Guild Wars 2

Hello folks,

I’m leveling up a ranger now, not too far into it but liking what I’ve seen so far. I’m thinking of picking up a devourer pet and using it as one of my mains, probably the lashtail one as its easier to tame at my level. I would like to get the carrion devourer later on the road.

How good are these pets? I like the idea of having a ranged pet for dungeons and such to avoid those AOE problems that can occur in melee combat.

I didn’t care for them when i first tamed one, tried it out and now i always keep one among my two pets.

I run a Carrion Devourer in my DPS builds. They’re honestly a must-have in addition to your preferred cat/eagle.

Being a ranged pet means they don’t have to be in the death-trap melee area near bosses. They also do respectable DPS, and their basic attack can proc combo fields and hits twice (great for RaO).

On top of that, they have a knockback for dealing with overly-attached melee mobs, as well as a retreat, meaning they can essentially manage themselves.

Devourer pets are my favourite ranger pets in game!

They do significantly more damage than spider pets (the only other real ranged pet family to my knowledge), and are a lot more defensive as well (bear in mind that spiders are a lot better at snaring enemies, which could help in PvP).

If you exclude cats and birds of prey, devourers, along with drakes, dish out enough damage to be at the top, making them a great choice because even though their damage may not be as high as the cats or birds of prey, they are a lot more defensive and are ranged as well.

Out of the 3 families, I took the carrion devourer as soon as possible (I ran into some high level zone at lev 17, think the zone was a lev 50 zone or something just to get my carrion devourer). I chose this type of devourer because of his F2 ability, the AOE poison he makes works as a poison combo finisher for yourself and other allies, and it deals the most damage when compared to the other 2 devourer families provided the target remains in the poison zone at all times.

This means that in PvP the carrion devourer might end up dealing a bit less damage since players can just roll out of the poison, but the other devourers’ F2 abilities are projectiles, making it more difficult to dodge.

The devourer is also a very responsive pet i realised, I’ve seen a lot of talks that are still going on about pet responsiveness, but since the last fix on our pet’s AI i had no problems except when my devourer is attacking structures in WvW (for example keep doors), where my pet sometimes refuses to attack the target I call for it due to him being at an awkward angle relative to the target.

Oh and as for dungeons, when a devourer is in trouble, they just burrow away to safety (most of the time hehe)

And last but not least, devourers have awesome animations, they are just plain awesome!

Thats good to hear. I had a Charr ranger I ended up deleting due to armor clipping annoyances, but I did love his devourer pet. It wasn’t very responsive though, this was prior to the AI update. So maybe can I try running into the Iron Marches to fetch a Carrion Devourer.

Another thing is that Carrion Devourer is possibly the best underwater tank in the game. His F2 Regenerate just lets him sponge up hits from anything. Especially if you have passive regen on him as well.

I main 2x Devourers (Carrion/Lashtail) in PvE because I love them so much, they are super tanky, and will actually kite enemies a bit, with their retreat. The AI is oddly intelligent with them, I’ve found, they will actually retreat out of channeled attacks, things like that. (at least I have observed mine doing it)

But as much as I love my Devourers, I wouldn’t recommend them for non-PVE. (only done WvW can’t say much on pvp) On enemies that are running away, even with swiftness and petspeed tactic, they just can’t hit. They have to stop to fire, and so they stagger after enemies always catching up just enough to miss. I find that spiders do this too, actually, and they have the added annoyance of being incredibly squish.

I’ve had more luck using dogs, buffing their speed with longbow #3, sometimes they will manage to get off a cripple, but even if they don’t, when they (or any melee pet really) closes in on a running player, they can get a chomp in here and there when they are in range. Not so with Devourer.

But I STILL <3 them~!

I love my devourers for two reasons:

1. They’re all about range, so they might actually survive an encounter once in a while
2. They have enough sense of self preservation to burrow and retreat, which has saved mine on many occasions

Devourers are winners in my book.

The poison from the Carrion Devourer seems to count as an attack, so shoot it into a group of foes, active RaO shortly before it hits and you should gain a big stack of Might.

I ran with a Lashtail for quite sometime and liked it. Carrion Devourer is next on my list to get – 1 of the last 3 pets I need for a full set.

I recently pick-up a cave spider and have been using it a lot. It also has a poison AoE that combos really well.

Thanks to this thread I checked out the devourer pets. My ranger is level 24 right now and went for the lashtail and whiptail for both pet slots and loving it up. Before I just had a drake and the bear. The fact that these guys are ranged is awesome, just means that they actually attack the whole time instead of running after enemies and trying to get within striking range, plus they hit hard.. I’m spec’d into power (main) and precision (2ndary) and my devourers seem to be able to keep up in DPS pretty well + the poison.

As others have said they also kite pretty well, knocking back enemies, then I hit them with a cripple shot, or they go underground and retreat and kite the enemy. Awesome pets, thank you for the posts.

Probably going to aim for the better devourer sooner or later.

I love my devourers – currently using the whiptail and lashtail ones (I didn’t realise there was a third one, I’ll have to hunt that one down too).

However, they can be somewhat of a liability in Orr. Each time they use their burrow retreat, they end up agroing another 1-5 enemies (usually 2-3)…turning a simple fight into a much-larger-than-expected melee.

And they hate those poison-lobber things (fish-mouth things) that make that odd noise – they’ll happily run through and ignore a dozen enemies just to try to be able to reach the poison lobber…abandoning you and leaving you to deal with everything they annoyed.

I have all of the pets (personal victory for me last night) and I gotta say, not the biggest fan of the Devourers. People speak of their tankiness but they’re ranged so that seems weird. Plus, some of their attacks have a long, high arc which can cause it to miss mobile targets, thereby negating its dominance over melee pets. And they look horrible. I’ll stick to my cats & pigs.