Guild Wars 2

Has anyone noticed that some pets are more used than others?

If you think that there are either pets that get too much attention or pets that need some love, please post it here!

For me:

Overused: Brown Bear,Jungle Stalker, Fern hound

Underused:Warthog, Boar, Hawk, White Moa, pretty much the entire Jellyfish family

Mode of play also changes it. PvP the wolf is very common, knock down and a F2 for fear makes them useful. Build also matters, but that is not in the scope of your thread.

is suppose it depends on what you mean by overused.

If you mean used more then they should i would say any of the bears, because as far as I’m aware there is no reason to use them out side of soloing champs.

i you mean beats the are most often used (but in appropriate situations) i would say cats/dogs/birds/spiders.

and underused i would suggest pig familiarly, as they are strong but hard to use.

the pets i use most are
PvE
Cats and drakes (often jag and river drake)
Pvp/WvW
Dogs, birds, spiders, drakes (build pending)

Pig have too much rng to really be great and are mostly likely balanced around the best option available. They can in the competitive modes be a liability as the environmental bundle can be picked up by anyone (if they haven’t fixed that already)

PvE: overused – cats. Maybe eagle while soloing cause it looks cool sometimes.
Underused: Bears. Good for nothing, noob sign.

PvP/WvW: overused: Dogs. Maybe spiders occasionally.
Underused: Bears. Why would one even consider a bear in WvW/PvP. Every time I see a video with someone having a bear on passive while WvW/PvP, I wanna cry.

PS: Armor fish = Underwater bear.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

PS: Armor fish = Underwater bear.

The armor fish is even more of a wet noodle meat shield than a bear. Less damage, a bit less health but waaay more armor, and a stronger heal.

I wouldn’t use the word “overused”, but there are pets used more often than others, and some that I never even used in 2+ years.

Pets I use more often than others :

1) Wolf is 95% of the times with me
2) Fern Hound is the second most used pet
3) Jungle Spider and Raven are used often

Pets I use very little :

Jungle stalker, Drakehound, Lynx

Pets I never use :

All Drakes, Devourers, Moas, Bears and Pigs

I only play WvW roaming and PvP so Most pets are useless imo.

Some pets (canines, felines) are so much ridiculously better than other pets (ursines, porcines) that it’s as though Anet wanted us to only use certain pets and put the others in there as flavor for roleplaying.

Depends a bit what we are talking about here. Drakes are great for wvw. Wolfs earned their spot, hard cc on demand… yes please.

I would say birds are underused. Cats are reported as the highest dps but the data here shows that birds are best on moving targets:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Ranger-Pet-DPS-Comparison/first

That guy also incorrectly assumed that Ravens have the best f2, but hawks and eagles do more damage with their f2 on a 6s cooldown. So the advantage for birds would be even greater over cats.

Imo, drakes are underused. They are fantastic pets not for their F2 utility, but for their balance between DPS and tank and their great moveset. They can take a hit and deliver a hit, they’re the only pets with cleave and a blast finisher and if you manage to land their F2 it hits pretty hard. Although, the only time you’ll probably ever land their F2 attacks is on NPC’s it still does great damage. Personally I run dual drakes just because they’re so reliable, like the old family van. They never fail to do a respectable amount of damage and to stay alive when you need them alive. <3 my drakes.

There is no pet that is overused. It is only pets that are more versatile then others. The most common pets are canines and bears, closely followed by felines

Depends on game mode. I only play PvE (WvW occasionly but don’t care much about changing skills).

I laugh always about all the bearbows: so many rangers run around with LB and brownbear. It’s ridiculous and a horrible choice to kill enemies in open world. They have one niche usage: killing champs solo. Very easy doing and cozy.

I myself use 90%: Jaguar and Jungle Stalker, be cause the damage is so so so so so so much higher than any BEAR. Sometimes a Drake, since they are pretty tanky and have still ok’ish damage.

Eggyokeo.9705:

I’m aware there is no reason to use them out side of soloing champs.

There is no reason to use them for soloing champs either.
I use feline for that. Full BM traitline, and 4 points in skirmishing.

Skirmishing: Pet’s Prowess, Carnivorous Appetite
Beast Master: Speed Training, Rending Attacks, Natural Healing

Signet of Stone
Signet of the Wild
Signet of the Hunt

A feline will out regen the dps while dealing very nice damage.

AESOkami.1072:

Has anyone noticed that some pets are more used than others?

If you think that there are either pets that get too much attention or pets that need some love, please post it here!

For me:

Overused: Brown Bear,Jungle Stalker, Fern hound

Underused:Warthog, Boar, Hawk, White Moa, pretty much the entire Jellyfish family

From what I have seen – Overused Bears/Underused – Pigs

BUT I love my Drakes

FWIW I almost always use a drake and a pig in PVE (drake for the cleave and blast, pig for the rng fun…sometimes it drops the gooood stuff). WvW it’s moa for the on demand fury for sniping key targets down quickly and wolfy for a possible downed-state savior (it happens quite a bit). These choices are based on full zerkatron gear/stats of course.

I don’t often see pigs. I run them, sometimes pig/siamoth. The f2 drops are amazing, and the knockdown potential is awesome! Yeah it’s RNG, but the pig drops healing items and elixer of heroes (yay for free invuln!) and that has saved my backside more then a few times, and the siamoth drops buffs and invisible. I would really like to see more people use them. I feel they are largly over looked.

Flintbrow.7985:

and wolfy for a possible downed-state savior (it happens quite a bit).

Scaring thieves out of refuge is nice too.

Sube Dai.8496:

I would say birds are underused. Cats are reported as the highest dps but the data here shows that birds are best on moving targets:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Ranger-Pet-DPS-Comparison/first

I’m convinced that’s mostly an artifact of one of the bird skills being Swiftness (33% move speed buff). I’ve tested pets against the moving golem with and without Signet of the Hunt (25% move speed buff) and Agility Training (30% pet-only move speed buff). If either are active, nearly all of the bird DPS advantage disappears.

The birds’ damage is also more bursty – they loiter around a while casting swiftness or “winding up” a skill, then their animation swoops out to attack. I think this gives a false impression that they’re better at running down moving targets. People remember the times the bird’s burst damage took down a foe, while forgetting the times the bird did nothing because it was busy casting swiftness or milling around between attacks. (Burst is normally a good thing, but not when the timing is outside of your control – sometimes you hit F1 and the bird will cast swiftness as its opening “attack”.)

ChaosSgt.9713:

AESOkami.1072:

Has anyone noticed that some pets are more used than others?

If you think that there are either pets that get too much attention or pets that need some love, please post it here!

For me:

Overused: Brown Bear,Jungle Stalker, Fern hound

Underused:Warthog, Boar, Hawk, White Moa, pretty much the entire Jellyfish family

From what I have seen – Overused Bears/Underused – Pigs

BUT I love my Drakes

Drakes master race! <3 my girls Cinnamon and Peppermint. I see Salamander Drake used relatively often although I definitely wouldn’t call it overused, more like average. I don’t understand why anyone would take bears when you have drakes though.

One of the forum members who’s name I can’t remember mailed me his excel data showing the bird swiftness cast is so detrimental to their sustained DPS, it’s worse than cats on a moving target despite moving faster.

Whatever is correct, I think it’s safe to say don’t pick your PvP pet specifically for damage, but rather their boons, abilities, and attacks.

Wanna hear a joke? Attacks in a cone and has 240 range! Ah ha ha ha ha…. Ehm. That’s funny.

Archon.6480:

Wanna hear a joke? Attacks in a cone and has 240 range! Ah ha ha ha ha…. Ehm. That’s funny.

Is it a drake? Lololol

Sube Dai.8496:

I would say birds are underused. Cats are reported as the highest dps but the data here shows that birds are best on moving targets:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Ranger-Pet-DPS-Comparison/first

That guy also incorrectly assumed that Ravens have the best f2, but hawks and eagles do more damage with their f2 on a 6s cooldown. So the advantage for birds would be even greater over cats.

If you are chosing pets for their damage in PvP, you’re doing it so wrong…

PvE: cats win
PvP: Dogs/spids win (depending on power/condi builds).

Maybe a condi build should have an eagle as secondary pet for the special ability since it stacks off ranger condi damage, and that’s it for birds.

I don’t know why I don’t see many Moa’s… think about it… Fern Hound is popular because it has an on command heal… and hard CC… well Moa’s do just about the same they ALL have the ability to heal with Harmonic Cry and it can be triggered quite reliably by swapping to them when your health is somewhere around the 75%< threshold, some of their F2’s are supportive like AoE Protection while some are more offensive like AoE Daze and I find the AoE far more reliable than the drakes. I’d like to take this post to advocate for More Moa’s in 2015!

Moas are right on the border of being excellent and being useless. The daze is too hard to land, and their monking abilities are too small and short duration (I’d rather dodge roll to get a short duration prot up.) But I’m not terribly impressed with sylvan hounds either.

Fury is a weird boon for rangers, since we couldn’t not have fury if we tried. It’s nice that it’s AoE, but for dungeons everyone has fury up 100% of the time anyway.