Guild Wars 2

Since, I’m a new ranger myself so i dont know if this is a L2P issue.

First pet:

Drakes: Any of you guys find their f2 hard to aim? (A little easier on the bouncing drakes, Lightning and The poison one) The cone f2 drakes, once the opponent moves a little away from the drake, it cancels the cast, and goes after the foe wasting the f2. B.) If my foe goes a little bit outside the cone or back of the drake, f2 completely misses and wasted again.

Only thing you can make your foe eat all the hits is immobilize them enough with duration or no cleanses or stun long enough so it they can eat all the kitten.

Drakes F2 is strong but its mostly situational, in the heat of battle its clunky to use.

Second Pet:

Porcines: Any of you guys find it hard to use f2 and pick up the loot in the middle of the battle? Could be the same as thief skill.

IMO, the most comfortable f2 to use is the birds, because they have the lowest cast time of f2.
Feline leaps takes a long charge too which your foe can dodge easily.

Canine Howls are pretty good because they have a pretty large radius and knockdowns on top of that.

So any tips with the above pets? Thank you in advance.

PS: 1.)Another problem i have with pets is that when I jump off the ledge (i.e. Spirit Watch) My pet circles around the map, taking the ledges going down when i press f3, sometimes i start a battle without my pet needing for me to swap.) <—— is this intentional?
2.) With my duel with shadowpass, I just noticed if youre against a kiting class, the pet is having trouble sticking with the opponent.

Humpy bumpy!!!!!

My advice with the above pets (drakes and porcines) is don’t use them. Or at least use the river drake. The other drakes need the target to be CCd to land their F2s.

For porcine you need to have it on passive or recall it to you, and you need to be at range or the enemy will pick up your item and use it on you. And its special charge misses 99% of the time.

When you jump off a ledge, wait till your out of combat, use the pet swap, and then immediately swap back to the pet you want (who is now at your side.)

Pets always have trouble staying on human opponents. Signet of the hunt, CCs of any kind, the trait Agility Training, the shout “Sic’ Em” and swiftness can all help.

For PvP/WvW I rarely use anything other than dogs. They have soft and hard CC on both normal attacks and howls. Birds, which you like, are nice because they give themselves swiftness, and they pair nicely with the beast master line traits (i.e. Intimidation Training for extremely high cripple uptime.) Spiders are another option since they immobilize and rarely miss their attacks (from range.) Spiders are very fire-and-forget.

Never use any drake besides river or marsh (since their f2s track and bounce). The best way to use them is to activate the F2 and kite your enemy in front of the drake. In PvP that means positioning with F3, use F1 to turn it the right way, and F2, followed by kiting. For most of the pets you can use F3 followed by F1 to kind of skill cancel their pet skills if they won’t land, this way they are on kitten -ish cd instead of 45 or whatever they are.

From a PvP stand point, best pets are canines > drakes > spider > dps pets.

The reason dps pets (cats and birds) are so low is that they just die to easy unless you a BM build in which case I would rank them Birds > cats > drakes > spider = wolves.

The rest of the pets should never be used unless you wanna like aggro the fire elemental boss in fractals with your bear pets.

Ahh what a waste., i liked the condi variation they provided especially the confusion one but yeah..

I hope they fixed the pets first in general then add more control. Adding more control will be great but i think the priority should be the functionality of pets in general

Condition pets are horrible. Since pets have their own stats they will almost always do low condition damage (unless you might stack them).

Eurantien.4632:

Condition pets are horrible. Since pets have their own stats they will almost always do low condition damage (unless you might stack them).

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQBAKxXeB-TZgZAAQZAA

^so is the tooltip wrong or something? I put rabid amu and it increased confusion damage. Just wondering

Yes, the tool tips are wrong.

StickerHappy.8052:

Drakes: Any of you guys find their f2 hard to aim? (A little easier on the bouncing drakes, Lightning and The poison one) The cone f2 drakes, once the opponent moves a little away from the drake, it cancels the cast, and goes after the foe wasting the f2. B.) If my foe goes a little bit outside the cone or back of the drake, f2 completely misses and wasted again.

Some people use Guard to stealth their pet for 10 sec. Then you can have it crank up the F2 without the target knowing to get out of the way.

Kinda expensive to give up a utility slot just for Guard, but if you’re already running a shout/regen build then you can go nuts with it.

Solandri: and 7 out of ten still sucks this combo…

Aggrostemma.1703:

Solandri: and 7 out of ten still sucks this combo…

Was this meant to be sarcastic? :p

Welcome to ranger, pick from the few good pets and just ignore the rest!

Seriously, you’re going to find out that some pets rock and others are along the lines of “kitten?”

Some can end up being situational for pve but that’s about it. Take the time to try them all and find which one suits your build or possible build the most.

NinjaEd.3946:

Welcome to ranger, pick from the few good pets and just ignore the rest!

Seriously, you’re going to find out that some pets rock and others are along the lines of “kitten?”

Some can end up being situational for pve but that’s about it. Take the time to try them all and find which one suits your build or possible build the most.

I did try them all lol.

The thing is I mentioned this already on my main question.
The current status of some pets are limiting the choices.

Would you choose the Confusion drake? No. Why?

No Condi Dmg stat for pets f2 is lackluster
f2 is hard to aim, very situational.

Same for Fire drake.

Only pros i have for drakes is that it is sturdy, blast finisher on swap and cleave attacks but thats about it. But it is slow as kitten too untraited.

Porcine? Maybe yes maybe no.
Concept is good, f2 mechanic is kinda iffy because it requires you to pick up the loot. and your foe can also do that use it against you.

Now if you compare it to the Canine and Spiders and Birds family

Spiders. Ranged. Soft CC. — This is the reason why it is picked most out of all the other pets. Immob does not need Condi dmg stat
Hound- Knockdown, Immob Cripple, No Condi dmg stat needed, Deals okay damage.

Hound and Wolf f2 – Range is good, howl in place. Now compare it to the drakes f2? cone, often fails.

Birds have the swiftness thingy yes, but the f2 is so spammable ( 2 hits, low cd, no activation time)

Now based on the comparison, I think you would rather normally choose these 3 families above.

well apart from the lack of condi stats for pets , the bonus pet stats from beastmastery are So low its nearly pointless.

i’d rather they made it 35pts(or 20) per Tier of adept minor, master minor , grandmaster minor.

so total at 6 in beast mastery will add 210 to all pet Stats< not excluding condi and healing with Expertise Training the pets condi stats will cap at 560points+ 875 power+condi from max might totaling 1435 condi damage.

but now i’ve done some thinking about why there isn’t any condi stats on pets you can clearly see why.

this plus the rangers Stats / condi damage in addition to a condi based pet attacks, would push it over acceptable DoT and Dps limits balanced between the ranger + pet.

Can’t compair a AoE howl vs a close range High damage Cone 2.75k base without might or Signet of the hunt added is a huge amount of damage and for a cone attack I expect it to be hard to land , increasing that 2.75k damage by 150%5% (predators onslaught) and taking into account if a Squishy targets gets hit by the cone , it will nearly down them if they don’t dodge out of it and thats why i tend to use a Crippleimmobilise attack befoe unleasing a Cone attack thats a huge damage boost.

hence why the wolfs Damage on its howl is so low, its only a damage factors so it can be effected by blocked and dodges also because it always effects 5 targets in a large area.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

well apart from the lack of condi stats for pets , the bonus pet stats from beastmastery are So low its nearly pointless.

i’d rather they made it 35pts(or 20) per Tier of adept minor, master minor , grandmaster minor.

Wait, going full into BM gave 300 all stats right? (excluding HP and condi damage)

Also, yes the condi damage for max might is really high but that is really an ideal situation, and how many times would this happen in a realistic fight? so having 0 condi damage stat is still the main point that some should have it as a stat, they just make their pow stat lower as a compromise?

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

Can’t compair a AoE howl vs a close range High damage Cone 2.75k base without might or Signet of the hunt added is a huge amount of damage and for a cone attack I expect it to be hard to land , increasing that 2.75k damage by 150%5% (predators onslaught) and taking into account if a Squishy targets gets hit by the cone , it will nearly down them if they don’t dodge out of it and thats why i tend to use a Crippleimmobilise attack befoe unleasing a Cone attack thats a huge damage boost.

hence why the wolfs Damage on its howl is so low, its only a damage factors so it can be effected by blocked and dodges also because it always effects 5 targets in a large area.

Yes damage wise they can’t be compared. But take this for example again, The confusion drakes f2 is based on a condi? So why not lower its base damage? At its current state, (no condi damage stat for pets) whats the confusion for? it ticks for 148 on each skill use. So is confusion only for a cover condition?

If we had condi damage stat for pets that are based on damaging conditions, it would go towards their condi side, so lowering the base damage for that drake or even fire would be reasonable right?

This is the reason some of the pets are whack choices, i think they were just copy pasted skins and changed the f2 and Anet did not even bother checking, Oh hey this pet deals burning or etc, Let’s lower the base damage! and add condi damage scaling!

The only justifiable drake pet with the f2 is the Lightning drake, Bouncing f2, 2.7k base damage, low, precision (not always crits) No added condi effects unless traited to its f2. now that is more reasonable than the others wouldn’t you agree?

They need to add more control over pet skills so you can do combos with your own. Like condibomb, cc chains, burst, etc.

For example, the drake, if we could activate the Tail attack as the F2, we could have an on demand blast + weakness, which gives more utility but isn’t game breaking.
The spider could have the poison field that way too, which means you could chain it with f2 so it has some use, birds with on demand swiftness, canines with with knockbacks, and the list go on.

That alone would make all pets useful and the whole class more fun without making it OP.

And yes, I know most of these things could be done just by having the pet on passive and using the attack buttom. But thats exactly the problem, it isn’t precise. We’re forced to make that or rely on RGN and it has several problems. Like we can’t blast combo fields if we’re not in combat or if the fight goes on we can’t know when people will use their combo fields and/or t he drake will use the blast, we have the pet on passive which means it can’t do damage to make it use that one skill on the right time, etc.

So, rewarding skill based gameplay instead of what we have now, a random punishing mechanic.

Edit:

Let’s see other classes:

Thief. Steal deppends on the class targeted so the thief can decide what he needs more. Necro’s fear, warrior’s whirling axe, rangers condi clear + regeneration, mesmer’s plasma, etc. But that’s not all, it also Shadow Step to the foe, wich is really good. And it can be traited to do damage, daze, condi bomb with one of the stronger conditions in the game (confusion), grant stealth, etc.

Mesmer. They have a set of skills that work for raw and condi damage at the same time. It also works for CC and survibability.

Enginer. The mother of utilities. For real: stealth, boons, condi to boons, condi damage, healing, etc. This is like rangers should work, but instead of decide which utilities you want to affect your toolbelt before the fight begins, you have to decide which pets you want to use. So, in total we could have 4 utilities (two on each pet) with their cooldowns and the pet switch mechanic CD, and the punishing dead pet mechanic still in place.

And these are just some examples. But all the classes have good class mechanics (please necros, don’t kill me, I know you have some problems too) that make you play with it, not just decide if you want it on passive and a attack / comeback buttom.

StickerHappy.8052:

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

well apart from the lack of condi stats for pets , the bonus pet stats from beastmastery are So low its nearly pointless.

i’d rather they made it 35pts(or 20) per Tier of adept minor, master minor , grandmaster minor.

Wait, going full into BM gave 300 all stats right? (excluding HP and condi damage)

Also, yes the condi damage for max might is really high but that is really an ideal situation, and how many times would this happen in a realistic fight? so having 0 condi damage stat is still the main point that some should have it as a stat, they just make their pow stat lower as a compromise?

my bad worked it as 5pts 1 point / 1 point per trait, the new system got stuck in my head :p

ya its 300 atm but pets have been nurfed a lot since Release, its not just a case of lowering the power, to gain a condi boost though.

its Adding extra sources of damage in addition to a well built Ranger , it’ll add More Power / BM diversity but all it will do is make LB Full zerker builds even stronger where the pet can deal just as much damage without taking a loss from the lack of pet traits, like the build does currently so i’d say its just too much Balancing to be done currently.

i just feel adding Additional condi damage souces from condi stats, pets having there own trait trees,in the current Balance patch could mean bursting someone in a chain from 100-25% with no chance to recover because off CCs and pet bleeds.
putting condi stats on pets would push it over the edge.

making pets Ascended stats(including condi and healing +125 stats) puts the pet machanic on equal ground to other classes machanics that use Ascended gear.

starting here would give it some ground work to build on to see if the 125+ pet condi and if you add a expertise training/rending attacks keeps it within reason from becoming overpowered.

i’d rather keep the pets power stats the same than lower them for a bit condi damage.

making them ascended makes more sense.

someday ^^ gets the idea thats much more Reasonable and party friendly for combat/out of combat situations.

@Zenos

I dont see how it will be OP, reducing their power stat and adding condi damage and make it their primary stat. Its a fair compromise. wouldn’t you agree? so basically we’ll get like a rampager stat, high prec mid pow and mid condi kinda thing.

Adding trees would also not make them op, then just remove the pts we get in beastmaster by half then add reduction in pet swap. so you only get 150-200 pts and you get %reduction of 30 if you go full.

The trait tree itself would allow you to customize your pet to be viable to taking traits on our own tree just to make some pets half decent.

its the combination of Traits , whats going to fill those pet slots , if they move to a Pet Tree.

More trait buffs for the ranger? its a power creep if anet were to add pet trait trees.

i see what you are saying Balancing the power between the ranger and pet is much more complex than just Reducing power and adding some condi stats.

you’ll have to consider the combined Burst/ dps Potentional if those changes where to happen.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

its the combination of Traits , whats going to fill those pet slots , if they move to a Pet Tree.

More trait buffs for the ranger? its a power creep if anet were to add pet trait trees.

i see what you are saying Balancing the power between the ranger and pet is much more complex than just Reducing power and adding some condi stats.

you’ll have to consider the combined Burst/ dps Potentional if those changes where to happen.

So whats the best approach then?

StickerHappy.8052:

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

its the combination of Traits , whats going to fill those pet slots , if they move to a Pet Tree.

More trait buffs for the ranger? its a power creep if anet were to add pet trait trees.

i see what you are saying Balancing the power between the ranger and pet is much more complex than just Reducing power and adding some condi stats.

you’ll have to consider the combined Burst/ dps Potentional if those changes where to happen.

So whats the best approach then?

well this is a reason why its hard to Balance a Ranger without taking the pet out of the Equations.

so all your wanting is a condi stat to have a value on pets , making them ascended pet stats to include condi and healing , gives them the option to boost Rending attacks , incombination with Expertise training .

with Shareboons or even Beastmasters bond , the might taken into account too.

could land the pet with a Decent amount of condi DoT without giving them too much condi stats.

the other side of things would be to Redesign some of the pets to be Condi based but anets stance on pets is they want any pet to be useful to any build used , hence why they lifted the limits on some pet traits removing the Requirement to use certain pets for utility.

3 things need to be added or changed to bring the Rangers machanic back in balance.

1. Pets need Buffs , not just a chunk % damage, the cooldowns on some skills need Mixing up a bit , minor Pet trait adjustments improving the boon duration for Blue MoA for starters 4secs is weak for that cooldown and it need Concentration Training to be viable when matched with its cooldown.

freshen up the mix loose the staleness.

maybe Tweek the Pet swap times by a few less seconds 5 secs seems fair to work with mighty swap more effectively.

improve the appalling base Regen on the furn wolf , without Traits its lackluster.

2. the ascended stats on the pet make an overall 5% increase on everything the pet does, including condi damaging attacks also giving pets a 125 condition stat.

3. Optional f2’s

anet can’t do much about Pathing ect, but they can do somthing about the Staleness on pets , through the cooldowns and improving the overall stats of all pets .

thanks to pet nurfs and the ascended stats our pets got left behind way behind, these changes are need if we wish to see Balanced pets.

Anet wants pets to be a part of the class , not just a Utility item as they clearly have shown over the last few patchs .

this is the only way i can see any improvements without Removing them from the overall Equations/traits that intwine with the ranger itself , and treating them as the Equal to a one button Utility, for ever being put on passive lead me to think god that is boring even more than now.