Guild Wars 2

Just another time-to-kill comparison. I haven’t seen a recent one, so here it goes.
The few one with commas between numbers (in seconds) are where I bothered with replicate timing.

light target golem, 10/30/30/0/0
lynx 14, 15
snow leopard 17
jaguar 17, 21
river drake 15 (2x lightning b/c bounce), 23 (1x lightning no bounce)
eagle 24, 23
raven 24
owl 26
marsh drake 28
fern hound 30
wolf 30, 33
cave spider 34
forest spider 35
white moa 35
red moa 37
lashtail devourer 41 (no tunneling or knockback), 54 (with tunneling and knockback)
warthog 44
arctodus 47

underwater, light target golem
jaguar 21
snow leopard 23
shark 24
whiptail devourer 26
blue jellyfish 35
salamander drake 40
armor fish 48
murellow 50

edit: added wolf

What happened to the wolf?

WatchTheShow.7203:

What happened to the wolf?

Kills at the same speed as the other dog (fern hound).

WatchTheShow.7203:

What happened to the wolf?

What about it? it was never the best dps pet not likely to improve after being nerfed obviously, it was good for cc and good on moving targets that’s why people use them for pvp and still do.

Thx for posting this man! a lot of people overestimate bird dps…

Nice. But I would like to see numbers on the moving golem.

is this with F2 or without? (might kitty)

Xyonon.3987:

is this with F2 or without? (might kitty)

With F2 on all but pigs and dogs (which have utility F2 skills that lower dps).

Fomby.4295:

Nice. But I would like to see numbers on the moving golem.

I have a feeling dogs and spiders would suddenly rank a lot better.

it amuses me that a shark is weaker underwater than a cat … A CAT!!!

Fomby.4295:

Nice. But I would like to see numbers on the moving golem.

THIS.

no Siamoth or Boar?

Adrian Guardian.9480:

Fomby.4295:

Nice. But I would like to see numbers on the moving golem.

I have a feeling dogs and spiders would suddenly rank a lot better.

The dogs’ knockdown and spiders’ immobilize helps a bit, but don’t really last long enough to get in many attacks. So their ranking goes up, but not as much as you might think.

The biggest improvement I saw against the moving golem comes from pets whose F2 skills chill. e.g. The snow leopard’s kill time against the moving golem drops from 97 sec to 54 sec when F2 is used (vs 34 sec against a stationary heavy golem). So its moving kill time was 185% longer than stationary kill time, but only 60% longer with F2. Chill duration is 13% the cooldown (alpine wolf’s is 10%, snow owl’s is 15%). Malicious training will increase the duration to1.5×.

The dog’s kill time was 100 sec against a moving target vs 58 sec, or about 75% longer. For comparison the moa (which has the quickest and steadiest attacks) took 3.4x longer (240% longer) to kill the moving golem.

I’m not really sure how valid the tests of the ranged pets on the moving golem are. The golem circles around some rocks, which block the ranged pets’ attacks. This creates a huge amount of variability in their kill times compared to the melee pets. Their kill time against the moving golem was about 85% longer, but I’d say the variability means the actual figure is +/- 20% that.

I’d been meaning to finish up my tests, but Anet’s Dec patch notes say they tweaked how pets attack moving targets. Meaning I have to re-run all of those tests; so take the above figures with a grain of salt. (The tests take a long time – moving, moving with F2, moving w/ signet of the hunt, moving F2 signet, moving w/ agility training, 5x for each case to even out any variation. More pressing matters like taxes take priority.)

In the meantime, here are the results for the stationary tests against the heavy golem on land (average of 5 trials each):

Cats: 34.0 sec
Cats w/ F2: Jaguar 32.5 sec, Jungle Stalker 36.2 sec, Lynx 31.8 sec

Drakehound: 57.6 sec, 65.3 sec w/ F2 (fear)

Birds: 45.6 sec, 39.9 sec w/ F2 (hawk bleed)

River Drake: 59.8 sec, 47.3 sec w/ F2 (lightning)

Arctodus (bear): 92.0 sec, 76.0 sec w/ F2 (bleed)

Moa: 61.8 sec, 72.1 sec w/ F2 (buff)

Pigs: 64.5 sec

Forest Spider: 62.7 sec, 60.0 sec w/ F2 (poison)

Lashtail Devourer: 78.9 sec, 67.5 sec w/ F2 (bleed)

Solandri.9640:

Adrian Guardian.9480:

Fomby.4295:

Nice. But I would like to see numbers on the moving golem.

I have a feeling dogs and spiders would suddenly rank a lot better.

Snip

Very nice research. I do like my snow leapords chill, plus it’s a leap which almost guarantees a hit. Couple that with the all of the cripple we have, and it’s some nice single target CC.

Against the moving heavy target golem, in seconds to kill:
snow leopard 67
owl 73
lynx 92
forest spider 90
eagle 93
jungle spider 97
fern hound (no F2) 101
warthog (with F2 weapon used by ranger) 109
krytan drakehound >120
hyena 131
river drake 133
lashtail devourer 148

against the unmoving light target golem, when the ranger picks up and uses the F2 weapon:
boar bone 34
boar rock 34, 33
boar skull 37
warthog scale 26, 26, 26, 26
warthog gunk 32
warthog venom sac 31

Adrian Guardian.9480:

Against the moving heavy target golem, in seconds to kill:
snow leopard 67
owl 73
lynx 92
forest spider 90
eagle 93
jungle spider 97
fern hound (no F2) 101
warthog (with F2 weapon used by ranger) 109
krytan drakehound >120
hyena 131
river drake 133
lashtail devourer 148

4-6 more time to kill the target o.O, pets need a little more of attack range.

did you try it with pet movement boost traited? (only really relevant for melee pets i guess)

urdriel.8496:

4-6 more time to kill the target o.O, pets need a little more of attack range.

You should compare with Solandri’s numbers, those are against the heavy target golem, my other numbers were against the light. It’s more like 1.5x-2x, with spiders having the least disadvantage (only their AoE poison is prone to miss), pets with cripple/chill on attack (like dogs and owl) having medium advantage (chill/immobilize on howl doesn’t help though, the cast time makes it not help the pet) and the rest taking twice their time.

I didn’t try the pet movement trait.

I’m surprised snow leopard isn’t more popular.

Snow leopard beat Owl? I’m surprised; all my test showed that birds have higher damage application on moving targets, on the order of 30% higher. Which matches up with your other numbers pretty well.

What’s special about the leopard?

Rhyse.8179:

Snow leopard beat Owl? I’m surprised; all my test showed that birds have higher damage application on moving targets, on the order of 30% higher. Which matches up with your other numbers pretty well.

I’d love to see the numbers, because I’m surprised birds to so much worse than cats when I test them.

Rhyse.8179:

What’s special about the leopard?

The only cat with a snare. Cats are great for damage, and chill is a very useful condition, like when using a ranged weapon in PvE.

Adrian Guardian.9480:

I’d love to see the numbers, because I’m surprised birds to so much worse than cats when I test them.

I don’t have them anymore- I did the tests a long time ago. It’s possible they’ve changed. The reason is that birds have a much shorter attack animation, and a greater number of their attacks hit the moving target. The difference was quite large, and in favor of birds, back when I did my testing.

Cats have always had the highest kill speed on the stationary golems. This hasn’t changed. It’s just the moving targets.

thomasgjkgwdn.4760:

did you try it with pet movement boost traited? (only really relevant for melee pets i guess)

I’ll reiterate that these numbers are likely invalid, since Anet claims they tweaked how pets attack moving targets. But they do bear out that movement speed makes a big difference.

Snow leopard
unaugmented: 96.7 sec (100%)
signet of hunt: 71.6 sec (74.0%)
reg speed with F2 (chill): 54.6 sec (56.4%)
hunt + F2: 50.4 sec (52.2%)
hunt + F2 + malicious training: 44.0 sec (45.5%)
stationary comparison: 34.0 sec (35.2%)

I made sure not to fire F2 until after the first hit, so the cat would be in combat and malicious training kicked in.

Drakehound:
unaugmented: 99.8 sec (100%)
signet of hunt: 81.6 sec (81.8%)
agility training: 83.0 sec (83.2%)
hunt + agility: 82.5 sec (82.7%)
stationary comparison: 57.6 sec

Essentially no difference between signet of the hunt (25%) and agility training (30%). There is no benefit to having both – the two combined do not stack.

Due to the moving golem running around rocks which block line of sight, run speed increases actually do help the spider:

Forest spider:
unaugmented: 114.8 sec
signet of hunt: 105.3 sec
reg speed w/ F2: 93.6 sec
hunt + F2: 81.8 sec
stationary comparison: 62.7 sec

But not the devourer:

Lashtail devourer:
unaugmented: 152.5 sec
signet of hunt: 158.6 sec
reg speed w/ F2: 129.9 sec
F2 + hunt: 127.0 sec
stationary comparison: 78.9 sec

I’m guessing the extra speed helped land the spider’s poison field more effectively. Or this could just be a fluke due to the huge variability in ranged pet kill times due to LOS issues.

I thought of a way to test the effect of the bird’s swiftness (33%) but haven’t had a chance to test it. Considering there was negligible difference between 25% and 30%, I don’t expect 33% will be much different.