Guild Wars 2

When you play big events or dungeons your pets are usually completely useless, unless you constantly heal them and add boons which makes them immune to dmg for a little while. Even then the pets always die within a few seconds on bosses that do a lot of AOE dmg. Poison clouds in particular is nasty as pets don’t follow you close enough to get out of them before they die. When they take dmg they slow down even.
My suggestion would be that the pets still took the same dmg from direct attacks but that they have a much higher resistance to AOE dmg.
You want to rely a lot on your pet when you play ranger and in some fights it works really well, in others I have to keep my pet passive as their is no point in sending it in at all. That will take away a great portion of my control and dmg I otherwise have.
How do you feel about this, happy for input.

i usually pull my pet in an out using f1 and f3 and often use that to pull enemies into traps without the side effect of the enemy running right to me after I attack it. If you send your pet back in (for arguments sake a drakehound). They have a leap skill that can combo with a flame or ice trap. Ice trap gives them frost armor which makes them a little more durable. hope that helps.

You can also choose to use ranged pets during boss events to avoid them from being one shot by big AOE damage. Other than that, I’d say send in a polar bear, as mine cankittennear survive anything. Sometimes I think he’s indestructible.

I would say that, it depends on how heavy you want to use your pet. Lets not forget that the Ranger has some Signets and Shouts utility skills that help boost your pets, and not to mention your traits in Beastmaster can also boost. But if your the type of ranger that uses more combat-specifc skills, your pet wont do as much as you’d like. So for the most part, it all depends how you setup your skill build! Hope it helps

So far I’ve been using a spider and a devourer. They both have ranged attacks which can keep them out of harms way a lot. The biggest issue is they never move when being beaten up or being in AoE. As others said you can manually call them back to you which I sometimes do.

Also, you can set a pet to Avoid Combat. So for some pets, this can be useful, since they will stand near you, and, if you take the Fern Hound as an example, they have some skills that can heal you and others in the area. This can be increased with traits…

So if you’re not wanting your pet to jump into combat immediately, there’s other options available, and likely more will become apparent in the coming weeks/months.

Mario has a great point. I’ve noticed my Fern Hound is great for boss fights as I can keep him out of combat at my feet and run to areas where people may need a heal. My weapon on swap has +healing to it so I just swap, heal, swap, keep moving.

Also a lot of people seem to be really generous and will try to raise a pet even in battle if able. I need a /ty macro for those guys hehe.

What everyone has said before I feel are some of the best ways to go. I use these tactics based on what I am doing. One thing I like to do is have one pet better for offense and the other for defense (Fern Hound and Blue Moa are great for helping you and groups). I also use the Beastmaster trait that increases their attributes by 1 for very kill until 25.

Pet swapping saves my pets more than anything else. But I also make use of the trait to give my pet Protection when I dodgeroll, wich helps too. Especially if I’m BM, in which case my pet is a major source of my dps.

But if you’re not BM spec’d, your pet is not as large a part of your effectiveness, and the occasional pet death can be manageable.

Use ranged pets if your pet dies instantly in melee range, use bears if you need a pet with a huge HP pool. Fern hound is a good tough pet, it has decent toughness and vitality, but also AoE Regeneration. Drakes have the same stats as canines, and can self heal a little.

There are options out there. Plenty of traits and whatnot you can invest in to make your pet a real solid tanky critter. But the less you invest, the stronger your ranger itself will be, and that means the loss is less noticeable. Invest a ton, and if he goes down still, you’ll be just a wet noodle. Pros and Cons all up in this mo f…. what.

I can begin to say how much I love swapping pets often and using the protect-on-dodge-roll trait. With that I can keep my drake up through almost anything, and I find its damage to far outshine a bear.

Of course, if you do find yourself in a world boss event of WvW you may need to switch to a long-range pet. The devourer’s ranged attacks, very high armor, evasion skill, and knockback all make it an excellent pet for survivability. I believe its damage is still higher than the bear, as well, though probably not on par with the drake or pigs.

put them on passive and use them for the f2 if nothing else. i tend to leave them out of zergs and send them after dudes that break from the pack and chase people down. ranged pets are cool but they always seem to pull aggro from a group and get beat down by a straggler.

I swap in emergencies. Brings the new one immediately to my side and out of combat. I’m also specced so that swapping gives me two seconds of quickness which, with a shortbow, provides a nice bit of burst damage. I try to time so that my warhorn effect is up at them time to max out the effect.

My pets do fine in major battles. My arcturus has withstood battles with champion-class bosses for 10+ minutes at a time. It has high vitality, good toughness and a self-heal bite, among other things. I never worry about healing it. I didn’t even take the Beastmaster tree. As others have said, it’s about choosing the right pet for the job and filling out the skills to support it. In pve, I just experiment with different animals to see who’s good at what.