Guild Wars 2

I am going with the Wolf and the Alpine wolf for my Ranger in WvW. This is mostly for the crowd control effects.

However, the Major trait for canines in the Beastmastey tree adds a 4 second cripple to the F2 skill. This fine for the Alpine Wolf, but I’m worried that it will cause problems with the Wolf.

One of the primary uses of Fear in WvW is to move people out of choke points, and even knock them off ledges. However, if a cripple is added to Fear, it kind of defeats the purpose of moving people away from a location.

Will cripple “override” Fear in this case, or is it not something to worry about?

Why don’t you go to Heart of the Mist and see for yourself?

Your enemy will be both feared and crippled. It’s a bad trait if you are trying to force someone of a point. However, it is still useful to the fear wolf to provide that control in cases such as when they’ve set off your traps and you can hold them in it longer with fear/cripple. Then again if you use spike trap you don’t need the cripple. Then again if you have chill from alpine wolf you don’t need the cripple. Then again if you use the drake hound then they are already immo…

Honestly, the only useful time I’ve used that trait it when running away from people and switching pets for the howl to cripple behind me.

The trait is badly designed, its’ cons outweight the pros and it’s been described why above by Eurantien. Not just for the canines but for the spiders too. 2 of them have Immobilise so why would you add cripple, whilst the other 2 do not but being honest who picks pets for skin rather than utility in competitive modes? I don’t see the usefulness of that trait.

I’m hoping in time the folks at Anet will give these traits a second look and replace them with something more usefull to the ranger or the pet.

I play the ranger because of the idea behind the class, otherwise there’s no reason to play it in the current state it’s in (at least compared to every other class out there)

Another example of awful trait design be devs. I really doubt they have thought through this!

How to solve: Remove family limits to BM traits!

The cripple would make sense if it had a chance to proc from the basic attack rather than the F2. In that capacity, it would compliment and enhance the control aspects of the canines and spiders, rather than hinder it.

From just observing pets in WvW, it looked to me like they go down pretty fast in the AoE. I though maxing out the Beastmastery trait would be necessary to give them some toughness.

Is there any other way to make your pet more survivable in WvW? (Having a near-useless Major trait seems to preclude putting points into the Beastmastery tree).

Its a fine trait for Spiders, What most don’t understand is you can apply the cripple via the F2 ability and if you use the one that is Poison on the next 3 attacks, It applies Cripple on the next 3 attacks, same for the one that’s on the next 2 attacks and weakens, If you pick up the 50% duration talent you can make that cripple last basically almost 20 seconds from the Spider..By just swapping and applying your F2 each time over and over again.

However it is terrible for Wolves.

I actually quite enjoy it on my wolf; it sets up melee spikes almost as well as immobilize.