Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2 Pet Mini Guide #1: Porcine Pets

Keeping with my first guide about pets, I’ve done another write up on one of the pets that I think is underused. And with good reason. For the longest time I thought that the Pigs were the most uninsteresting pets. They’re the pets with the 2nd highest Vitality stat, and they have a knockdown, but their F2 Skill looks really meh. The Dog F2 skills look so much better. Fear and Immobilize are just so useful… but that was before I learned what Forage actually does.

Each Pig has 3 different possible Forage items, each with different effects. They are actually the same skills that thieves get when they use their Steal skill with one exception: anyone can use them. Of course this would be troublesome in PvP, but in PvE, it is perfect.

Meet The Pigs

Here are the skills with a quick description and a corresponding wiki link.

1. Pig: Defensive/Healing Support
Egg – Eat Egg – heal and regain 6 initiative
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Eat_Egg
Seed Pod – Healing Seed – summon healing tree (water field)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Healing_Seed
Elixir of Heroes – Drink – 3sec invulnerability
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Drink

Given the Pig’s items, this pet is best suited for D/D thief allies as they can make the most out of the Egg, and being in melee range, they could use the heal or the invulnerability. Mostly a healing support hog (see what I did there? :P), the Pig is good for allies that are tanking for you.

2. Boar: Heavy CC/Interrupts
Skull – Skull Fear – 600 aoe fear (based on distance)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Skull_Fear
Bone – Bone Crack – Melee Stun
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bone_Crack
Rock – Throw Rock – 600 range knockdown
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Throw_Rock_

The Boar is a heavy CC pet and is best used if you need to constantly CC a big non-boss enemy, like the Scavengers or Breeders in AC. All of the item drops are good interrupts.

3. Warthog: Assorted Conditions
Scale – Throw Scale – bleed poison weakness
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Throw_Scale
Gunk – Throw Gunk – ethereal field
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Throw_Gunk
Exploding Venom Sack – 10s poison field
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Exploding_Venom_Sack

The Warthog on the other hand, is a condition damager and was the ranger’s only source of confusion via gunk being an etherial field. We now have The Drakes from Southsun Cove to directly cause confusion, but the charge up is way too long to be reliable. Granted, the ranger itself can probably get only 2 stacks of confusion via gunk, but its still pretty cool. Scale is also pretty good as it inflicts 3 different conditions.

4. Siamoth: Buff/Blind/Hide Support
Tuft of Hair – Blinding Tuft – stealth/blindness
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blinding_Tuft
Plasma – Consume Plasma – all boons
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Consume_Plasma
Feathers – Throw Feathers – stealth/blindness
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Throw_Feathers

The Siamoth is our one source of activatable Invisibility. I cant believe I missed how awesome this pet is. Tuft of Hair and Feathers both give 3sec stealth and blindness in a 160 AoE around the user. And Plasma is like a super buff item that gives you ALL the boons for 10 seconds. Arguably the best Porcine pet… if you dont mind the fugly look it has. Personally, I like it

How To Use Porcine Pets

There are 2 ways that I found the Forage skill to be the most effective:

1. Use Forage before entering combat. Best Used with the Warthog or Boar so you can start the fight with Conditions, CC or buffs.
2. Use it midcombat to drop the items and leave it there for until you need it (WARNING: PvE only). Best Used with the Pig and Siamoth.

Dont Be Selfish

Remember that Porcine pets are supposed to help both you and your allies. If you use bows, use your Porcine pets to support your melee allies. Dont get mad if they use your items!

Field Use

I tried using the Siamoth on CoE because it was what my Guildmates wanted to run. At first I went with the pre-cast Forage and it worked out ok. Afterwards, we tried using the midcombat technique. What we did was I let my pet go up with my melee allies and drop the item right where they are. If they needed the blind/hide, they would pick it up and use it right there. Even better if a Plasma drops, the nearest teammate can stop attacking for a second to grab and eat it, then go back to killing with 10 seconds of stability and all the other boons available in the game.

Additional Tip
Inform your allies that you are going to use Forage and what each item does before hand so they can use the items to the best effect. I like calling out the item that the pig finds in chat so they know that an item is ready for them.

Conclusion

Porcine pets are a good mix of Offense (via their knockdowns), Defense (since they have the 2nd highest Vitality on pets) and Support (via their Forage items). If you’re going with a group that needs support, bring a pig along with your fern hound so you have a reliable regeneration and whatever skils the porcine you picked has.

tl;dr:
1. Let pet start attacking.
2. As soon as the charge animation starts going, press F2.
3. The pet should start foraging as soon as the enemy is knocked down.
4. Let your melee allies use up the item.

I will play around with it a bit to see how it works….and if it would work in WvW.

This is cool, are you doing more pets?

very good guide ! i m waiting for the others pets

Very nice writeup!

I like the idea behind forage, but I think the implementation leaves a lot to wish for – it’s a clumsy mechanic tbh.

If they’re going to keep it this way, I think the duration of some of the items picked up needs to be longer, and the cooldown of their F2 ability needs to be shorter.

I’d rather see either that you and your pet automatically gets a buff when using the skill (if it is a buff), and/or groupwide buff. If it is something that’s used offensively, it should be used automatically.

OR, third option – don’t force us to pick up the item, but rather replace the F2 ability of the pet with whatever it picked up, and let us trigger it that way.

I see a lot of room for improvements to their F2 skills to make them easier to use.

I’ve loved my Porcine pets since day 1 and have posted many times about how great their Foraged items are. I’m glad someone else agrees.

Another good use in PvE is when fighting in melee (as I often do for a change of pace). Your pet will be right next to you so their item is easily accessible.

I will admit, as OGDeadHead said, that Forage is a bit clunky. For enemy players to be able to use it has got to be an uninteded bug. And while it’s nice letting your allies use it, that rarely happens. I’d be much happier if it replaced our F2 button with the Foraged item (like the Thief steal skill). Maybe make the buff items like the Egg or Plasma be ally-targetable.

Really nice write up, I may be giving my wolves a break next dungeon I run.

Just going to throw this out there, but if you’re using off hand axe if you whirling defense in the etheral field with a target (the way whirls work is it will throw one bolt in a random direction and one at the target if you have one, other wise 2 go in random directions) and you can get up to 15 stacks of confusion if you DONT use quickness for whirling defense because whirls become MORE useful the longer they go. This is because bolts are thrown at time intervals not X move throws Y bolts.

Other than that, great post!!

I’ve tried to give items to allies during random world events before, but no one actually picks them up. I guess people have been conditioned to avoid random item pickups since they’re usually not worth it. Hell, I’d probably ignore them too if someone else was spawning them. Its clunky to need to notice the item on the ground, move over to it, interact to pick it up (hope there aren’t any lootable bodies in the area :p) then use it.

I assume it’d work much better in a coordinated dungeon, but I haven’t gotten to the point where I do anything like that yet. Figure I should get to level 80 before I start doing any dungeon runs so that I at least have the raw stats even if I don’t know what I’m doing having never done a proper dungeon.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Very nice writeup!

I like the idea behind forage, but I think the implementation leaves a lot to wish for – it’s a clumsy mechanic tbh.

If they’re going to keep it this way, I think the duration of some of the items picked up needs to be longer, and the cooldown of their F2 ability needs to be shorter.

I’d rather see either that you and your pet automatically gets a buff when using the skill (if it is a buff), and/or groupwide buff. If it is something that’s used offensively, it should be used automatically.

OR, third option – don’t force us to pick up the item, but rather replace the F2 ability of the pet with whatever it picked up, and let us trigger it that way.

I see a lot of room for improvements to their F2 skills to make them easier to use.

1. Pet swapping removes cd on F2 skills
2. That might have the unwanted effect of CC’ing something at a bad time. Timing the Forage to activate at the exact moment is quite hard given how pet queuing works atm.
3. That would prevent allies from using your item buffs.

I do agree that it could use some reworking, but what I want is for enemies to not be able to pick up the items so we can use them offensively in pvp or wvw

Asthenea.1546:

This is cool, are you doing more pets?

Gransasso.9842:

very good guide ! i m waiting for the others pets

I will! XD No definite date on publishing them though, any requests on which pet family i should do next?

Durzlla.6295:

Just going to throw this out there, but if you’re using off hand axe if you whirling defense in the etheral field with a target (the way whirls work is it will throw one bolt in a random direction and one at the target if you have one, other wise 2 go in random directions) and you can get up to 15 stacks of confusion if you DONT use quickness for whirling defense because whirls become MORE useful the longer they go. This is because bolts are thrown at time intervals not X move throws Y bolts.

Other than that, great post!!

wow i didn’t know that! I dont use axe of hand at all XD

Electro.4173:

I’ve tried to give items to allies during random world events before, but no one actually picks them up. I guess people have been conditioned to avoid random item pickups since they’re usually not worth it. Hell, I’d probably ignore them too if someone else was spawning them. Its clunky to need to notice the item on the ground, move over to it, interact to pick it up (hope there aren’t any lootable bodies in the area :p) then use it.

I assume it’d work much better in a coordinated dungeon, but I haven’t gotten to the point where I do anything like that yet. Figure I should get to level 80 before I start doing any dungeon runs so that I at least have the raw stats even if I don’t know what I’m doing having never done a proper dungeon.

Yes, it works better in coordinated teams. My guildmates always used to hate my pets, but they loved the plasma from the siamoth and i didn’t get one pet complaint from them the entire run :P

The actual mechanic of ‘locating and picking up’ the forged item is extremely frustrating to say the least. Not only do I have to ‘guess’ by moving around the area until the Pick UP (F) yellow box appears, once located I need to mash (F) for the item!

Good on paper, bad in live!

nobody ever eat my pig eggs.

My issue with Forage is it’s pretty pre-emptive. On my Thief I know what I’m going to get and I can plan my Steal and usage of the Stolen Item with the flow of combat.

With my pigs it’s more of a gamble and clunkier to use. It should be one or the other: random chance at the item but it goes in your hand, or guaranteed item but you still have to manually pick it up. Or something like that.

Cempa.5619:

The actual mechanic of ‘locating and picking up’ the forged item is extremely frustrating to say the least. Not only do I have to ‘guess’ by moving around the area until the Pick UP (F) yellow box appears, once located I need to mash (F) for the item!

Good on paper, bad in live!

you could press alt so it appears on your screen

PsionicDingo.2065:

My issue with Forage is it’s pretty pre-emptive. On my Thief I know what I’m going to get and I can plan my Steal and usage of the Stolen Item with the flow of combat.

With my pigs it’s more of a gamble and clunkier to use. It should be one or the other: random chance at the item but it goes in your hand, or guaranteed item but you still have to manually pick it up. Or something like that.

Exactly this.

For the thief, he knows in advance what he will get and his F1 button will change so he will instantly use the item if he presses F1 again.

For the Ranger, he has to press F2, then wait for the pig to do his animation, then walk to the pig, then pick up the item, which blocks all his main weapon skills (unlike the thief) and then he can use it. And it’s not even clear what the ranger will get when he pressed F2. Also, enemies can pick it up instead of just the ranger and his teammates.

So all in all, it’s horrible and not worth your time, except maybe to initiate combat with if you have a lot of time to play a game of chance to get the item you wanted.

For the thief it’s very powerful because it’s very usable and predictable. For the ranger it’s horrible and takes a lot of effort and micromanagement to get to work and then still it’s worse than the thief because the item is blocking all your weapon skills and you don’t know what you will get.

Holland.9351:

So all in all, it’s horrible and not worth your time, except maybe to initiate combat with if you have a lot of time to play a game of chance to get the item you wanted.

Sorry but you’re missing the point here. Forage isn’t meant to act like the Thief Steal at all. That would make the skills redundant. Steal is just for the thief, and Forage is for everyone. (unfortunately, for enemies as well :/ )

Now you complain about the randomness of the item drop, but if you look at them, they all do the same thing. They have a theme, except maybe the plasma on the siamoth.

All the heals are on the pig, all the interrupts are on the boar.

As I mentioned in the guide, its better if you call out the items dropped, and you inform your allies what each of them does. This requires a bit of communication and works best with a coordinated group.

With the bug fix on the bundle bug in today’s patch, I think Pigs should get another look from players. Has anyone found new techniques on how to effectively use Pig pets?

Since this thread is a bit more comprehensive than my own and better written, and I am part of the self appointed pig advocacy group, I am giving this a bump!

I did want to state though, that I am able to reliably get 3+ stacks of confusion off of throw gunk. I start with sword/dagger, hit dagger 5 then switch to shortbow. I then use shortbow 4, then 5 (or sometimes the other way around depending on situation) and by that time its usually gone. If not, I try to use shortbow 3 to get that one extra stack. I also use this in combination with pain inverter to great effect on a condi build. Theoretically, if used with a Reef Drake, one could have confusion up almost constantly using these skills. However, in practice, the confusion from Reef Drake takes a bit too long to cast and I find it most useful ikittenerg vs zerg scenario where I expect them to die after getting the skill off.

used to be usable in pvp since you could swap in and out pets midmatch, grabbing a random CC item in your down time was clutch…
But the terribly short range on the pet knockdown and 3 item random F2 that half the time wouldn’t work if you were moving… and how the items took time to pickup and replaced your action bar just made them useless besides that.

I spent a few good hours trying to work out a use for the guys, gunk and elixer made me terribly excited, ethereal fields and invuln are amazing, but yeah just not worth it since they are 1 in 3 and to boot the invuln is on a 1s cast…

garethh.3518:

used to be usable in pvp since you could swap in and out pets midmatch, grabbing a random CC item in your down time was clutch…
But the terribly short range on the pet knockdown and 3 item random F2 that half the time wouldn’t work if you were moving… and how the items took time to pickup and replaced your action bar just made them useless besides that.

I spent a few good hours trying to work out a use for the guys, gunk and elixer made me terribly excited, ethereal fields and invuln are amazing, but yeah just not worth it since they are 1 in 3 and to boot the invuln is on a 1s cast…

Well the invuln -does- last 6s (friend timed it), then there’s a mini healing spring (seed), and a mini heal (up to 3k healing) on that piggie, and then the whole Warthog has the Scale which is a lot stronger than gunk (I think it’s bleeding, poison, and weakness? I know it has weakness could be wrong on the others).

I find them pretty nice, i personally think that their charge needs to either 1) Be cast faster + reach destination faster or 2) follow the target for X duration until it either collides with them, or the time runs out.

Very inpressive guide I never know this b4.
Need to try someday.
Hope to see another pet if u have to share.
thank you

Durzlla.6295:

Just going to throw this out there, but if you’re using off hand axe if you whirling defense in the etheral field with a target (the way whirls work is it will throw one bolt in a random direction and one at the target if you have one, other wise 2 go in random directions) and you can get up to 15 stacks of confusion if you DONT use quickness for whirling defense because whirls become MORE useful the longer they go. This is because bolts are thrown at time intervals not X move throws Y bolts.

Other than that, great post!!

Just to add to this, the bolts will continue flying even if the field goes down, if memory serves me right. Sebrent, you’re the designated fact checker. Go test it and come back and yell at me if I’m wrong, thanks.

Another idea for the short duration ethereal field is to leap out of the field or time a blast finisher on it with your team.