Guild Wars 2

I’m sure the Ranger-is-“kitten”-useless people will have a lot of counterpoints for what I listed, they might be valid, but pets aren’t as bad as they make it seem. Now, we move on to the lighter side of the guide, the Pros of having a Pet!

Why Pets Are Good For You

The best thing about being a Ranger is that there is two of you, all day, everyday. You spawned into the game with your pet and your pet will stay with you until you logout. It will keep you company for better and for worse! Ok, I tried to make that sound dramatic, but you get the point. What this means is:

1. There will always be 2 targets for your enemies. If they go for your pet, that’s 100% damage reduction on your Ranger. If they focus you, your pet gets more hits in (provided you snared the enemy, of course). Also, if you take an Ursine pet you have a sturdy tank in the PvE maps!

2. You can do 2 things at once. Some really good examples of this would be:
– you can make your pet aggro the Champion Karka boss guarding the rich ori node while you mine. This works for commune skill challenges and some guarded chests too.
– You can rez a teammate while your pet continues to attack an enemy (or the other way around if you have Search and Rescue).
– Your pet can free you from the Crystal Imprisonment that Subject Alpha makes.
– And one of the more fun stuff to do with pets is when you’re guarding a tower in WvW and nothing’s happening, you can send your pet off to fight the monsters just outside your tower and collect the loot since they spawn right on your feet.

No other class can do these things.

3. People say that Pets account for 30-50% of a Rangers damage. This means when you’re in the downed state, you still have 30-50% of your damage still standing! Even better is that your pet still has access to all of its skills when you’re downed, so you have an additional 2 skills available to you (taking into account the swap timer of course).

Pet Roles

Now here’s where most people encounter problems. There are people that use pets for the wrong purposes and complain that they are useless. The way I see it, choosing pets is just like choosing which set of gear your going for. We have several pets that great for certain roles and absolutely horrible in others. They can be categorized into offensive, defensive and support, while some are a mix of 2 categories.

Offensive pets would include the Feline, Drake, Shark and Bird Families. Felines and Birds, in particular, can be likened to glass cannons as they have the highest precision of all pets, but they also have the worst toughness and vitality. Seeing 2k crits from these guys are pretty common and account for a LOT of Ranger DPS.

Defensive pets would include Ursine, Canine and Boar Families. They have respectable defensive stats, average Power and Precision and their abilities are mostly designed to negate damage or to disable enemies. Special mention goes to the hyena because it can summon more knockdown machines for you!

Support pets would be pets that are designed to either assist you, or hinder enemies. These would be the Moa Family, which is basically a walking buff station, the Spider family with a plethora of immobilizes and conditions, and the tanky Devourer family with their racial knockdown abilities and condition based activated skills.

Picking the appropriate pet for the situation is something a lot of players lack, thus they cry that “pets are useless.” One of these scenarios is when defending or attacking a tower or castle in WvW, melee pets that attack defended doors die. Of course it will, not even players can survive 2-3 Elementalists spamming spells on that. In this situation, opting for a ranged pet would be better as it is away from the AoE damage that is intended to destroy rams. Sometimes it can even hit defenders up on the walls!

So now you’ve captured the tower and you’re defending it. You then find that Ranged pets cannot hit enemies below walls because their range is too short and have now become useless. Melee pets sent to the zerg will die in an instant and are now useless as well. The appropriate pet to switch to here would be Moas as they can buff your fellow defenders on the wall and still be safe.

Basically, I’m saying appropriate pets should be used whenever needed. Pets should be swapped around as necessary. We’ve got over 10 pet families and over 30 pets to choose from, so we have a LOT of options! (Barring the Drake family as they’re bugged to only use one attack atm). Drakes got fixed on the January Major patch, so they’re viable now as well! (I love those AoE heals from Healing Spring + Tail Swipe)

Closing:

If this little guide still didn’t make you like pets, I strongly suggest trying it anyway. Nothing like test driving a car to get a feel for it yourself. Just keep in mind all the problems and the workarounds I’ve listed here while doing it. If you still don’t like pets, but still prefer ranged combat, maybe a Rifle Warrior would be a better profession for you. Pets are here to stay for Rangers and they won’t go away (even if you stow them!)

About the Author:
I have played 400+ hours on my ranger and I’ve tried several builds on the Ranger. I dabbled a bit in sPvP and spent a modest amount of time in dungeons and WvW so I experienced pretty much everything the game has to offer on my Ranger. Everything I listed here is from personal experience and influenced by the posts I’ve read on the GW2 main forums and on r/Guildwars2.

jubskie.3152:

Picking the appropriate pet for the situation is something a lot of players lack_, thus they cry that "pets are useless

This is what makes the difference for me. When I do dungeons and get rangers on my group, all i have to do to know if the ranger is good or not is to pay attention at what pets they use and how they manage their pets.

This is a game where you can switch pets anytime as long as you are out of combat, there is no excuse to being stuck at using the same pets for everything.

I hope Anet allows us to switch the non used pet even when being in combat, this would really help to adapt your pets to the situation even if you can’t get out of combat

Sleepy.2647:

jubskie.3152:

Picking the appropriate pet for the situation is something a lot of players lack_, thus they cry that "pets are useless

This is what makes the difference for me. When I do dungeons and get rangers on my group, all i have to do to know if the ranger is good or not is to pay attention at what pets they use and how they manage their pets.

This is a game where you can switch pets anytime as long as you are out of combat, there is no excuse to being stuck at using the same pets for everything.

I hope Anet allows us to switch the non used pet even when being in combat, this would really help to adapt your pets to the situation even if you can’t get out of combat

Amen! I’ve seen Rangers standing back plinking away with a bow while their bird eats AoE after AoE until it’s dead.

Nice write up, jubskie.

jubskie.3152:

1. Rangers aren’t designed for spike damage, they are constant, steady DPS. Rangers deal the same damage as other high damage classes given a set period of time on a single target. Yes, we wont see 10k crits anytime soon, but we get lots of quick 2k double crits from birds and felines instead.

When you add up the numbers, they are still pretty weak. The pet numbers are also completely unreliable, and therefore irrelevant to spike damage.
Steady DPS is good, however… Steady DPS only matters if you can survive long enough to deal it. Guardian can afford to do steady DPS. Ranger not so much.

The rest of your points come down to the same issue. Ranger has to sacrifice all utility and put lots of micro into doing mediocre damage that comes naturally to other classes. Does it make ranger completely useless? No, of course not, but in any competition driven game being significantly behind is the same as being useless.

And for the record: Pets suck. They require too much attention for very marginal return.

Best thing about having a pet out for me is; Rage as one.

wait.. you can use the skill with a pet stowed. I guess I like to rage by myself.

I wonder if there’s a word for that bizarre kind of massive vicarious narcissism, where one person believes another is completely infallible.

News flash for you, this game was made by human beings, and humans make mistakes. Constantly.

You didn’t bust anything, you suggested strategies to sometimes mitigate (but not remove) necessary crippling nonsense rangers have to deal with because they have a pet.

jubskie.3152:

1. Rangers aren’t designed for spike damage, they are constant, steady DPS. Rangers deal the same damage as other high damage classes given a set period of time on a single target. Yes, we wont see 10k crits anytime soon, but we get lots of quick 2k double crits from birds and felines instead.

This doesn’t mitigate the fact that when a pet is dead or ineffective a significant portion of out damage is now gone. What other class has the possibility of a significant component of the their DPS and utility being completely shut down because of bad AI or bad luck with a boss AoE/inability to avoid a zerg? Pets are the first things to die in a zerg in WvW, even the ranged ones. In boss fights you cannot swap them out every single time they are about to die. They do not respond to the recall command fast enough to avoid many AoEs. Pets will be downed often and for a long time. It’s a fact of the ranger and it means rangers, unlike other classes, will spend much of their game time at less than full effectiveness.

jubskie.3152:

2. Pets not hitting fast moving targets is definitely a big issue, but Rangers have a lot of tools to help our pets along. We have access to a LOT of cripples and immobilizes. Think of snaring someone as marking them for your pet, and you should see it hitting more reliably.

You can help your pet hit, for sure, but many classes can easily remove conditions and avoid this quite simply. The reality is, simply running in a circle is all it takes to counter the pet AI (and dodge most arrows as well sadly) and pets unable to attack targets unless they have some CC on them is unacceptable. It needs to be better. Working harder to achieve the same results others can achieve for less work is not good balance.

jubskie.3152:

3. Pet Pathing is more of a PvE issue and it is very annoying when travelling in Orr. As for the pathing, this can be solved easily by swapping pets once you get to the bottom. No more pet running off and aggroing everything! Simple eh?

It’s good advice but it’s still a hassle to have pets pull half the dungeon unless you stow them before jumping (and it means stowing them often or waiting for cooldowns to swap them if you are in combat for making jumps). Rangers become dangerous to their entire group when jumping platforms with the way pets are currently designed. Their pathing, aggro tendencies the inability to stow them permanently without the game bringing them back out as soon as you are in combat are hindrances we shouldn’t have to deal with.

jubskie.3152:

4. As for the Pets dying a lot, this can be somewhat mitigated by putting points in the Beast Mastery Trait line, but it’s really up to ANet to help us here. One other reason pets die a lot is because it’s master neglects it. Even worse, is the master sends it off to fight in melee and expect it to survive when the Ranger itself can’t survive that scenario. If you see that big bad Risen Abomination charging up for its smash attack, call your pet back before the animation finishes. Most people just let the pet take the hit and then complain. Another possible solution is to use ranged pets.

I dealt with this with your first point, but it’s true there are ways to mitigae some unecessary deaths of the ranger pet, but the reality becomes that rangers end up having to do a lot more work (and possibly invest more resources) to keep both themselves and their pet alive. When a boss does an AoE I have to both dodge roll in time AND swap my pet out at the same time (if the cooldown is up) which can be very difficult. That’s if my pet is lucky enough to be alive still. Many bosses which are easily meleeable are still not pet friendly because dodging is involved in almost any boss fight. Pets are going to be absorbing attacks that players don’t. They also don’t have the advantage of being able to be rallied or revived from a downed state like a player does. So fights where melee characters get downed, those are usually fights where a ranger pet is on the 40-60 second cooldown. The longer they go, the less we are able to contribute because of constantly downed pets.

There are ways to reduce the hindrances ranger pet design has forced us to deal with, and some of your suggestions can improve the quality of life of a ranger and his pet, but in no way are you busting a “myth” nor do most of these suggestions alleviate the concern that these issues are real problems that are not skill based but rather design failures.

Honestly, trollhammer sums the issue up quite nicely. People who enjoy the class (like myself) will still play it, and still manage to contribute fine, but we are definitely behind the curve.

Useless? I agree, busted. They will keep aggro off you, especially when you need to high-tail it. Combined with traps I can power-run through almost everything. I even used the bear to keep the Champ in Southsun occupied while I mined the rich ori. You can’t tell me that’s useless.

The weaker ones don’t do very well in a fight, but the tougher ones make PvE very easy. Dungeons are certainly a thing but I do recommend ranger as a first class even with the questionable idiosyncrasies.

Effective is perhaps a better word to analyze, and for that I would say no, the pet is not very effective, even a disadvantage in some ways. My main grief is that, unlike every other profession, this is the only unique mechanic that can be defeated.

You can’t stop a thief from stealing, an elementalist from chaining with attunements or an engineer from swapping kits. You can shut down a ranger’s unique mechanic and halve their effectiveness: knock the pet out.

And here’s my suggestion: pets can rally the player, rangers should be able to rally their pets. A bond is a two-way street, Anet, we support one another.

Sleepy.2647:

jubskie.3152:

Picking the appropriate pet for the situation is something a lot of players lack_, thus they cry that "pets are useless

This is what makes the difference for me. When I do dungeons and get rangers on my group, all i have to do to know if the ranger is good or not is to pay attention at what pets they use and how they manage their pets.

This is a game where you can switch pets anytime as long as you are out of combat, there is no excuse to being stuck at using the same pets for everything.

I hope Anet allows us to switch the non used pet even when being in combat, this would really help to adapt your pets to the situation even if you can’t get out of combat

I normally just keep my Fern Hound and Drake/Moa with me, but then again they’re fairly tanky with 30 points in BM so i hardly need to worry about them… however i know exactly what you’re talking about where the rangers just throw their bird into the fray and then cry that their pets always dead….

@OP Awesome post!! Hopefully a lot of new players will read this before coming to the conclusion pets are broken!!

nldixon.8514:

Sleepy.2647:

jubskie.3152:

Picking the appropriate pet for the situation is something a lot of players lack_, thus they cry that "pets are useless

This is what makes the difference for me. When I do dungeons and get rangers on my group, all i have to do to know if the ranger is good or not is to pay attention at what pets they use and how they manage their pets.

This is a game where you can switch pets anytime as long as you are out of combat, there is no excuse to being stuck at using the same pets for everything.

I hope Anet allows us to switch the non used pet even when being in combat, this would really help to adapt your pets to the situation even if you can’t get out of combat

Amen! I’ve seen Rangers standing back plinking away with a bow while their bird eats AoE after AoE until it’s dead.

Nice write up, jubskie.

I’m yet to see any pet not eat up AoE and die in seconds even Ranged pets like devourers and Spiders die in seconds because they are too stupid to move out of the ways and their HP is just silly low on all pets…

Great write-up. Forum needs more posts like this.

Great write up! My only objection is that I personally do not understand why canine pets are classified as defensive. My wolf has the same stats as my Drake, so the statement about canine having more defensive stats is a little bit baffling. Just my two cents though. I can see an argument for why canines can be classified as defensive (especially fern hounds), but I find my wolf to be a valuable ally for offensive play.

Yeah, I would classify Canine pets as being offensive and Drakes as defensive. Canines tend to have snares and CC skills, while Drakes as a whole have higher Toughness and Vitality, although not as much as Bears. If their other pet skills worked, they’d also be able to tank more effectively thanks to Chomp (self-heal) and Tail Swipe (AoE launch with a charge-up, so it’s not very useful offensively, but very handy when there’s a bunch of mobs pounding on it).

One other thing I think you can add to the “Why pets are good for you” section is they are significant potential damage that is independent of your gear selection. Some people look at this and say “aww pets suck, it’s not worth it for me to wear full glass cannon berserker gear because I wont improve my total dps as much as non pet classes.” You can also see the opposite as an advantage: “I can wear more defensive oriented gear for myself without sacrificing as much damage capability as other classes.”

I have no complain about ranger pet except it needs a better ai on moving target, and a faster casting f2…seriously 2 sec is a really really long casting time

Very nice post. Well-written, balanced, and informative. Thanks.

pets definitely need the 90% reduction to AOE damage trait that was given to pets in other game titles for this very reason (pets dying from AOE all the time).

Undertow.2389:

One other thing I think you can add to the “Why pets are good for you” section is they are significant potential damage that is independent of your gear selection. Some people look at this and say “aww pets suck, it’s not worth it for me to wear full glass cannon berserker gear because I wont improve my total dps as much as non pet classes.” You can also see the opposite as an advantage: “I can wear more defensive oriented gear for myself without sacrificing as much damage capability as other classes.”

That’s not true. Other classes can just choose to wear less defensive gear and have full control over their class effectiveness. Rangers have a large component of their DPS (that has a confusing % of effectiveness reserved for the pet) that is beyond stat choice and limited to a selection of pets which have other factors (such as range, utility and survivability – more of an issue when you can’t just dodge to make up for running full zerkers). Pets are not useless, which was never a myth, the popular belief is that they are often a hindrance and don’t function as well as they should resulting in the class as a whole paying the price. I don’t believe you’ve busted that belief.

jubskie.3152:

Pet Roles

Now here’s where most people encounter problems. There are people that use pets for the wrong purposes and complain that they are useless. The way I see it, choosing pets is just like choosing which set of gear your going for. We have several pets that great for certain roles and absolutely horrible in others. They can be categorized into offensive, defensive and support, while some are a mix of 2 categories.

Offensive pets would include the Feline, Drake, Shark and Bird Families. Felines and Birds, in particular, can be likened to glass cannons as they have the highest precision of all pets, but they also have the worst toughness and vitality. Seeing 2k crits from these guys are pretty common and account for a LOT of Ranger DPS.

Defensive pets would include Ursine, Canine and Boar Families. They have respectable defensive stats, average Power and Precision and their abilities are mostly designed to negate damage or to disable enemies. Special mention goes to the hyena because it can summon more knockdown machines for you!

Support pets would be pets that are designed to either assist you, or hinder enemies. These would be the Moa Family, which is basically a walking buff station, the Spider family with a plethora of immobilizes and conditions, and the tanky Devourer family with their racial knockdown abilities and condition based activated skills.

Picking the appropriate pet for the situation is something a lot of players lack, thus they cry that “pets are useless.” One of these scenarios is when defending or attacking a tower or castle in WvW, melee pets that attack defended doors die. Of course it will, not even players can survive 2-3 Elementalists spamming spells on that. In this situation, opting for a ranged pet would be better as it is away from the AoE damage that is intended to destroy rams. Sometimes it can even hit defenders up on the walls!

So now you’ve captured the tower and you’re defending it. You then find that Ranged pets cannot hit enemies below walls because their range is too short and have now become useless. Melee pets sent to the zerg will die in an instant and are now useless as well. The appropriate pet to switch to here would be Moas as they can buff your fellow defenders on the wall and still be safe.

Basically, I’m saying appropriate pets should be used whenever needed. Pets should be swapped around as necessary. We’ve got over 10 pet families and over 30 pets to choose from, so we have a LOT of options! (Barring the Drake family as they’re bugged to only use one attack atm).

Closing:

If this little guide still didn’t make you like pets, I strongly suggest trying it anyway. Nothing like test driving a car to get a feel for it yourself. Just keep in mind all the problems and the workarounds I’ve listed here while doing it. If you still don’t like pets, but still prefer ranged combat, maybe a Rifle Warrior would be a better profession for you. Pets are here to stay for Rangers and they won’t go away (even if you stow them!)

About the Author:
I have played 400+ hours on my ranger and I’ve tried several builds on the Ranger. I dabbled a bit in sPvP and spent a modest amount of time in dungeons and WvW so I experienced pretty much everything the game has to offer on my Ranger. Everything I listed here is from personal experience and influenced by the posts I’ve read on the GW2 main forums and on r/Guildwars2.

Honestly , I got 3 devourers and a fern hound( for healing ).
They are the best defensive pets as they got the hugest amount of Toughness.
I think that Lashhtail Devourer got the strongest " F2 " attack. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rending_Barbs

tigirius.9014:

pets definitely need the 90% reduction to AOE damage trait that was given to pets in other game titles for this very reason (pets dying from AOE all the time).

ye, lets make our bears completely immortal in any boss fights, because with their own heal skill + 6 sec invul combined with passive lifereg from signet of the wild or 30 bm trait and our healskills that all affect the pet as well, they simply would not die anymore ever, unless they are focused by the boss and even then, will take quiet a few hits.

seriously 90%? i havent played WoW for years so i just had to google that up, wow… . Before you ask for anything like this (like many others do in this forum) have you ever thought a little about it? Lets say they bring this pet-aoe reduction into the game but a little bit more “balanced” like 30-40% or so? then the same rangers would still complain about the same thing, because their pet still died after 3 aoes instead of 2, and they still “dont want” to control their pet themselves.

i completely agree to the op, choosing ranger means to control yourself and your pet, not just playing a ranged character with a permanent, undieing, free bonus dmg-tool by your side, i have already stated in the german forum that it is very well possible to keep your pet alive in most fights and still let it dish out some decent dps, however it requires a bit micro management.

and for the people who think other classes dont rely on a pet for their dmg potential, you have never tried playing a pet necro or a turret engineer, true they can play builds that dont include pets and turrets, but thats not the point why i chose to play them. Also warriors or rogues are beeing reduced to only ranged dmg at some boss fights, forcing them to always carry a ranged weapon in their secondary slot and effectively ruining many builds.

Sleepy.2647:

jubskie.3152:

Picking the appropriate pet for the situation is something a lot of players lack_, thus they cry that "pets are useless

This is what makes the difference for me. When I do dungeons and get rangers on my group, all i have to do to know if the ranger is good or not is to pay attention at what pets they use and how they manage their pets.

This is a game where you can switch pets anytime as long as you are out of combat, there is no excuse to being stuck at using the same pets for everything.

I hope Anet allows us to switch the non used pet even when being in combat, this would really help to adapt your pets to the situation even if you can’t get out of combat

+1

Pet change of the un-active pet must be implemented!

What myth? Pets aren’t useless, they’re just not good. Lol.

Shiren.9532:

That’s not true. Other classes can just choose to wear less defensive gear and have full control over their class effectiveness. Rangers have a large component of their DPS (that has a confusing % of effectiveness reserved for the pet) that is beyond stat choice and limited to a selection of pets which have other factors (such as range, utility and survivability – more of an issue when you can’t just dodge to make up for running full zerkers). Pets are not useless, which was never a myth, the popular belief is that they are often a hindrance and don’t function as well as they should resulting in the class as a whole paying the price. I don’t believe you’ve busted that belief.

1. I’m not the OP.

2. It’s simple math, if class X derives 100% of their offense from gear and the ranger derives 60% with 40% staying static from a pet, then if at a given offense/defense gear stat distribution class X is equal to a ranger, removing offensive stats from that point will have less of an overall effect on ranger dps than on class X, and vice versa.

3. There are indeed lots of people on this forum saying pets are worthless and asking for a petless option for the ranger. Basically they go “being a pet class has x, y, z disadvantages therefor rangers are crap until you remove pets and make us exactly the same as every other class” while completely discarding or ignoring the ways in which a pet is an advantage. To me, that was the goal of this thread; to remember the upsides. But then again, this is an MMO forum, where people demand a boring homogenized game and hyperbole to extremes (every class, not just rangers) in the name of the almighty “balance,” citing any disadvantage is an obvious “design flaw” and how the devs have an mindboggling “disconnect.”

Undertow.2389:

To me, that was the goal of this thread; to remember the upsides.

This, exactly. I check this forum everyday and I got so fed up with all the complaints about pets that I just had to write this up and quell the QQ. Everyday there will be a thread about permanently stowing pets, pets being a hindrance, pets dying too fast or the Nth thread about pets not hitting moving targets. This whining is from people that choose to work against the mechanic rather than work with it. I embraced it, took my time to understand it, and now I’m sharing what I’ve learned to everyone.

As for the people that still want to stay negative: I know that pets have issues, I acknowledged them on the first post.

I’ve experienced all of these as well and I know that these are all very valid and all very real.

However, they are not as useless and broken as people make them appear to be. They still have their uses and its up to ANet to help make pets more effective and helpful. I just hope Jon Peters’ update on melee pets hitting more reliably will be good.

To everyone else who enjoyed my post, thank you for reading! I hope you learned something new and I hope this would be the start of good, healthy discussion on pets and their uses.

I love my pets, and I manage them very well, and know of both the drawbacks and advantages with pets and pet classes. I see no myth busted here, nothing new under the sun really.

However, I wanted to give two big thumbs up to Shiren – you, my friend, got everything right in your posts. What you wrote are the current truth about ranger pets.

Such a simple thing as being able to res a pet if you choose to, and/or pets being able to rally when the opponent goes down? Of course that’s how things should work.

So many ways Anet could make “quality of life” improvements for the ranger, if they just wanted to.

Another thing I’ve noticed lately, is if I call my pet back sometimes it doesn’t run straight to me but it instead dodges or gets out of the way of an enemy.

I noticed my Moa Bird do it a couple times, I hit f4 and he went away from me and dodged this champion’s big attack. It may just be coincidence but if the AI was coded to do that more it would be great. Maybe even if it did on its own without pressing f4.

It is easier to call them back when you’re playing a ranged weapon as you can see everything the enemies are doing. I wish there is at least a button to make the pet dodge or something.

But a bunch of people saying pets are useless happens in every game. You make some good points, hopefully it will enlighten some more people that pets are worth it. I personally find playing as a Ranger with a pet is much easier than playing a warrior. There are many games where pets are declared useless and I end up having no trouble.

There are problems but they are not breaking the entire world. Once the pathing and the moving targets thing is patched up, pets will be awesome. However one thing I’ve noticed is in some dungeons pets will be killed in one hit or a couple seconds, but that could probably be fixed if pets could dodge.

I’ve never really looked at the pet system and thought it was completely horrible. There was always the upside to me.

FlyingCrackers.5620:

Another thing I’ve noticed lately, is if I call my pet back sometimes it doesn’t run straight to me but it instead dodges or gets out of the way of an enemy.

I noticed my Moa Bird do it a couple times, I hit f4 and he went away from me and dodged this champion’s big attack. It may just be coincidence but if the AI was coded to do that more it would be great. Maybe even if it did on its own without pressing f4.

It is easier to call them back when you’re playing a ranged weapon as you can see everything the enemies are doing. I wish there is at least a button to make the pet dodge or something.

Can’t say I’ve noticed that. It’s been suggested before, that calling you pet back should make the pet dodge (maybe twice in a row) towards you, and then start running back. Seems like an easy fix, they don’t even need a special animation for it imho, just the dodge-mechanic applied to them.

Calling your pet back to dodge AoE’s or powerful attacks is all well and good if you’re playing ranged. But if you’re playing melee yourself, then you’re screwed. You won’t have to time dodge out of the way and then call your pet back as well unless the enemy has a huge chargeup. And thats assuming you’re even trying to dodge roll out of the way, if you’re doing something like using Greatsword’s block / evade or using one of Dagger / Sword’s evades, then you’re completely out of luck.

It would need an internal cooldown (three or five seconds?) but I like that idea Deadhead.

As stated, pets are not useless, but they require a lot more effort than they should to keep them alive+effective.

They need to be able to hit moving targets by default (without the ranger having to dedicate away additional valuable skill slots to CC just to ensure that the pet will hit the target, for a brief duration.)

Dungeons annoy me the most as a ranger. If the pet just jumped down with you when you jumped down (to somewhere) that would help a lot in dungeons. As it is, they find the shortest path to you and pull everything along with it. Also, if you take a tiny bit of damage while jumping, they pop straight back out and cause more aggro. Other classes can jump about confidently in a dungeon knowing that they won’t pull half of the map, but the ranger can’t.

Switching or stowing the pet to avert the above is not always an option. If you’ve just come out of combat and during that combat you pet switched (say, to help it avoid dying to an AOE effect) then your pet stow+switch will be on a cool down. Leaving only two options to mitigate this somewhat:
A) Wait for the cool down to clear by which point your group will be wondering why you haven’t moved. They’ll probably be at the next boss telling you to hurry it up.
B) Trait for faster pet switching, sacrificing valuable trait points but nonetheless still waiting for the pet stow+switch to come out of cool down.

Pets in their current state in world PVE maps are (mostly) fine, but in dungeons I just don’t enjoy being a ranger, personally I’d like to be to perma-stow pets when in a dungeon but that won’t happen.

Pets do perfectly fine in regular pve. Yeah they occasionally aggro the wrong mob but I find that a ranger has plenty of ways of getting out of sticky situations like that even in lvl 80 areas. For the most part melee defensive pets make for a good distraction vs regular foes while offensive pets make for a good damage source vs small mobs of enemies without much aoe damage provided that they don’t attract any serious aggro.

In any other situation however (dungeons, bosses, vs human opponents) I find that my options reduced to either using ranged pets (that I don’t particularly like) or simply using pets like the red moa and jungle stalker and basically having them stand by me while their F2 ability and protect me are on cooldown.

Sadly that means that my damage output is significantly decreased and an important mechanic of my class is severely limited during the times when I generally need my pet the most. I mean I hardly need any help dealing with trash mobs and elites in regular pve.

An easy way to bypass the luring problem in dungeons (beyond the “stop trying to speedrun and just kill the gits” ) is to actually send your pet in deliberately, if it’s melee. Let them get around the pet, and when you’ve got a little bit of distance, swap pets. The new pet appears next to you, and the mob loses aggro.

ranger is my main toon. love it in general, had a lot of fun levelling it up to 80. its the dungeons where i feel less useful as a ranger. played guardian or mesmer and felt i could make a better contribution to the group.

part of it is the pets issues, and part is the traits – so many traits just seem unattractive to me.

i do wish the longbow autoattack was a bit more reliable/useful. and the shortbow #2 is pretty mehhhh… nothing is terribly wrong about them, but those skills are just a bit disappointing is all

Electro.4173:

Calling your pet back to dodge AoE’s or powerful attacks is all well and good if you’re playing ranged.

Yes. There were a few boss fight events where I managed to keep my feline alive the whole time simply by using F3 and F1 so it would always end up behind the boss, or stay with me if it needed to recover a bit, but I was using a bow.
If you’re playing melee you cannot ask your pet to stay away to recover by using F3. It will only stay next to you and therefore be right in front of your ennemy, taking damage… so if you melee you can only choose to sen your pet on suicide mission, you cannot get them out of a fight like you can when playing ranged.
So F3 should not only make the pet dodge (or at least get out of the way quickly and reliably) and come back to you, it should also put your pet in a mode where it tries to stay away from ennemies and AoEs (and not following you right into the heat of battle).

If it could be done and be reliable it would be much better than a straight up stat increase or some artificial protection against AoEs that I see suggested here and there. It’d make managing our pets rewarding because we’d have the tools to do it properly.

Tauril.8504:

Electro.4173:

Calling your pet back to dodge AoE’s or powerful attacks is all well and good if you’re playing ranged.

Yes. There were a few boss fight events where I managed to keep my feline alive the whole time simply by using F3 and F1 so it would always end up behind the boss, or stay with me if it needed to recover a bit, but I was using a bow.
If you’re playing melee you cannot ask your pet to stay away to recover by using F3. It will only stay next to you and therefore be right in front of your ennemy, taking damage… so if you melee you can only choose to sen your pet on suicide mission, you cannot get them out of a fight like you can when playing ranged.
So F3 should not only make the pet dodge (or at least get out of the way quickly and reliably) and come back to you, it should also put your pet in a mode where it tries to stay away from ennemies and AoEs (and not following you right into the heat of battle).

If it could be done and be reliable it would be much better than a straight up stat increase or some artificial protection against AoEs that I see suggested here and there. It’d make managing our pets rewarding because we’d have the tools to do it properly.

I haven’t run into this problem much, but I also tend to spec far into BM on any melee build I run, especially if I use 1h sword. However, even if I do need to move my pet out of the way to avoid being hit, unless I’m sitting in the bad stuff myself, there’s not much reason my pet shouldn’t be able to get out of the way as well.

Dante.1508:

nldixon.8514:

Sleepy.2647:

jubskie.3152:

Picking the appropriate pet for the situation is something a lot of players lack_, thus they cry that "pets are useless

This is what makes the difference for me. When I do dungeons and get rangers on my group, all i have to do to know if the ranger is good or not is to pay attention at what pets they use and how they manage their pets.

This is a game where you can switch pets anytime as long as you are out of combat, there is no excuse to being stuck at using the same pets for everything.

I hope Anet allows us to switch the non used pet even when being in combat, this would really help to adapt your pets to the situation even if you can’t get out of combat

Amen! I’ve seen Rangers standing back plinking away with a bow while their bird eats AoE after AoE until it’s dead.

Nice write up, jubskie.

I’m yet to see any pet not eat up AoE and die in seconds even Ranged pets like devourers and Spiders die in seconds because they are too stupid to move out of the ways and their HP is just silly low on all pets…

It’s not about the HP, it’s about pet management. If the pet gets killed by the AoE the player isn’t doing it right.

It’s possible to let the pet eat AoEs, but then it needs to be swapped before it’s dead. Alternately, the pet can be called back to the Ranger to avoid AoEs if the Ranger in question uses ranged weapons.

Pets shouldn’t die if the Ranger is paying attention and managing their pet.

[Edit: Despite that, I still think AoE damage reduction for pets would be nice.]

Know what would be a cool idea? If when a player dodges, so does the pet evade attacks. That would be a nice trait or even profession mechanic for avoiding large AoEs.

So you spend traits to boost your pets at the expense of those that you could’ve spent on yourself? You’re essentially shifting a greater percentage of your total damage to rely on your pet and run a greater risk of losing it when the pet dies.

You’re better off just learning which pets to use in different situations and knowing when to call it back.

Being that pet AI and mechanics are so absolutely horrid in every way possible it is rather silly imo to waste time buffing the pet in PvP at all. It’s going to be chasing any moving target or dead the vast majority of the time anyways. Given the handicap rangers are dealt with because of this I’ve always been impressed as hell when I run into the rangers that have kicked kitten with just spec’ing for themselves and ignoring the pet in PvP.

Hell, 1 aoe from my warrior/ele/necro/engi and ranger pets die in pvp anyways especially in WvW. Don’t see why something as basic as allowing rangers to just perma-stow the stupid thing is fought so hard against by the rangers that personally love the pet. Giving players an option to not have the pet out in no way affects those that do want it out. It’s like getting mad at someone for ordering a burger just because you prefer chicken.

Not useless….. they just kinda suck. I can do more damage without the pet than wasting points in a build just to keep the pet alive to do average damage if (with luck) the pet actually hits the mob im fighting.

I’m a new ranger and this helped me a lot. Especially the part about what pets are used for what.

I understand Rangers have a lot of buggy stuff, but I’m willing to stick with my Sylvari Ranger to the end, just because its fun and it’s my type of character.

Thanks again!

Double Spider = 6 sec of Immobilize!

What I would ask is allow me, the player, to manually activate these abilities.

My wolf crits 5k and with the elite buff + the sigil that gives you more size etc you can do about 12k easily with the number 2 skill of longbow. I can’t remember the names but i CAN take a picture if you want. :P

Also, the 12k crit is while flanking and buffed.

All I want is for my wolf to step out of the AoE. If I had a nickel for every time he ignored F3 and died standing in the red circle…well, I’d have a lot of nickels.

My bear is great though. Throw bear at enemy, enemy ignores me.

Still don’t see the issue with making pets naturally avoid AE damage or at least drastically reduce it. In PvE, the class is balanced around 100% up-time on their pet, which is automatically not possible, and then doesn’t work on 25% of the content out there. Removing the AE issue seems like an obvious fix. And in PvP, what’s wrong with players needing to actually focus on the pet to bring it down instead of just hit it occasionally with melee swings?

As a side note, can we get improved controls on the pets? We should only need a single key to tell a pet to attack and return. If the pet is actively attacking my target and I hit F1, the pet should return to me. If the pet is actively attacking something that isn’t my target and I hit F1, it should change priority to that target. Made a script to do this in WoW and it was really handy.

Please stop trying to defend a broken class. You might stop them fixing it..

Antisceptic.9174:

Please stop trying to defend a broken class. You might stop them fixing it..

Please learn how to play a working class so we wont become OP, i kinda want to have a challenge when i fight people.

Durzlla.6295:

a working class

lol he must be joking

Durzlla.6295:

so we wont become OP

bwahahahahaha
Oh goodness.

Maybe in a parallel universe that might ever occur.