Guild Wars 2

So ever since the trait rework I’ve been seeing more and more rangers using one of the two bird pets (eagle or hawk, henceforth referred to collectively as ‘Squawkums’) to the point that now I don’t think I’ve seen one ‘not’ using Squawkums in some time, especially in PvP. This…feels like it might be a problem.

Previously the Wolf was considered ‘required’ for pvp, and it’s still often run opposite of Squawkums for that sweet AoE fear. I was always somewhat uneasy about a single pet being considered a ‘must’, but whatever. There was still the 2nd slot which had some variation depending on what you were trying to build around. That, unfortunately, has changed.

At the core of this is the trait rework and the vastly increased power of the f2 ability for rangers. It just so happens that Squawkums has an exceedingly short cooldown on this, which means that not only are you allowed constant blinds (not necessarily a problem, if annoying at times to face), but you can use the taunt pretty much on cooldown. Not to mention that with the Beastmastery trait line taken, Squawkums itself does truly ridiculous amounts of damage to the point where I have to wonder why the various nations of Tyria haven’t simply begun training birds of war to fight for them.

High damage, short cooldown blind, fairly short cooldown taunt. None of these are necessarily unbalanced in and of themselves, but combine them and you have the Fearsome Squawkums of Pwnage and Face Mauling. On squishier builds, I’ve actually had the Squawkums kill me, by itself, in the duration of that taunt. It was a sad, sad day.

This thread isn’t supposed to be about the question of whether or not the BM traitline is unbalanced as a whole, however. I’ll leave that up to other people, though since it’s become a pretty much required trait line in pvp…I’ll let that speak for itself. Instead, this thread is about expressing concern that there are a large number of pets within GW2, and yet (especially for pvp) only a couple of these are actually used. This is pretty obviously a result of the BM trait rework combined with an exceedingly short f2 CD on Squawkums, but I’m not here to scream ‘nerf, nerf this ridiculous nonsense immediately!’. That wouldn’t be nice. Even if I want to.

Instead, I’d like people’s suggestions on how to balance pets as a whole and diversify their use so that you don’t have a single pet that dominates an entire game mode. Do other pets need to be buffed? Does the Squawkums need to be toned down? I’d like to hear the thoughts of rangers in this.

Again, my intention isn’t to ‘nerf’ something that makes a spec viable. Rather, I’d honestly like to see a greater variety of companions for rangers. How could this be accomplished without severely impacting the viability of rangers in applicable content? Better yet, how could this be done in a way that would open up further powerful, but distinct, choices? I’m just tired of seeing only Squawkums. I want to see other pets!

Owl hits harder but can’t spam blind. It’s always been the superior choice for me, not hawk/eagle.

Certain pets are always going to be better, GFTE happens to be good and the birds have more chance of hitting players, but its still not really effective for damage. Maybe if they actually made the other pets better. We just got Bristleback which will be used quite a bit imo as well as Smokescale, prepare for that one to become a meta pet.

Pets need improvement across the board for PvP, why is explained here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7DWcU3ULtw
https://youtu.be/GBZtYUa-pLg

Look at the videos in that thread and tell me pets are a problem again.

Alright, so one fix that needs to happen is they need to fix pet AI. Do you think if that happened that you would begin to see more pet diversity, or would people gravitate towards 1 or 2 pets for pretty much all builds? Do you think they need more damage in general, or should the damage be toned down if the AI is reworked so that the pets are actually effective in what they do?

I’ve always hated the way that ranger gets forced into taking pets that are meta, instead of pets that you actually love how they look, for example, I love how the jaguar and white wolf look, but running these pets makes you you look like a bit of a noob (I do it anyway because I love them that much)
I have always wished that someday they would rework pets and their ability’s so that you can slot whatever ability you want into any pet you want, I realise it would lose the flavour of each pet aspect it has now and ofc it would require a lot of balancing but yeah I can dream right?

To be clear I dream of the day I can slot fear into my white wolf.

Vavume.8065:

I’ve always hated the way that ranger gets forced into taking pets that are meta, instead of pets that you actually love how they look, for example, I love how the jaguar and white wolf look, but running these pets makes you you look like a bit of a noob (I do it anyway because I love them that much)
I have always wished that someday they would rework pets and their ability’s so that you can slot whatever ability you want into any pet you want, I realise it would lose the flavour of each pet aspect it has now and ofc it would require a lot of balancing but yeah I can dream right?

To be clear I dream of the day I can slot fear into my white wolf.

I’m not sure that’s necessarily the best design, though. Perhaps if they made other f2 abilities simply more viable? The snow leopard chill leap thing comes to mind, if I’m remembering it correctly. Landing it was a pain. And the chill wasn’t really that much compared to the cooldown. Perhaps, for an example such as that, increase the chill duration or decrease the cooldown of the ability? If I could land this reliably in pvp, for example, it would actually be pretty awesome for kiting purposes.

People would be able to use other pets for PvP if they were improved. Birds are mostly used because of their low CD F2s, swiftness buff (although you can see in that video, it is often a waste of time) and long range melee skills. Dogs are used because of the CC ability. There is nothing else that is really needed for PvP. Like I mentioned before, the Bristleback may find a good slot as it is 1200 range and has good abilities that should keep it alive longer and allow it to do some damage and the Smokescale will totally find a meta place for Rangers because of the smokefield F2 and its great damage. The other pets really serve no purpose for PvP, except maybe brown bear for its tankiness and F2 condi clear. Sometimes spiders are used for the immob, but dogs are better really as they are AoE and have a KD and cripple as well. Certain pets perform roles better than others, meaning the ones that perform the roles required in PvP will always be more popular.

The damage on pets has already been nerfed hard, we don’t want it even lower, unless ofc the ability to hit moving targets is increased exponentially. Although, that would not please the PvEers, since with meta builds, the pet only makes up about 15% of our damage.

@ Vavume
I would make a pet screen like this, so they are more customisable. Stats and everything. I would also use Alpine Wolf with fear for sure.

Starlightmagus.8654:

Vavume.8065:

I’ve always hated the way that ranger gets forced into taking pets that are meta, instead of pets that you actually love how they look, for example, I love how the jaguar and white wolf look, but running these pets makes you you look like a bit of a noob (I do it anyway because I love them that much)
I have always wished that someday they would rework pets and their ability’s so that you can slot whatever ability you want into any pet you want, I realise it would lose the flavour of each pet aspect it has now and ofc it would require a lot of balancing but yeah I can dream right?

To be clear I dream of the day I can slot fear into my white wolf.

I’m not sure that’s necessarily the best design, though. Perhaps if they made other f2 abilities simply more viable? The snow leopard chill leap thing comes to mind, if I’m remembering it correctly. Landing it was a pain. And the chill wasn’t really that much compared to the cooldown. Perhaps, for an example such as that, increase the chill duration or decrease the cooldown of the ability? If I could land this reliably in pvp, for example, it would actually be pretty awesome for kiting purposes.

Imagine a design where you can breed your pets, take one brown wolf and breed it with a white wolf, the result being a wolf that now has access to an f2 fear OR Chill, which you can choose between using, just like you swap out utilitys, that is the future!

i think one thing that isn’t working for pets is balancing via f2 cooldown

for example, krytan drakehound vs wolf. theyre both canines, identical except for the fear vs immobilize. the wolf fear is on a longer cooldown (40s iirc) than the drakehound cooldown (…20s? i think.) but the wolf is just dramatically superior, even with beastmastery. Fear is just ridiculously more useful than immobilize, and the longer cooldowns are usually obviated by the ability to switch pets.

also, the incredibly long execute time on most pet F2s makes them extremely hard to use in PVP or against a PVE enemy that is moving.

a balance pass for pets should reduce the cast time for most f2s, particularly those on underutilized or extremely niche pets.

P.S. I can’t stand birds, their chirping drives me insane

The cast time is required on F2s now because of the Taunt. The Taunt happens immediately and then the F2 effects after the cast time, if the cast time was too short, you could cancel one with the other. The dogs mostly. Attack F2s should be instant.

The new dino pets will be meta now, RIP birds.

Photinous.4628:

The new dino pets will be meta now, RIP birds.

They’re not really that great. One thing I’m testing is to see if the Bristleback’s Spike Barrage skill tracks its target. I thought I saw it a few times last night but didn’t really think about it much.

Wouldn’t that be awesome on half of our pet F2 skills, especially drakes?

Yeah the new pets will add Bristleback, if you need a ranged pet, and Smokescale as viable alternatives. Wyverns have interesting F2s but are let down by their autos.

Strength of the Pack and pet choice
currently, Strength of the Pack works very well with certain pets and poorly with most pets

to build might on the player you need a lot of hits in a short timeframe which effectively means using something like a River Drake. Many other pets are incapable of building a decent amount of might, even if they spend the entire durationa ttacking.

there’s also that strength of the packs utility is reduced in many boss fights owing to the difficulty of either keeping the pet alive, or keeping in alive AND attacking. you certainly can’t use many of the shouts with it effectively.

I believe strength of the pack should be normalized to generate might over time rather than might per attack, to help make more pets viable choices

simply because we have other forms of KD or Mobility CC from the druid too Ancient seeds ect and spike trap , we can get away with Not using a Wolf/hounds so other pets are more Suitable for these type of builds.

also because of our Survival rate going up due to the Reform of traits and extra Regen we can again forgo Wolfs/hounds not needing that KD and soak a bit more damage and pump out that little more using a Bird or Feline instead.

thats the jist of it really.

wolf was taken before due to power builds having very low survival rates near to no regen ect so Fear was needed and the Extra KD simples.

Should have seen birds BEFORE the trait work with the trait that crippled on F2. I had a really fun ‘birds of prey’ build they broke.

Anyway, blind and taunt spam on hawk is fun, but shallow. I’d rather take snow owl for the chill and raven for the blind. But if you dual bird it gets a bit squishy should you run into AOE, or be downed.

So the question of the second pet. I agree here that there are few good options for secondary pets. Basically its canine or spider—canine has the KD and spider has the range and health.

One of the main problems I have with pets is the waste. Birds waste the swiftness swoop (especially on me as I run traveler’s most of the time), canine howls are often a waste because things move, and spiders waste the poison field.

There is some pinpoint of light at the end of the metaphorical tunnel though. Condition damage on all pets is a big plus (as finally that trait is not entirely useless), however pets need a better way to actually apply that. I was thinning of trying cats for the bleed on hit, but its again an issue of squishy vs. non-squishy, as I will always run a ‘squakum’ alongside it.

I run canines in PvP, bird/wolf when roaming, drake when capping camps/towers or poking zergs, cats/drakes for pve. This isn’t even counting the new pets we are getting.

Birds are great for reliable damage on other players since they are better at landing their attacks on a moving target, they also have good cooldowns on their f2’s.
Cats are better for direct single target damage.
Canines are better for control.
Drakes are better for aoe and tanking damage.

Birds aren’t dominant, they are just better at a certain role.

I just want legit dinosaurs as pets, Give me a raptor/baby T-rex.

I use the pigs sometimes, especially the Siamoth, but the Foraging is so annoying, it should be like the Thief F2 : the Pig keeps the object till we press F2 again to consume it. Also, the cooldown is WAY TOO long for some tools to play with. I believe they need the most re-haul or buff.

As for the devourer, they need less dancing around (burrowing).

All I want is more control and less reliance on AI.

Oh and tweak some of the F2s while you’re at it.

The pets we have right now are like 6 years old. Knowing what they know now, there is no way they’d make many of these pets with all their ridiculous flaws. I wonder if changing the pet skillbars is just not feasible, which is why they gave us a bunch of new pets that all work pretty well?

Many of the old pets are still pretty solid. Canines are pretty widely used, felines are ubiquitous in PvE and sometimes beast master builds, birds for the F2s and good damage, spiders for the heavy immob, drakes for tankiness aoe and blast finisher.

I’m willing to overlook the pooh-ness of bears, pigs and devourers if they keep adding pets as useful as the new ones. There is really no downside to adding and keeping lots of pets even if half of them are bad, it just gives us more options when we try a new build.

I like to run spider/wolf in PvP. The spider’s range allows it to stay clear of enemy AoE to some extent (particularly PBAoEs such as the bulk of a d/d elementalist’s attacks), and it is more efficient than a devourer. I would love for it to have a more reliable hit rate though, especially on the poison field. I do think that the shadowscale in particular will become meta, as that channeled attack works well with SoTP and hits harder than rapid fire.

Starlightmagus.8654:

I’ve actually had the Squawkums kill me, by itself, in the duration of that taunt. It was a sad, sad day.

please dont spread misinformation like that, the people who ‘work’ on ranger will take it seriously, i dont want my only pet that hits a moving target to get nerfed

There are some pets that could be a viable choice in PVP if they get some small tweaks. Giving pets condition damage was one of the bigger ones as a lot of pets had skills that did less power damage to compensate for applying conditions but no bite to said conditions. Taunt also isn’t as strong as it was before so it isn’t outright better than Zephyr’s Speed, so pets that benefit more from Quickness might be more appealing than pets with a low F2 cooldown.

Cats and spiders were already decent pets that saw some use. Now that their conditions do damage these pets basically got a straight damage boost and might be valuable enough to see more of. Cats have great DPS as is so they work well with Quickness, and spiders never benefited from taunt anyway and tended to be taken in non-Beastmaster builds.

Adding Healing Power would make moas and the sylvan hound more viable options, for example. The sylvan hound especially as right now it’s regeneration is weak and actually hinders those who gain it over regeneration applied by someone with healing power.

Drakes: Cut the cast time of their F2 in half and allow their breath attacks to track the target the way Rapid Fire works when the ranger isn’t moving. Drakes being able to land their F2 reliably would be a big damage spike that could see a lot of use in PVP. Their tankiness and base damage is already pretty solid. All they really need is the ability to connect with the F2.

Porcines: Have the F2 deliver the obtained item directly to the ranger’s hand. It still might not be super appealing because of the randomness factor, but you can get some strong effects from the forage skill which makes it pay off big. The main thing holding it back is that the enemy has an equal chance of picking up the foraged item, which is just dumb.

Devourers: Adding bleed to their auto attacks could help a lot. The tiny chance to apply poison isn’t really worth the low damage. Though now they are in direct competition with the Bristleback in the role of ranged condition application. Devourer could have a niche as a shorter range pet with more condition applications and more defensive options but with less power damage and less range than the Bristleback.

Bears: … I don’t even know. It looks like they were suppose to be the tank pet, but that doesn’t work well. I’d probably change the regen they apply to protection, give them cleave damage, and increase their power stat so they hit harder. That way at least the Brown Bear would make a good tanky, sustain damage pet with a condi cleanse attached to it’s F2 and maybe Black Bear could be useful for AoE Weakness application to hinder group bursts. I’d also want to add a taunt to it in some way. Maybe replace Defy Pain which is kind of useless when we can’t control when it’s used anyway. Just some way for it to grab aggro away from it’s master and tank the way it was designed. Put it on a lengthy cooldown so it doesn’t feel like you’re getting spammed with taunt.

I’ve always taken birds because they ride their target like an angry spider money and as bad as the pet ai is most other animals can’t do this. Taunt was certainly a nice upgrade to this. I still take wolf on occasion.

If they changed foraging on porcine pet to work like steal then you would start seeing everybody run certain pigs. In fact I honestly hope they make that change going forward because Siamoth forage would be very valuable for sPvP. Overall pets need a review but I don’t expect one to be done at any point in the near future.

Change your pets based on the obstacle you’re faced with. There are no required pets only pets best suited for a given situation.

Some pets are more versatile than others such as the Wolf while others are more niche such as the Siamoth.

I don’t think that Birds are mandatory but I do think that they have great synergy with a lot of the traits in Beastmastery which makes them more appealing than a lot of the other pets. Still, Birds are squishy and using them when you’re against a hard hitting melee target such as an axe Warrior or medi-Guard will only get the pet killed before it can be of any real value.

I still prefer the Drake family over any other pet species simply for it’s versatility and reliability. I will always have at least one of my two pets a Drake to fall back on if my first pet is in danger. Drakes have high health and toughness so they can handle tanking when it’s necessary but they also hit hard enough that they don’t make their living as a meat shield like the Bears do.

Also on the note of Hawk/Eagle, as someone else has said here, the Snow Owl is actually the best choice. You can’t spam Blinds quite as often but it hits slightly harder, applies Chill (+ Weakness, Blindness and Taunt with all the traits) and it’s attack is off cooldown around the same time Taunt is off cooldown so you don’t have to keep track of the cooldown differences. Also, also, with Predator’s Onslaught you can make the Owl hit even harder thanks to applying a condition that counts as a disabling or movement-impairing condition.