Guild Wars 2

I decided to analyze pet kill time on the moving golem post patch and have some very interesting results. In this analysis, I test 4 types of pets at least 5 times each, used no F2 abilities and only used the passive from Signet of the Hunt to allow pets to keep up with their target (However upon further testing, mixing SotH, the 30% speed trait, and swiftness didn’t aid significantly in kill times, averaging 2-4s quicker.) (Edit: Speed buffs don’t stack, swiftness took over resulting in 8% more speed which may have caused these slight changes.).

Feline- Low: 19s Average: 32s High: 46s
Bird- Low: 32s Average: 38s High: 54s
Canine- Low 32s Average: 36s High: 42s
Drake- Low: 48s Average 52s High 1m4s

Compared to prepatch results (not listed), we have some very interesting figures. Wolves saw an average increase in speed of 14s! Felines nabbed another 4s while birds remained the same. Drakes saw similar results to wolves, lowering their time by 10s. What do these results mean? Well, it seems to me that if you want a consistent high damage pet, your choice is now rather obvious, pick a canine. The range in the canines score is only 10s while the jaguar and bird have 20s+ ranges. Why is this? From what I could see during testing for felines, they need to land crits to kill fast. This is similar for birds but not as extreme. For birds, the biggest issue is the long cast time and waiting period after attacking. If a bird misses one attack, they set themselves behind 5s+. Plus, birds like to cast the swiftness buff while in combat, resulting in a dead period on a moving target of at least 7s. However, when they hit, they tends to crit more since they strike twice and are overall more consistent.

How should these results be interpreted? Remember these results lacked the F2 skills of pets entirely (because I was lazy and didn’t want to test every pet). Therefore they shouldn’t be the deciding factor when choosing a pet. While it wasn’t extensively tested, I did average slightly better results with the feline and bird when the F2 was used. The biggest gain was the range being highly reduced (which I find more important for PvP because this is how consistent the dps of your pet is). The canine found no real change and the drake added about 5s on average but reduced the low by 2s once when the F2 landed partially (river drake was not tested in this).

I purposely only tested what I consider damage pets because I don’t think anyone really cares how quickly a moa can kill a player (believe me it is slow, once it hit 1m20s I just stopped and killed it myself). If anyone is interested, it took the spider an average of 1m10s and the devourer 1m21s to kill the golem. Whichever pet you choose, know that they can still die extremely quick, so use them well!

By the way, I use a wolf and jaguar as my pets in WvWvW because they compliment my build more than any other pets.

Whatever you say, scientist! I like my Jaguar. Seriously though, good job.

Panther Chameleon.8465:

Whatever you say, scientist! I like my Jaguar. Seriously though, good job.

lol well at least you gave the guy some credit

But it is a nice job with the research. Anet is looking for feedback anyway.

I’ll add that I do see that canines are pretty good in terms of speed and attacking efficiently. But that’s been that way pre-patch as well.

Overall I feel Anet did a good job but there’s still more work to be done and they have said so themselves. I can’t wait when it gets to the point where pets can truly be reliable for us.

w00t!
Thanks for the research. I’ve been using canines religiously anyways because of how they compliment my power/durability build (aoe fear, aoe immobilie, knockdowns and cripples?! Yes please!) and it’s nice to see that they are statistically in a good place.

very nice analyst on your part, imo whether pre-patched or post-patched, it’s still crap. Plus, I think there’s probably a speed cap in combat, because if you calculate 25% signet + 30% Agility Training + 33% swiftness boon buff, then our pets would have 88% speed increased right? But I don’t think it’s the case then, since my panther could barely hit the stupid thief strafing with their auto-attack…

tiboi.3108:

very nice analyst on your part, imo whether pre-patched or post-patched, it’s still crap. Plus, I think there’s probably a speed cap in combat, because if you calculate 25% signet + 30% Agility Training + 33% swiftness boon buff, then our pets would have 88% speed increased right? But I don’t think it’s the case then, since my panther could barely hit the stupid thief strafing with their auto-attack…

Swiftness doesn’t stack with passive speed increases on players, nor do passive increases stack. Swiftness takes precedence over passive boosts, and if you have multiple passive boosts you only get the single highest boost.

I assume pets would be the same. Don’t try stacking speed boosts, just pick one and go with it.

Interesting resaults. As if people needed even more reason to use Canine pets the most :p.

I’m really suprised the ranged pets kill so slowly, though.

If they’re running in circles it’s better but if they’re just running straight away from you pets are still useless as ever. You’d think since it took them 4 months to fix they would have actually tested it themselves. I guess we’ll have to wait another 4 months for the intended version.

Electro.4173:

tiboi.3108:

very nice analyst on your part, imo whether pre-patched or post-patched, it’s still crap. Plus, I think there’s probably a speed cap in combat, because if you calculate 25% signet + 30% Agility Training + 33% swiftness boon buff, then our pets would have 88% speed increased right? But I don’t think it’s the case then, since my panther could barely hit the stupid thief strafing with their auto-attack…

Swiftness doesn’t stack with passive speed increases on players, nor do passive increases stack. Swiftness takes precedence over passive boosts, and if you have multiple passive boosts you only get the single highest boost.

I assume pets would be the same. Don’t try stacking speed boosts, just pick one and go with it.

Interesting resaults. As if people needed even more reason to use Canine pets the most :p.

I’m really suprised the ranged pets kill so slowly, though.

Ah yes, I forgot about the stacking of speed buffs. So swiftness took over and gave the pet more slightly more speed resulting in slightly quicker times at least for the few tests I did with that. I didn’t test that as much as I did everything else because it wasn’t meant to be part of the experiment.

The issue with devourers is that they like to tunnel when the golem gets close, resulting in a dead period in dps for about 5s each time. Spiders and devourers also miss fairly often because of the short range. If the golem is running away and they attack at 900 range, they miss.

I’m glad you guys like what I did, tomorrow I may update the original post with F2 skills whenever possible. I may also do more pets if you all suggest some you want to see results for.

Just curious where this moving target is. I would like to test my melee pets attacks to see how the melee compares to a ranged pet.

Xarbokk.3195:

Just curious where this moving target is. I would like to test my melee pets attacks to see how the melee compares to a ranged pet.

The moving golem is in the target practice area between the lines of golems and the large group of them. It runs around a pillar. It is the only moving golem. Hope that help. If you don’t mind, the issue with ranged pets is that once the golem breaks line of sight, they reposition by chasing it, resulting in large dead times during combat. Honestly, I find this an accurate depiction versus players since smarter players will try to do things like break los, flee, gap close, etc to make it harder to kill them.