Guild Wars 2

Hey there, I am quite interested in the hunter but a little scared of the pet mechanic as I have heard that it is quite buggy, is that true? And how important is the pet actually to a ranger?
Other questions are, is the ranger fun and complex?
Thanks so much

Pets are at least 30 of a Ranger’s DMG. So when your pet dies, you are losing 30% of your DMG and they die ALOT.

Mine pets die on swapping and within 1-4 sec when reaching a mob…
So we’re losing by ~30% dmg since ~2 years, yet AN didn’t hotfixed it with no-dmg-at-pets-without-trait until they don’t figure out how to make it right.

Sorry, but I can’t call this professional at all…………

That doesnt sound very apealing.. So no fun to have without making pet my priority?

Pet almost NEVER die, both in PvE in PvP. You may need to swap pets every 20 seconds in bad situations (I’m thinking heavy AoE on a point in PvP in a full on team fight) but ya, pets really don’t die if you pay attention. Newbie rangers will lose their pets, but you really need to learn to watch it and put pet swap on a convenient button. Also learn to recall your pet out of heavy AoE (again, rebind your buttons.)

There is an AI pathing issue, where the pet struggles to reach the target before it moves. This is effectively nonexistant in PvE, however it does exist in PvP. People generally use CC pets to make up for that.*

*I guess I should expand, pets often have pauses before they make an attack, and a human will simply move. To make up for that, pets like dogs with cripple and knockdown or spider with immobilize (and ranged attacks) are very popular.

That already sounds better, how much diversity is in the ranger class?

In PvE if you want to roll with the best, there is a best build. You need to run the PvE meta build.

In PvP there is mostly spirit ranger, with a few others sideshows like traps.

In WvW roaming it is just WIDE OPEN. There are literally dozens of viable roaming builds.

In WvW zerging, the options limit but as long as you go tanky, you need to rely on skill more than build. You can also “zerg surf” as a glass cannon longbow ranger.

That actually sounds quite good..
So how much fun can you have with a ranger?

I have all classes fully geared up in exotic and ascended equipment. I only play ranger. If it’s for you, it’s for you.

in my opinion ranger is to much pet reliant (not to mention, that ranger have skills with wich he can kill his pet…no other class in this game cripples itself with its classmechanic in the way the ranger does with himself)…, in pve it doesnt rly matter, if you are able to keep your pet alive and it is possible by swapping the pet, or getting it out of aoe with movement and f3 (but its sometimes rly annoying, if you compare the effort you have to bring with other classes efforts, becouse you have to look on two lifebars), but the pet will allways die against champions, if they use their aoe, onehit, cleave skills, or whatsoever (you could use a spider, its a range pet)

the problems start in pvp, if you want to play a ranger (power/condi), becouse it is very easy to kite the pet and the pet will not be able to land any hit, so if you even manage to keep it alive you will lose the pets dmg and deal less dmg, than other classes at the end (fortunately many of the players in pvp cant kite proper) and in wvw zergs the pet is nearly useless (unless you use a spider, its a range pet)

guess what, why so many players dont like rangers in pve grps, or wvw grps…, it is possible to play a ranger proper and your pet will prolly never die, if you manage it right, but at the end the pet is stil a disadvantage in my eyes, if i look on the possibilities the other classes have, becouse no other class is able lose an essential amount of their own dps…, just ranger, guild wars 2 official petclass

Izamar.4260:

Hey there, I am quite interested in the hunter but a little scared of the pet mechanic as I have heard that it is quite buggy, is that true? And how important is the pet actually to a ranger?
Other questions are, is the ranger fun and complex?
Thanks so much

Expect the ranger section of the forum to be more negatively inclined towards rangers than positive. Most people come here to complain.

Second, as Fluffball said, there are meta builds that work best. Generally speaking, there are three builds often seen; Spirits, Traps and Regen rangers in no particular order.
The strengths of these builds is the “passivety”. Spirits are cast & forget (well, not really ofc) and are passively used based on RNG.

Traps is a bit more active and strategic and requires you to play good to be good. Traps has a big space between the “Okay” and “Very skilled” levels.

The regen build is super ‘strong’ because it is passive and requires almost nothing from the player because healing comes passively. It is possible to fight against 2 at once or even up to 4 but the build won’t get you anywhere. There isn’t much to learn there after mastering the rotation and learning when to apply specific conditions.

Outside the meta, I’ve found ranger to have many builds that work once the player is skilled enough. At the early times, I lost every single fight with knight/rabid gear but after playing around with more tanky builds I’ve learned how to survive and progressed back to knight/rabid gear and have no problems surviving or even escaping.

There are a lot of working builds;
Bleed build: Usually with 100% Bleed duration and Bleed stack burst. Weak to managed cleanses. Bleed mostly comes throuh Traits and Sigils.

Bleed build mixed with trap: Usually with at least 40% condi duration and trap traits. Less damage than above but safer too because it’s not fully bleed focused. Very weak to (the few) people who can predict your traps. Usually less survival because of traps taking up the utility slots.

Chill build: No exerience with it.

Regen Power Build: I played this with S/D + GS and it was really fun to harass people but very difficult to kill. It can be a very efficient build if you learn to use poison correctly, but I got bored because people can run away whenever they want…… and 10 minutes long fights aren’t very fun most of the times.

Regen Condi Build: Passive regen, lots of condi damage and tanky. What more is there to wish for? Unfortunately, this build will get you nowhere…. Good for learning how other people play, though.

Which pet you choose is independent in all of these builds and these builds are not all the builds there are.

People say that they are easy to kite but miss one fact; it means the enemy is paying less attention to you and more towards kiting your pet.
There are also a lot of soft-cc skills that help the pet hit the enemy.

The answer to your question depends on the build you’re running. It also depends on the situation.

Beastmastery builds and builds that rely on Empathic Bond for condition removal rely on pets more than, say, a power build that uses Survival of the Fittest as its primary condition removal. BM builds get their burst from pets and Empathic Bond only works while your pet is alive. Fortunately, there are ways to help keep your pet alive for these builds, which tend to be PvP or WvW roaming builds, where most opposing players don’t focus your pet anyway.

Pets are most likely to be nuked in dungeons and high level fractals where you’ve got these enemies with highly telegraphed attacks that deal massive damage. Fluffy is gonna stand there and take it in the face if you aren’t paying attention and don’t recall him early and take a few steps back yourself. In these situations, the ranger is going to rely less on pets since we’re generally going to be built for big numbers ourselves and won’t be using Empathic Bond; I find the pet to be more of a boon machine with some damage sprinkled in while I’m running a dungeon.

I run spider/ wolf for peels/ chain ccing. I am very dependent on them but run 0 in BM. I feel I don’t have to much of a hard time keeping them up (mainly use spider for fringe fighting).

This is from a Pvp viewpoint. I like them a lot because in really close fights you can LoS the enemy while still doing decent dmg. They also help you direct you in which way stealthed enemies ran to, etc.

If the pathing were a bit better I feel the class as a whole would be fairly close to complete. We are in pretty good spot at the moment, despite what the majority of the boards would have you believe.

Izamar.4260:

That actually sounds quite good..
So how much fun can you have with a ranger?

fun enough that i don’t use my guardian in pvp or pve anymore cant help it love my melee ranger to much love flying around like a ninja lol

To go a bit beyond the title question and just say outright what the weakness of the class is, it’s that rangers don’t tend to scale well with multi-target content.

Now, that isn’t actually all that noticeable all the way up to 5 man content. But where most people have issues is WvW zerging, where none of our options really scale well with the amount of bodies there are. Granted, they scale “well enough,” but in that level and scale of play, rangers don’t really offer anything over other classes that would make them competitive at a “best in slot” level for a team composition.

That being said, rangers do have builds that work in General PvE, PvP, and WvW small scale/roaming. As far as how pet reliant we are, it depends on the pet on the content and the build. I’ve found, with my PvE builds, that the pet is there, and adds damage output, but outside of the damage, you don’t necessarily need them for some sort of clutch play or skill rotation. When it comes to PvP though, the pets, on top of their damage, hold a huge portion of our CC utility with the right pet selections, and knowing how and when to use them is crucial to playing at a top level performance.

Drakes, Zephyr’s Speed, healing spring, and double melee = superfuntime

TL;DR Ranger is highly pet based, that’s not a problem if you learn to play the class. Most people who whine about rangers just haven’t figured it out yet, and since I’ve been playing ranger since the servers first launched, and frankly most of the complaints have never been an issue for me

I’ve been playing my Ranger since the three day headstart. I’ve tried to level other professions (I actually have a character of every prof) and I’ve always gotten bored and gone back to ranger. My second highest is a thief at 46, but ranger is just too much fun. Since the game launched, people have been complaining the prof is too pet based, but I’ve never had a problem with it.

I will note that I LOVE pets. All my D&D characters have always had pets, and in games that have a pet option, I always use the pet. That being said, Ranger pets only die if you are a bad Ranger. Sadly, being a bad Ranger is very, very easy as there are numerous easy pitfalls, too many to list here. If you’re a good Ranger, you kick total butt. I never grouped up for Orr, even when during launch people were running 5 man parties just to explore, I’ve solo spiked warriors for over 20k damage, and my favorite Ranger moment of awesome was when during Frost and Fire I saved my party from a wipe by soloing the Molten Berserker after everyone else in the group died before he hit 85%.

The main key in Ranger pets is that you NEED to swap pets. Keep an eye on your pet’s health, if it gets low, swap it. If you swap pets when your pet is alive, it’s a 20 second(untraited) CD. Swapping a dead pet is a 60 second CD, which means your in what I call the swap graveyard for that fight, cause if your pet died once in a fight, it’s going to die again before that CD is up.

Worth noting that you can make some builds that are fairly effective for solo play that rely on pet swapping. The Beastmastery spec has some traits that not only reduce swap CD, but buff you, your pet, and sometimes nearby allies on swap with fantastic buffs like might and even quickness that combo nicely into other builds. As long as you don’t use really bad pets (my only Ranger complaint has always been that not all pets were made with an equal stat total making some just plain strictly better than almost anything else for the specific role they serve *cough*drakes*cough*) and swap when health gets low, you’ll be great.

RoyalPredator.9163:

Mine pets die on swapping and within 1-4 sec when reaching a mob…
So we’re losing by ~30% dmg since ~2 years, yet AN didn’t hotfixed it with no-dmg-at-pets-without-trait until they don’t figure out how to make it right.

Sorry, but I can’t call this professional at all…………

Nobody knows what you just said in the second half of your post, but I’m assuming you’ve never used a pet before since that doesn’t happen ever.

Never say never. Plenty bugs and glitches that have yet to be fixed or even reported =)
Haven’t swapped to a dead pet in a while but it did happen occasionally in the past. They didn’t even follow you or revive out of combat. They were just dead as can be lol. I meant to post these a year ago but i guess i forgot. Ran in a corner and swapped to the lynx after fighting reef drakes. RIP Lynx. These are really old screens but i just thought I’d leave them here.

A direct answer to the title question from me would be it entirely depends on builds and what you are having your pets doing.

Can have builds that only have the pet for added utility and some where the pet is the main focus. So it varies depending on what you may be running and what you want the pets for at the time.

Pets are kind of like the icing on the cake. You can eat the cake without the icing, but it tastes so much better with it. A new ranger does not really need to worry about snuggles (pet) too much, but as you progress in the profession I think you will be heavily considering how to use them effectively in all game types. Ranger really is the pet class.

A couple of pretty childish answers about the ‘learn to play’-issue. Fact is: No other MMO I played has problems with pets liek GW2. The problems is mainly AoE circles with multiple layers which can kill pets in a second.

Other MMOs have mechanics that make pets immune to AoEs. That’s why especially in dungeons pets are generally not a viable way to do stuff. Every kind of pet, also conjured stuff like the Spirit Weapons, the Elementals or the Minions form Necro die in no time. Your whole Minion amry dies in a second.

The problem is deep in the games mechanics. Be cause enemies hit extremely hard but usually have telegraphed attacks which a human player can see and dodge. Pets can’t do that and since they are additionally not immune (or heavily reduced) to AoE pets go down far too fast. It’s a problem we know since the betas and they didn’t change it after even two years. Pets (aside form all the other A.I. problems) are NOT viable in a big chunk of this game and hence are offiically broken and ArenaNet can’t/won’t fix it. It’s a fact and nod a ‘yadda yadda yadda larn to play yadda yadda yadda’ issue. It’s just not viable.

Izamar.4260:

That doesnt sound very apealing.. So no fun to have without making pet my priority?

It’s exactly the opposite in most cases, actually. Doing your absolute best to ignore the gimmicky mechanic often yields the absolute best results.

The issue is that in ignoring it, you still have skill damage coefficients which are around 30% lower than they should be, and a real lack of self-cast buffs in the trait lines catered towards independence from the pet amplifies this. Comparing my autoattacks from my thief and ranger longbow builds, both running heavy-DPS builds, my thief autos for around 4-6k per strike at almost double the speed (and then there’s 20k backstabs) whereas my ranger gets lucky with 3k’s. My thief also has higher toughness, crit chance, damage modifiers, better utilities in most fights (the pet is notmally dead in demanding situations due to AOE’s), and has more health.

Pets are pretty much just an unreliable form of utility in some cases when they aren’t dead. Aside from that, I play with mine on passive exclusively and only send it to kill targets when I need the damage boost or get desperate.

Removing the pet as a damage entity/targetable/killable AI component but simply making it a source of said utility would be ideal, but ANet loves their pets.