Guild Wars 2

CATSASSIN’S CREED:

The road to mastering the Phantom Catmaster and the way of Catsassination is not an easy road. This build will require significantly more button pressing than the average pistol dagger thief. It will require a feline mind and micromanagement skills.

The Phantom Catmaster is a build that essentially turns your pet into an independent killing machine capable of spiking down and kill enemy players on its own, in less than 3-5 seconds, and completely from stealth. This setup requires extremely good pet management and good timing to set up kills. I have remote control killed many players using just the pet and fighting them without even putting myself in the fight.

Played correctly this build can stand toe-to-toe with any class. I have decimated countless players using this build and I hardly consider myself a master. This includes decent D/D eles and thieves of all flavors. This build, while designed for WvW, will work in any game mode (PvE, SPvP, WvW, Open World).

BUILD SETUP:

TRAITS:

Skirmishing: 10
-I Pet’s Prowess (30% more pet dmg on crit)

Wilderness Survival: 30
-V Expertise Training (Pets deal extra condition dmg)
-X Martial Master (20% CD on GS and Sword skills)
-XI Empathic Bond (Pets take 3 conditions from you every 10 seconds)

Beastmastery: 30
-V Commanding Voice (F2 pet skils recharge faster)
-VII Rending Attacks (Cats bleed on crit)
-XII Natural Healing (Passive regen on pet hp)

ALTERNATIVE TRAITS:

The backbone of the Catmaster is the 10 in Skirmishing, 10 in WS and 30 in BM. The other points are freely swappable and can be tailored to your playstyle.

Chokolata has pointed out that one can go:

15 Nature Magic (Nature’s Protection, Boons go to pet)
15 Skirmishing (Fury on weapon swap)

Nature’s protection is extremely powerful in this build and I’ve also been using it with a 1h sword setup + warhorn to buff the pet. This is perfectly viable setup, as well as Choko’s dual bow setup. Feel free to experiment with the free points to find what works for you.

GEAR:

Primary Weapon: Greatsword (Sigil of Earth, Energy, Nullification [for fighting booners] all work well. Battle is ideal for 15 in Skirmishing and Nature Mastery in order spread might buffs to the pet.)
Secondary Weapon: Shortbow (Sigil of Earth, Energy, Nullification [for fighting booners] all work well. Battle is ideal for 15 in Skirmishing and Nature Mastery in order spread might buffs to the pet.)

Armor: Rabid, Carrion, soldier all work. All the power is in the traits and pet. Carrion gives you more damage but less direct damage survival, Rabid is nicely balanced with high toughness and condition power, PvT reduces condition damage but makes you very tanky for attrition fights. I personally use Rabid. The runes would be 6x Undead. For builds that have weak condition removal from lacking 30 WS for empathic bond or healing spring, 6x runes of Hoelbrak to reduce condition removal durations on you work very well as pointed out by Chokolata.

Jewelry: Same as above. Rabid and carrion mixes can balance the stats. Full Rabid/Carrion works as well.

Pets:
Primary: ALWAYS JAGUAR
Secondary: Wolf (for fear), or Snow Leopard (Second cat with chill pounce)

SLOT SKILLS:

-Sic Em!
-Sharpening Stone / Prayer of Kormir (human for Wvw condition removal that is on demand / Lightning Reflexes (Stunbreak) / Qz (More quickness, pointed out by Geshque for fast bursting). *Think of this slot as an open one to swap depending on the situation
-Signet of the Hunt
Elite: Rampage as One (Stability and Escaping/Engaging Fights)

UNDERSTANDING CATSASSINATION AND CATMASTER TACTICS:

The majority of ranger power is built into the pet. No other stat, gear combination, or setup gives you more damage pound for pound that running 30 BM with a high damage pet. Longbow comes close, but it is a terrible defensive weapon that leaves you easy pickings for anyone closer than 900m. The advantage of building a full BM build is that it allows you to build bunkerish without sacrificing any damage. It is best to build for condition damage as this stat will greatly benefit the Greatsword and Shortbow weapons that you will be using to support the pet.

All of the skills, traits, and setup options of this build synergize together to turn your pet into a terrifying monster. To get the most out of this build you will need to understand the concept of Catsassination, which is the major focus of this build.

What is Catssassination and how does it work?

To understand Catssassination, it is important to understand the mechanics of the Jaguar pet and how its stealth F2 ability works.

The Jaguar’s F2 ability will put the Jaguar in stealth. While in stealth, the pet gains the following properties:

-The Jaguar goes into stealth for 6s, becoming completely invisible to the enemy.
-The Jaguar’s crit rating goes to 100% while in stealth
-The Jaguar CAN ATTACK WHILE IN STEALTH. The Jaguar is capable of damaging the enemy while being completely unseen on their screen.

Catsassination is a way of building massive burst into the Jaguar pet using our setup. This is how to initiate Catsassination:

Optional: Precast Rampage as One, stack might using the shortbow autofire.

*1.) Send your pet to attack the enemy
2.) At some point during the fight when the enemy is vulnerable, put the Jaguar in stealth using F2.
-While in stealth the pet gains 100% crit rating, activating the 30% on crit trait.
-The pet will bleed on crit, and will gain massive bonus damage from crits due to rending strikes and Expertise training.
3.) Burn sic em! Which raises your pets damage to 40%.
4.) Burn signet of the hunt, which makes your pets opening/next attack hit for upwards of 150% more damage by buffing the pet with opening strike. If you have the GS equipped and are in ranged, nail them with bash for a 150% dmg boost to pet dmg. This buff does not stack with Signet of the hunt because it also applies opening strike to the pet.

When striking the enemy using Catsassination, the Jaguar will disappear into stealth then the Jaguar’s opening attack will hit for 30% +40% +150% damage with a 100% crit rate and apply a bleed from hell (an additional 50% is added when GS5 hits before the spike). Afterwards the pet will chase the enemy in stealth at inceased speeds dealing 30 +40% more damage attacks and dealing additional bleeds.

This is an INSANE amount of damage, hitting glass cannons at upwards of 7000-8000 damage with the opening attack while doing this completely unseen.

As seen, the burst is insanely high. The pet can drop targets on its own, without the support of the ranger, from stealth, and in less than 3-5 seconds. You want to practice this tactic and learn how to cast these skills down in the perfect order. You want to learn how to always use Sic Em! last so that you never clip it with stealth or Signet of the Hunt.

Once you get Catsassination down, you will start piling the bodies and collecting tears. Using this tactic, I was able to kill a Yak guarded by 4 people with my pet while it was in stealth. After the Yak died I swapped my pet out. The end effect was 4 escorters seeing their Yak suddenly die from casper the friendly ghost. I stood behind a tree laughing on hysterically vent while they all fanned out wondering what the heck was going on.

Catsassination is EXTREMELY effective when you are entering the fight as a third wheel. When you see someone else attacking an ally, usually they are not paying attention to a distant pet. You can get your pet in on them while it is in stealth and initiate Catsassination, downing them with high damage from a source that is completely invisible on their screen.

I imagine I’ve made alot of people scratch their heads and go digging into their combat log when they suddenly see 7K out of thin air and drop dead with no idea what just happened.

Knowing how to Sic Em!:

As of the 26 Mar 2013 Patch Sic Em! IS NOT canceled by Signet of the Hunt or GS5 Bash. Because of this it is more effective to now put the cat in stealth first, then use Sic Em! Before SoTH and Bash. This patch actually INCREASED the damage of the Catsassination by allowing you to get 190% damage by using Sic Em! and having the buff affect the opening strike granted by Bash/SoTH!

You can use the BM 10pt Adept trait to reduce the CD of shouts instead of reducing the CD of Pet F2 skills. This is helpful while you are still learning how to use Sic Em!

I personally find having the Pet Stealth active faster to be more useful because it has more offensive and defensive applications for utilizing, attacking, and saving the Jaguar.

IMPORTANT: Using cat stealth will still cancel Sic! Em! So beware of this!

Skirmishing Tactics:

In this build, all your firepower is in the pet. You must learn to keep the pet alive, but with 30 BM for high pet stats, natural healing, and some tactics I go over below; this is not too hard. The pet can even survive in zergs if the caretaker is skilled.

While you need to be within 1500m to target enemies with pet based attacks, the pet will chase enemies to upwards of 4000m. Learn when to swap your pet out to save it.

Another neat trick is that if the ranger is out of combat and the pet dies, it immediately comes back to life as long as you are not engaged in an encounter.

To fully utilize this build it is important to know that you can and will burn your heal to save your pet. This is useful when you are remote controlling the pet and not in the immediate encounter. Burning dodges to apply protection to the pet when you are remote attacking enemies or when enemies try to spike the pet down is also a valuable strategy.

When roaming, there are times when it is good to send the pet out first via remote control and use it to whittle down the enemy. Most players may not see the cat as a huge threat. They will come hunting you, the ranger. At this time you can swap to shortbow, nail them with a cripple, stun, then Catsassinate them.

Alternatively, you can remote control engage the enemy with your secondary pet (Snow Leopard or Wolf) and use it to weaken the enemy and burn all their defensive CDs. When you actually get into the fight, you can quickswap to the Jaguar (gaining quickness) then throw out a fast Catsassination. This heavily confuses enemies as they will only see the Jaguar for a split second. Sometimes the enemy will not catch the Jaguar going into stealth and it will land a massive amount of damage from an unseen position that will just flat out kill them.

The Greatsword is an amazing defensive swiss army knife. When needed, Swoop in combination with Rampage As One will allow you to escape almost any fight easily if you are not rooted. To do this, simply doublelick empty space to drop target and swoop away from your enemy. I like to leave the pet behind to harass my enemies while I flee. Sometimes it even kills them.

The GS is great against thieves as well due to the counter stopping backstab. I usually go into block and I know they will be circling behind me, I can flip around and maul behind myself to nail them with heavy bleeds. When the Thief comes out, dodge CnD then Catssassinate him.

Also utilize the GS to block projectiles as ranged attacks will not trigger the counter, allowing you stay blocking and guard yourself against enemies like P/D thieves until you can swoop them or shortbow crip/stun them in order to feed them to your pet. Also have hilt bash ready for thieves that try to come in for CnD.

D/D eles can be tough. Having a spare Shortbow with a nullification sigil can help with boon removal. To effectively kill them you want to chain stuns to keep them locked down (Gs bash chained into swapped shortbow stun for Catssassination).

Remember that when you burn signet of the hunt, you also lose the speedboost associated with the signet. This is where Swoop and Rampage as one come into play to maintain your fast speed. If necessary, you can swap to shortbow and use a swiftness arrow to get a boost if you really need one.

Even without the Catssassination spike fully charged, the cat can deal massive damage all on its own. The ranger is also very survivable due to gear and 30 in WS. Even if you miss your spike, you can still deal massive damage to enemies and fight evenly with most builds. Weaknesses in the build come from lack of on demand condition removal, so mass condition stacks may give you problems. If you have problems with conditions and you are a human, you can use Prayer of Kormir instead of Sharpening Stone. If you find the need to have an on demand stunbreak to cover when stability from rampage is not up, you can use lightning reflexes. If you aren’t a human, signet of renewal gives you limited condition removal capabilities.

In zergs, I like to single out people I know aren’t paying attention then Catsassinate them. The Jaguar can easily infiltrate a zerg in stealth and surprise killshot someone while being 100% unseen. Like a thief, you can also stealth the pet defensively when the zerg singles it out and starts hammering it with damage. This can allow you to keep the Jaguar behind enemies lines to harass enemies for a long period of time.

Swoop, Swap, and Stomp:

This build is good at finishing because pet swapping grants you quickness, which you can then use to stomp enemies. A good tactic to use is to keep your pet on downed enemies so that they burn their interrupt on it. Then swoop in, pet swap, and stomp them.

Flexibility:

This build is very strong, very flexible, and very lethal. It works with almost any weapon set. This build synergizes well with the mainhand axe chill or 1h sword melee dancing.

*Chokolata has also found specific setups that work with dual bows and some alternate trait swapping, see further down the thread for details on this.

I’ve been using this build for a long time and I’ve had great success and fun with it. I hope everyone finds it as enjoyable as I do!

what the… i don’t even…

catsassination – my new favorite word…. since it also applies to real life cats more often than not…

well… yeah… uhm… thanks for writing this, i guess? (^_^)b

Great post lordhelmos. Happy to see you’re enjoying the good side of the Ranger too

Very nice write up

This is very reminiscent of Xsorus’s Nature’s Ninja Videos, except in a well written format

One tiny detail you missed: GS5 gives the same effect to pets as a signet of the hunt. It’s possible to get 2 boosted attacks from SotH, then GS5.

My real life cat went to the toilet today and had a wee, I thought that was quite fantastic cause I hate having a litterbox, this has nothing to do with your thread aside that the story contained cats, I felt like sharing.

First off i would love to commend you on a great guide and build . It is very similar to something that i have been thinking about , but i have been hesitant to implement .

Same as you i would be using the black and white cat and making them the hard hitters , some of the utilities would be the same as well . But i will try to explain the differences now .

I am thinking about putting my traits in this order :

marksmanship 0
skirmishing 15
wilderness 10
nature 15
beastmaster 30

The beastmastery makes your pet the best it can be , and i would use the same traits as you .
Why nature magic one might ask ? Well , to put it bluntly , the 2nd minor trait that you get that gives any buff you have is given to your pet as well . This ties dirrectly to the skirmishing as you have speed and fury on weapon swap , buffing your pet every 10 seconds .
Of course you would lose a lot of survivability by only having 10 points in wilderness, but this would be offset somewhat by placing the nature protection trait in the Nature magic slot .

As for runes i would use the runes of Hoelbrak which buff power and might specifically, and its final bonus reduces the condition duration by 20% , and with lemongrass food it could go up to 60% reduction .

For sigils i would use the Sigil of strength on my shortbow and sigil of battle on the alternate weapon .

So in essence , each critical would give might to yourself and your pet , each weapon swap would give might ,fury an speed to your pet , each hit for more then 10% of your hitpoints would give protection to both you and your pet .

Thoughts???

jubskie.3152:

Very nice write up

This is very reminiscent of Xsorus’s Nature’s Ninja Videos, except in a well written format

One tiny detail you missed: GS5 gives the same effect to pets as a signet of the hunt. It’s possible to get 2 boosted attacks from SotH, then GS5.

Your absolutely right on this and it requires a very good timing to get the double buff. One thing to be careful of is that the buff on the pet from GS5 for the damage bonus will overwrite Sic Em! So in this situation you would want to go >

Pet Stealth > Signet of the Hunt > GS5 > Sic Em!

As long as Sic Em! hits last you are ok. A great tactic is to weapon swap to shortbow after bash and chain the stunshot to it. You will also get quickness for yourself and the pet, causing Catsassination to hit much faster. You can easily 2-3 shot people running this, especially if you are breaking glass.

Good call on this.

Chokolata.1870:

First off i would love to commend you on a great guide and build . It is very similar to something that i have been thinking about , but i have been hesitant to implement .

Same as you i would be using the black and white cat and making them the hard hitters , some of the utilities would be the same as well . But i will try to explain the differences now .

I am thinking about putting my traits in this order :

marksmanship 0
skirmishing 15
wilderness 10
nature 15
beastmaster 30

The beastmastery makes your pet the best it can be , and i would use the same traits as you .
Why nature magic one might ask ? Well , to put it bluntly , the 2nd minor trait that you get that gives any buff you have is given to your pet as well . This ties dirrectly to the skirmishing as you have speed and fury on weapon swap , buffing your pet every 10 seconds .
Of course you would lose a lot of survivability by only having 10 points in wilderness, but this would be offset somewhat by placing the nature protection trait in the Nature magic slot .

As for runes i would use the runes of Hoelbrak which buff power and might specifically, and its final bonus reduces the condition duration by 20% , and with lemongrass food it could go up to 60% reduction .

For sigils i would use the Sigil of strength on my shortbow and sigil of battle on the alternate weapon .

So in essence , each critical would give might to yourself and your pet , each weapon swap would give might ,fury an speed to your pet , each hit for more then 10% of your hitpoints would give protection to both you and your pet .

Thoughts???

I think you would hit harder, but one of the major benefits for going into 30 WS aside from the major toughness bonus is Empathic bond. Empathic bond is very powerful in situations where you are overloaded by conditions and although some RNG is involved, its one of the best ranger condition removal options aside from the human Prayer of Kormir, which removes 3 conditions on demand.

With nature mastery, you could rely on healing spring but this forces you to stand in the spring while you remove conditions. A thief will usually pop daggerstorm or eles will bounce you out of it.

Also with might on crit for the pet and Rampage as one up, you can stack crazy amounts of might very fast. The might doesn’t last long off the trait though, so you have to capitalize on it very fast before it fades (It is only like 1-2 seconds per stack).

I ultimately settled on a tanky setup because the pet is so strong with 30 BM you can have the best of both worlds, survival and damage, without any penalties.

Also another major downside is without 15 in WS, you lose companion’s defense which gives protection to the pet when you dodge. This is a really good trait that you want to have when remote controlling the pet. It allows you to sit 4000m out and send you pet in to kill people while you are somewhere safe. The pet can be protected just by dodging.

Awesome work there bro. This is just fantastic in terms of style, design and information! I’ve just tried your build and though i was quite sceptical about our pets before, this just stunned me. Insane burst, exellent survivalability, mobility and so on.

But I just wonder if I could replace LR or SS for QZ? I ve tried it and just smashed everything on my way with all pet buffs popped up and with 4 sec of quickness! You can also pet-swap just before combat to have up to 6 sec of quickness but that’s optional. Yes LR is the only stunbreaker we have, but nevertheless what would you say about giving QZ a try?

I ran a similar build except it was 0/10/10/20/30 I took Enlarge from natures magic as well as natures protection, what enlarge does is once you hit 25% health your pet becomes larger, deals 25% more damage (stacks with GS5, SotH, and Sick’em!) and gains stability for I believe 12s, which is essentially the active on sig of the wild. And I believe it has a 30s CD, but I never tested for the CD so that may be wrong.

Durzlla.6295:

I ran a similar build except it was 0/10/10/20/30 I took Enlarge from natures magic as well as natures protection, what enlarge does is once you hit 25% health your pet becomes larger, deals 25% more damage (stacks with GS5, SotH, and Sick’em!) and gains stability for I believe 12s, which is essentially the active on sig of the wild. And I believe it has a 30s CD, but I never tested for the CD so that may be wrong.

QZ is definitely an option, aside from Signet of the Hunt and Sic Em, the third utility slot is an open slot that you can swap around based on the situation. I definitely encourage people to tinker the build to fit their personal playstyles.

Some players may need more breaks, some more condition removal, and masters would change skills and weapons based on the situation. There is a lot of flexibility there, as the core functions of the builds work with multiple setups.

An alternative would be sigils of battle on both weapon sets . meaning that every time you swap weapons your pet would have fury might and swiftness . Which is quite good .

I do not like emphatic bond because id rather have my pet move at top speeds then myself . I can dodge and stall for time , my pet cannot .

Also consider playing a shortbow + longbow setup , the cycles are great , especially if dual sigils of battle .

Start off with shortbow – 4 , 2 ,pet F 2 , SoTH , swap weapons 3 2 , if he closes in swap pets use longbow 4 pet f2 , swap back to short bow , rinse repeat .

The single target and crowd controll is obscene, not to mention the pet damage with 10 vulnerability stacks

Also the condition overload on the ranger is a non issue with rune of hoeblbrak 20% condi reduction and 40% with lemongrass poultry soup .

Alternatively one could swap to zephyr and entangle and take the 20% reduction on them . By using dual bows , standing in the spring isnt really an issue

NOTE:

I have tried this build with dual bows , SOTH + SOTW + sickem + RAO, hoelbrak rune , dual battle sigil and amulet of divinity in SPVP . Stuff gets demolished . I used lynx and black cat

Chokolata.1870:

An alternative would be sigils of battle on both weapon sets . meaning that every time you swap weapons your pet would have fury might and swiftness . Which is quite good .

I do not like emphatic bond because id rather have my pet move at top speeds then myself . I can dodge and stall for time , my pet cannot .

Also consider playing a shortbow + longbow setup , the cycles are great , especially if dual sigils of battle .

Start off with shortbow – 4 , 2 ,pet F 2 , SoTH , swap weapons 3 2 , if he closes in swap pets use longbow 4 pet f2 , swap back to short bow , rinse repeat .

The single target and crowd controll is obscene, not to mention the pet damage with 10 vulnerability stacks

Also the condition overload on the ranger is a non issue with rune of hoeblbrak 20% condi reduction and 40% with lemongrass poultry soup .

Alternatively one could swap to zephyr and entangle and take the 20% reduction on them . By using dual bows , standing in the spring isnt really an issue

NOTE:

I have tried this build with dual bows , SOTH + SOTW + sickem + RAO, hoelbrak rune , dual battle sigil and amulet of divinity in SPVP . Stuff gets demolished . I used lynx and black cat

Nice find on this, with the dual bows what armor stats are you using for LBow? I’m thinking knights might work well with this for the extra power/crit. For max survival maybe even PTV.

Edit: Ah nvm I see your running Divinity. I wonder what other sets would work well. I think we have alot of flexibility in gear due to all the power being packed into the pet and traits.

Also Choco, your double bow version hits really hard. You sacc some survival but can burst down crazy fast with the might stacks up. The Jaguar stealth is incredibly deadly if they don’t see it coming.

Sometimes what I like to do is stall a bit with pet return after the pet vanishes. Some good players that understand the build will burn dodges as soon as they see the stealth. You can play mindgames with people and juke them or delay the spike for the first 1-2 seconds of the stealth.

With so much CC it also becomes alot easier to nail them with the combo, especially running GS with shortbow stun into bash.

On dual bow if you happen to get vulnerability off on them then nail them with rapid fire while your pet is stealthed and spiking, they are done. No one is going to survive that much damage. On top of that rapid fire shot feeds RAO and the stacking might traits on the pet.

But running that setup takes alot more mastery, as you have less survival and mistakes are going to be alot more punishable without LR.

yes, but take into consideration that you CANNOT be bursted down because the first hit over 10% over your total hp will activate the protection, that with boon duration lasts longer

Chokolata.1870:

yes, but take into consideration that you CANNOT be bursted down because the first hit over 10% over your total hp will activate the protection, that with boon duration lasts longer

This is hilarious because you have situations when a backstabber gets on you and unloads his spike only to fail to kill you. Then you have your pet stealthed on him to deal 8k and assassinate him instead.

I’ve had situations like this in WvW. Where the assassin gets assassinated, with Nature’s Protection it will be even better. I’ll have to play with this version more, thanks for the input!

I’ve also noticed in some situations that if you have Sic Em! On a stealthed thief and the pet has attacks queued, it will follow the thief through stealth and continue to attack until its queue is emptied.

This is really nice for mesmers and thieves who try to quick vanish, sometimes you can still get them.

For my personal playstyle, since I’m more of a WvWer (where mobility is so important), I like to stay with the GS just for swoop to get in and our of engagements. This becomes less important in enclosed sPvP where more encounters are forced by terrain and it is less open.

In teamplay, this build is really nasty because the amount of CC you have across multiple weapons. That and the enemy has to constantly be aware of your pet, if they give you one window of opportunity, all it takes is one catssassination and they are pretty much done. The pet is a great pressure tool. Even on capture points, you can sic the pet on them to push their positioning. It deals so much damage they can’t just sit there and take the punishment. It gets better when you stealth they pet and they relax, thinking you just pet swapped when they are really about to eat like 12000 dmg in the next 3 seconds from casper.

Haha after I started running this, I pay special attention to Jaguar pets when I’m not on my ranger :P

Awesomely written, and I too now have a new favorite series of words. Catmaster! Catsassin! Catsassination! Catsassinated! =^.^=

I think what gets/would get a lot of people about this build/playstyle is the unorthodoxy of it. Rangers (at least the ones I’ve seen in WvW) rarely utilize their pets beyond support dps/target practice for the enemy. The better ones will micro their pets and use them for control effects, but going full-blown beastmaster is going to another level entirely, something I think I only last saw in GW1. As a result, people will generally only pay attention to pets as a sort of footnote to the badge-containing glass case that’s probably nearby, or at most watch out for any control effects they might try to apply, but not expect one (or something, since it’s stealthed the entire time) to murder the kittens out of them all by itself.

Well, now you’ve gone and done it! The meta’s out now, and we’re all going to be a little less safe thanks to you! If I drop dead in WvW for no apparent reason now, or especially after culling’s removed after the 26th, I’m going to go out screaming “LORDHELMOS!” :P

Ok, i have played a dozen matches in PvP ,and i have goofed off in WvW a bit . I must say, the build is pretty kitten awesome . I have been using the variant that i suggested btw , burnt 10 gold in 5 minutes to buy the gear that i needed .

Honestly the cycle is insane , not to mention the perma fury . I had a bit of an issue in closed spaces because i am used to shortbow greatsword-sword m but man did pretty much everyone drop . I had a couple of close calls vs necromancers, because i was to stingy to eat my poultry soup , and guardians are unkillable when in bunker form, but they cant touch you either so i suppose thats ok . Thiefs die in 1 cycle . He can run or die .
Simply obscene

Not really my style but I admitt, very creative and I am sure effective :P Not least because, as someone above mentioned, I doubt anyone would really be expecting it.

I can also imagine it being hugely useful for attacking enermy seige in WvW. I often use my wolf to suicide at enermy seige, and can pretty effectively get them down overtime, but thats with only 5 BM. With a truely powerful pet you can easily take out seige from a great distance with no risk to yourself.

Cufufalating.8479:

Not really my style but I admitt, very creative and I am sure effective :P Not least because, as someone above mentioned, I doubt anyone would really be expecting it.

I’m trying to figure out what I can do to counter/survive this if/when I suddenly find myself holding the strips that was my face in WvW. :P

The Catmaster him/herself is essentially a BM Bunker variant, so the same sort of tactics one might use to bust one of those could apply here… save for the fact that the jaguar in this case is downright lethal compared to the same jaguar of a cookie-cutter 0/0/30/10/30. The jaguar is also central to this build, so the Catmaster is going to be paying a heck of a lot more attention to it (and it in particular) compared to a BM Bunker, making sure it gets buffed, healed, protected, stealthed, swapped, etc. when needed, rather than maybe just a couple or so of those.

In broad strokes, it’s almost like you’re dealing with a BM Bunker and a Backstab Thief at the same time; one’s a chore to kill and the other can kill you in a matter of seconds if you’re not alert. Such being the case, I would imagine the priority would, like going against a BM Bunker, still be the pet, just doubly so here because of how the Catmaster can so easily set you up to become a condition-stacked Fancy Feast if you focus on him/her instead.

With the shortbow build I’m running with right now, if I found myself going up against a Catmaster (and I didn’t get Catsassinated yet), I’d probably try to burst the jaguar down as much as I can and when I can, kiting the Catmaster (assuming I can find him/her) only when the jaguar stealths/swaps/becomes the Mossman, evading and using LR as necessary. I don’t like my chances, though. :P

I imagine a good 1v1 Ranger counter would probably be a Trapper, if only because he/she’d have a fairly reliable counter against stealthed opponents. A Catmaster vs Catmaster battle would be legendary.

A Catmaster vs Catmaster battle would be legendary.
__________

This is starting to sound like a pokemon dual now

I just wanted to add some more experience i had with playing the build with dual bows :

1] longbow 3 gives vulnerability and 11.5 seconds of speed for the pet

2]rapid weapon swapping will sustain 6-9 might on both you and your pet

3]fury and swiftness from weapon swapping are active 50% of the time

4]rapid fire will do anywhere from 3.5k to 6.5k damage

5]there is enough time from activating the longbow and unloading 3 and 2 m to cast 5 arround yourself for DoT damage and cripple

6] the shortbow will crit for anyhwere between …. 450 and 700 damage depending on might stacks and target armor , critical chance with fury goes over 60%
will add more later

Any chance to get a vid of this build in action?
Sounds incredibly interesting!

Make a vid, tuto and how it works in wvw. Then I would actually believe more in this. This all makes sense, and seems very good, but still, a video showing how and when to do, with some kills in the wvw always help

Lord: I run a very similar build. I am cat man all they way (I’ve always vehemently disagreed that Birds have more burst when properly traited as you have shown).

One suggestion is to swap Snow Leopard for Lynx in my experience (and others) Lynx does more damage overall.

reference: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/60919-what-is-currently-the-highest-dps-pet/page__st__30

Damage Research:
Time to test with the +30% critical trait.
medium target dummy, seconds to kill, with F2 skill activated at start
30 beast mastery

traits: speed training, rending attacks, expertise training, pet’s prowess, companion’s might

Results:
lynx 12, 10, 10, 9, 11, 10, 11 seconds
jaguar 11, 8, 7, 8, 8, 7, 10, 8 seconds
snow leopard 9, 13, 12, 11 seconds
j stalker 18, 13, 13, 14 seconds
eagle 15, 11, 14, 13 seconds
raven 14, 14, 11, 10, 11 seconds
owl 14, 16, 16, 15 seconds
dog, no F2 14, 14, 14, 14 seconds
pig, no F2 15, 17 seconds
sal drake 15, 18, 14, 19 seconds
hyena 21, 23, 21 seconds
jaguar vs lynx difference 0.6s-4.3s (95% confidence interval from permutation) under these circumstances

Jaguar blows the lynx out of the water if used in melee range, and using quickness swap activated F2, since it’s one of very few pets that you can actually do that with.

All leap attacks will miss their target if using swap+F2 instantly.

Other than that, all felines should be identical when not counting the F2. Snow leopard vs lynx (F2) = cc vs dmg.

No one is disputing Jaguar is the king, especially in Lord’s catsassasination setup its superiority is even more egregious, the debate is between Lynx and Snow Leopard:

Rending Pounce (Lynx): Leap at a foe and make them bleed VS. Icy Bite (Snow Leopard) Bite your foe, chilling them.

Really comes down to player preference as you’ve noted cc vs. dmg.

I appreciate your implementation of my suggestion about QZ in your guide, but hey – write my nick correctly please )

First, does GS 5 cancel sick ‘em?
Can’t test rite now.

Second, ever thought about using “Guard” with built in 8 sec stealth+protection?
Especially, if you run a wolf, Guard is nice cause you can run the infamous “pet torpedo”.

I’d really love to duel someone fluent in running OPs build, as I rarely run into builds like this roaming on my tier.

It looks like a good build, similar to my own but I think this one is a little more 1v1 specific where I tend to be fighting vs multiples.

Sic em to me isn’t worth it, such a long CD, its buggy, pets have obvious tracking issues, etc…
I think if you’re going to survive against multiple foes LR is a must, I personally find LR be our most valuable slot skill outside of the regen signet.

I prefer to run dogs, with the canine f2 cripple trait. Whenever my fern or wolf use their F2 its an AOE cripple, combined with LR and swoop its pretty hard to get me down.

Overall I like the general build, but it’s too dependant on your pet and is single target specific. Sic em is a great burst option, but IMO lacks the utility of what I consider to be more valuable slot skills.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Pretty cool writeup. I’ll have to give this a shot. I’ve made a similar pet focused build with a few variations from what you’ve described, but this sounds like it should be pretty fun.

This is actually a fun. But it could be much MUCH more fun if the pet could land every single strike on running target. 50% of time enemy player even without a dodge can avoid my pet attack. I dont speak about a player who is not aware of your jag and stands in one place, i speak about a 1 v 1 situation for example. Even im my jag is stealthed simply not standing still will help you avoid nearly half of that insane damage. Is this a flaw in the mechanics or it is supposed to be so? Cause i haven’t seen anyone avoiding tons of damage just with running against a mesmer for example. That is not how it should be – we can avoid damage through well-timed dodges but not with running circles. At least that is not fair.

As for the ranged pets – their projectiles are even easier to avoid. I mean that this build is fantastic. It’s the mechanics wich makes it feel bitter.

Robert with the patch coming online tomorrow and a lot of articles being released already. Can you spoil us the changes happening to ranger? Can’t wait no more. :>

I can disappoint you, but there will be no significant changes to ranger just as always. Though many will be glad about the AR res which I BELIEVE will be implemented at last, but it is so obvious, that such bug should have never even existed.

Geshque.1326:

I can disappoint you, but there will be no significant changes to ranger just as always. Though many will be glad about the AR res which I BELIEVE will be implemented at last, but it is so obvious, that such bug should have never even existed.

They already said GS will be buffed. I consider this a significant change.

Geshque.1326:

I can disappoint you, but there will be no significant changes to ranger just as always. Though many will be glad about the AR res which I BELIEVE will be implemented at last, but it is so obvious, that such bug should have never even existed.

Still, a lot will claim that particular bugfix to be another buff for rangers!

Winneh.2064:

Any chance to get a vid of this build in action?
Sounds incredibly interesting!

Now that does look funny, guess they aren’t paying attention to a cat mauling their legs off

But didn’t they recently update it so pets can’t scale walls?

Leo G.4501:

Now that does look funny, guess they aren’t paying attention to a cat mauling their legs off

But didn’t they recently update it so pets can’t scale walls?

Yeah, but the “I’m getting mauled by thin air!” part still applies. :P

Dojo.1867:

Geshque.1326:

I can disappoint you, but there will be no significant changes to ranger just as always. Though many will be glad about the AR res which I BELIEVE will be implemented at last, but it is so obvious, that such bug should have never even existed.

They already said GS will be buffed. I consider this a significant change.

We ll see )

I’d like to note, just because I don’t think I saw this mentioned as I skimmed the post—you do not have to be in range of anything with the Greatsword 5 to apply the damage buff to the pet, use it at the air, pet still gets the buff.

Xsorus.2507, Thanks a lot for the vids!
That looks REALLY, REALLY funny

Leo G.4501:

Now that does look funny, guess they aren’t paying attention to a cat mauling their legs off

But didn’t they recently update it so pets can’t scale walls?

Yea, which i’m super POed about… ruined a perfectly good spec grin

but you really only use Guard near keeps, you can actually just use Signet of the Hunt everywhere else with similar idea.

Just send your pet in and let him eat people… It’s really quite funny.

Ultravalefor.5038:

I’d like to note, just because I don’t think I saw this mentioned as I skimmed the post—you do not have to be in range of anything with the Greatsword 5 to apply the damage buff to the pet, use it at the air, pet still gets the buff.

Yeap, just make sure you use Sick Em last after everything else…Cause it’ll go away soon as you use another ability, which is silly.

Xsorus.2507:

Winneh.2064:

Any chance to get a vid of this build in action?
Sounds incredibly interesting!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSKPg85l9XY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsytldPp_AE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ngzqppOb6A

Thanks Xsorus. Choko and everyone else supporting the build and guide! My apologies, I’ve been out due to a crazy work week. I’ll update the guide with all of the great feedback from everyone.

The only problem I have with the build right now (and you can run it for 1v1 and it is funny) is the whole way Sick Em right now is really wonky.

If Sick Em actually didn’t drop when you used other abilities it would be much much better.