Guild Wars 2

i personally feel that the responsiveness of these skills is way out of whack. im in an spvp match and i hit f2 hoping my pet will do something for me (in this case, it was fear). no such luck. i hit it again to remind my pet what i want him to do. oh? still no fear. finally on the third try i got him to do it, but by that time the main reason i wanted to fear was gone.
Anet needs to make these skills INSTANT. i realize that there is cast times to take into account but i want these skills to be activated when i push f2 (making the cast time begin like a normal skill would, only it comes from my pet). no sooner, no later, and i certainly don’t want to have to hit the f2 skill 3 or 4 times just to finally get the pet to do the skill. this is very noticeable when i’m on the move and i want my pet to stop and do something, but it keeps cancelling itself out to catch up to me. i literally have to stop and sit there and slowly use the skill. the skills are still useable, but some tweaks on this would make pets that much more reliable in my opinion.

Ranger: Okay pet, use your special!
Pet: Stand back, I’m gonna do it! I’m gonna use my special!… meh I don’t feel like it, talk to me again in 5 seconds.

i share your pain, have some things to suggest

- double clicking the skill will sometimes cancel it, try not to do that
– when you use the f2 skill, it queues the f2 skill in with the other skills the pet has, you can get around this by using the f2 skill immediately after swapping pets, this puts the f2 skill to the beginning of the queue

this doesn’t fix the problem, but it helps in some situations

I’ve never noticed any problem with getting my pet to use its F2. I click it once, and it’ll use it.

The only problem I’ve seen is that it doesn’t cancel actions already in progress at all (like most player abilities do), so you have to wait until your pet finishes what its already doing before the F2 will go off. That in combination with the cast animation makes some quite delayed, especially for pets that have long attack animations to begin with. I do think that should be changed, make it like normal player abilities where activating the ability will stop everything the pet is doing and start the ability right away. A bit of reduced casting / animation time for some abilities (namely the roar skills of the cats / moas and the drake breath skills) would be nice as well. Keep the animations, but its not really nessicary to have 2 seconds of “power charge inhaling”.

My jungle spider’s F2 is so kitten slow, sometimes i don’t even bother unless it’s like way early in the fight, lol.

Brainload.3742:

My jungle spider’s F2 is so kitten slow, sometimes i don’t even bother unless it’s like way early in the fight, lol.

Spiders’ F2 skills are just buffs for their next auto attack(s). So I actually find those some of the fastest and most reliable ones, personally. Especially since they have no animation, so no waiting for lengthy breath or anything. They actually do seem to activate instantly (the buff itself at least), its just that you have to wait for the pet to actually throw out a normal attack after the fact.

Ive never noticed if the F2 skills were being used by my pet.. I roll with a pig so his F2 is kinda useless in a fight because im not going to run up to the mob to pick up an egg or a tree or whatever it is that makes a healing tree sprout up, my hawk has a bleed condition but since im using a shortbow i never notice if its adding to the bleed stack or not.

The cast times and behaviour of your pet’s F2 abilities is well known. If you can’t get them to work in PvP, it’s because you’re doing it wrong.

When I enter combat with my wolf, he knocks down the enemy. Right after he knocks down, I use his F2 ability, and he fear’s the opponent as soon as it gets up. I then shoot Point Blank shot to stun again, swap to the Drakehound, and Hunter’s Shot. With quickness and Swiftness, the Drakehound knocks the enemy down again, at which point I use the immobilize howl immediately, to freeze the enemy in place as soon as they stand up, swap to the Greatsword, Swoop, and Hilt Bash to stun the enemy. That chain of actions keeps an enemy constantly unable to move or act for quite a while.

Estes.3107:

Ive never noticed if the F2 skills were being used by my pet.. I roll with a pig so his F2 is kinda useless in a fight because im not going to run up to the mob to pick up an egg or a tree

Lol, thanks! Got a good laugh out of your response here!

Just going to toss this one out there, and one of the reasons the F2 responsiveness hasn’t ever bothered me… the animation wind up time bugs the crap out of me, but there is a workable way to que F2 immediately.

Hit F3 immediately before F2. It cancels whatever they’re doing and resends them in immediately following with the F2 skill 1st priority.

Ravnodaus.5130:

Just going to toss this one out there, and one of the reasons the F2 responsiveness hasn’t ever bothered me… the animation wind up time bugs the crap out of me, but there is a workable way to que F2 immediately.

Hit F3 immediately before F2. It cancels whatever they’re doing and resends them in immediately following with the F2 skill 1st priority.

This is the kind of thing we shouldn’t have to micro.

True, it’d be better if it was fixed. But it IS a useful tip and one I never realized, so thanks for that Ravno.