Guild Wars 2

How do you find Ranger pets these days? To me, even with full BM they feel somewhat lacklustre, easily killed in the overwhelming aoe and cleave you see in nearly every game, and they just don’t seem to have the bite they used to.

I like some of the new traits that give the pet f2 a bit of utility, but something still seems off. Don’t know if the short leash, lowish damage (was it nerfed since launch?), or pretty much everyone now seemingly having fast run speed and various abilities that auto proc blind, cripples, etc, but I just can’t find that classic BM playstyle atm. The BM trait line has its good points, but the pets just don’t feel that powerful to me.

Any rangers had success in pvp recently with BM and pets? Any pointers?

I use BM in some builds, but mostly because of the taunt. I think the pets need a buff though, since the chars themselves all got buffed in damage and sustain, but I don’t think the pets got buffed to make up for that, or did I miss sth.?

Also, the BM trait-line is for the most part beneficial for your pet, which often makes the ranger himself squishier. Yes, taunt is pretty cool and blind/weakness as well, but often, the added protection and condition-removal of nature magic is just better (in many builds I use the choice is either nature magic or BM.)

I think they should buff pet’s a bit in all of their stats and maybe put a more defensive trait for the ranger himself in the pet-line.

What I really don’t like about the pets though is, that some pets just don’t benefit from a lot of traits in the BM-traitline:

1) taunt: basically useless for ranged-pets.
2) weakness on F2-hit: useless for pets with boons that are applied to you that don’t hit opponents.
3) higher critical hit DMG: well, only good for pets with high precision and power.
4) higher healing power: Only good for a handful of pets.

I really enjoy playing taunt though: It really makes controlling your pet correctly and keeping it alive much harder and more rewarding.

no.. if you want it to survive 5 players bombing one point then it needs to do almost 0 damage.. its already annoying to fight a ranger with this thing chewing me up random ccing me and i cant even get away from it let alone if i take the time to kill it you just pop out another one ..

Pets are only receiving half the stats they used to get from the beast mastery line. Anet said the other half would become baseline but that hasn’t happened.

Pets have also been hit very hard by the condi change, even with high vitality pets empathic bond is now useless because of burn stacks.

I’ve actually started running trooper runes with guard, heal as one, and rampage as one (or whatever they call it now).
The low cool down shouts are the only condi removal that work for the pets, plus the Perma protection and regen help keep the pets alive. It also frees me up from having to spec into wilderness survival so I’m able to pick up spotter, quick draw and remorseless.

Well, bird pets hit me for 4k+ and the traited taunt is unevadable, unblockable and even prevents weaponswap…

Iavra.8510:

Well, bird pets hit me for 4k+ and the traited taunt is unevadable, unblockable and even prevents weaponswap…

The trait hasn’t been unevadable for 2 weeks. They fixed that without fixing the bug that keeps it from triggering while the ranger is downed, or fixing the missing pet stats.

Just yesterday i got taunted in the middle of Blurred Frenzy, so no, it’s not fixed yet.

Iavra.8510:

Well, bird pets hit me for 4k+ and the traited taunt is unevadable, unblockable and even prevents weaponswap…

It’s very evadeable since it’s pretty clunky to use sometimes, has a limited AoE and is tied to a 15s cooldown. Add all these together and you can easily see when it’s coming and dodge it.

There’s also stability and stunbreakers.

There are literally tons of skills that stun/immobilize that are way harder to evade.

Ranger pets = glue eating internet explorer at the corner.

Puck.9612:

Pets are only receiving half the stats they used to get from the beast mastery line. Anet said the other half would become baseline but that hasn’t happened.
.

Really? If true that is pretty severe.

One thing I would like to see is the remaining pet related traits bundled into the BM line, basically as standard (without having to “pick” them) since we now have to go fully into any particular tree.

Yasha.5963:

Puck.9612:

Pets are only receiving half the stats they used to get from the beast mastery line. Anet said the other half would become baseline but that hasn’t happened.
.

Really? If true that is pretty severe.

One thing I would like to see is the remaining pet related traits bundled into the BM line, basically as standard (without having to “pick” them) since we now have to go fully into any particular tree.

Yup they actually just made a comment about it on the bug forum. Apparently they will start working on it “soon”…. so probably another 6 months or so.