Guild Wars 2

There are a LOT of choices but these three are mine!

Ok first of all thanks for this amazing video.
It will sure help alot of ppl out there.

I would agree with all ur 3choices no matter what,
Bear is a amazing tank (also the other bears are incase u hate this ugly looking bear)
Lynx is just awesome.
Salamander is kinda new for me tbh. Never used it, but sounds interesting gonna give it a try later.

But i also got 2 questions:
What is ur personal opinion about Spiders and Birds?

As for WvW or some Bosses the spider might be a really good choice, thanks to his range and usefull abilitys (like root with his next attack)
And the bird is currently my favourite Dmg pet (Lynx is also awesome!)
Kinda like the bird style so i stick with my bird currently.

Anyway what would u think who suits the dps roll as pet better?
Lynx or one of the Birds?

Good video.

As far as Lynx or birds they are about even as far as I have seen. Eagle and Raven are good substitutes for a Lynx and hit very hard. Lynx does a bit more over time. Birds will also give you a swiftness boon in their rotation as opposed to the Feline Vulnerabilty condition. The swiftness is nice for kiting.

ty Safia I liked the vid and posted there.

great video thanks I replaced my bear with the murellow and am much happier for it

I’ve personally been loving the Jaguar over the Lynx due to its buffs when it it uses stealth. They’re not listed anywhere, so they typically get overlooked, but for the duration of the stealth the Jaguar gets a really nice boost.

I also love the dogs for their on-command interrupts (dogs will interrupt their target’s first skill after being called into battle). It’s hard for me to play without a dog on swap. Knowing that I have an ace up my sleeve really makes combat more interesting for me, although the introduction of out-of-combat cooldown makes it hard to keep your dog in 2nd place. If you start battle with it out, much of the impact is lost.

All of the drakes have great survivability, and if you don’t have any other source of fire in either your build or from your teammates, then the Salamander is stellar. If you do however (torch, flametrap, an ele buddy...), then since burning can’t stack intensity the Salamander is outshone by some of its cousins. Same goes for the Murrellow and poison. Poison doesn’t stack intensity either, so you only really need one consistent source of it. Redundancy can be wasteful, and a Murrelow wouldn’t partner well with a condition necro, for example.

I think the thing that I like so much about GW2 is that there is no objective best. There almost always is a best for a particular set of circumstances, but if your circumstances change, so should your approach. It’s so much fun!

I don’t really agree with your assessment of the devourer. If you think of it as a tank, then you would be right. But it’s not, it’s a ranged pet first and foremost, with great tools for maintaining that range. Not only does the family have that retreat (which is very useful for a ranged pet), but it also has a knock back, which is useful for maintaining ranged and very useful as a skill in itself, for interrupts and such. Also, the Lashtail devourer is the only ranged bleed from a pet in the game, and the Whiptail devourer is one of two ranged poisons from pets in the game. (The other being the Forest Spider).

Other than that, not a bad video. I’d like to see a video sometime of a detailed description of all the pet families and their roles. Would be pretty useful for incoming ranger players I think.

The Salamander Drakes fire skill can’t measure up to the River Drakes lightning skill. Not only does lightning breath deal a ton of damage in a shorter time, it also does damage to nearby foes. Fire breath is also not the best choice when considering that drakes basically are direct damage pets. If your damage is condition based, it makes a lot more sense to just go for a spider, devourer, or feline, instead of a drake and a bear who both only have condition damage on their F2 skills.

It’s funny that you recommend using pets that buff you during boss fights, but it never occurred to you that devourers are perfect for boss fights. Not only do they deal ranged damage, they also move backwards on their own whenever the boss gets near them. Plus, they have high toughness.

The boars Forage skill is amazing if you take the time to learn it. You basically get the Thief’s profession specific skill, Steal, on a pet! How can you not like that? We are talking about a pet skill that can either give you the ability to go into stealth, give you a three second stun, or even give you the ability to deal fear. It should defiantly not be underestimated if you are playing a melee Ranger. Especially when considering that boars also have a knockdown skill next to that.

Lastly, why didn’t you mention birds? Birds are perfect if you want the same precision as felines, but with more survivability.

I understand that this was just your own choices, but a lot of people are going to take this as a guide, in which case it’s not really a good one. I recommend that you try all the pets, and try to make the best out of them, before you draw a line of which ones are good or bad.

The armor fish is a really great underwater pet, too. Does good damage and is incredibly durable.

We really need a Moa or Bird with on demand swiftness so we can have a substitute for Warhorn 5.

Dashel.8056:

We really need a Moa or Bird with on demand swiftness so we can have a substitute for Warhorn 5.

Birds have on demand swiftness. Just send them to attack a ranged target, and then call them back after they cast swiftness. It’s easy to do after a little practice.

I like Warthog and the Fernhound. I could care less about what buffs they bring they are just cool.

Kasama.8941:

The Salamander Drakes fire skill can’t measure up to the River Drakes lightning skill. Not only does lightning breath deal a ton of damage in a shorter time, it also does damage to nearby foes. Fire breath is also not the best choice when considering that drakes basically are direct damage pets.

I use the River Drake (lightning) in sPvP, simply amazing (when its not on its being stupid streak) but with lightning breath, rapid fire and quickening zephyr most players are about to pop there healing or die in just a few seconds. In an aoe environment the lighting breath crits so much that 3 enemies are on half hp from it. I’m wanting to test beast master tree to see if it hits harder but in sPvP I think that may be a mistake to rely on my sometimes silly pets.

First off, great video, thanks for sharing.

I gotta disagree on your evaluation of Devourers. I see you use a longbow, so you probably have the classic mindset that “pets should tank while I dps.” However, I hope you experiment with other play styles to see how a ranged pet could work well. What first comes to mind is the situation where you told your Moa to stay next to you during a big boss battle; whereas a Devourer could run along and actually get involved in that fight.

I have this nasty problem of wanting to use the best pet for the situation, but hating the look of some of them. I really dislike the look of the devourers, but as ranged pets (and especially for bosses) they’re great. The Murrelow is fugly, but I begrudgingly use him because he’s amazing. Still trying to get the hang of utilizing the porcine family’s Forage skill fluidly in combat. But I agree with Kasama, you get the Thief mechanic for free. Sweet deal. I’ll have to try using them when in melee more.

Also, I love my Crimson Moa or Jungle Stalker for the party-wide howl buff. Sweet when CotW is on CD. Fern Hound is my go-to for when I know I’m going to need some self-healing and my build is weak in defense. Again, another howl that helps the whole party too.

Next time I play I’m going to really focus on those pets I keep locked away and try to find a place for them. There’s not one pet that doesn’t have a purpose and they make us extremely versatile as a profession.

/tagging good thread

I use two devourers. They seem to be able to handle the most damage. I guess its the toughness, knockback and borrowing.

I use the cave spider love the skill it as and I use the arctodus for when I need a tanking type pet have no issues with both when I’m playing with others I go spider and we sit back and do damage when I’m alone I go arctodus and I can take like 5-6 mobs by myself

Alex.7563:

Also, the Lashtail devourer is the only ranged bleed from a pet in the game, and the Whiptail devourer is one of two ranged poisons from pets in the game. (The other being the Forest Spider).

Carrion Devourer has ranged poison, with its F2 skill being a poison combo field.

I haven’t been using anything but two spiders and two jellyfish for a long time. I tried bears/arctodus, and birds (because birds, man, awesome!) but it just didn’t click with me.

The spiders’ root skill is awesome, and their frequent poison field combos a ton for me. Though I might have to look into Devourers if they really move that smartly.
And Jellyfish are just ace at holding aggro and never dying. Which is good, because I’m crap at underwater combat >_>;;

Great video, learned a lot from it!
@Kasama it is a guide, but it’s still based on opinion. This just gets some of us newer rangers an insight to what a pet should be doing

I have tried Spiders a few times, but I am not a fan. I prefer Devourers. Less attack abilities, but their AI seems to be a little smarter. They stay back and fight from their maximum range, whereas Spiders seem to get a lot closer than they need to.

My favourite is definitely my Fern Hound, however. It makes for a nice all-round pet, with above-average attack AND defense AND an F2 ability that boosts the survivability of both of us. It is not going to do the damage of a Lynx, or take the brutalisation a Brown Bear can, or provide the constant support of a Moa, but it does a little of everything in a nice, rounded, plant-y package. Plus my Ranger is Sylvari and that gets bonus points for style

Fern hound is awesome.
2 days ago we had about 20 rangers together all rockin Fern hounds. We did some large scale events and world bosses and sheer the amount of heal-over-times we had constantly up was hilarious!

Hmm… I love the look of the Fern Hound and this was the pet I started out with (I play Sylvari). I was having somewhat of a harder time than expected leveling through the first 10 levels (pet kept dying for some reason) and I read somewhere about Arctodus so I went to the Norn area to tame him.

After getting to Arctodus, life became SO MUCH easier for me as a ranger. Seriously. This bear rarely goes down even when taking hits from 2-3 enemies.

The other 2 pets I enjoyed so far are:

1. Jungle Spider – The Poison combo field + root is just awesome sauce. I love using this pet during DE’s

2. Raven – My favorite solo questing pet. It looks really cool flying around when it attacks, plus it gives you a swiftness buff when you enter combat so what I usually do when I’m running from one point to the other is to randomly attack critters using F1

Right now I’m running mostly with Raven and Bear. I replace the Raven with Jungle Spider from time to time but the Bear always stays in my toggle. I wish they’d modify the interface and allow us to switch up to 3 pets :P

I’ve yet to explore other pets though.

Oh and I don’t know if this is a bug but the blue jellyfish (or was it red? I tamed it in the lake in Lions Arch) is totally useless! It does not seem to want to attack. :/

Hawk has an activated ability with a cooldown of 6 seconds that does well over 2,000 damage and does a few stacks of bleeding. I’ve not been able to find a better DPS pet (even Lynx).

I really like the Raven in WvW. It seem a lot of the other players don’t see him very good so he always staying alive attacking them. I remember one time when i had to run back into the keep b/c we were outnumbered and my Raven was still outside attacking the enemy for a good minute before someone saw it.

Go Raven! That is a really cool story. I am tempted to try it out myself now

for a running build (yes, i’ve used running builds for hitting nodes) i’ve run hawk/eagle since they kick in with swiftness usually right when you get aggro’d, for tanking i use mostly arctodus and polar bear (arc for the bleed if i want extra damage and the polar bear because chill is awesome).

for pvp (i’ve not done much) i’ve been into the snow owl (chill and precision) and whatever cat it is that has the bleed leap. in instances i’ve been using black widow and carrion devourer for the range and poison fields.

edit: oh yeah, gotta try raven out in wvw.

I’m running melee ranger so…

1. Wolf – disengage + cc
2. Cave Spider – ranger + weakness + combo field + cc
3.PvP/Dungeon Brown Bear – condition removal
3.PvE Devourer – Rampage as One booster