Guild Wars 2

So, we’re getting new pets. Some of you may (but probably don’t) remember me from my rundown of the various pet types in the game. I’m not going to update that particular guide without first testing each of the new pets in their final form, but I’m curious what reactions to the mechanical side of the pets is thus far (and please, keep squealing to a minimum. I’m as excited for Wyverns as you, but that’s not what we’re here for :P)

This will be running under the assumption that the pets we saw in the reveal were not beast mastery specced, which fits for the stats shown here.

Tiger: We didn’t get to see its F2 ability, so I’m currently running under the assumption that it’s just a straight addition to the cat family. Which, realistically, is perfectly fine. Lots of people love the cats.

Bristleback: This is interesting, because it does double-hits with decent damage. It’s one of the two we got stats on though; and looking at it? It’s literally a direct upgrade from devourer. Same stats as the little scorpion things except for +500 power and what appears to be better damage coefficients, alongside 1000 condition damage and the ability to deal 12 stacks of bleeding. If you’re on land, this is THE ranged pet, no question about it, but it’s Terrestial so you can’t take it into the water.

Wyverns: The stats for wyverns are interesting to me. you know how drakes, if specced properly, can tank in mid-high level fractals? This is similar. The wyverns lose out slightly on HP pool in exchange for an upgrade to toughness, which as many will tell you is a direct upgrade against anything but condition damage. The fire wyvern has an unfortunate animation lock (and a long one at that) as part of its F2 ability, but this is eased by making it so that it’s immune to damage while activating it. The electric wyvern on the other hand has no immunity or locked frames, but still deals decent damage. They don’t have the cleaving of drakes on their auto-attacks, but the Wing Buffet ability is crazy good if you can get your wyvern to land it, as it’ll stunlock a person for a good four seconds. All in all, a very solid choice. Worth noting is that the electric drake’s headbut is a control effect, meaning it could well replace the wolf for supremacy in PvP.

Smokescale: Oh boy, what do I say about this? Smokescales are almost guaranteed to have their damage nerfed – which is largely fine, as they’re currently the PvP pet supereme, as the one on stream (that wasn’t specced into beast mastery, I might add, and had no boons to speak of) did 9500 damage to a single target with the shadowstepping nonsense. Having a pet that can cut the health of an opponent in half in pvp is going to be hilariously strong in duels, and absolutely terrible if you’re fighting multiple opponents. In PvE, the smoke field can make them immune to damage too, so you can get your tank on without needing a tanky pet. Gonna need some balance work.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on this as well, but those are mine.

EDIT: It was pointed out the smokescale got a Taunt proc when it activated its mist field. Looks like the pets were done up with BM active.

I have a strong feeling the Bristleback will be classified as a Devourer, and the Devourers will be reworked to be using the same skills since the Devourers as is, are absolute garbage in every way.

And one thing to keep in mind, ALL pet families will have either 400, 700, or 1000 condi damage based on what the family is. So there’s a good chance a lot of our pets that are lacking due to condi damage will suddenly become pretty amazing.

Smokescale definitely looks like it is the new top tier pet (move over Wolf)
If its damage was indeed without BM, i foresee that burst skill getting scaled down by 20-30% at least. Hopefully not more than that because those skills are usually on a 30-40s CD and have some sort of condition for activating.

Fire Wyvern looks interesting as well. Another fire field for either might stacking or Flame Aura/Burning Projectiles.

Bristleback looks good as well but wish it applied a different damaging condition on its F2 activation (torment maybe?). Oh well.

Btw, does anyone know if the 5 pets revealed are the only pets being released in HoT?

edit: Oh it did have BM? Unsure what the numbers should be base then but I know if you can control when the Smokescale does that shadow skill, procing Signet of the Wild + Sic Em would do some insane damage.

One thing that concerns me about the Wyverns: Their attack speeds. I know they hit twice, a one-two punch combo, but just re-watching the footage, there’s quite a bit of delay between auto attacks on a stand-still golem.

Smoke scale had taunt proc, so in the video it had BM.

Draeyon.4392:

Btw, does anyone know if the 5 pets revealed are the only pets being released in HoT?

I’m fairly certain they would have told us about any others they were adding, so we get five. A kitten good five, but just five.

One thing that concerns me about the Wyverns: Their attack speeds. I know they hit twice, a one-two punch combo, but just re-watching the footage, there’s quite a bit of delay between auto attacks on a stand-still golem.

Agreed there; I’m concerned about it being animation locked like has been a problem for so many pets. If that’s the case, It’ll be relegated to “near useless” in PvP rather than the awesome it should be, and that’s something nobody wants. It’s all good for PvE, though.

Smoke scale had taunt proc, so in the video it had BM.

thanks for poining that out; I was tired when watching the stream so didn’t see.

Not saying devourers aren’t going to get buffed to match, but the bristlebacks looked like they had different family skills to devourers, so they’ll be a seperate family.

Interesting observation regarding smokescale damage: I hadn’t noticed it was quite that high. The other one I was eyeing off for PvP purposes, though, was the electric wyvern. Wolves are popular because they have both an activated and an automatic hard control effect (the knockdown and the fear howl) – the electric wyvern has a similar double control (the blowback and the charge). Whether it will be an actual substitute will depend on just how the figures work out, but it could impact the dominance of wolves in PvP… or allow for doubling up of the two.

Fire wyvern has an animation lock, but while its animation locked it’s doing damage to a large area – and, as noted, invulnerable itself. I could see that being used in PvP in order to punish an opponent for staying on point (that’kittenting a much larger area than the easily dodged drake breath), while in PvE… the four seconds of invulnerability may well be a good thing if it’s doing at least as much damage during that as it would be normally. Which I expect it will.

Frankly, I wasn’t expecting the wyverns to be charmable at all. :o I’ll probably be tempted to run dual wyverns at least once just for the novelty…

It’s dragons and dinosaurs, that’s awesome, don’t even care what they do.

Assume these will be available for all rangers, not only druids?

that’s correct, Shinzan. Presumably we can only tame them in the jungle, though, so only HoT players will have access to them outside of pvp.

they look interesting…. not shown the tiger but it seems to have a bleeding attack (tiger seems a bit missplaced with the other “exotic” pets)…
Im just wondering if these new pets will also be clustered into classes?
I like that we get some exotic pets – they just need to watch that they are not so good that the old pets become useless…
And i still think there are some existing animals which would make great pets and could be implemented – griffons, moose etc.

Eurantien.4632:

Pet that grants stability. Pet that grants invisibility (or at least creates a smoke field). Maybe a steam pet could do that?

Finally! Posted this back in like January 2013. Wanted a smoke field for so long.