Guild Wars 2

Canine vs Drake

Hey folks, looking for your opinion/feedback on the merits of Canines vs Drakes since the patch.

Since almost forever, I have run Canines almost exclusively for regular PvE and WvW (I stay away from zergs and only roam solo or in small groups). The only exception to this being dungeons, where I run 2 Devourers. Early on I tried Drakes, but between the bugs (chomp heals the other guy!) and only having ever so-slightly more tankiness than Canines, I wrote them off. But since the last couple of patches, I notice that the Chomp bug has been addressed, and there has been a substantial Vitality buff to Drakes.

So basically I have three questions I would like some feedback on:

1. Canine vs Drake, how do they stack up dps wise on a single target (and yes, I already know that Drakes have AOE dps, and Canines have none)?

2. Assuming you were forced to choose only one for PvE, which would it be – Canine or Drake ?

3. And assuming you were forced to choose only one for WvW, which would it be – Canine or Drake?

Thanks

Drakes hardly ever die. Canines die more easily. Canines do, however, have some CC capabilities and (I believe) a little more DPS. Then again, drakes do fair damage through their F2 skill.

Hard decision! I actually use a fern hound and an ice drake simultaneously to get the best of both.

In WvW, definitely drake though, because they simply don’t die. Though I’d actually root for any ranged pet in WvW.

Good questions! These are the kind of threads I like to see, not those whining about lb and confusion. I still use canines exclusively. The main reason being they are part of my PvP/WvW build and that I use PvE to practice with them (pet swapping and F2 usage mainly). I will continue to use them in WvW and PvP for the aoe fear/immobilize but I may actually swap to drakes for dungeons and PvE since landing their F2 will be much easier and quicker and they longer heal their opponents with chomp. Even in large ZvZ fights, pet management is key, and I have no problem keeping my canines alive.

From a DPS perspective, and based on numbers from the wiki, I would surmise the Drakes would out-DPS the Canines. The Drakes’ damage numbers (non-F2 skills) are: 122, 240, and 647. The second and third damage numbers have 20 and 30 second cooldowns, respectively. The Canine damage numbers are 122, 247, and 248. The second and third damage numbers have 20 and 40 second cooldowns, respectively. Further, generally speaking, the Drakes’ F2 skills have higher damage numbers than the Canines. So, since the Canines and Drakes share attribute numbers, from a simplistic perspective, the Drake should out DPS the Canines.

What this doesn’t take into account are the additional abilities of some of the particular skills within each family. In general, the Canines’ F2 skills are more utility focused (e.g., Fear) vice being damage focused on the Drakes. The Canines’ regular attacks also have some utility with cripples and knockdowns. It is quite possible that these could help the Canines land more hits and surpass the Drakes in DPS; it would depend on the playstyle of the Ranger (i.e., ranged or melee).

As to which I would pick between the two… in general PvE I would take the damage of the Drakes. For Dungeons, I would take the Drakes or one of each; Drakes for the damage, the utilities of the canines for the non-Defiant enemies. For WvW, Canines for the utility.

Ision.3207:

Canine vs Drake

Hey folks, looking for your opinion/feedback on the merits of Canines vs Drakes since the patch.

Since almost forever, I have run Canines almost exclusively for regular PvE and WvW (I stay away from zergs and only roam solo or in small groups). The only exception to this being dungeons, where I run 2 Devourers. Early on I tried Drakes, but between the bugs (chomp heals the other guy!) and only having ever so-slightly more tankiness than Canines, I wrote them off. But since the last couple of patches, I notice that the Chomp bug has been addressed, and there has been a substantial Vitality buff to Drakes.

So basically I have three questions I would like some feedback on:

1. Canine vs Drake, how do they stack up dps wise on a single target (and yes, I already know that Drakes have AOE dps, and Canines have none)?

2. Assuming you were forced to choose only one for PvE, which would it be – Canine or Drake ?

3. And assuming you were forced to choose only one for WvW, which would it be – Canine or Drake?

Thanks

1. Dogs do more single target disregarding traits I think they also attack faster so are better on moving targets, but if you have the traits giving bleed on crits and increased condition damage for pets drake must do more even on single target.

2. Drake easily the aoe capability and survivability alone makes them worth it.

3. Canine knockdowns are too good compared to what a drake offers in pvp to go any other way than canine between these.

phantomFury.9168:

The Drakes’ damage numbers (non-F2 skills) are: 122, 240, and 647. The second and third damage numbers have 20 and 30 second cooldowns, respectively. The Canine damage numbers are 122, 247, and 248.

Tail swipe does marginally more damage than the canines knockdown ~25%, the listed figures are incorrect. Just wanted to point out that drake tooltips are very wrong.

Currently I’m experimenting with pet combination for ZvZ. Atm I’m thinking about Marsh Drake + Wolf.
From what I noticed drakes auto attack speed and damage are very close or equal to canine ones. Drake seems to be interesting in ZvZ because of his great survi after last patch, blast finisher being nice for friendlies and F2 (in marsh’s case it’s aoe poison with 900 range and it’s tracking target!). AoE auto attacks are just bonus.
Speaking about dmg: with all the kitten flying around, 20 more or less dmg on hit doesn’t change much :P
I belive I don’t have to explain why I -always- have wolf on swap

1) If you’re using the Drake Breathe and being intelligent while doing so and locking down the enemy so they can’t escape (we’re assuming you’re in a competent team whose not going to KNOCK THEM OUT OF THE WAY!! flips table due to group last night) then the drake will win, if we’re going for no F2s, or on a highly mobile mob then the canine will probably do better, but not by too much.

2) I’d choose the canine, he has a lot of control and if i’m using my Fernhound also brings some support via regen, which imo wins out in a PvE environment over a blast finisher and some raw damage.

3) Drake easily, he’s sturdier, and deals AoE damage there’s no reason you -wouldn’t- want to bring a drake to WvW because you want both of the traits they bring for that sort of scenario.

Are my eyes deceiving me, or have people responded politely and intelligently as if this were a normal friendly conversation? I mean no one has jumped in telling me to re-roll a Warrior, or that I’m a self-hating female homophobe for having skimpy armor. Heck, not even the usual “self-appointed” forum moderators have shown up to tell me we already have threads like this and I’ve committed an unforgiveable sin for posting another one.

Good lord, will wonders never cease!

;-)

Seriously folks, thanks for your input and feedback, I appreciate it.

I’ve actually tested it and drakes deal about 15% more damage than canines, on average on a single target. This is due to the fact that they deal pretty much the same damage with their auto-attacks (can’t rely on the tooltips for pets, they’re pretty inaccurate) and have nearly identical stats, but drakes have better skills otherwise; the tail swipe deals way more than the pounce and recharges faster.

So basically:

1) Drakes deal more than canines in any situation. They deal more damage overall, have a better cleave, and their F2 skills tend to actually deal damage, as opposed to the canines’, which tend to be control or support.

2) Drakes have better defense than canines in all situations, albeit only marginally. Their stats are equal, but drakes heal with their Chomp skill.

3) Canines have better control skills. Pounce knocks down, and most of the F2 skills offer increased CC.

So that’s pretty much the gist of it. Drakes are actually pretty good, DPS-wise. The only pets that exceed them in raw DPS are felines and birds, and unless you stack a lot of might and take Pet’s Prowess, the difference is less than 10% damage. With 25 might and fury, and Pet’s Prowess, it’s a 33% difference between felines and drakes, which may or may not be acceptable depending on the situation.

In my opinion with wvw canines are far superior than drakes. Duel canine gives you two knockdowns, two cripple attacks, as well as fear/immobilize/chill. For 1v1 battles that is absolutely huge, and the f2 attacks for canines are not too bad with larger battles either. Just my two cents, I can completely understand why others argue drakes are better though, for my build/play style canines do the trick for me.

Canines. Drakes have a DPS advantage in PvE, but I use my pets for utility, and Drakes F2 skills are some of the slowest in the game which makes any PvP problematic.

With Canines traited up to deal cripple on F2 you can really hound(hehe) people. The knockdowns are also incredibly useful once you get a handle on making the pet use them at the right time. It is actually pretty easy to interrupt other players with a freshly swapped in Canine, and this even works well while downed to prevent (or delay) being finished.

In WvW ZvZ situations, when the enemy zerg is trying to retreat I like to run a Drakehound into the enemy, F2 bomb immobilize and cripple, then throw a muddy terrain down behind them and our zerg’s AoE cleans up. I run Drakehound and either Wolf or Arctic Wolf (Wolf for PvP, Arctic for PvE and occasional WvW). I used to think that cripple on F2s ruined the Wolf’s fear but in practice it works well since the target will not run outside of AoE a lot of times and is unable to act so it works a lot like a stun and I have found that my role in WvW has evolved into CC spamming and interrupting. Canines are perfect for this role. I also really like the traited heal on the Sylvan hound, as it is able to provide some CC to the front line along with the heal. Excellent.

I used to run a variety of other pets in dungeons but lately have mostly used the Canines and ran a similar CC build to WvW and it has worked out well especially if the rest of the party is bringing loads of AoE. The big difference is that I bring a spirit along in most dungeons because by now I know all the safe spots to plant them. Spirits are of course still useless in PvP, but I have found them to be of use in some WvW situations since you can put them behind your walls and buff your people which can make a difference especially in the long, drawn out sieges.

Also a tip: Canines will attempt to leap/knockdown on their first attack but you can cancel this by hitting F1 again right as you see them start up the skill. They will wait out the short cooldown and try again, with practice you can begin to anticipate when this will happen so you can start to chain interrupts of key skills (we desperately need a UI skillbar for pets so we can see the exact timers, but then again our pets need a lot of things).

Also a tip: Canines will attempt to leap/knockdown on their first attack but you can cancel this by hitting F1 again right as you see them start up the skill. They will wait out the short cooldown and try again

I love little npc magic tricks like this, thanks for sharing it!

Lunchbox.9543:

I love little npc magic tricks like this, thanks for sharing it!

Then here’s another little one that’s new. I saw a thread days ago about people complaining that their pets weren’t attacking from behind. I have found the new AI to work wonderfully, you just have to figure it out. Canines will leap as soon as they are in range so reliable knockdown utility was retained and you don’t have to account for your pet running around behind first…but then they will just autoattack from the front. To get them to ‘reset’ behind the target (as long as the pet isn’t the active target of the enemy…see below), just recall(F3) them and then F1 again and they will run behind and attack. So they made it best of both worlds, opening attacks will fire off asasp with no attempt to move behind target, while autoattacks will have the pet move behind.

Another thing I noticed is that if you pet is the active target of the enemy, he will not attempt to get behind and just attack from the front. This is good since no time will be wasted with your pet attempting to get behind an enemy that is actively tracking it.

2 fixes for previous posts:
1. Drakes do NOT have the same stats as canines. In last patch they doubled drake hp
2. Drakes F2 is NOT the slowest one. In last patch it got lowered to 1,5 sec – same as dogs F2.

Wow… i’m the only one who takes a drake into WvW and a canine into dungeons lol? This is strange…

Granted i tend to take a drake + canine combo everywhere in the PvEish world (they compliment each other nicely) and just rely on one more in one area than the other.

Drakes for PvE.

Canine for PvP. The knockdowns and cripple are invaluable.

runeblade.7514:

Canine for PvP. The knockdowns and cripple are invaluable.

I agree about KDs in PvP, but we can’t generalize. What about ZvZ? And not only the pug meatgrinder – what about organized big guild groups? Single KD there isn’t as powerful as in 1v1.

Ision.3207:

Are my eyes deceiving me, or have people responded politely and intelligently as if this were a normal friendly conversation? I mean no one has jumped in telling me to re-roll a Warrior, or that I’m a self-hating female homophobe for having skimpy armor. Heck, not even the usual “self-appointed” forum moderators have shown up to tell me we already have threads like this and I’ve committed an unforgiveable sin for posting another one.

Good lord, will wonders never cease!

;-)

Seriously folks, thanks for your input and feedback, I appreciate it.

We can’t exactly warp “Which is better, drake or canine?” into those same boring complaints can we? But I suppose I should be getting back on topic…

1) It doesn’t matter.
2) You can’t get into dungeons anyway.
3) Reroll a warrior if you want DPS.

Hurrdurr… O_o

(Honestly, I’m just loving my drakes right now, but I don’t PvP.)

Terkov.4138:

2 fixes for previous posts:
1. Drakes do NOT have the same stats as canines. In last patch they doubled drake hp
2. Drakes F2 is NOT the slowest one. In last patch it got lowered to 1,5 sec – same as dogs F2.

Oh yes… Drakes got their health almost doubled and their breath speed almost doubled… So good.

It’s like easter eggs in patch note form.

Canines for cc; don’t use them in dungeons. I would choose one hound and one drake in wvw. :p

You guys know that KDs aren’t everything in PvP yes? For example, drakes apply weakness for 5s, which means you take less damage (especially if you have protection) and they can’t dodge you as much.

The dog will provide you more CC at the cost of some potential dps and will require more control than the drake in order to survive.

The drake will provide you with more potential dps at the cost of no real CC and will require less control than the dog in order to survive.

The drake combos really well with Healing Spring and other combo fields as it has a blast finisher.

While the dog CC is awesome, if you hit someone with a drake’s F2, you can bet they’ll notice.

I use a combo of the Reef/Salamander Drakes in all aspects of Gw2 (PvE/WvW/Dungeons.) The only exception is when I do sPvP, I use Drake Hound/Wolf because sPvP seems to be faster paced with fewer targets so, the Canines work really good here. With the Drakes F2 abilities your going to definitely use it wisely, either after rooting the target(s) or when you have them crippled/slowed and popping the F2 abilities when their more concentrated on you and not on dodging your attacks or strafing you. Though I must admit the KD from the Canines is useful and the Wolfs FEAR F2 abilitie really helps out when your way outmaned or downed to save yourself from being finished off.

Well hope this helps, and it’s always nice to see more Rangers in WvW!

I love the drakes. They have on demand blast finishers since they use their tailswipe when you swap them in. The breaths are more viable now, and pack a lot of punch. But my main reason is that I can do bleed on crits for both drakes, cats and sharks, which are what I usually run. They are great in zergs too.

If I ever do bring a drake into WvW, I bring Marsh. The F2 still hits the intended target at any angle (even directly behind the drake) at a 900 range. MUCH less of a hassle to manage than the other drake F2s.

However, successfully landing the river drake’s F2 once or twice has made me laugh hysterically.

Drake F2 is buggy as kitten.
It has the worst response time in combat and least chance of actually landing, from what I’ve seen out of any F2 skill.

REALLY wanted to use a drake in PvP for protect me and barkskin since it is just a well of free life then… but the pet just sucks. It brings FAAAR too little dmg to the table with a broken F2 to be even considerably worth the loss in traps or a feline/canine.

Beardmonger.4692:

If I ever do bring a drake into WvW, I bring Marsh. The F2 still hits the intended target at any angle (even directly behind the drake) at a 900 range. MUCH less of a hassle to manage than the other drake F2s.

However, successfully landing the river drake’s F2 once or twice has made me laugh hysterically.

I was in a 2v1 yesterday, caught them both in muddy terrain + entangle and a sig of the wild lightning drake breathe, killed both of them right as they broke out of the roots xD.

PS: did I -need- to pop everything? No, but I really wanted that oricalcum node and didn’t want their nonsense stopping me xD.

Beardmonger.4692:

If I ever do bring a drake into WvW, I bring Marsh. The F2 still hits the intended target at any angle (even directly behind the drake) at a 900 range. MUCH less of a hassle to manage than the other drake F2s.

However, successfully landing the river drake’s F2 once or twice has made me laugh hysterically.

Huh?

I’m somewhat at a loss on what you said. Are you saying that the Marsh Drake’s F2 attack, if in range and un-interrupted, never misses his intended target?

And if so, which other Drake sub-species would you rank as 2nd for most likely to fully hit his target with his F2 attack? Salamander Drake?

Ision.3207:

Beardmonger.4692:

If I ever do bring a drake into WvW, I bring Marsh. The F2 still hits the intended target at any angle (even directly behind the drake) at a 900 range. MUCH less of a hassle to manage than the other drake F2s.

However, successfully landing the river drake’s F2 once or twice has made me laugh hysterically.

Huh?

I’m somewhat at a loss on what you said. Are you saying that the Marsh Drake’s F2 attack, if in range and un-interrupted, never misses his intended target?

And if so, which other Drake sub-species would you rank as 2nd for most likely to fully hit his target with his F2 attack? Salamander Drake?

Marsh Drake is the only drake whose breathe homes in on the target, but as such he’s lacking in the raw power aspect, but that bouncing poison can be detrimental.

Lightning drake is secon easiest to land due to it also being ranged and having ~180 cone, then the ice drake because once they get hit they’re chilled and makes subsequent hits easier, then the salamander and reef drakes are tied.

In terms of strength however, it’s reversed unless the lightning breathe double bounces (bounces back to target)

Ran with Drakes last night in MF, and it was wonderful. Their F2’s almost always hit the target, and I enjoyed laying on some confusion and frost with these tanky lizards. They hardly died, and usually when they did it it was at places where it couldn’t really be helped.

In wvw I’d still go with dogs though. Drakes’ F2s aren’t as reliable on a moving target like the dogs’ AoEs, and the dogs have knockback which is just awesome to have on hand. But for dungeons that aren’t high on red circles of doom, I might be switching over to full-on drakes.

Rangers should focus on just surviving. If you are a true ranger fighting comes second surviving comes first.

If you are fighting a melee boss it would be smart to have a ranging pet, as with fighting a ranging boss it would be smart to have a melee pet.

Fighting only matters if you die all the time. The game is about fun, so do what you believe is the best for you. No one can tell you that you’re better off with another build.

Durzlla.6295:

Ision.3207:

Beardmonger.4692:

If I ever do bring a drake into WvW, I bring Marsh. The F2 still hits the intended target at any angle (even directly behind the drake) at a 900 range. MUCH less of a hassle to manage than the other drake F2s.

However, successfully landing the river drake’s F2 once or twice has made me laugh hysterically.

Huh?

I’m somewhat at a loss on what you said. Are you saying that the Marsh Drake’s F2 attack, if in range and un-interrupted, never misses his intended target?

And if so, which other Drake sub-species would you rank as 2nd for most likely to fully hit his target with his F2 attack? Salamander Drake?

Marsh Drake is the only drake whose breathe homes in on the target, but as such he’s lacking in the raw power aspect, but that bouncing poison can be detrimental.

I’m not sure, but I don’t think it homes in on targets any longer.

If you read the update notes, this is what they said:

Drake Skills

• Lightning Breath skill: Reduced cast time from 2.7 seconds to 1.5 seconds. The lightning from this attack no longer tracks targets.
• Fire Breath skill: Reduced cast time from 2.7 seconds to 1.5 seconds.
• Insect Swarm skill: Reduced cast time from 2.7 seconds to 1.5 seconds.
• Frost Breath skill: Reduced cast time from 2.7 seconds to 1.5 seconds.

Thing is, Lightning Breath never tracked targets in the first place afaik, so I think they mixed that up with Insect Swarm? Not 100% sure about this though, will go to pvp to test the Marsh drake some more post april 30 patch, would love some help with this!

Nope, lightning breathe did home in as a bug in some areas, marsh drake still does it he’s my second favorite drake (first is reef)

K, good to know!