Guild Wars 2

Ranger is not my main class, but have been fooling around with a melee build in www the last couple of days and find it very “strong” and fun.
I especially like the new BM trait’s Go for the eye’s and Beastly Warden, good control in small fights.

But for the love of me i dont understand the difference in Health from pve too pvp/www. My PET’s (owl and wolf) have 26.430 hp in pve and 15.400 in pvp/www with BM line. Even in really small fights they usually die in seconds, and thats with full BM line and WS line (ill link build at end).
Im usually good at micro managing the PET’s but when your in melee yourself there isnt much you can do to save em from the cleave.

Another thing is condie clear. Is there any reason why Wilderness Knowledge doesnt Work on your pet aswell?

So question is how can we make pets abit more durable?
I will write up a couple of suggestions, feel free to chime in

1. Remove the HP diff from pve —-> pvp/www
2. Make pets take 50-80% reduced dmg from cleave, will only do full dmg if directly targeted. Prolly too hard to program?
3. Make the pets Health/Armor scale with the rangers Health/Armor. So the tankier the ranger the tankier the pet.
4. Make Wilderness Knowledge affect the pet.
5. When the ranger Dodges/evades so will the pet (pet can get a distortion effect for 1 sec so it doesnt interrupt there skills)
6. Make the BM line effect the pet even more, more vitality/toughness.
7. Buff Companion’s Defense and Barkskin for the pet. Higher uptime on prot, much lower Health treshhold for barkskin for the pet.
8. Natural Healing in BM is lackluster? Also conflict’s with much stronger traits. Buff it or merge it with Pack Alpha.

Thats basically it, if you disagree be nice Also if you got any input for a good/better melee power build lemme know.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-J;5FVu-p2NEF-0;9;4Y_b;0037157046;4RwG7U;1m9fgm9fgu-kS3-1j22;1ZbZ6_b_6abab2H0H-2c;9;9;9;9;9;9;0VRs8o

Pets aren’t supposed to die. I have been getting some pet deaths lately due to the sheer number of bugs and questionable balances. Your pet is not going to survive a grenade barrage at the moment.

Before the patch, your pet didn’t really die. Once they fix these game-breaking bugs (taking long enough?) I think things will go back to normal.

You condi clear pets by swapping. It’s crazy strong, which is why they never died before this patch.

Not sure what circumstance’s you describe as “your pet is not supposed to die”

Like i said i dont main ranger and yes barrage and massive burn ticks aint helping atm But in any 3+ fights atm pets hp just fly off with the sheer amount of cleave. Damage did go up alot after the patch, but didnt really try melee ranger before patch so dont know.

Even if all the various bugs are fixed I dont see it being any better off. I dont expect that you can send your pet into a sea of pll alone without it dying but would love for it to live more than a few secs with the melee Group.

The thing is as a player you get most of your defenses from active play, dodges/evades, positioning and well timed use of cooldowns from the Group. But the pet has almost none of that.
Its true that it will get boons if traited and signet of stone affects it aswell, but even fully juiced up with BM/WS lines its simply to squishy to survive more than a couple of seconds in melee.
Im talking mostly www here, but the same applies if you run into 2-3 pll in tpvp though not as badly ofc

Just so I am clear, I am talking about a melee ranger here. LB rangers have and easier time since they can recall there pet or simply switch pets if it gets low. I can ofc do the same but it will be in the midst of the action and the end for it a few seconds later.

I play a melee ranger with a similar build to the one you posted. You didn’t list what kind of pets you’re using, are they birds or cats by any chance? Those are quite fragile.

Drakehound and Wolf are most people’s default competitive pets, and you keep them alive by re-positioning them as needed (recall and attack from a different angle out of DoT, pull out of the middle of larger groups, etc.), and definitely swapping regularly. If you’re still having trouble, try spiders or drakes, as those are significantly less likely to die.

Before the patch, it was kitten near impossible to kill a ranger’s pet if he was paying even the slightest bit of attention. Once the barrage and burning and a few other things are adjusted, it will go back to how it was. You’ll get used to it. You can always practice pet control in PvE if it’s that bad. Go solo a champ + some random mobs or something. Vet giants in Orr plus pull everything around it, etc., and make sure your pet never dies.

Edit: One thing to do to get your pet out of a hot melee area is to have it go attack something else. Pets generally will take your target no matter what, but you can tell it to go attack a specific target and it will lose your target. I’m not 100% sure of the mechanics, but I believe you need to already have attacked your own target, or else you’ll have to press the pet target button twice, as it prefers your attacked target. Hope that made any sense at all.

Before the patch my pets never died almost (except under heavy aoe). Now they just melt to anybody because of ultra dps and fire field (more fire field, but i’ve seen 75→0 with one GS #3 from warrior). Thats kind of sad…

Ahh sry using Owl + Wolf/Drakehound

Really like the owl, rarely misses Taunt/blind with its special ability. But will try a tankier pet for larger fights, and see if its any better. Dont really see much diff in the tankyness of a bird vs canine’s though, i know they have about 600 more toughness but still only 15.4k Health.
Had my wolf instagibbed from a shatter combo last night were i happily dodged away myself as and example.

With the new BM traits ranged pets are almost useless atm in my mind. But maybe i shouldnt be expecting too much of my pet as a frontliner/melee? Will ofc try even harder to micromanage the pet.

That shatter combo is one of the new times your pet can die. I don’t know enough about mesmers to know if it’s going to get nerfed. Otherwise I guess we just live with pets dying every now and then from shatter mesmers. Not much you can do if you don’t even know the mesmer is there until he bursts. Barrage and burning are definitely getting fixed though.

Well, I won’t go too into detail but the beauty of having pets is you get to pick two of ’em and switch in combat. If your current pet is low on HP call it back (F3) or switch. Otherwise pick a pet with more vitality or toughness or trait into Natural Regeneration.

if your in a situation where your pets getting instakilled there isn’t much that can be done. engi’s and mesmers are 1 hitting just about anything right now. if you can swap pets to save them, even if you swap during the shatter but before the pet dies you’ll have a new fresh pet to attack with. cats and birds are super squishy, canines have more toughness and i think more health as well, they just don’t crit as much.

we’re also missing 150 points from the BM line due to a bug(i think), that may help buff the pets up some.

edit: just took a look at your build, why not run MoC instead of brutish seals? you’re not really getting a lot out of that trait with only 1 signet but MoC pairs nicely with the GS.

1. Nicknobreak

Call it back to were? This is about pure melee rangers, even frontline for small too medium battles (www), would prolly not take my ranger into a 40v40 as pure melee frontliner

I agree as a lb ranger i have no problem keeping my pet alive or atleast have a 100% uptime of my pet via swap/call back. But as a pure melee it just seems much harder sometimes, even with BM/WS lines.

Natural Healing is just lackluster when your in a big fight. What matters there is active defenses like dodge/evades, stunbreaks, well timed cd’s and condie removal and ofc all the goodies you get from your teammates.

Pet only get boons out off all these and even a Brown Bear only have 2600 armor, it will still melt in seconds especially with immob, cripple, chill etc that i cant remove besides swapping pets, and 2nd pet will be in the exact same situation seconds after swap/reengage.

Well it’s crystal clesr, thei health pool didnt get adjusted but the condition damage and power damage do way more damage now. I think anet just didn’t think anything doing it or forgot about it.

I am running MoC

But for gvg fights i tend to run Brutish Seals for Signet of the Wild (in MM line triggers at 50% Health) and Stone cd reduction.
Also added cruelty sigil to my build now instead of hydro on 1h sword, 249% crit dmg is noice
Also running dagger alot of the time instead of axe and ofc Healing Spring for organized fights with guild grps.