Guild Wars 2

Making a separate topic since I tracked down the (or at least one of the) bugs introduced in the Feb 26 patch. My post in the original “Feb 26 stealth nerf?” topic is here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Feb-26-stealth-nerf/first#post1546922

In a nutshell, critical hits with the cat’s Maul skill are not hitting for the correct damage. With a 30 BM spec and the pet’s prowess trait (+30% critical damage), the critical hits should be doing 180% the damage of a regular hit.

The Bite skill is working correctly.
Bite: 1320.9 (n=7)
Bite, crit: 2361.4 (n=15)
ratio: 1.79, as expected

The Maul skill (which has two attacks in rapid succession) is not.
Maul 1: 923.7 (n=7)
Maul 1, crit: 1156.1 (n=9)
ratio: 1.25

Maul 2: 2002.2 (n=12)
Maul 2, crit: 2171.5 (n=21)
ratio: 1.08

Bug report posted here.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Ranger-cat-pet-critical-damage-bug/first#post1549742

If there are other pets you feel are hitting for less damage since the patch, I encourage you to run your own tests and report the results here. Just be careful not to mix up the damage figures for the different skills (they usually have a distinct animation or the average damage is different from the autoattack skill). Birds are the other pet widely reported as hitting for less, so I’ll try to run some tests with them tonight if someone doesn’t beat me to it.

Eagle was critting for 2k pre patch and now cannot get above 1.7k post patch

Tested the birds and didn’t find anything unusual with the autoattacks. I got critical to regular hit ratios of 1.78 and 1.75.

When I tested the F2 skill, I found another, different, maybe-bug. I started off getting ratios of around 1.6, but stopped testing when I noticed a pattern. The F2 skill is a double-hit both of which do the same damage, unless it criticals. I waited for a regular and critical hit combo so I could compare critical ratio directly. What I found is that:

• Pet’s Prowess (+30% critical damage) is not applied until after a couple attacks. I don’t know if this is how it’s always behaved, or if this is a new behavior. It does not show up as a buff on either the pet or the ranger, so it’s being applied dynamically behind the scenes after the fight starts. You can see it turn on and off by opening the pet dialog with ‘K’ and looking for the 30 next to critical damage. The bottom line is that your pet’s first strike (and frequently the second strike) will never benefit from this trait.

When I opened the fight with F2, the pet dialog showed 0 next to critical damage, and criticals only hit for 150% of a regular attack. I observed the following damage pairs consistent with Pet’s Prowess not being active:

1067, 1601 (1.500x ratio)
1088, 1638 (1.505x ratio)

If you use F2 after the the pet dialog showed a 30 next to critical damage, critical damage was as expected.

1085, 1956 (1.802x ratio)
1060, 1908 (1.8x ratio)

As I understand it, most of you using the birds open a fight with the F2 skill. If you have the Pet’s Prowess trait, this guarantees that the initial double hit will only get 150% damage from criticals. If you use F2 after the fight has begun, it will critical for 180%. Highest crit damage I saw from F2 if I activated it after the first strike was 2048.