Guild Wars 2

I know most rangers go with either cats or bears, but I was really surprised when I decided to try out a devourer against some of the FOTM bosses. Maybe I am late to the party, but I was surprised how little I had to micro manage them. They are ranged to begin with so they avoid all the close to mid ranged spells, and when the boss got close they burrow and distance themselves. With the bunker build they can survive all the long range spells no problem, and as a last resort you can swap one for another if they drop low.

It was a huge relief, not worrying about calling the pet back and forth to dodge some spells and a big relief that I could worry more about the fight than my pet for once.

Yeah, they are pretty good “fire and forget” type of pets for many encounters.

The secret is: Devourers are good in almost anything. Because they don’t try to tank, they tend to stay alive longer. Each of them compliments well – so you can put in any two of the three and swap on every swapping cooldown.

They do insanely good condition damage DPS. You won’t see shiny burst damage numbers, but stuff will die really fast. They aren’t as pretty in screenshots of you and the pet by the fireside – but they handle very nicely.

I have -all- of the pets because well… pokemon instinct… but I think I haven’t actually used anything but the devourers since headstart, save for short tries with the others to realize that “oh yeah, not what I was looking for”.

In GW1, I used a much wider variety of pets, finding more of them useful. Here, it seems that if the pet isn’t a ranged pet, you’re going to be hearing that ‘Not my Pet!’ voiceover on constant echo… And the burst damage pets don’t seem to do enough, whereas the condition ones just compliment assorted other conditions / boons a group might have going.

Personally I like spider for Cliffside and other mobile bosses. But yeah, devourer is amazing. You can tell when a ranger is decent if they use devourer over brown bear.

Drakes ::::::::::::::::::::

FoTM is a pretty cool place to test your pets out. I like devourers in ranged fights next to spiders, I never had to use bears actually…. ever, IMO canines top bears everyday of the week. Has anyone found a proper use for drakes in FoTM?