Guild Wars 2

I’m new to Ranger, and I really love the 2 wolf pets (sylvan and arctic), is it bad to keep using these 2 once I start doing dungeons?

Yes and no. If you’re beastmaster specced it’s very important I’d think, since it’s like choosing which weapon for which occasion. If you’re not specced into the pet choosing one may still be useful, but not über important.
(Sylvan hound is one of the more popular support pets for non BM)

Pets in PvE (not dungeons) are important. Hounds, Cats, Birds, and Drakes are considered the best. Hounds have a knockdown and howls, Cats and Birds are DPS machines, and drakes have a blast finisher as well as breaths. The drake used to be the Ranger’s ONLY blast, which was dumb because you can’t control it. Now we have the warhorn’s 5, and soon maybe the greatsword’s 2. Drakes and healing spring are good.

In dungeons, pets are useless. They die too fast to the bosses. If you want to, keep your pet on ‘avoid combat’ and use the ones that buff you. I use the cat that gives 5 stacks of might, and the bear for it’s condition removal roar. The birds are a good choice as well. Keep it out of combat. When you need a speed buff, just target something and have it attack. It’s first attack will be a screech that speeds you up. Just remember to call it back right after, before it actually hits something. If it does, you slow down to combat speed.

Also, if you want to attack a boss with the pets, use a devourer or spider. They have range, but they will be AoE’d anyway and die fast.

If you MUST use a melee pet to attack that boss, use a bear or pig. They are the only ones that can survive multiple heavy AoE attacks from a boss.

Conix.4589:

Pets in PvE (not dungeons) are important. Hounds, Cats, Birds, and Drakes are considered the best. Hounds have a knockdown and howls, Cats and Birds are DPS machines, and drakes have a blast finisher as well as breaths. The drake used to be the Ranger’s ONLY blast, which was dumb because you can’t control it. Now we have the warhorn’s 5, and soon maybe the greatsword’s 2. Drakes and healing spring are good.

In dungeons, pets are useless. They die too fast to the bosses. If you want to, keep your pet on ‘avoid combat’ and use the ones that buff you. I use the cat that gives 5 stacks of might, and the bear for it’s condition removal roar. The birds are a good choice as well. Keep it out of combat. When you need a speed buff, just target something and have it attack. It’s first attack will be a screech that speeds you up. Just remember to call it back right after, before it actually hits something. If it does, you slow down to combat speed.

Also, if you want to attack a boss with the pets, use a devourer or spider. They have range, but they will be AoE’d anyway and die fast.

If you MUST use a melee pet to attack that boss, use a bear or pig. They are the only ones that can survive multiple heavy AoE attacks from a boss.

Sigh. There’s so much misinformation here.

Pets do not insta die vs bosses. They just don’t, outside of a few specific bosses with mechanics that heavily punish pets or completely suboptimal strategies on the part of the team. Even the squishiest pets(birds and cats) are able to stay up a reasonable amount of time vs most bosses, especially if everyone melees(since there is an AOE cap in stacking situations the pet often will not get damaged at all) and if you manage your pets well, switching often you can keep good pet up time vs most bosses. For Dungeons high DPS pets like Cats and Birds, or if your party needs fury, the Red moa are good choices. In some situations ranged pets are decent, but for the most part they shouldnt be used.

Please, please do not use Bears or Pigs for bosses because you think that Bosses will insta-kill your pets, if you really have trouble keeping your pet alive Drake’s DPS is far better, while also having significant survivability. Further, keeping your pet on passive in dungeons is frankly worthless, the best buff pets(Moas) are actually very tanky, and their damage is actually a bit more than you would expect while being able to keep up quite a bit of fury. If you keep your pet on passive you’re losing out on anywhere from 20-30% of your dps for no reason.

As to the actual question, yes pet choice is highly important. In dungeon situations, even fully damage specced, your pet is a significant portion of your damage and choosing to use relatively low damage pets is going to significantly hurt your contribution to your team. In WvW roaming or SPVP its often a good idea for instance to use a wolf for the CC alongside a cat or a bird for damage. In Zerg fights pet choice tends to matter a bit less, albeit its not completely unimportant, mostly because Zerg vs Zergs do legitimately put down enough AOE to kill even the tankiest pet.

So I would suggest not simply choosing a pet you like and sticking to it if you are interested in playing at all optimally (if you don’t really care about playing at all optimally then there wasn’t much point in making this thread I suppose)

ShadowLordX.5148:

Sigh. There’s so much misinformation here.

Pets do not insta die vs bosses. They just don’t, outside of a few specific bosses with mechanics that heavily punish pets or completely suboptimal strategies on the part of the team. Even the squishiest pets(birds and cats) are able to stay up a reasonable amount of time vs most bosses, especially if everyone melees(since there is an AOE cap in stacking situations the pet often will not get damaged at all) and if you manage your pets well, switching often you can keep good pet up time vs most bosses. For Dungeons high DPS pets like Cats and Birds, or if your party needs fury, the Red moa are good choices. In some situations ranged pets are decent, but for the most part they shouldnt be used.

Please, please do not use Bears or Pigs for bosses because you think that Bosses will insta-kill your pets, if you really have trouble keeping your pet alive Drake’s DPS is far better, while also having significant survivability. Further, keeping your pet on passive in dungeons is frankly worthless, the best buff pets(Moas) are actually very tanky, and their damage is actually a bit more than you would expect while being able to keep up quite a bit of fury. If you keep your pet on passive you’re losing out on anywhere from 20-30% of your dps for no reason.

As to the actual question, yes pet choice is highly important. In dungeon situations, even fully damage specced, your pet is a significant portion of your damage and choosing to use relatively low damage pets is going to significantly hurt your contribution to your team. In WvW roaming or SPVP its often a good idea for instance to use a wolf for the CC alongside a cat or a bird for damage. In Zerg fights pet choice tends to matter a bit less, albeit its not completely unimportant, mostly because Zerg vs Zergs do legitimately put down enough AOE to kill even the tankiest pet.

So I would suggest not simply choosing a pet you like and sticking to it if you are interested in playing at all optimally (if you don’t really care about playing at all optimally then there wasn’t much point in making this thread I suppose)

Do you run dungeons with a bird? They insta-die. Cats? eh, maybe not all the time, but you keep the bear on the switch to give that cat time to heal up. I was talking dungeons. Almost every speed run ranger build in dungeons uses cats and bears. I use sword/horn or Greatsword and a longbow. With zypher the cat’s might to stack on top of the others, I can hit 16-18k and over in about 2 seconds, while staking 20 vuln, then I switch out and jump in with the sword, swapping pets as they need it. leap out on cool downs and repeat. If someone else can stack the vuln, just stay in there with the sword and use zypher with its auto attack, better DPS. Let the pet attack here. When you are away, bring the pet with you. I have full zerker gear, scholar runes, and exotics. Combined with my traits, I can hit for 35% extra damage. With that, pet DPS is negligible, even more so when they nerfhammered the crap out of their damage. Before the nerf, a pet might make up 35% of total DPS… after? Not even close.
look up any good and actually fast speed run on youtube. They are all done with bears and cats, doing that thing. It’s really all we have. I’m guessing your that ranger is the one that sits in a corner plinking shortbow’s 1 all day, not actually doing anything?
bottom line, we have our own blast finisher. We don’t need the drake (not that it is bad, just not a great choice in the dungeon vs other things). Birds use swiftness during fights, so they are out DPSed by cats, and they die in 1 good AoE. wolves are not good in a dungeon. Well, they aren’t bad, but their big draws don’t work. Brown bears are tanky, while having a good utility. Remember that the F2 takes forever and you’ll do well. Pop that a bit before you need it. Forgot about the red moa… but my warriors keep up max fury anyway, so I’d rather take the bear/cat combo. Guess that’s up to you.
But my first comments were to help you if you were new to dungeons, which it sounded like. I am assuming he does not know about stacking in dungeons either, but staking isn’t really fun either haha. Speaking of, I have to wonder if they will change that, it seems too big of an exploit…

Pet vs Explorable Mode Bosses

COF:
p1, first boss will 1 shot a pet. pets can easily die on the second event. last boss can one shot a pet (either with breath, or with the aoe burn, though you have a second or two to react to the latter, you can only react if the swap is available or you are using healing spring).
p3, pet can die on scorpions easily, and the room after. pet can die during bomb event, or a legit mag lava escort. pet can be one shot during the defend mag sequence prior to last boss. pet can be 1 shot by meteors in the last room (though again, there is time to react to the burning if swap is available).

Arah:
its been way too long. the first boss that is two bosses together, they can one shot the pet.

HotW:
Are there any bosses on any of the HotW paths that DONT 1-shot pets? Perhaps the guy on the stairs. The rest can all 1-shot.

TA:
First and lost bosses are guaranteed to kill your pet if its attacking, both paths. Spider boss probably will also, if you are doing up/up.

CM:
See HotW.

SE:
I’ve never actually wanted to go here.

CoE:
A pet can live through all of COE except the “1-2-3 dodge!” bosses (theres 2 of these i think?). Can your group? Probably not. Still, the challenge of many fights here has nothing to do with actual fighting.

I’m not going to cover every fractal. The point that there are bosses in every common dungeon path that 1 shot pets seems pretty evident.

pet choice matters. some pets offer control, some offer damage, some offer unique buffs, some are effective as ranged dps or buffbots, some pets warn other players away from grouping with you, but they are all at some point dead meat to bad PvE mechanics and Anets refusal to adjust aoe damage’s impact on pets.

Conix.4589:

…

Cats and Birds have the same health, so if either would insta die both will. Keeping a bear on the switch, you might as well run and ooc to get your pet alive again since the dps drop will be similar. And no speed run build for ranger uses bears. At all. Not any that are worth being called a “speed run” build. The bear’s dps is so low that you’re better off having a cat alive for a few seconds than having a bear up the entire time (I’d run the numbers for the exact amount of time a Cat has to stay alive to make it better than a bear that stays up the whole time but I’m too lazy atm).

The red moa is a suggestion for pug runs where I find fury is often the most lacking buff, and being able to singlehandedly keep fury up allows you to siginificantly increase party wide dps.

Further, the main problem I had with your point is that that kind of advice broadly pushes anyone who takes it to play worse. And people believing that pets are useless in all cases, or no pet but bears can survive in dungeons, is why when I run CoF p1, the easiest path to keep any pet alive, I still see rangers using Bear pets, or rangers leaving their pet on passive. If you keep your pet on passive or use bears 100% of the time you aren’t even trying to be effective, in fact you’re actively sabotaging your effectiveness. This kind of mantra, that pets are useless and only bears can survive in dungeons, are why, despite ranger being one of my favorite classes, I always assume that if we get a ranger they’re going to be bad for the party, and only rarely am I pleasantly surprised.

The pet is STILL a large amount of your dps. The idea that the pet nerf was so severe is hardy exaggeration, Cats specifically only had 1 attack thats on a 20 second cooldown nerfed, their dps as a whole was not nerfed significantly (stalk was nerfed a bit more but if you’re keeping up sizable fury uptime on your pet via boon sharing the nerf actually isn’t significant). At the very least the pet makes up 15% of your dps in a situation where both are fully maxed. In non optimal scenarios, the pet can be anywhere from 25%(with a complete dps setup), to potentially far more if you are running a non-optimal build (I.e. for every point you deviate from full berserker gear the more your pets dps matters relative to your own, or if you use weapons with weaker overall damage compared to the optimal weapon (sword) the more your pet’s dps is going to matter). So your choice of pet has a significant impact on your actual dps numbers(if you think 15% of your dps isn’t significant then I don’t really know what to tell you)

Regardless of whether you intended this to be a message to dungeon newbies or everyone, the idea that pets are useless in dungeons because they die all the time is a bad message for people to start out with, it would be like telling people that they should just use Soldier’s gear because they’ll die all the time in Berserker gear. Sure, its probably true that if you are new and in berserker gear you will die a lot, but its better to die and try to learn to play better, than to build bad habits and never get better. The same is true for pets, if you come to rely on never having to swap pets or worry about your pets health bar because you’re used to having a bear that never dies, it builds bad habits that as a whole will make you a worse player.

Raven.9603:

Pet vs Explorable Mode Bosses

COF:
p1, first boss will 1 shot a pet. pets can easily die on the second event. last boss can one shot a pet (either with breath, or with the aoe burn, though you have a second or two to react to the latter, you can only react if the swap is available or you are using healing spring).
p3, pet can die on scorpions easily, and the room after. pet can die during bomb event, or a legit mag lava escort. pet can be one shot during the defend mag sequence prior to last boss. pet can be 1 shot by meteors in the last room (though again, there is time to react to the burning if swap is available).

Neither of CoF1 bosses 1 shot the pet, they don’t 1 shot my Berserker Ele either, so you have plenty fo time to swap your pet if it does get hit(the only time I’ve ever had my pet die in CoF outside of the boulders/acolyte fight, is if my pet gets chain hit by Comets, which is an rng kill at best and only happens rarely). CoF p2, nothing in p2 one shots the pet, some of the mobs have fairly strong attacks, but all of them give ample time to swap/heal the pet. In fact CoF is one of the easiest dungeons to keep pets alive full time with only decent management.

Raven.9603:

Arah:
its been way too long. the first boss that is two bosses together, they can one shot the pet.

The only bosses in Arah that are but so pet unfriendly are Lupicus and the final boss on p2(who doesn’t so much 1 shot the pet as simply make it unable to do damage(since the pet doesn’t get the buff), maybe some bosses in p4, but I’ve only run p4 once and was not on Ranger at the time)

Raven.9603:

HotW:
Are there any bosses on any of the HotW paths that DONT 1-shot pets? Perhaps the guy on the stairs. The rest can all 1-shot.

Quite a few don’t 1 shot the pet actually. There are a couple bosses where the pet has a really hard time (Mr. Ice Spike guy comes to mind, and the Butcher, although he’s not so much pet unfriendly as just unfriendly to melee in general). But its not impossible to keep your pet alive for a lot of the fights.

TA:
First and lost bosses are guaranteed to kill your pet if its attacking, both paths. Spider boss probably will also, if you are doing up/up.

I know for a fact none of those bosses 1 shot pets, not even cats. The pet will have a hard time staying alive if the team has a hard time staying alive in those situations, but otherwise the pet stays alive fine.

CM:
See HotW.

SE:
I’ve never actually wanted to go here.

I haven’t played Ranger much in either of these dungeons, but at least for SE the only place i could see having serious trouble keeping the pet alive is last boss of p1, or the Mining suit boss, and golem bosses in p2.

CoE:
A pet can live through all of COE except the “1-2-3 dodge!” bosses (theres 2 of these i think?). Can your group? Probably not. Still, the challenge of many fights here has nothing to do with actual fighting.

Your pet can survive all of CoE including the 1 2 3 dodge boss if everyone is stacked(the aoe cap comes into effect here and if everyone is stacked your pet won’t even be hit).

I’m not going to cover every fractal. The point that there are bosses in every common dungeon path that 1 shot pets seems pretty evident.

pet choice matters. some pets offer control, some offer damage, some offer unique buffs, some are effective as ranged dps or buffbots, some pets warn other players away from grouping with you, but they are all at some point dead meat to bad PvE mechanics and Anets refusal to adjust aoe damage’s impact on pets.

With regards to fractals, yes on a whole pets tend to have a harder time in, at least higher level, Fractals than most dungeons, due to the damage scaling outstripping pet’s health significantly and several mechanics which can add undue difficulty to keeping a pet alive.

As a whole, the issues pets have are there, but broadly speaking a lot of them can be avoided via good management of the pet . Overall, I would like to see some improvement to design taking into account the fact that pets can’t dodge the same way players can, but while this would be a nice improvement, the lack of it doesn’t make pets useless.

CoE? No. P2 and P3. No. Maybe if you are specced 30 into BM and you’re running signets. Maybe. Other wise. No. Just, farking no the pet will not survive Alpha fights. Never has no matter how I was specced. Why? The pets DO NOT DODGE.

Whats your spec and strat to get the pets (any pet) to live through Alpha? Cause, until I see a video of you stacking melee on alpha, and the pet living… Well, bullkitten.

OP, in any given situation you’re better off meleeing and using a ranged pet. Less chance they’ll die. Unless you pew-pew (meaning you are doing less than if you meleed) and can manage the pet back and forth from target.

Tired of hearing this crap about “good management” when there are so few tools to manage the pets. Not to mention you cannot manage them to retreat/heel then to attack again if you are meleeing because they just stand right next to you. Which is why there needs to be a dodge mechanic for the pet. Jon Sharp has stated in the STOG we aren’t getting anymore tools because it’ll scare off the nubs from the ranger class. A reason I don’t like him or the balance team or anyone who makes has anything remotely to do with the Ranger class decisions. Obviously, that crack pipe gets passed around the cubicles.

One basic rule is if you find both your pets dieing fast and ending up on cooldown, switch to ranged pets…they may well survive longer…another alternative is the bear/drakes who will last longer in melee.

Also, guard utility skill works best with a flying pet.

Pets with F2 skills that effect allies are good whenever you are in a group or around loads of other players WvW for example…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PWQ-39_C8LI

I don’t know if anyone has beaten the 5:27. In that video he ran cat + cat. Pet wasn’t that big of a deal from the looks of it though, mostly ignored.

IMHO the pet situation is much improved from the start of the game when 95% of my time in a dungeon was spent with a dead pet. There are a few bosses which are really tough on the pets, but for the most part my pets survive boss encounters. Overall I actually have more problems with pets running blithely through traps in dungeons than with bosses. I usually run a cat/drake combo BTW, switching to devourer for bosses which give melee-range pets problems.

Having played both bunker and zerker builds, the zerker build actually tends to have an easier time keeping the pet alive. You’re usually able to kill stuff faster with a zerk build, minimizing the chance of your pet accumulating enough damage to die. With the bunker build, you trade off kill-time for survivability. But your pet doesn’t gain any of that survivability (unless you go BM bunker). So if the fight lasts twice as long, your pet has twice the chance of dying during it. (Obviously the build of the rest of your party matters too.)

thefantasticg.3984:

CoE? No. P2 and P3. No. Maybe if you are specced 30 into BM and you’re running signets. Maybe. Other wise. No. Just, farking no the pet will not survive Alpha fights. Never has no matter how I was specced. Why? The pets DO NOT DODGE.

Whats your spec and strat to get the pets (any pet) to live through Alpha? Cause, until I see a video of you stacking melee on alpha, and the pet living… Well, bullkitten.

I’ve only done one CoE run since I started playing again, but we were using the stacking strategy and my pet survived most of the Alpha fights. The first Alpha I was kicking myself I had devourer/drake loaded instead of my normal cat/drake, since I run jungle stalker for the 5 might stack buff. We could’ve used that more than the pet’s damage.

I think what’s going on is that mobs have the same 5-target AOE limit that players do. When you stack, Alpha’s AOE hits the 5 players (who hopefully all dodge) and the pet is spared. Thinking back, I think the times the pet died were when a player died and we were trying to revive him when Alpha’s AOE hit.

The choice of pets are alpha-omega. Each pet family offers something unique, and each family has its strengths and weaknesses.

For tanking/group play – Moa, Bears and Fern Hound
For CC/support play – Canines, and spiders
For Dungeon play – devourers and brown bear/red moa
For WvW – Spiders, Canines, Cat’s, Moa’s
For pure PvE – anything goes. Just make sure you got the right “pet utility” for the encounter.