Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone, i just want to give you some information about two of our ranget pets, how they perform in combat, and some suggestions that may be done in order to make both equally viable in all game modes.

For a start, lets look at the stats:

Both pets have quite similar stats, wich are as follow:

Power: 1524 for devourer, 1868 for Bristleback
Presicion: 1524 both
Toughness: 2898 both
Vitality: 2211 (22110 Health in PvE, 15418 Health in PvP)
Condition damage: 1000 both

The rest of the stats are 0 for both pets

As you can see, the bristleback has a sligth edge in power in comparassion to devourers

Now lets look at the skills

Autoattack (skill1)

Devourer has twin barbs, which deals 526 damage (i dont know to what armor it is compared, but i supose it is on the same proportion as the bristleback´s damage numbers ), which shoots two pellets at a slow-medium speed, with a maximun range of 900, and 10% chance to apply poison for 6 seconds on each pellet.

On the other side, our friend the bristleback has spike shoot, which shoots a spike at your target, dealing 621 damage and has a 3/4 seconds cast time with 1200 maximun range

Taking casting time and damage numbers, bristleback deals 1.574144486692015 more direct damage than devourer. maybe the poison makes the diference a Little smaller, but i doubt its really worth considering taking condition removal and the RNG involved.

Now lets see the other skills:

Skill 2

Devourer has tail lash, which is a melee, single target knockback that deals around 750 damage, with a 1.25 seconds cast time and 20 seconds cooldown, hoestly, a extremely unreliable skill because of the melee range condition on a ranged pet, and the long cast time and cooldown for what it does.

On the other hand, bristleback has rain of spikes which shoots spikes to up to 3 targets, 3 at each one, each one causing bleed for 5 seconds, and dealing 828 damage, on a 1.75 seconds cast time wich has the potential of inflicting a total of 12 stacks of bleed for seconds, and dealing a total of 9936 damage, all that on a 18 seconds cooldown. Has no CC, but instead packs tons of damage potential on a shorter cooldown, and its more reliable than tail lash.

Skill 3

Our friend the bristleback has sharpen spines, that causes his 5 next attacks inflict 1 bleed for 5 seconds on a 30 seconds cooldown, with instant cast time. Useful for sure, but has only a moderate impact.

On the other side, devourer has devourer retreat, in which he does a 3.5 seconds animation in wich in burrows and retreats, evading 1.75 seconds of that time. Basically, its a useless skill, since the evade starts too late on the skill, and most of the time, its nessesary to retreat, or causes mobs to move away from your teams AOE, while it its not dealing damage.

Special (F2) skills

Our friend the bristleback has Spike barrage a 1200 range, relatively acurate, médium speed barrage of 16 spikes, wich together deal a monstrous amount of 6210 damage, on a 15 seconds cooldown, with a 3.75 seconds cast time.

Our por devourers have all 30 seconds F2 skill cooldowns, being the following:

Poison barbs: 1751 damage shotgun cone shot that apply 5 stacks of poison if all shots hit (basically point blank), 2.5 seconds cast time (long windup animation)

Rending barbs 2100 damage barrage of barbs that apply a total of 6 stacks of poison for 5 seconds 4 seconds cast time (probably 2 of the 4 seconds are pure windup)

Poison cloud 350 × 6 240 radius poison field bomb (shoots a Green ball that produces the field) each hit aplies poison for 4 seconds, 1 second cast time

IN SHORT, pros and cons of each pet

PROS

Bristleback

-More range
-More damage
-Shorter cooldowns
-All skills are useful in some situation

Devourer

-Poison cloud is a poison field
-Twin darts has 20% chance of proyectile finisher

COS

Bristleback

-No combo fields
-no combo dinisher

Devourer

-Really low damage compared to bristleback (and almost any other pet but moa and bear)
-1 badly designed skill (tail lash)
-1 totally useless skill (devourer retreat)
- Unrealiable damage (slow proyectiles and RNG poison on autoattack)
-High cooldowns on F2 skills
-Bad F2 skills (high windup and low damage????)

PROPOSED CHANGE

Bristleback
-Equalize power on bristleback and devourer to 1524, to reduce bristleback´s disproportionated damage

Devourer
-Increased cyclic rate of fire for devourer to match bristleback (probably just reduce its cast time to .75 seconds to match spike shoot)
-Instead of 10% of 6 seconds poison, now twin darts has 100% of 2 seconds poison
-Swap skill 2 and 3 of devourers (lash and retreat) with the following:
Upgrade Tail lash to Boulder shoot: “Use your tail to throw a Boulder that knocks back foes”
728 damage
5 targets maximun
240 radius
15 seconds cooldown
.75 cast time
900 range
Same speed and trayectory as a twin darts shoot

Upgrade devourer retreat to Borrow attack “Burrow towards your foe, evading attacks, creating a explotion of Sharp stones when you emerge”

728 damage
5 targets maximun
240 radius
15 seconds cooldown
1 second evade
Blast finisher
2 seconds cast time ( .75 to burrow, 1 on the move and .25 to come out (damage ocurs a 7 1.75 seconds mark))
600 range “must be in range to use it”

- Changes to F2 skills

Poison barbs:

-reduced cooldown to 10 seconds
-barbs now pierce and hit up to 5 targets
-reduced casting time from 2.5 to .75 seconds

Rending barbs

-reduced cooldown to 10 seconds
-reduced casting time from 4 to 2 seconds (removed windup, it will just start shooting rigth away)

Poison cloud

-reduced cooldown to 15 seconds

END

That way devourer will be the much more viable, offering some CC and higher ranged damage and utility, with may give them and advantage and a reason to pick them instead of bristleback / spider when it comes to ranged pets.

I really hope you agree with me, and that if some Anet Dev comes around here, it takes this changes seriously and maibe, if posible, apply them in game.

There’s so much wrong here that I don’t even anymore with Rangers…

I feel like a ranged pet that burrows into melee range isn’t desirable. I’d rather have it still burrow away from the target. Maybe it leaves something like the elementalist Eruption skill in place then burrows away? That way it can kind of protect itself and stay away from enemies, but still leave a nasty surprise.

In order to prevent enemy mobs from chasing the devourer you could just make it an aggro dump like entering stealth.

I know, i was thinkin the same when desingning that skill, but also, lets take into aconut tan the ‘shorter range’ of all the 3 ranged pet family is devourer, since it has the slowest proyectiles, not to mention that some of them (the whiptail devourer) have f2 that deal maximun damage at point blank range, so thats another reason i left it a s a burrow charge rather than a burrow retreat, basically because it maximizes damage on devourer, and makes sure the expotion is placed at its target rather than its current location.

the bristleback is more in line with whta the ranger needs about the pets.
nerfing bristleback is not the solution, that idea is simply wrong.
the devourers and the rest of the pets im fact need to be brought in line with the smokescale and the bristleback.

• some combo finishers/fields in one of the pets skills to bring more game to the pets.
• i would put in every pet: one burst damage(condi or power), one defensive and one support\utility skill. plus the basic attack.
• i would allow the player to choose which of those three is the f2

if not possible to allow the player to choose the f2 i would put always the utility in f2. burst should be used as soon as its our of CD. defensive should be cast when the pet reach some hp limit.
utility is more difficult to decide when to use it, so i would leave it up to the player.

ranger needs rework to be able to finish targets in pvp, having the pet just for the burst is not a real solution is just copping the problem with a dirty fix.

Yes, let’s nerf one of, or not if, the best pets to be similar to devourer… lol

Other pets need to be brought in line with Cats, Smokescale, and Bristleback, not the other way around.

Why the kitten do you want to nerf the Bristleback for? Stupid kittening thread.

As an adamant user of carrion devourer,

• I would love more teeth on AA. Yeah your suggestion is strong but I like it anyhow.
• I would like my devourer charging forward and face tanking yes please. Much better than evading away and taking aggroed mobs with it. If something runs away it can still hit reliably. The explosion on arrival would be good in pvp for that cripple and compulsory dodge from enemy.
• No knock back on tail swipe please. Knockdown/stun/daze/whatever, but please no more devourer moving foes out of my aoe!

I’m content with carrion devourer f2. I would accept improvement but I’m not asking for it.

In the current state of the game smokescale and bristelback are ok, but if anet starts to nerf all this powercreep, those pets would need adjustment too.

And devourers definitely deserve improvements.

For the longest time, I used carrion devourer in PvE. It is, by far and at the time, the tankiest pet in the game. No, its retreat maneuver is not ‘useless’, but a key element that keeps it alive against champions and bosses if you know what you’re doing. It made soloing a breeze. Underwater, carrion devourer is a beast.

Please, for the love of God, don’t asked for anything to be nerfed with ranger. Pet or otherwise.

Thanks for all responses,

I know many of you think that nerfing bristleback its not nesesary, but lets just compare it to other pets.

Basically, bristleback deals more damage than pigs, bears, moas, dogs, drakes, devourers and spiders, has longer range and faster proyectiles that can easily hit targets at a distance compared to other pets.

In other words its better in every posible way when tlking about ranged pets, and even in out damages some melee pets like the ones stated above.

That´s why i think it should have their power normalized to equal devurers and spiders, which at the end, will traslate in a 18% direct damage reduction aproximately. which is a considerable amount, but, in my opinion, nesesary.

It may not be as visible as the game is rigth now, but once the power creep brougth by HOT is taken care of, it will become more evident.

Don’t give them bad ideas to nerf. Ranger needs buffs, not nerfs.

Other pets need to be brought in line with Bristleback.

with the current state of the game´s balance, i honestly think that core rangers are fine, and druid / bristleback / the rest of the clases but warrior and tief need a considerable amount of nerfs to supress the power creep created by HOT´s release

uri.6521:

Basically, bristleback deals more damage than pigs, bears, moas, dogs, drakes, devourers and spiders, has longer range and faster proyectiles that can easily hit targets at a distance compared to other pets.

This statement alone shows your analysis and knowledge of pets are shallow. There’s more to pets than just DPS. Go through your analysis again and use more than numbers before proposing changes, especially nerfs to the Bristleback – an offensive, ranged power-type pet that Rangers have been asking for a very long time.

I am aware that there is more things tan just damage, there is also CC and support which are Anet´s supossed 3 pilars of combat in gw2

If we take into account only ranged pets, neither spiders nor devourers have any sort of support in forms of boons or healing,

In the CC departament, spiders have their throw web skill which imobilizes, and devourers have tail lash which knocks back

Spider´s CC skill is fine since its ranged and relatively fast proyectile, which may be in some builds, its higher than devourer damage, higher health and CC where a reason they were the only ranget pet picked by serius rangers, usually alongside a Wolf which had high CC availability.

Devourers on the other hand, offer nothing but tail lash in terms of CC, which is very unreliable due to high cast time and long cooldown, which leaves devourer almost like a damage only pet, that deals less damage tan its CC packed counterpart the spiders.

Rigth now both spiders and devourers CC capabilities are completely overshadowed by the bristleback´s giant gap in terms of damage, both in raw power and reliability to hit moving targets due to faster and longer range proyectiles it shoots.

Maibe there could be a reason in terms of CC to choose spider over bristleback, but bristleback simply deals much, much more damage, and that its not rigth.

You still don’t get it. Each pet class was made thematically different. Devourers are turret pets. Leave & forget as they can take care of themselves. They have defensive moves such as Tail Lash & Burrow as a self-defensive mechanism for when drawing aggro. Their cons outweigh the pros, but that’s how they were designed. Devourers are a pet strictly for debuff (RNG poison on auto) and distraction: nothing more.

What you are asking for, is to have a pet designed for offensive, direct damage pressure (Bristleback) that punishes enemies for coming too close to match a defensive, debuff pet that defends itself against nearby enemies. Think about your proposal again. It’s like asking for Drakes to be nerfed to match Wyverns.

Ok, maybe you are rigth, but devourers are still alomost never used in PvP / PvE / WvW, and there must be a reason that has to be adressed in some way.

uri.6521:

Ok, maybe you are rigth, but devourers are still alomost never used in PvP / PvE / WvW, and there must be a reason that has to be adressed in some way.

So aney should buff devourers and by the way the rest of th vanilla pets.
We all agree the design of those pets is simply awful.