Guild Wars 2

Hi all,

I am a glass canon ranger and have been finding it difficult to survive in dungeon.

Thus I am looking at ways I can fully utilize my pets to make up the difference.

I tried bear tankers but in dungeons, bosses deal damage that are so high that the pets die instantly. Even as a player at level 80, a hit by the boss sends me below 50% HP, and if it comes with conditions, I die on the spot shortly if my heal is still in cool down.

So I need some opinions:

1. What pets are good for dungeons, especially for a glass canon build that fires long bow/short bow from range.

2. Wolf’s Terrifying Howl = Howl at foes to send them running in fear. Does this apply to bosses in dungeons or it applies to normal dungeon foes and not bosses?

All comments/opinions will be most welcome.

Thank you

Dungeon bosses have Defiant, which Fear no longer bypasses. In other words, you can only CC them if they currently have no stacks.

I haven’t tried it yet, but I would imagine the Reef Drake is a good pet for dungeons.

You need to use ranged pets, the only available being devourers and spiders. Because dungeon monsters hit so much the only way to keep pets alive is to keep them away from the monsters and AoE, which melee pets are incapable of doing.

Fear or any other basic CC doesn’t work in one hit on the bosses as DK said above. So the wolf is decent for trash mobs, but will do very little against bosses unless used intelligently to drive “adds” away.

The standby’s for surviving dungeon bosses are:

1) Dual Devourers – These are your toughest pet, bar none. Despite what some people say or think, they’re far more durable than bears because A) They’re ranged and B ) Their combo of toughness and knockback and retreat gives them far more tools than the bear’s large HP pool (which is tough to heal back to full with such a crappy toughness stat). Personally, I go with the Carrion and Lash tail. Carrion can put out a poison field which you can combo with to keep solid poison on the boss and others can leap/blast finish off of to add weakness to the boss. The Lash tail’s barbs combo’d with QZ does some very solid damage and gives a lot of projectile finishers. Spiders are another option, but in my opinion, they’re way too squishy to be that useful.

2) Red/Blue Moa, Jungle Stalker, Fern Hound ON PASSIVE – These pets all have very solid buffs that can be used reliably to spread some boons to your team. Fury, Protection, Might and Regeneration are all huge benefits if you can reliably apply them. Keep the pet on passive, don’t let them run in to battle and just use their buffs on cooldown. Swap out the pets for the quickness buff every 20/15 seconds and just keep applying their buffs.

In general, the most important thing is to know the encounter. There are some bosses who are AoE light and are unlikely to wipe your pet accidentally. Go ahead and use Jaguar/Raven on them. But for most of them, keep your pet out of melee (either by using a devourer or by leaving them on passive).

EDIT: Apparently Lash tail as one word (as it is in game) is censored…Lakittenail. Seriously?

Thanks Drarnor, Bri, Omega for the clear explanation and feedback.

Appreciate the time you have taken to reply and it has been helpful.

Cheers

I tend to use Glass cannon pets if I am positioned safely away enough to keep an eye on my pet.

This way, I can press f4 if I see a dangerous AoE attack incoming or if my pet is running low on hp.

Its really odd that there are only 2 ranged style of pets

If you don’t have much in BM spiders are good too, because even with BM they’ll do crap damage but that long immobilize on such a short cooldown is fantastic, and extra poison fields are always helpful. Devourers seem much better with lots of BM points, they take quite a beating and do respectable damage.

I play my GC a little different, going w/idea screw the pet.
Markmanship- Beastmaster’s bond
Beastmaster-Zephyr’s speed
Juvenile Reef Drake/(900 range f2) Juvenile River Drake+Healing Spring Combo Finisher: Blast.

Basically try to time zephyrs speed pet swap w/healing spring & Tail swipe (Drake will tail swipe soon as it’s in range of target) combo finisher blast. Right after your pet procs Beastmaster’s bond I usually use that as a que to lay healing spring down & swap pet. It’s pretty fun, & melee will love you.

If a fight starts dmg heavy on group you can get a 2x healing spring blast finisher back to back by swapping initial pet right after it does tailswipe.