The problem is virtually nobody specs to pet traits so pets are obscenely squishy even the tank ones so they simply arent worth rezzing for the time it takes without specs.  Everyone wants a giant damage number epeen so marksman skirmish are the way a lot seem to spec.

Without pet traiting your pet will be dead fast then you heal at around 19 per tick taking 15-20 seconds of you being out the fight to get the pet back up.

I do spec to pets and healing and if my polar bear falls below 25%(bloody rare) it gets swapped out if by some weird chance swap is on cooldown and the pet has to die then I can get a pet back up and in the fight in 3 seconds with revive due to the pet healing enhancements that traiting to pets offers.

IMO Pets shouldnt be available unless you have began to spec to pet traits this would make more sense I'm not adverse to the creature still running round as a companion but it should not be able to attack be attacked etc until a certain number of traits into the line much like SWG's creature handler was and the base offered nothing more than a call ability with no commands and more commands unlocked with the tiers.

Pets can be excellent though I've lost count of the amount of thanks I have had when my pet drags someone's corpse off the ground with the search and rescue skill whilst I can still DPS or when the pet due to its high health and damage taking abilities can go to a revive I simply couldnt due to squishiness.

Originally posted by kaiser3282

Originally posted by NomadMorlock

The problem is most Ranger players don't understand pet management at the moment. If your pet is about to die and you switch pets, the cool down is 15 seconds. If you wait for it to die, the cool down on your next swap is 1 minute. 

 

You also have the ability of pulling your pet back to you before he dies. I have no trouble keeping my pets alive even in dungeons, but I seem to be the only one in my guild who is good at this as my friends pets are always dead. If the don't want to manage pets, they should be playing a thief or warrior with bows. 

 

You also can spec into stronger pets, however most haven't tried these builds much. 

 

 

Well, in PvE / Dungeons its one thing, but its a bit tougher to keep your pet up and pull it back / swap before it dies in WvW. Sometimes your pet will get in there and be fine for awhile and you can manage it, but other times the pet will wind up being in the center of a mass of AoEs and dead in 2 seconds.

No, it's really not. *THIS* is a prime example about why GW2, as with GW1, is DIFFERENT than other MMO's.

You can't expect the person who mashes the most buttons the fastest to automatically win in this game. You have to *THINK*.

My pets hardly ever die in any battle,i let pet attack and when it get's just under half way i call it back and let it heal then send him in again.

This is only when i'm doing DE and WvW

Simple..

when my pet dies i swap pets right away and keep swaping them and when the cool down goes slower and the pet is dead i dismiss it to avoid the OPs issues....

i always use my pets but they: 1) die too fast, and 2) deal TPS (tickles per second)..... their dmg suck, but oh well.... (that counts for every pet, ranger pets, necromancers pets, mesmers illusions and phantasms, elementalist elemental pets, engineer turrets, etc)

Originally posted by Sylvarii

My pets hardly ever die in any battle,i let pet attack and when it get's just under half way i call it back and let it heal then send him in again.

This is only when i'm doing DE and WvW

Simple..

This is pretty much how I do it. At the moment I'm playing around with using my pets for their buffs/debuffs (or as alpha strikers) instead of just straight DPS, and only switching them when the situation changes. Seems to be working OK at the moment and it gives a bit of extra depth to combat.

Originally posted by SQTO

I am a ranger and never rez my pets. if one dies then i just switch to the other one. 

Winner!!!

If you're not switching pets out when they die then you fail.

Originally posted by Nadia

Originally posted by rosco

2) This pet death icon should be different than the player death icon. they are just too different in value. I will rez anyone, anytime, ASAP, but not a pet. I don't even want to lose time trying to discernate if it's a player or an animal.

i agree

ideally,  give players an option to toggle OFF pet rezzing

Yeah, good solution.

There really are a few more options I would like in the game, such as making it put all looted mats in the bank directly instead of forcing you to stop every 5 minutes harvesting to empty it out. And yes, the key to empty them all at once is gold.

Anet answered my prayers. From the patch note:

Pets can no longer be revived using the “F” prompt. This is because you can either use F4 to swap pets which will bring that pet back alive or you can wait until you are out of combat at which point you pet will revive automatically. We felt it was doing a disservice to Ranger players to incentivize them to spend a long time reviving their pet when it was a very inefficient thing to do and happened after combat anyway. This will also help clear up “F” to interact functionality.

Hey, OP! 

1)   Real men loot when the fight is over.  It's not like it vanishes.

2)   Swapping pets is elementary.

3)   Blue icon does not equal grey icon.

Apparently this was patched today.  Pets can no longer be revived.  Read the patch notes:

Ranger

• Beastmastery Trait: Instinctual Bond – Now grants 5 seconds of quickness to the player’s pet and can only occur once every 50 seconds.

• Pets can no longer be revived using the “F” prompt. This is because you can either use F4 to swap pets which will bring that pet back alive or you can wait until you are out of combat at which point you pet will revive automatically. We felt it was doing a disservice to Ranger players to incentivize them to spend a long time reviving their pet when it was a very inefficient thing to do and happened after combat anyway. This will also help clear up “F” to interact functionality.

Originally posted by Dibdabs

Hey, OP! 

1)   Real men loot when the fight is over.  It's not like it vanishes.

2)   Swapping pets is elementary.

3)   Blue icon does not equal grey icon.

Actually...

Looting after the fight means you'll miss a lot of junk.  WvWvW battles typically move around a lot and running off by yourself to look for loot you left behind leaves you open to a gangbang.  I don't do small time PvP as I don't believe a MMO (Massivly multiplayer) should involve small groups of players doing anything so I don't know how looting works in that.

Honestly, I think loot should just appear in your bags if some drops.  That way players will focus on the actual combat and strategy over trying to grab every missed bag/token/coin they can.

Originally posted by rosco

How many time did it happen to you ? In the middle of a big battle (PvE or WvW) you see a rez icon in front of you, and as you start to rez your teammate, you notice that the guy is actually an animal.

1) I won't lose my time rezzing a pet when even it's master doesn't find it valuable to rez it himself. Is a pet so crappy that you can play with or without it in the same way ?

2) This pet death icon should be different than the player death icon. they are just too different in value. I will rez anyone, anytime, ASAP, but not a pet. I don't even want to lose time trying to discernate if it's a player or an animal.

3) This costs me money and loot too, because I cannot spam the loot key whenever I want in a big fight, since a roaming ranger will sometimes bring it's "rez target" into your action zone, stopping your loot since you might be trapped in a useless rez animation while you just wanted to loot the zone. So you just stop looting for a time, and yes, you forget stuff on the floor.

We don't need to see a dead pet on the minimap either.

It's not the Ranger's fault. Why so hostile to Rangers, They didn't set out to piss you off by putting a dead pet IFO you as a stumbling block.

Why don't  you go into battle with only one hand equipped with something? That's what you are telling Rangers to do.