Guild Wars 2

So….I really love my ranger. But I know for a fact I’m not using my pet as much as I could be. So – how do you use your pet effectively?

Mainly right now, my pet is just an extra target and a little extra dps. I don’t really think about my pet unless I hear my character tell me that my pet is down, and then i switch it out. That’s about it.

How can I improve this?

I would suggest finding some mobs and having only your pet attack them. See what kind of damage your pet does and see how effective the F2 skill is when you activate it. Try that with all of your pets. Once you’ve done that start working in that particular usefulness when you are in combat as usual.

I personally watch the area around my health bar and my pets health bar so know when to swap out, use a skill or even call him back for a moment.

I highly recommend putting five points into BM for the two seconds of quickness when you swap pets. It doesn’t sound like much but that really helps your DPS.

You can also use a tank type pet to help you escape from overwhelming odds. If you get swarmed by mobs, call out your tank and have it attack. They’ll turn to hit him and you can run. I guess you can do that with any pet but the tank gives you time to get a little further away.

If you need to harvest resources near a tough mob, put your pet on it then get the node and run.

Also there are a lot of F2 skills that are nice. The Lynx’s knockdown is especially awesome as is the Shark’s self buff. If you use Quickening Zephyr before the F2 it will come out almost instantly.

I tend to agree with Bastion.
First you should be trying to get to the point where you can keep your pet alive and you’re using their F2 skills. After you’ve got that down you can start to worry about stuff like choosing the right pet for a situation/build, abusing family skills, and other stupid pet tricks like using your mobile meat-shield as a distraction.

Wait, don’t pets use their skills automagically? Do I have to activate their abilities beyond an auto attack?

<< 3 day old noob.

Wendigo.1470:

Wait, don’t pets use their skills automagically? Do I have to activate their abilities beyond an auto attack?

<< 3 day old noob.

They use all skills automatically but the first skill listed on the pet stats screen(K). That skill is activated by you pressing (by default) the F2 button.

The key too the ranger is realizing that you need to focus on three health bars instead of two.

For most classes it is character and target. For us it is character, pet, and target. (advantage for the ranger is our pets health bar is right next to ours, other classes don’t have this)

Things that help with survival, signet of the wild. I love this thing, the regen goes a long way with prolonging pet life in between swaps. Its active is relatively meh for its long cooldown and loss of passive so I don’t use active.

Traiting into the final line is an option and if you go 30 in you will aside from having a super buffed pet also get another source of regen on pet making it even more sturdy. I would suggest going at least 15 into the line for reduced pet swaps, this alone will keep you from watching one pet die and then the other because of long timers.

Also, use your heals not just for you but for your pet as well, all heals are shared. Healing Spring is the best because its effects last 30s allowing for more healing should you wind up getting focused after healing your pet or if your pet is focused after healing yourself.

Always pop heal when your pet is at half health or swap, when it reaches that level it is reaching the critical stage of one shot potential. Never allow your pet to go down, it is the beginning of the end of the ranger.

Use your f1 f3 to call back surge forward your pet on targets, if you are pulling back to avoid AoE get your pet out as well. Also pull him back if you see the purple butterflies floating over his head this means he has been confused and will be hurting himself and hard.

Another series of trait points I suggest if you are serious about your pet is 15 into wilderness survival. It grants you extra endurance regen and allows protection (33% damage reduction) on dodge rolls for 2s. This is primarily for your pets benefit. You will spend most of boon in dodge animation. This allows your pet to tank AoEs should he be caught in them.

These are some of the things I have learned in the six some rangers I have created and deleted out of frustration with how lame and boring the class “appeared”

The pet does take a lot of focus if you want to use it properly, and why my sixth and final ranger has become my main, I am never bored in combat and take great pride in the fact I can keep my pets fighting fit through most fights and haven’t had both pets dropped in a single fight in the last month of play.