Guild Wars 2

Started a ranger alt and have liked it fine so far but I was wondering about this.

Swiftness and crowd-control are your friends.

I figured as much but I meant even with that animation speed range etc

Devourerer’s have ranged attacks but I’ve never used them, so I’m not sure how reliable they are, but in terms of melee pets them all seem fairly even in these terms.

Raven’s hit moving targets.
Canines have fantastic CC, it takes some micro’ing (click ‘come to me’ if it isn’t going to hit) and occasionally setting up (snares typically) to make sure the enemy is in range though (just a heads up).

I haven’t found any other type of pet I’ve liked.

Yeah I have been using birds and have found them mostly consistent I just wasn’t sure if that was the best, and since I haven’t got them all I have been wondering.

Canines I like the cc but sometimes they feel unresponsive.

How about spiders and devourers? Are there projectiles the type you can move away from or do you have to dodge?

Spider and Devourer projectiles are about as reliable as bows (maybe less). What works does actually depend on your build.

Something to keep in mind about Canines is they will almost always use the knockdown after being swapped in. So if you are in melee range yourself and swap in a Canine you can pretty much guarantee a knockdown on demand.

Otherwise, as others said +move for pets (however you get it) and CC (or other methods of controlling the position of enemies) are your friends. Birds also seem to be more reliable than most/all pets at holding aggro in high level areas like Orr for whatever reason.

Ty all for the info. I will stick with birds for now but will look more into devourers and spiders as I level but will likely stay with the former. When I start to pvp I will likely go with canines from the info you give it would seem that in melee range the quickness on swap would likely make the knock down a guarantee. Ty again.

Pets with a leap attack are pretty good against moving target.
Mostly, when your pet move faster than your target (snare on foe, or speed boost on pet) it would be able to hit him.

Birds are no different than the other pets when it comes to moving targets. There’s even a video demonstrating it here:

Florgknight.1589:

Swiftness and crowd-control are your friends.

Making your pet move faster actually doesn’t do much difference in getting your pet to land attacks since so much of what makes them miss is their attack animation. Go to the mists and set your pet to attack the moving golem and time how long it takes to go down, then spec into the 30%+ movement speed for pets talent and do the test again.

deepwinter.9015:

Birds are no different than the other pets when it comes to moving targets. There’s even a video demonstrating it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk5DiFJAtWQ

I don’t actually disagree but your video illustrates melee mechanics in this game at its core. This applies to players also. Whenever you enter a long animation if another player kites you while you use a melee weapon they can literally out of range you by moving away while in the animation (this can also happen at max range for ranged weapons during flight). The most notorious skill this happens to is 100b for warriors since you can walk out of it.

Considering that I do this on ele quite often vs pure melee classes I dont know exactly what to say. Afaik this is intended but I do agree the animation is slow. The analysis feels off as you could face this issue on the third skill of guardians hammer and numerous other weapon sets. The delay between the action and the affect is long enough for something to move away. Since this happens in general pve and pvp to players I am hard pressed to accept this. Without snares and movement this could happen to most melee across the board.

I don’t disagree that accuracy is an issue I just feel this was a bad example because I have seen this done to players and all form of npcs using a melee weapon. Once again I agree pet accuracy needs help but this seems to be more of a general issue for any skill that animation roots.

Well with Signet of the hunt +10% speed and +30% from trait it is still impossible to catch some classes in WvWvW. Insane imbalance or hacks I don’t know.
PvE wise anything is good, though my preference is Porcine (Knock down) and bird (conditions-)

Meryt.9823:

Well with Signet of the hunt +10% speed and +30% from trait it is still impossible to catch some classes in WvWvW. Insane imbalance or hacks I don’t know.
PvE wise anything is good, though my preference is Porcine (Knock down) and bird (conditions-)

Cool, so they can miss just a little bit faster~

Test it, run speed doesn’t rectify jack because the attack animation isn’t affected by any anything other than Frenzy.

After testing in the mists, I found that wolves and wolf-like pets are best for moving targets. Jaguars come in close, but that’s only really because they are glass cannons.

Wolves keep up strong damage on moving targets because A ) they snare with cripple and B ) they have a fast attack speed with minimal attack animation.

Also, the runs peed doesn’t make a difference for most pets, but it does actually help a bit with wolves.

Also, birds are terrible at moving targets since their attack animation is so flamboyant.

Dahkeus.8243:

After testing in the mists, I found that wolves and wolf-like pets are best for moving targets. Jaguars come in close, but that’s only really because they are glass cannons.

Wolves keep up strong damage on moving targets because A ) they snare with cripple and B ) they have a fast attack speed with minimal attack animation.

Also, the runs peed doesn’t make a difference for most pets, but it does actually help a bit with wolves.

Also, birds are terrible at moving targets since their attack animation is so flamboyant.

Have you tested the ranged pets yet? I haven’t gotten around to doing much testing (been leveling this alt quite a bit).

As far as the canines I think you may have come to the same conclusion as Psychrome. As I thought about it it would seem that fast animation should trump all. I really will have to get around to how ranged pets stay on target. My hope is that by endgame I get a good feel for the pet I will use in PvE primarily. Likely bird or wolf depending on how tanky my spec is toward the end.

Ty guys for the info provided again it truly does help.

Finally got around to testing and I concur with Dahkeus canines are best at it. The snare is one thing but all the animations are short. Moa with the exception of that vul screech and cats come in right behind. However, canines are way far ahead. Shockingly enough birds seemed the worst.

yep, canines are strong. their balancing factor is long cooldowns on their actives & passives ( 20s & 40s ), where other pets can fire off their passives much quicker ( cats have 8s CD burst ability for example ) with shorter CDs on active as well.

if you use a bow & want a melee pet, it’s hard to say no to canines.