Guild Wars 2

This past few days I’ve been getting absolutely owned by a couple of rangers on SoR using their pets. One “guarded” me up on the wall of Briar and I was dead before I even knew what was hitting me. They are panther pets and the damage they do is huge. Is there a certain build that makes pets do really high damage?

The cats have higher precision than the other pets (other than birds), so will crit more often. As you add points to BM, their precision (and other stats) get higher, so they crit even more. There are various traits to increase pet crit damage, add bleed on crits, and increase bleed damage. And you can use a various skills to give your pet fury (20% higher chance to crit), and increased damage on the next hit.

One of the cats’ automatic skills (maul I think) is a double-attack – the first does regular damage, the second double damage. So combined if they both crit will do 2x + 4x = about 6x the damage of a regular attack if you’re properly traited. Do note however that the ranger has no control over when this skill fires. Sometimes you get lucky and it’s the pet’s opening attack. Other times the target dies before the pet uses it (20 sec cooldown on the skill). And more to the point, there’s no way to reliably use the “increased damage on next pet attack” skill just before the pet uses maul. It’s all down to luck.

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firebreathz.7692:

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Thanks. That’s about how it felt to me. Now just gotta figure out how he did all that. I don’t remember seeing the “rampage as one” effect, but I’ve noticed sometimes it doesn’t show on my pet when it goes off.

firebreathz.7692:

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Yup, the 3k and 6k hits in rapid succession in the video is maul. So in addition to firing his elite and every utility skill (for extra pet damage and quickness), he got lucky and the cat used maul.

Edit: Found the post I made on my guild forums.

20 Skirmishing
10 Wilderness Survival
30 Beastmastery
10 points left to distribute as you please (10 in Marksmanship can be used to extend pet condition duration).

The traits you want are:

Skirmisshing
- Pet’s prowess – pet does 30% more damage on criticals
- Carnivorous appetite – pet heals on criticals (this is important for survivability)

Wilderness Survival
- Expertise training – pets deal extra condition damage

Beastmastery
- any of the five pet traits in the first trait slot work
- Rending attacks – cats, drakes, devourers, sharks bleed on criticals (this is most important to get)
- Natural healing – pets (and you) regenerate hp while in combat

For PvP purposes, you may not need carnivorous appetite. And just to be clear, I did not come up with this. It’s one of a gazillion BM builds floating around, I just summarized it.

I have a feeling that’s the same build I’ve been using since launch. I went to the mists and tested it on the heavy golem a few times and aye, down in the blink of an eye (around 3 seconds). Here’s the build (I had to bit.ly the link to avoid ‘bad link’ error). I don’t take ownership of it, I got it from a guy over at gw2guru forums back on release.

It’s pretty simple to get the burst. Stalk on the panther, Sick ‘em, Quickening Zephyr
1 autoattack on the sb. You don’t need a maul off yer pet as the regular attacks will crit for over 3k and Rampage as One isn’t needed for the full effect either, altho obviously it will help.

My spvp gear is full sup Ranger’s runes, a zerker’s amu and.. well that’s it!

Incidently this build is great for dungeons/fractals and general pve as well as pvp just need to switch around utils to suit. A real good all-rounder.

Rhaps.8540:

It’s pretty simple to get the burst. Stalk on the panther, Sick ‘em, Quickening Zephyr
1 autoattack on the sb. You don’t need a maul off yer pet as the regular attacks will crit for over 3k and Rampage as One isn’t needed for the full effect either, altho obviously it will help.

If the target dies this quick, the only benefit from RaO is fury (+20% crit chance). You don’t really need fury if you’re using the jaguar pet to stealth as done in the video. When stealthed, the next 3 attacks automatically crit. (Might be more, depends on if it ends on # of attacks or a set amount of time – never thought to test that.)

Actually I’d question the need for fury at all. In the tests I did with this build, the cat would critical on 70% of its attacks all on its own.

Solandri.9640:

Rhaps.8540:

It’s pretty simple to get the burst. Stalk on the panther, Sick ‘em, Quickening Zephyr
1 autoattack on the sb. You don’t need a maul off yer pet as the regular attacks will crit for over 3k and Rampage as One isn’t needed for the full effect either, altho obviously it will help.

If the target dies this quick, the only benefit from RaO is fury (+20% crit chance). You don’t really need fury if you’re using the jaguar pet to stealth as done in the video. When stealthed, the next 3 attacks automatically crit. (Might be more, depends on if it ends on # of attacks or a set amount of time – never thought to test that.)

Actually I’d question the need for fury at all. In the tests I did with this build, the cat would critical on 70% of its attacks all on its own.

I agree, the fury really doesnt benefit this build much from a burst dps perspective, but when your pet’s stealth is on cd it helps sustain dps. Also stability is useful in myriad situations and a long haste is handy too. I do swap my elites out though as situation demands.