Guild Wars 2

The current design of pet swap incentives is in conflict with aspects of the ranger. You’re encouraged to swap them as often as possible to maximize pet skill usage and utilize on-swap effects like Poison Master, Clarion Bond, Zephyr’s Speed, and Spirited Arrival.

But then each time you do every boon and effect on your pet is removed. All the boons you stacked up with “Strength of the Pack”, Potent Ally, and Fortifying Bond are gone, and not only does your pet lose out on damage but you can’t utilize boon-sharing effects like “We Heal as One” to full effect afterwards.

Any ongoing effects on your pet are removed. This includes “Strengh of the Pack”, Cripping shot, Signet of the Hunt, and many others.

So on one hand you want to keep your pet out to utilize all the effects and buffs you give it. But on the other hand you want to swap it as often as possible for on-swap effects and to optimize pet skill cooldowns.

A good way to frame this is with weapon swap. You swap pets and weapons for many of the same reasons, but could you imagine if every time you swapped weapons your character would lose all boons and allied support effects? This is essentially the situation Ranger is in with pet swap.

And Soulbeast takes this to the next level. Every time you meld all those effects are removed and since the intended way to play is to be constantly swapping in-and-out of meld and switching pets you’ll be resetting pet buffs twice as often!

This needs a real solution. Fresh Reinforcement doesn’t go far enough and isn’t even a baseline effect.

I’m not sure of the technical limitations, but an ideal system would be a baseline boon and effect (e.g. remaining duration and charges of Crippling Shot) transfer for both pet swap and beastmeld.

Upon a pet swap all boons and effects should transfer to your next pet with their remaining duration.
Upon entering beastmeld all effects on the pet that would have been applied to the ranger while in beastmeld (e.g. crippling shot) should be transferred to the ranger, while a baseline effect like Fresh Reinforcement should be implemented for boons.