Guild Wars 2

The fight against Canach isn’t hard…. except all my pet does is run around and trigger all the traps. If I have the pet stowed it’s fine, until of course I take the tiniest bit of damage, my pet jumps out and starts triggering traps that are still red.

My big issue is not Canach, it’s that as a Ranger I can’t permanently stow my pet when I want to. This is a big design issue with the ranger that the Canach fight highlights very well.

just put the pet on passive that really helped me

And unfortunately for you they have flat out said you’ll never be able to permenatley stow your pet because it goes against the class design. Pretty crappy IMO

Before I figured out how to damage him, my drake had taken out 25% of his health through conditions and was the only reason I was able to res myself over and over. It kept the damage off me so that I had time to figure out which mines I wanted to disarm or so that I could get some distance when my health was low. I was actually thinking that ranger made that fight easier than it should have been.

blackgoat.5172:

And unfortunately for you they have flat out said you’ll never be able to permenatley stow your pet because it goes against the class design. Pretty crappy IMO

That’s what I don’t understand. It’s not like a necro always has to have a minion out, or a mesmer an illusion, or a guardian a spirit weapon, or a elementalist a golem… A pet is a good part of the rangers class abilities, but if I want to intentionally handicap myself for a little while so that I can do something like every other class can, why is that against the class design?

I got achievement (not lightfoot one) with a Ranger. Kept switching out pets as they went down, kept throwing down seed turrets and went to the back of the cave where there was a fairly large space between several traps and kited around as I threw the seed turret and pets. I eventually wore him down and got him (on first attempt). I did get thrown into couple of traps but overall was able to keep working at him. From what I understand the Caltrops do next to nothing but the bomb one and maybe the poison traps do take his health if you can switch them and get him to run into them. I also have read if you can lure him to the front of the cave there are some respawning traps you can keep re-enabling to help take him down.

Might be interesting to see from each class what they have figured out to take him out. It wasn’t easy as a Ranger but doable. It was outside the instance that was hard….KarkaCity out there. Do not plan on just standing around waiting cause the karkas will eat yer brains….

Canach didn’t give me many problems. He would occasionally knock me down and then stare at me like he forgot what he was doing. Then he stepped on a bomb and lulz ensued.

I just shot him with crossfire and poised volley while my pet put bleeds on him while i walked slowly backwards in a circle

I think my pet is the one who killed Canach. I had no idea what to do on the fight. I kept trying to trigger the traps and wondering why he took no damage from them.

It said he was immune to damage so after the first bit I stopped trying to attack him.

So I spent 40 minutes running around and it seems my pet’s condition attacks slowly took him out…

Amaruit.9364:

blackgoat.5172:

And unfortunately for you they have flat out said you’ll never be able to permenatley stow your pet because it goes against the class design. Pretty crappy IMO

That’s what I don’t understand. It’s not like a necro always has to have a minion out, or a mesmer an illusion, or a guardian a spirit weapon, or a elementalist a golem… A pet is a good part of the rangers class abilities, but if I want to intentionally handicap myself for a little while so that I can do something like every other class can, why is that against the class design?

Probably a flavour thing, as in = “Your pet is your loyal friend and not your mindslave, so it will act upon its own impulses and you, as a nature lover and all that, will accept this and try to learn from your pet as it learns from you to better fight as one”.

It’s a good concept sure, but if the gameplay implications are too annoying it should be ignored.

I wouldn’t know as I don’t play ranger.

Aerinndis.2730:

It was outside the instance that was hard….KarkaCity out there. Do not plan on just standing around waiting cause the karkas will eat yer brains….

No kidding! The Karkas outside the instance were more of a hazard than Canach and his mines were.

Thanks for the info folks. I was reluctant to try this out with my Ranger but now I’ll give it a go, assuming that the Karkas don’t eat my brains before I get in there.

Good luck getting the Lair Light foot achievement with a ranger. Tried it 5 times as a ranger and just switched to my alt and did it on the first try.

Did the Light Foot achievement with my ranger without any trouble, if your pet steps on a trap it doesn’t nullify the achievement (only if YOU step on one or if you take damage by one triggered by your pet).

Put your pet on passive and enjoy your invulnerability (Canach can’t outdamage your downed state 3rd skill).

I beat Canach on my 1st try with the ranger, and that was only because my pet kept reviving me after it kept killing me.. go figure.

This was a kitten awful boss encounter. I like the idea of the traps, but did not like the idea that there was no way to tell which trap needed which disarm other than trial and error then memorizing. Of course the pet setting off every mine in a nautical mile didn’t help the frustration level.

First and last time in that lair.

Elementalist: use frostbow-no. 5 freeze target, move back a bit trigger mine wait for him to move, do it 6 times and you win…
Seems like rangers had more to think about in this encounter. Might’ve been more of a challenge if it weren’t for my ranger not being lvl 80 yet.

I agree, I experienced this problem too.
If they don´t think about the pets when they are developing the game, at least why don´t let us completely turn it off temporary when we wanted?

The way that I did was to stay the whole time in the hall, close to the wall, with the pet in pasive mode. Then I killed canach with the 2 closest mines, little by little.

In any case, frustrating. If a ranger wants the achievenment of not going into the traps, with no problems, he can’t enter on the lair. he has to be outside

I haven’t done Canach solo yet, but I did do the group instance with some friends. The exact same problem is present. Pets trigger the traps and they seem to intentionally path right through them, even when the straight line back to me when I recall them goes nowhere near any traps!

Most of the time they hit traps because there’s really only a small path between them all and your pet being out to the side, pretty much always triggers them.

As far as I can tell, the best and only thing to be done is to have someone always focusing on turning traps green so pets aren’t constantly sabotaging the effort by blowing them up all the time. Still, it’s a lot more effort and 1 less DPS for the fight just because you have a pet class in the party.

Its so lame, no point on taking my ranger to exp mode. Its just a burden on the rest of the pty, like theives in all dungeons. Most annoying thing is my pet is stupid enough to run infront of me and set a trap that is nowhere near where I am standing. What happened to not agroing things? I think these stupid traps should count into that category or fix the ai on pets. Never buying a leopard in real life, they never listen to me.

I thought my pets (moa and stalker) actually made it easier because Canach kept focusing on attacking them which meant I could keep him in one place and hit him with mines without worrying about being hit myself.

That’s a big part of how I got the Lair Lightfoot achievement the second time I completed the dungeon (4th time I’d been in but the first 2 times I was just playing around with traps to see how they worked and then quit to start a real attempt).

The other part was throwing traps at him when he bugged and started taking condition damage. It didn’t make a big difference but it did bring him down faster.

This isn’t entirely related, but I really hope you yell out “Citizen!” whenever your devourer does something he shouldn’t.

Atleast the rangers now have an semi official walkthough to complete the minidungeon even with their broken profession defining mechanic :I

What’s the point even having it when the game forces you to have it on passive?

I beat Canach solo instance with two cats by staying near a single trap with a safe spot nearby. Sic the cat on him and make sure to keep that trap green so you can lure him on it. (You don’t have to use a cat, I forgot to switch out is all…)

IMHO guardian was harder than ranger and thief was just @#%^!!.

In regard to the NULL exp fight, my party stayed near the entrance where there are two poison gas traps. if you squish yourself in there good, you can avoid the sparks later. I sent my cats after NULL and took the job of keeping the two poison gas traps green.

My second set of weapons contained an off-hand axe, so I also reflected the healing turrets’ bullets where I could. Pretty sure I was the only person in the party who had a reflect equipped.

If you press skill 1 on the mine detector and look carefully above the traps, there is an icon that matches the skill you need to disarm them.

l2p, you are taking care of two in-game things, not one.
Please be responsible to your buddy’s life—-stop being lazy.

We had to kick a ranger from the null instance today, we just couldn’t do it with his pet there constantly holding aggro. Once we kicked him we managed to 4 man it on the first try.

We felt bad, but we could struggle for 20 minutes with a ranger in the group or do it in 5 minutes without him.

rangers are just a huge disadvantage for this instance.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I tried it once with a Moa for the heals, but eventually gave up on Adrien Beaky as I found my devourer Citizen Snips to be more useful for DPS in the burst moments.

HROUDA! You were the dev in southsun that stole my pet’s name! I’ll ‘kitten’ you!!!. <buys a white kitten>

LF necro advice on this guy.

Also, more often than not he will be right smack on a green one, not setting it off.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Hey folks,

I main a ranger and I’ve done this fight a few times… so here’s a few little tips and such that I’ve found worked for me and my pets.

Bring devourer or spider. Position yourself nearby but in a safe spot free of traps, and either swap or f3 your pet to your position. Try to keep near NULL so that your pet doesn’t get pulled due to NULL running off after a fleeing player while your pet chases him/it. I found ranged pets were good in this instance since it meant they weren’t running off triggering things nearly as often as my drake/wolf was.
I tried it once with a Moa for the heals, but eventually gave up on Adrien Beaky as I found my devourer Citizen Snips to be more useful for DPS in the burst moments.

Bring Search and Rescue. It is especially useful if your group is struggling at the last 25% and you need help picking someone up quickly. Pet swap next to the body of the person before using it if there are multiple people going down and you need some focus.

The fact we need a separate guide for Rangers cause we can’t permanetly store our pets means two things; 1. It’s f’n stupid we can’t perma store our pet and 2. It’s f’n stupid you can’t code a dungeon to avoid an issue like this.

Way to fail.

@ ZudetGambeous, yeah. Rangers are a disadvantage if they’re not paying attention to their pets.

For any rangers reading, if you can keybind F1 and F3 to your mouse to sic your pet on an enemy and recall them when necessary, it’ll make your dungeon lives SO much easier.

Also, like Hrouda said, try to stay near your pets in this dungeon, like within 600 range. Less chance of them running over traps because of weird pathing issues.

It seems like rangers weren’t even thought about when designing this fight. It felt like bad design to me.

Main ranger user here. The fight is a little more difficult with a pet, but it is definitely manageable. Just keep your pet in passive mode when NULL’s defenses go up and try not to wander into a tight space with lots of traps. ;3

bring a non ranger class,you get boosted to lvl 80 and your just using the traps to kill him anyways.so a lvl 2 new character can also do the solo instance easily.

I know it doesn’t solve the root problem of ranger being at a disadvantage

Drysdale.3826:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Hey folks,

I main a ranger and I’ve done this fight a few times… so here’s a few little tips and such that I’ve found worked for me and my pets.

Bring devourer or spider. Position yourself nearby but in a safe spot free of traps, and either swap or f3 your pet to your position. Try to keep near NULL so that your pet doesn’t get pulled due to NULL running off after a fleeing player while your pet chases him/it. I found ranged pets were good in this instance since it meant they weren’t running off triggering things nearly as often as my drake/wolf was.
I tried it once with a Moa for the heals, but eventually gave up on Adrien Beaky as I found my devourer Citizen Snips to be more useful for DPS in the burst moments.

Bring Search and Rescue. It is especially useful if your group is struggling at the last 25% and you need help picking someone up quickly. Pet swap next to the body of the person before using it if there are multiple people going down and you need some focus.

The fact we need a separate guide for Rangers cause we can’t permanetly store our pets means two things; 1. It’s f’n stupid we can’t perma store our pet and 2. It’s f’n stupid you can’t code a dungeon to avoid an issue like this.

Way to fail.

Harsh words but I kinda agree. I find it annoying that when I store my pet 2 seconds later its back again.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Hey folks,

I main a ranger and I’ve done this fight a few times… so here’s a few little tips and such that I’ve found worked for me and my pets.

Bring devourer or spider. Position yourself nearby but in a safe spot free of traps, and either swap or f3 your pet to your position. Try to keep near NULL so that your pet doesn’t get pulled due to NULL running off after a fleeing player while your pet chases him/it. I found ranged pets were good in this instance since it meant they weren’t running off triggering things nearly as often as my drake/wolf was.
I tried it once with a Moa for the heals, but eventually gave up on Adrien Beaky as I found my devourer Citizen Snips to be more useful for DPS in the burst moments.

Bring Search and Rescue. It is especially useful if your group is struggling at the last 25% and you need help picking someone up quickly. Pet swap next to the body of the person before using it if there are multiple people going down and you need some focus.

The issue here is that the Ranger’s pet is a severe liability in this dungeon, and unless we actively fight the pet controls and pet AI the whole dungeon to work around what is a broken mechanic the Ranger is an active detriment to any group for the NULL fight.

Put a pet on passive – and it still wanders aimlessly around the ranger, causing nearby mines to be exploded (which then explode at double the detection range so they hit people who had been safely avoiding them). Let them attack, and NULL gets fixated on them making it harder to pull him into tampered mines (yes, calling the pet back to you can work…except the pet will trigger other mines on the way damaging your party members again, after NULL had just reset the mines that had been a “safe” path)…

Trying to work with your party…the ranger can’t afford to help downed party members get back up themselves, because the pet follows them in to the downed party member and explodes the mines around the ranger and the downed person…after which you have 2 downed people (or one downed ranger + one dead – and very annoyed – party member). Send the pet on Search and Rescue, and they they often kill the person you’re trying to help res before they reach them by blowing up mines on them (and sometimes die themselves on the way in too, thus not even bringing the party member they killed up at all).

Seriously, this dungeon’s mechanics have NOT been designed with the capabilities and limitations of the Ranger class’s pets in mind. Apart from the work-around of “try using ranged pets…because they will do stupid things less often”, there is no real tools for the Ranger to prevent the pet from kittening up the dungeon for the other party members.

In a game where so much thought has usually been put into anti-griefing event design, I was very dismayed by the lack of consideration of the interaction between this dungeon’s design and the Ranger’s pet – turning the Ranger into a pariah for this dungeon.

Tierce.5370:

@ ZudetGambeous, yeah. Rangers are a disadvantage if they’re not paying attention to their pets.

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For any rangers reading, if you can keybind F1 and F3 to your mouse to sic your pet on an enemy and recall them when necessary, it’ll make your dungeon lives SO much easier.

Also, like Hrouda said, try to stay near your pets in this dungeon, like within 600 range. Less chance of them running over traps because of weird pathing issues.

I agree, the pet is not an afterthought (the extra 10% damage or whatnot). I run two ranger builds, one with 30 in BM and another with 0 in BM. In both builds the pet is critical to being effective.

Take time to study each pet’s abilities and choose the right pet for the right situation. Watch what your furry friend does and adjust accordingly. If you see your pet triggering traps and enemies, call him back and stay near him. Make him attack when it is safe. I would recommend all rangers play with 30 in BM for a while. It will force you to think about the pet and the strengths in this class should become more clear…

I just used “Guard!” to send my pet far off to the side in a safe spot. 180 seconds is more than enough time to kill Canach on your own if you know the pattern.

I don’t understand what any of you are talking about. I just sick my pet on Canach right at the start at which point it’s out of the fight. It can’t trigger a trap because it’s not running around.

For Null I just let it do whatever. If Null agroed on it I would F3 it to me until it was passing over a green trap. Then F1 to stop Null there. It doesn’t matter if it sets off the trap during Null because you can still swap it to green and now Null is effectively trapped on a trap for the rest of the fight, giving you plenty of time to beat him up.

These fights are rediculously easy, you just need to actually understand what the mobs are doing, and how to control your pets.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

We had to kick a ranger from the null instance today, we just couldn’t do it with his pet there constantly holding aggro. Once we kicked him we managed to 4 man it on the first try.

We felt bad, but we could struggle for 20 minutes with a ranger in the group or do it in 5 minutes without him.

rangers are just a huge disadvantage for this instance.

Rather than kicking the guy (after all, not his fault the pet was being a kitten), did you consider asking him to move out of aggro? Then you could have completed the task without him, and he still gets the achievement?

Bloodwort MacFangho.4638:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

We had to kick a ranger from the null instance today, we just couldn’t do it with his pet there constantly holding aggro. Once we kicked him we managed to 4 man it on the first try.

We felt bad, but we could struggle for 20 minutes with a ranger in the group or do it in 5 minutes without him.

rangers are just a huge disadvantage for this instance.

Rather than kicking the guy (after all, not his fault the pet was being a kitten), did you consider asking him to move out of aggro? Then you could have completed the task without him, and he still gets the achievement?

Or better, told him to move his pet, since he does actually have control of the thing.

Though it was nice of Robert to offer advise on this, it does highlight another issue I have with this kind of thing. Why should I have to pick a specific pet to run a dungeon? I want melee pets. That’s what fits my character and that’s ‘how I want to play’. It’s all very well saying we can switch to ranged pets, but I don’t want to play my ranger that way, I want to play it my way, and my way is with melee pets that are obedient and stay stowed when I tell them to stay stowed.

It seems to me that perma stowing would be a simple thing to add, yet they don’t want us to have it. Are they afraid we will never use our pets?! That’s just crazy to even think it. And even if a ranger did choose to never use their pet, 1) They’ll be at a disadvantage in most situations as they’ll be loosing out on some useful skills and extra DPS and 2) It’s THEIR CHOICE!

As much as I love this game I do sometimes get a bit fed up with Anet telling us how we should be playing, especially when they have said so many times before that we can play the game our way.

Sorry Robert, I appreciate your advise, but it is not enough for many rangers. We want better solutions.