Guild Wars 2

This thread is going to primarily focus on the function of the traits “Go for the Eyes” (adept), “Wilting Strike” (master), and “Beastly Warden” (grandmaster) and their interaction with each type of pet. For starters, I will explain how each skill works.

Go for the Eyes – Applies blind to enemies near the pet in a 240 radius aoe. Assume capped at 5 targets. Activates as soon as your pet starts casting their F2 skill. No ICD (or very small <0.5s). Grants pets up to 300 toughness based on level.
Wilting Strike – Applies weakness to any enemies struck by an F2 skill. The skill must do damage in order for the weakness to be applied. If the skill does damage multiple times, the weakness is only applied the first time it hits an enemy. No ICD (or very small <0.5s).
Beastly Warden – Applies taunt to enemies near the pet in a 240 radius aoe. Assume capped at 5 targets. Activates as soon as your pet starts casting their F2 skill. ICD of 15s.

Now that you know how these traits function, you can guess how they will work with each pet. You don’t need to though because I’m going to test them and give the results here.

Bears – The Black Bear and Polar Bear function identically to the canines (skip to canines if you want to know now). The Murellow and Arctodus run to the target and reliable land the blind and taunt. The Brown Bear strangely run towards the target but doesn’t get close enough to land the blind and taunt and can’t apply the weakness.
Birds – All the birds F2 skills function the same way. They “fly” within 240 units of your enemy before casting their F2 so you reliably get the taunt and blind. The weakness quickly follows thanks to their quick animation.
Canines – Canines with damaging F2 skills will run within range of the target before casting but will miss the blind and taunt because it will be too far out of range. Take the position of your pet into consideration before casting if you want the taunt and/or blind to land. Hyena and Fern Hounds will cast in their current location and can’t apply weakness. The wolves and drakehound synergize astoundingly well with the taunt because the specific condition only overlaps the last 0.5 of the taunt and the weakness is applied at the same time as their respective condition.
Devourers – All devourers have a ranged F2 skill so they function similarly to canines in respect to how to expect the taunt and blind to work. They all apply weakness. Getting them within range to land the blind and taunt is an issue since they have ranged attacks far exceeding the blind and taunt range.
Drakes – The drakes that cast a 250 range cone reliably get within range to land the taunt and blind. This could provide a surprising amount of synergy as enemies may be forced to stand right in front of the drake (but only for 0.5s as the cast time take 1.5s of the taunt). The Marsh and River drakes will function similar to the canines and will be out of range of the blind and taunt.
Felines – The felines with a leap F2 skill function similarly to canines in that they will miss the blind and taunt due to their F2 skill outranging the traits. The Jaguar can make great use out of the taunt as the stealth disallows the enemy to attack and gives the Jaguar a couple free hits in before the taunt wears off. Remember that the Jaguar casts it’s F2 at its current location and that it can’t apply weakness (the F2 does no damage). The Jungle Stalker F2 is activated at its current location and can’t inflict weakness.
Moas – The Pink Moa runs to the target and reliably lands the blind and taunt. The White Moa casts its skill at its current location. The other moas can’t deal damage and cast at their current location.
Pigs – The pigs function identically to the Fern Hound and Hyena. They simply cast their F2 skill in their current location and since they are unable to do damage with it they can’t apply weakness. Not ideal pets for these traits.
Spiders – Spiders are unique by applying venom to their next attack(s). This allows them to be the only pet that can apply the weakness condition from Wilting Strike on multiple attacks. The weakness condition is only applied whenever the spider does an autoattack with the venom active (I know this seems obvious, but I wanted to make sure there wasn’t an exploit with it.). The blind and taunt are activated at their current location (which can be problematic for the same reason as it is for devourers).

So you may be wondering which type of pet is the best. It depends on the activity (of course). If you are in PvE, most mobs stand still when fighting so all you have to do is tell your pet to attack the target and when within melee range use the F2. This won’t be so easy with spider and devourers, but you can still do it if you want by telling your pet to follow you and guiding it close to the enemy. Therefore, I can fairly safely conclude that the worst pets for these Beastmastery traits are Devourers. Spiders take a close second. Every pet that I mentioned that can’t apply the weakness condition goes third (or you could choose another trait if using those pets). The rest of the pets share the spot for capable trait users in PvE.

In PvP I’ve managed great success with birds and canines. I imagine drakes and felines could also have their place, but canines and birds both synergize very well with these traits. The more skill based pet is the canine, but since the taunt is applied instantly on F2 cast it isn’t that difficult. I personally have been running with the eagle and hawk for blind and weakness spam (4.75s CD).

There is one possible exploit of these traits I discovered but I’m unsure if it’s even considered an exploit so I won’t post about it hear unless Anet confirms it’s intended. I assume it will be fixed alongside a nerf of at least one of these traits shortly.

If you have any questions or input to provide, feel free to say something. I would like it for somebody to confirm the unit cap on Go for the Eyes and Beastly Warden. I know certain pets don’t fit into the categories I provided (hyenas aren’t canines) but I wanted to make this easy to understand and felt that lumping pets with similar basic skills together under a single name would help. I hope you find this information useful and easy enough to read.

I don’t believe the 4.75 Weakness is an exploit as it is actually an exception to the rule. I believe the trait has a 10 second ICD (or something like that) but they made the hawk unrestricted (says in the f2)

Really solid post man. +1

Bunuka.3154:

I don’t believe the 4.75 Weakness is an exploit…

I didn’t mention the exploit I found but I can say that isn’t the exploit. It isn’t too difficult to find, and it feels like an unintended consequence of how these traits work.

Indoles.1467:

I didn’t mention the exploit I found but I can say that isn’t the exploit. It isn’t too difficult to find, and it feels like an unintended consequence of how these traits work.

Ahh okay. Glad to hear and good decision keeping it quiet, maybe submit a report to anet as well

Also keep in mind Go For the Eyes gives toughness which makes all your pets tankier

Durzlla.6295:

Also keep in mind Go For the Eyes gives toughness which makes all your pets tankier

Good point. I was focused on the active aspects but no reason to leave that out.

So, all we have learned from these traits is that they segregate pets even more. Thanks Anet!

Gotejjeken.1267:

So, all we have learned from these traits is that they segregate pets even more. Thanks Anet!

I was kind of hoping someone would bring this up (testing each pet made me think about this a bit). While I agree that there is a definite separation of which pets are capable with these traits versus which are not as capable. I found that these traits make more types of pets viable in all game modes compared to a ranger without them. Pretty much every melee pet can make good use out of 2 of these traits if not only for helping the ranger by applying a 2s control effect. Pets with long F2 cooldowns will struggle, but how often does a pet survive long enough to use it’s F2 twice in both PvE and PvP? This encourages pet swapping to get more use out of these traits, which also brings a pet with full health.

Let’s take an example of a fairly useless pet before these traits. Can we agree that the Pink Moa was pretty well unused by all rangers? Now the Pink Moa can taunt a target into it’s daze screech to increase the likely of it hitting the target dramatically. Very few pets stand out so poorly with these traits like they do without them and players that understand this may be able to create some new ranger builds that utilize these new found capabilities.

Awesome post. Thanks dude!

Im running owl/raven always as MM WS BM simply because, as OP stated, their F2 are actually reliable (they land most of the time unless target is moving at 33%, I then have to wait till they turn/stop) and birds have F2 on 15 sec cd compared to other pets that have much higher cd. Birds also deal nice single target dmg, but can die quickly even in 1v1, usually I dont swap birds till one is close to dying, since ICD on taunt is 15 sec anyway.

Thanks for post. This is excellent. Time to switch to birds~

Shiren.9532:

Indoles.1467:

Bunuka.3154:

I don’t believe the 4.75 Weakness is an exploit…

I didn’t mention the exploit I found but I can say that isn’t the exploit. It isn’t too difficult to find, and it feels like an unintended consequence of how these traits work.

If there is little to no ICD I assume you’re talking about bird F2 with the incredibly short CD allowing weakness spam. Most pets have long F2 CDs which ensures any “on F2” traits to be balanced but birds are positioned to bypass that with a short CD.

Honestly I’d rather see birds have their F2 replaced with their swiftness skill and their bleed becomes an auto-attack. This increases their DPS by removing their swiftness cast animation from their attack chain (it hurts their DPS a lot) and it gives rangers control of swiftness.

You do realize if they did this ALL birds but 1 or 2 would lose access to swiftness completely right? It wouldn’t be worth it imo, especially since birds were originally designed around the burst + utility role, which they do nicely.

I’d much rather they play around reworking pets that are nearly useless (pigs, devourers, moas) before they play around with pets already used in every aspect of the game.

Adding onto what Indoles said, beastly warden also makes 3/5 drakes go from never used, to VERY strong options. Previously you’d never land their F2, now with the taunt you can land a decent portion of it which makes them worth bringing, especially if you have any immobs in your build to capitalize on the drakes F2 further.