Guild Wars 2 Update: Pets and Profession Combos

It’s been a fair while since we’ve heard anything major from Arenanet regarding their upcoming MMO. Thankfully, game designer Jon Peters has posted an update detailing what the dev team for Guild Wars 2 have been up to over the past couple of months.

First up is an improved tool belt system for the engineer profession. The tool belt is profession mechanic that fills the engineer’s F1-F4 keys with skills that tie into heal/utility skills in slots 6-9. In the initial planning stages, only some of the engineer’s heal and utility schools had corresponding tool belt skills. Following a redesign, the player can now equip any such ability, giving the tool belt greater flexibility.

Ranger pets have also been tinkered with, resulting in players being able to have four pets in total – 2 terrestrial and 2 aquatic. Amphibious pets can occupy either slot. A simple tap of the F4 button will switch out your pet, even in combat, meaning greater flexibility and possibly the difference between life and death if your original pet bravely sacrifices itself in order to protect you. Better yet, your poor, dead pet will be magically healed to full health when you switch back to it. Swapping pets does have a cooldown, and if your pet was pushing daisies when you swapped it out, that cooldown will be increased.

Pets also have two stances: active and passive. As you might expect, in the active stance a pet will assist you in combat, while in the passive stance it will simply follow you around obediently until ordered to attack via the F3 button. Pets can also be ordered to attack a specific foe by selecting a target and pressing F1.

Finally, pets no longer evolve. Instead, they remain equal to the level of the ranger, while their stats and abilities are determined by their species. Each species belongs to a family, and each family has three basic skills to define it. For example, bears are hard to kill, drakes do AoE damage, devourers use ranged attacks, etc. Each species within a family also has a unique skill of their own.

The last mechanic discussed in the update is that of cross-profession combos. These are special actions which reward players for working together (although combos can be performed by a single player as well). Cross-profession combos have two important elements; the initiator and the finisher. Initiators set up the combo, creating an area in the world that changes some skills performed within it, ie covering the ground in ice or shrouding a portion of the land in darkness. Finishers interact with these initiators, and are actions which are aimed at the field created by the area altered by the initiator.

Examples of combos include:

Using Ricochet through a Firewall to get a bouncing axe that has a chance to burn the targets it hits.

Using Leaping Death Blossom through a Symbol of Faith to remove conditions from allies near your target.

Using Stomp inside a Smoke Screen to cloak nearby allies.

When a combo is created, players will be notified via a floating tooltip, with players encouraged to experiment among themselves.

All in all, it looks like the combo system is going to be a lot of fun, and those of you who are interested in the engineer or pet classes have plenty to look forward to as well. To read the article in its entirety, you can head over to the Arenanet Blog.