 seconds. Its first attack applies revealed for 6 seconds. 30 second CD.

Basically, Sic ’Em is currently overpowered against thieves because the revealed is instant. Instead I suggest lowering the cooldown slightly and making the pets first attack dodgeable so that there is counterplay to the revealed. Pets are also very weak to conditions in general, so this just adds more pet survivability.

“Guard”: 20 second cooldown, Your pet gains 10 seconds of stealth and aggressively guards an area with a radius of 600. Allies in the area take 10% reduced damage. This ability also removes the pet leash and allows you to leave your pet in an area while fighting somewhere else. However, your pet will not be able to chase enemies outside of this area, and if the ability is reused or if you swap pets, the pet will port back to your side.

“Search and Rescue”: Currently, this ability is very underpowered with an extremely long cooldown, and the pet res is not fast enough to prevent a stomp. I’d probably first lower the cooldown to 40-60 seconds on this and see if it starts being played in any serious builds. Another option would be to have your pet grant stealth to a downed ally and then attempt to res. I think this ability could be balanced well if it was tweaked enough.

The only counterplay against stealth is too strong? Sorry, but we’re speaking about a skill only against stealth thieves or stealth mesmer and about 6 seconds. In my opinion, the skill is too low, because of his very special counterplay function. Your idea of sic’em is not counterplay. it’s just a new +x damage skill. It’s idea goes towards a beastmaster-skill, but the revealed by bite is absolutely useless, so you can cancel it. But then we lose the only counterplay against stealth.
I would prefer the current sic’em but with a bonus, so we can use it against other classes. Maybe an immobilize by the first pet attack.

Search’n’rescue: just revive ally in an instant, when the pet arrives the ally.

Aleksander Suburb.4287:

The only counterplay against stealth is too strong? Sorry, but we’re speaking about a skill only against stealth thieves or stealth mesmer and about 6 seconds. In my opinion, the skill is too low, because of his very special counterplay function. Your idea of sic’em is not counterplay. it’s just a new +x damage skill. It’s idea goes towards a beastmaster-skill, but the revealed by bite is absolutely useless, so you can cancel it. But then we lose the only counterplay against stealth.
I would prefer the current sic’em but with a bonus, so we can use it against other classes. Maybe an immobilize by the first pet attack.

Search’n’rescue: just revive ally in an instant, when the pet arrives the ally.

That isn’t counterplay. Sic’Em is an “I win” button, not counterplay. Counterplay against stealth would be traps. And traps need some love.

Honestly Im fairly happy with all of the shouts except for Guard and S&R

Guard should IMO Confine hte pet to a specific area. Restealth the pet whenever its not in combat. and give it protection as long as its in that area. I also feel it should temporarily increase the leash range. The idea would be that you could leave the pet in a choke to suprise and slow down passerby’s while fighting on another point. As it is now though. The pet does ANYTHING except guard the area its tasked to.

As for Search and Rescue. I have little to no problem with its mechanic. However I feel it should find a target aroudn hte PET not the ranger. (No point if bringing search and rescue if your using a longbow) Also the OBSCENELY long cooldown it has on something that isn’t a guaranteed rez (its seriously as long a cooldown OR LONGER than other INSTANT rez skills) I meen its a rez skill you can KILL for crying out loud. Let us use it reliably atleast.

I sincerely support these ideas.
Especially the “Sic’Em!”. The reasoning is basically a viable BM DPS variation of builds, since pets have literally zero condition removals. With ability like this, pets would definitely become more reliable DPS assets. Especially when A-net forces us to use them.
Not to mention that we would finally get a way of using Signet of the Renewal to actually help the team without killing our own pet at sight.
However, I believe that cooldown of 30 seconds is too low. With the trait with CD reduction, this ability would get almost 40% uptime which might very easily get out of hand.
Since the duration has been moved from 8 to 10 seconds – I don’t find a problem of letting the CD at 40 seconds (32 traited).

I also like the “Guard!” idea.

However, I do think that “Protect me!” loses it’s former idea absolutely. Not to mention that Rangers already provide a huge access to Team Condi Removal (healing spring 6,Spirit of Nature 4, SotR 12) I do believe that your “Guard!” idea would already add a signature feature of this ability – team defense.
My suggestion to “Protect me!” Would be ordering your pet to leap to you, applying Aegis and Protection for … Let’s say 4 seconds – also providing a blast finisher (finally a reliable one you could control).
The cooldown could be significantly reduced to 30 seconds.