Pet error?

I just started trying to do pets, so ran a pet through Fort ranik with a beastmastery build. I kind of want it aggresive then Dire, so I dropped my own marksmanship to 1 (rune). I dont really care that much if it turns out hearty though..just a better tank then :\ Both evolutions have their ups and downs.

ANYWAY - I Observed the pet for awhile...And noticed when I used a pet attack a few things could happen:
1) Sometimes The pet completely Ignores the attack command.
2) Sometimes I see that the damage dealt is higher due to the skill's bonus, but the attack animation doesn't change (its like a normal attack, not the "auras" shown in the pet guide)
3) And I've yet to have any of the "special" effects of a pet attack work, like bleeding if their moving, and such.

-_-

It doesn't help that pets are dumb as dirtalready.

All I can think is that you are spamming your commands too closely together, which doesn't give your animal a chance to comply before you override it with a second command. You must send in your pet with a bow, or be attacked yourself, before your pet will start attacking, then you add a special attack. I'm not sure whether aiming at an enemy pre-battle and then hitting 'Feral Lunge' will do anything.

No, I figured out they acted like shouts about 3 minutes into trying to play around with it, so I got to where I just hit one :\

They do act like shouts or they are shouts. I've used pets quite a bit and the best I can figure is you were doing something like Mishkin was saying. You can only have two of those attacks stacked at a time so if you hit a third before your pet has used an attack and opened up the queue then you will cancel one out.

As was already touched on, if you use another pet attack before your pet has had a chance to execute the previous one, the new one will overwrite the old one. Some will complain about this, but it has its advantages and I'd like to point out one of those. If you have the pet interrupt, Disrupting Lunge, on your bar but have already issued a different attack when your enemy begins using its skill, you can use Disrupting Lunge and still get your interrupt in during the current attack cycle.

While pet timing will always be somewhat sloppy, the inability for pet attacks to que up can help you time things better.

Just thought I'd add a positive note to something that's usually a point of irritation.

That's a really good point. I do that quite often actually even with bow attacks (which seem to have the same 2 stack limit). Sometimes I just seem to spaz a little and hit the wrong skill, so being able to correct this before the pet executes is pretty handy.

I repeat /again/ - It is NOT because I'm hitting multiple attacks...

I thought that was what you were saying but I couldn't tell for sure. I was a little confused by your post. Sorry I misinterpreted what you are trying to say. I don't know what to tell you though since I haven't noticed what you've said to any significant degree.

I myself kind of fall back on what Jenosavel said, "While pet timing will always be somewhat sloppy...." I personally think it is really hard to do some pet testing say anything with a true degree of certainty becuase the pet timing is so sloppy. It could be you notice this much more since you didn't use pets most of your ranger career. I've never noticed pet attacks occuring consistantly with the attack I've used. It is just a godsend that ANet has pet damage display now so at least you can see damage differences.

To answer your specific issues here goes:
1. You must shoot the target first with your bow. I have never not had my pet attack after I've used my bow. You don't need to use a skill first it will just attack. I don't think they just attack by calling the target (but not actually attacking) and then using a skill.

2. If you are refering to the Prima guide or GW official online guide, then I only have one answer to that: DON'T. It may be correct in many areas, but there is enough inaccurate information in both to render them totally unreliable. Don't look for auras to confirm a pet attack. Look for the damage done or condition to confirm this.

3. Some pet attacks, just like any other professions or particular attributes linked skills are fairly useless or extremely difficult to time and trigger. Two of these for beast mastery are the pet attack to inflict the bleeding condition and the ability to interupt. Interupting with the pet is soooo hard to do and 80% or more of the time is pure dang luck.

A good prep to take if you want to help your pet do better damage is Melandru's Arrows, or the bow attack Poison Arrow and then use the pet attack (is it Feral Lunge?) that gives extra damage to a target that is under a condition.