Guild Wars 2

I am seeing way too many rangers using Bears as their pets in WvWvW. Bears are good for tanking elite monsters, but they are terrible in pvp situations, and useless in zerg situations. Bears live longer in some situations, but they don’t actually do anything worthwhile, so there is little point to having them.

I think the best pets for WvWvW are the cats (jaguars), and maybe spiders (jungle spider).

Try to master the art of resummoning your pet before it dies; if you resummon your pet when it is alive, its summon cooldown is 3 times shorter than if you resummon it when it is dead. If you pick traits that do useful stuff when you summon your pet (hint: quickness), you will benefit from this mastery much. It’s like having extra skill buttons!

Specing for beastmastery makes a significant difference in the power and survivability of your pet. Some traits spread across the tree that are pet oriented (hint: heal on crit) make a huge difference.

There are a few pets I’ve tried and liked in WvW.

- Jungle Spider is good because it has a passive root and its f2 ability is also a root (should be a stun) they do really bad damage but if you need to stop someone, they are good for it.

- Devourers are ranged so they don’t die instantly, do decent damage, have a knockback and burrow evade. I suggest the Lashtail Devourer because its f2 skill is a direct damage dart.

- Cats do crazy crits which amounts to higher damage than nearly any other pet. Also cause vulnerability with their basic attack. I suggest the Lynx because its f2 ability is a leap + bleed.

- Birds have the same high crits as cats. However they are much smaller and don’t get targeted as often. I suggest either the Eagle for its bleed active, or the owl for its chill active. Keep in mind though birds have weird AI, they like to do loop de loops before attacking.

- Bears. Bears are actually very good pets. If you’re a glass cannon ranger, chances are you will need to use the “Protect Me” shout for survivability. Bears are better at taking damage than any other class, so Bears are your safest bet when using “Protect Me”

Drakes are unreliable, canines might have the best base stats but I don’t like them particularly. No other pet is noteworthy.

In my experience so far, I think I prefer the devourer the most. I keep the spider around also but I might switch it to something else. I’m thinking about a high toughness/vitality pet for “protect me” I think I might try bear.

neoxide.7320:

I suggest the Lynx because its f2 ability is a leap + bleed.
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If you’re a glass cannon ranger, chances are you will need to use the “Protect Me” shout for survivability. Bears are better at taking damage than any other class, so Bears are your safest bet when using “Protect Me”

The reason I suggest jaguar is that they don’t leap, so the animation bug where your f2 ability stalls your pet doesn’t happen. Once they fix this issue (as they have said they will), the leaping cats might be better. In any case if you are using one cat, two is better and you have to go with a leaper too.

“Protect Me” is not a good enough trade off; 6 seconds of every minute isn’t going to keep you alive very long. If you are going glass, go full glass and get a cat. However, I actually advise not going full glass and getting lots of toughness instead, but keep the kitty.