Guild Wars 2

Awesome write up, xsorus. Excellent points. I really make the same gameplay decisions for the same reasons.

I mostly agree with your post. However I don’t believe “bad rangers” use brown bears. Sometimes I am forced to use a brown bear simply because it doesn’t die. I have managed to build my character so 90% of his damage comes from the actual attacks. People are frequently surprised that my ranger actually does as well, if not better than other classes in terms of DPS.

The roll of my bear is to sponge AoE, nothing more. That being said, for anything other than a meat shield, the bear is useless. Also, the F2 utility is garbage on almost every pet. Reducing the cool down slightly on moas will not alleviate the issue with rangers. If we do not gain more compelling F2 skills for our pets, they will always remain gimpy. The wolf’s change was a step in the right direction, however that was the only pet that received any noticeable buff.

Like xsorus said, a 2 condition removal on the brown bear is still not very compelling, especially when that skill requires a target, for no good reason. I have had my bear on passive and he will still try and run to a target to use “Shake it off”. This is incredibly frustrating, especially in WvW, where I always keep my pet on passive in zerg fights.

Every single balance patch encourages rangers to write walls of text about what’s wrong with class, also all kinds of petitions, threats etc.

It is all pointless guys – they do not hear you.

Oh well you can submit an obvious bug and maybe some QA guy will thank you for doing his job!

I haven’t tested it lately, but doesn’t the red moa’s furious screech apply fury long before the animation ends.

I think you can hit F2, Fury is applied early in the animation, then command the moa to attack before the animation ends.

This reads like an sPvP list (why doesn’t GW2 have forums for PvE and PvP class discussions like GW2Guru does?) because devourers are useful when the pet is likely to take a hit, which sometimes gives them the edge over spiders in PvE.

Bears are probably the tankiest pets in the game and there are some things you can do with a bear that no other pets can do. Tanking champion mobs to solo group events easily (admittedly it takes a long time) is something a ranger can do with a bear.

I generally agree that pets are poorly designed and there are lots of problems with them but you wrote this list from a PvP perspective.

You can easily tank every single Champ out there that a Bear could, with a Drake..

There is zero reason to run the Bear.

ZERO

Anything that can instantly kill a Spider will also do it to the Devourer, They’re not anymore tanky then the Spider, the Spider has more HP, the Devourer has less HP but more Toughness.

Utility Wise, the Spider Wins out, hell Damage Wise it wins out.

I don’t agree about bears and drakes.

Bears have:
*The same toughness.

• 1373 more vitality (3535 vitality on a drake, 4808 vitality on a bear) that’s a massive difference.
• A five second duration invulnerability skill.
• A heal that heals 1,758 health over 11.5 seconds compared to the drake heal. I don’t know how much it is but if it’s the damage of Chomp it’s only 342.
• All bears but the Arctodus and Murellow have defensive F2 skills. Weakness and Chill are great for tanking bosses, if conditions are a problem Shake it Off will be useful. Only one drake has a defensive F2 skill.

The bear has significant defensive advantages over the drake. The extra health, the heal over time, five seconds of invulnerability and F2 skills which reduced the damage of the boss, bears are capable of things that drakes are not. All these tools buy the bear more time to take one or two more hits to last you long enough to swap them out if you run a bear, if you run a drake they will die in many situations before the swap cooldown is up.

Devourers have Devourer Retreat. The AI in GW2 is terrible and it’s especially clear when ranged AI moves into melee because of line of sight issues. It’s also clear when ranged AI doesn’t move away from an attacker when it moved into melee. A devourer will do this with its retreat skill while at the same time counting as an evade. A spider will stay still unless you micro them and even then the micro is limited to the responsiveness (which is bad) while the devourer is moving away while evading.

There are times in PvE where I will take a bear over a drake or when I will take a devourer over a spider. I’m not saying neither one of them needs work (spiders got both a DPS and I believe a personal vitality buff while the devourers never had such power creep) and they probably are two of the lesser pet families in the game (bears are still tank kings for easy mode open world PvE) but they still have their marginal uses.

You’re assuming that you need that extra vitality from the bear Shiren, If you’re fighting a Champion the only thing you need is enough vitality to allow you to Pet Swap when needed…hence why a Drake is always a better choice, It’ll do more damage, its Cone Based, and you can easily swap when needed.

As for Devourer vs Spider, the Spider is less likely to be attacked in the first place then the Devourer simply because the Spider has less Toughness, If you’ve not noticed, Toughness actually acts as a form of Aggression…Simply go attack any mob right now with Both pets, You’ll notice that the Mob will go for the Devourer over and over because of this. This leads to the Devourer wasting DPS by evading back, This is why Devourer’s have one of the slowest kill times out of all mobs, Because they spend more time running then actually doing DPS.

Gotta agree with your assessment, Xsorus. I won’t be able to get back online until the mid-end of November, but I’m looking forward to future patches making me want to main my Ranger again. I’m a hopeful kinda guy. I’m hoping someone at Anet reads this and realizes, “Well, we never got pets right. Let’s just swallow it and allow for perma-stow while we work on making them better.” That’d bring me back to my Ranger in a heartbeat.

I agree with everything in the OP I want to add something about the bears and boars and alike, I know exactly what they need, cleaves! all low dps “tank” pets need to cleave on their mainattack this alone would raise the stock on all of them and although drakes would still be a better choise in most cases because their dps and F2s are so vastly superior adding a cleave to the other ones would make them useful in any scenario a drake would currently be used and in the case of bears even more because as tanky as drakes are sometimes they still get gibbed because the cleave can make them aggro multiple mobs, even with this the F2s should be improved more though but it’s a giant leap in making all these viable.

+1 op

All pets should have cleave attacks btw.

Great post, basically the opportunity cost is too high.

We have the most clunky imlementation of enviromental weapons among all the classes with the pigs. Why don’t they work like the ellys or the thieves is out of my mind. The weapons could replace the pet f2 or they could spawn one copy on the ground and one copy in your hands, or maybe combine both: one copy on the ground and the other one replaces the f2.

Before this patch I switched to Polar Bear. I found out that ppl tend not to flame if you bear isn’t brown due to reasons…

No I’m using a fernhound, because I love wolves and their skills in this game.

Xsorus, that was an excellent post. Bravo!

While I think that Devourers are a bit better than you have described, I won’t quibble, because your write up was so dang good. Besides, the fact that someone actually posted a “fix pet” thread without the usual kittened claim that they are all 100% useless and the usual goofy demand for a “perma-stow give me 40% more dps in exchange” option is refreshing. And your comments on the Bears was especially spot on, and well stated.

Personally, I believe that with a few simple tweaks to specific pets and traits, Anet could do a world of good for the Ranger class. Rangers are already among the very best roamers and duelers in WvW (despite the so-called useless pet claims – funny that), and also one of the top solo classes for PvE (don’t laugh at that either, there are indications that over 60% of mmo players are solo players, Anet cannot ignore a number like that). And Rangers continue to be among the top 3 0r 4 classes for sPvP . So fundamentally, the Ranger pet fixes boil down to Dungeons and WvW Zerg fighting.

IMO, I believe that with a few pet tweaks, and change to a trait or two, and last but not least, a 50% reduction in taking AoE damage — and the so-called pet “crises” will be over for most everyone except the worst of the low-skilled players.

Once again, thanks for the nice write-up.

Xsorus.2507:

You’re assuming that you need that extra vitality from the bear Shiren, If you’re fighting a Champion the only thing you need is enough vitality to allow you to Pet Swap when needed…hence why a Drake is always a better choice, It’ll do more damage, its Cone Based, and you can easily swap when needed.

If you look at the pet attribute ratios:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pet_attributes#Attribute_distribution

The bears are 6 toughness, 14 vit, for a total survivability of 6*14 = 84.
The drakes are 6 toughness, 10 vit, for a total survivability of 6*10 = 60.

So the bears will survive 40% longer. In general I agree with you and run drakes. But there are a few bosses which will kill off a drake before your pet swap timer is up. I’ll load a bear for those. (I’ll have to see how the 70% hp buff changed that.)

As for Devourer vs Spider, the Spider is less likely to be attacked in the first place then the Devourer simply because the Spider has less Toughness, If you’ve not noticed, Toughness actually acts as a form of Aggression…Simply go attack any mob right now with Both pets, You’ll notice that the Mob will go for the Devourer over and over because of this. This leads to the Devourer wasting DPS by evading back, This is why Devourer’s have one of the slowest kill times out of all mobs, Because they spend more time running then actually doing DPS.

While the evade can be annoying, I want my devourer to be tanking. If my pet is being attacked and is forced to evade, that means I am not being attacked and I don’t have to evade. My DPS is a whole lot higher than my pet’s, so me having to evade is much worse than my pet having to evade.

I also disagree about the devourers and spiders being the same defensively.

The devourers are 8 toughness, 6 vit for 48 survivability.
The spiders are 4 toughness, 10 vit for 40 survivability.

This means the spiders are 67% better against condition damage. The devourers are 20% better against direct damage, but the high toughness means your heals are 100% more effective against direct damage on the devourer.

The two pets are just different defensively, and have different use cases. If you’re facing a lot of condition damage, use the spiders. If you’re facing a lot of direct damage, use the devourers. If you want the pet to tank, use the devourers. If someone else is tanking or you’re ok taking the hits, use the spiders.

(And just for reference the spiders have about 25% more DPS than the devourers excluding evade, only about 10% more than the lashtail if you spam F2. The utilities on the spiders are much, much better though.)

pet f2’s absolutely need to be insta-cast. why? because the “cast time” is actually equivalent to the pet wobbling over to the target. if it takes it 3 seconds to reach the target, this is the bloody cast time. why do we need to have a SECOND cast time?

Wait…people don’t use devourers? They grab aggro more than the Ranger does, making them perfect for diversions, not to mention their long range makes certain that they’re going to die far less than the other pets if they’re not able to grab aggro. They can even take hits. I’m actually surprised more Rangers don’t use them. Also, Moas are there if you’re running for group support and don’t care about the damage output of the pet. And if you’re like me, you don’t care about the pet’s damage output 99% of the time.

I could not agree more. It is a rare day I do not run double drakes, at least in PVE. They are just too handy.

Lash tail devourers f2 is good for stacking might with roa. But again its probably not worth the overall drop in DPS…

I’d agree with you about most of the pet except Devourers. They’ve got quite a good dps for their amazing toughness. My Devourer have absolutely no problem staying alive against most of the champs in Orr or anywhere else.

Bears… are just horrible. Poor damages and (yes) poor survivability. Worst part is that their shout have a cast time. Just removing their shout cast time/animation on F2 would make them ok.

Birds still have their annoying speed boost cast time/animation that destroy their dps.

Moa… I use them sometime when i need extra heal (still not on par with drake and water field). Better survivability then bears overall.

Cats… well, we all love cats ^^. Please remove this annoying cast time/animation on jungle stalker shout (again, that’s an useless nerf and we don’t care about this animation).

Pigs, like said their F2 is a freaking issue. Why don’t they just keep this item so we can use it just by pressing F2 again?

Devourers are tricky. They’ve got amazing survivability and they can have pretty good damages. It’s just they don’t do high numbers. (Still, I wouldn’t spit on an attack speed boost)

Spider just die to easily. And as for me, I think Devourers have an higher Dps. (It may be because I use a specific build that focus on a lot on optimizing their possibility. Like Bleeds on crits for exemple that are pretty handy when your pet double hit or chain hit)

Drake… Are ok

RyuDragnier.9476:

Wait…people don’t use devourers? They grab aggro more than the Ranger does, making them perfect for diversions, not to mention their long range makes certain that they’re going to die far less than the other pets if they’re not able to grab aggro. They can even take hits. I’m actually surprised more Rangers don’t use them. Also, Moas are there if you’re running for group support and don’t care about the damage output of the pet. And if you’re like me, you don’t care about the pet’s damage output 99% of the time.

They grab diversion based off of their Toughness, Any pet with high toughness will do this, Drakes and Wolves for example will.

Problem is, Once they got the Aggression they spend more time not actually doing damage, and they lack any utility what so ever.

Also, I didn’t even think about Birds, I really should include them, Even though I like them like someone mentioned up top, That stupid swiftness ability they have with the long animation actually ends up lowering the Birds DPS + actually causes them to lose ground in most cases..

Things like those Obnoxious Animations are why pets in general suck in some regards.

Also Dadnir as you mentioned and i yelled at Anet in the other thread, Jungle Stalker isn’t used not because of the Shout being Low duration or having a long cast time (the two things they screwed with this patch) but because it has a bloody 3 second cast time…

No one has time to wait around for a 3 second cast time shout from a pet..

Pets in this game confuse me, making pet families have different skills etc never works. It didn’t work in WoW. People did the samething, just choose the higher DPS pets because either tank pets DPS is to low, another can sorta DPS but is useless otherwise and the utility pets never work. I’m unsure why Anet followed this same plan. Best thing you can do is allow people to pick their pet, pick what skills for their pet to use.

Easy Fix for the Pig is once you use the Pigs F2 the generated Item replaces the Pigs F2 until used, expired or pet swapped. Would make the skill seamless and not as clunky.

Agree 99% with Xsorus..
Bears are defently more tanky than Drakes, so i feel more comfortable using Protect me with Bears
Also Devourers have an autoattack with 2 attacks, thats mean that with RaO you get 2 stacks of might every 1 sec, i know that its not a reason to pick over spider but sometimes with a good might stacking party is usefull

I have my Ranger parked in the Labyrinth right now. Here is my typical Boss fight in there…. > mouse click< f2, > mouse click< f2, > mouse click click click< f2, hit the F2 Key, Hit it again. F2 finally goes off.

Got to love Lag.

My warrior’s f2 goes like this > mouse click< f2 >click< the area key, done.

Pigs would be amazing if Forage’d ability would be accessible on F2 or F2+Ground for ally. Giving both yourself and ally a stealth or Plasma (yay!) would be totally awesome since Porcines’ responsibility to F2 and cast time is fairly OK. And their racial Charge ability could use some cd and cast time reduce. It’s amazing against zergs, knocking line of players for rough 3 seconds
Problems with many pets are very simple – They have little to nothing to actually support ranger himself. Like for example (Dream of Dreams):
ANet gives us ability to control racial special pets’ skills such as porcine’s knockdown, spider’s web.
Now what to do with bear ? Apart from some nice changes like giving cleave to pets I see some fixes;
a) Their heal ability. Let it be a frontal cone cleave attack, giving regeneration + small heal for every foe hit.
b) Invincible roar. Simple thing. Once casted, grants Bear immunity for direct damage for 5 seconds and Ranger for 3 seconds. Amazing, huh? I’d switch to Bear in a heartbeat. It isn’t long enough to be hat better than traited SoS, but 3 seconds is fairly enough to quickly counter some large burst incoming. + Bear immunity could work well for even longer immunity via “Protect Me!”
Also, switch all useless F2 attacks that do nothing to help the ranger aside from applying low damage on long cast time to mkre utility based. Like some pet could release the Ranger from all movement imparing effects and for next couple following seconds that pet would “eat” slows and immobilizes thrown onto Ranger by himself. (Yes, “Master’s Call” – essential thing).
Simply give every single pet like 2 types of damage-only (maybe with some little effects) used by pets themselves (still, controlable if needed) and 2 skills working as different utilities. That would be a large improvement in variety.

Rym.1469:

Pigs would be amazing if Forage’d ability would be accessible on F2

This. Talk about QOL improvement. I really like the idea behind forage, but the actual gameplay mechanic behind it is so horrible it’s not even funny.

Thank you for this thread. I’ve been levelling a ranger through casual pve and wow, and seen much that you’ve summarized very well.

I really wish they’d buff birds – I think they’re cool, but they really don’t do much damage like they should.

-Jeff