Guild Wars 2

What’s most effective pet in PvE and PvP?
thanks to your replies

PvE = Jungle Stalker
PvP = Wolf

Wolf, wolf and more wolves.

Tragic Positive.9356:

PvE = Jungle Stalker
PvP = Wolf

This.

And if you against a PvE boss that can’t be crit, I suggest to use drakes.

I like all the Drakes, I like all the cats, I like some bears, and I like wolves.

I also like spiders and the Devourers even though Devourers suck.

I also like the Shark.

Ravinsild.4637:

I like all the Drakes, I like all the cats, I like some bears, and I like wolves.

I also like spiders and the Devourers even though Devourers suck.

I also like the Shark.

We should be allowed to get an elementalist to combo some sort of wind spell on our shark to go full sharknado.

On topic, I like the alpine wolf (though I never used the normal wolf but his fear skill sounds pretty good), the fern hound, for the extra heal and the moas are useful too for the buffs.

All the wolves are good even the Hyena. Hyena can DPS stuff fast with his f2 buddy.

The hyena can cripple, if I recall correctly.
Cripple can be very useful, specially if you are using a bow.

In PvP the wolf is good for control and the birds are good for dps. Drakes come in handy for their cleave and tankiness. Marsh drake f2 + rampage as one = 25 stacks of might.

Ravinsild.4637:

All the wolves are good even the Hyena. Hyena can DPS stuff fast with his f2 buddy.

Lacks Math.

Hyena even with the summoned Hyena buddy will only deal 75% of the standard wolf pet.

50% without the second Hyena buddy.

PvE- Fern hound is my favorite tank for KD and regen. Dungeons are kitties and a spider if there is too much pbaoe going on.

WvW- I run a Raven or Wolf in one slot, Jungle spider in second

Siamoth is your best friend, there is no point to run a ranger without your ugly siamoth.

PvP as others said Wolf. Other very strong pets are the krytan drakehound and jungle spider, but they can never replace the wolf so pick either of these two as the second pet.

PvE people are pretty wrong with jungle stalker. It’s the second best. The best is the jaguar. Ideally you take both but keep in mind jaguar deals more damage. Also worth mentioning the drakes. They are the only pets that cleave and are tankier than felines. They shine in fights where there is a lot of aoe that might kill a squishier pet or if you need to hit multiple targets.

There are also utility pets that have niche uses. Porcines can give you stuff similar to thief steals like stealth, fear and invulnerability, red moa gives a pretty long duration fury, jungle spider has 2 immobilizes etc.

borya.2964:

Siamoth is your best friend, there is no point to run a ranger without your ugly siamoth.

I extremely strongly disagree. Pigs are one of the families that should basically never be used. They do some cool stuff, but when compared to canines they just don’t compare.

I know Flopy uses one though, and I get it since he apparently likes to 1vX on a LB. You could also compare that to the fact that ROM carries PUGs on a berserk GS warrior.

Fluffball.8307:

borya.2964:

Siamoth is your best friend, there is no point to run a ranger without your ugly siamoth.

I extremely strongly disagree. Pigs are one of the families that should basically never be used. They do some cool stuff, but when compared to canines they just don’t compare.

I was kidding, people run the pets they want, who care.

I like the siamoth, he fit my playstyle and my build, and he literally saved me dozens of times. He also have a great pull, dunno where it come from since it’s not in the skills description. Siamtoh/wolf, i can’t remember the last time i tried another pets. Am sappy.

Fluffball.8307:

I know Flopy uses one though, and I get it since he apparently likes to 1vX on a LB. You could also compare that to the fact that ROM carries PUGs on a berserk GS warrior.

I read attentively, i promise you, but i don’t understand.

robertul.3679:

PvP as others said Wolf. Other very strong pets are the krytan drakehound and jungle spider, but they can never replace the wolf so pick either of these two as the second pet.

PvE people are pretty wrong with jungle stalker. It’s the second best. The best is the jaguar. Ideally you take both but keep in mind jaguar deals more damage. Also worth mentioning the drakes. They are the only pets that cleave and are tankier than felines. They shine in fights where there is a lot of aoe that might kill a squishier pet or if you need to hit multiple targets.

There are also utility pets that have niche uses. Porcines can give you stuff similar to thief steals like stealth, fear and invulnerability, red moa gives a pretty long duration fury, jungle spider has 2 immobilizes etc.

And this is wrong.
Jaguar is the pet with highest self DPS. By allowing it to have 100% crits (note that Jaguars already have almost 40% themselves), for 6 seconds with a 30 second cooldown, it’s like boosting the SELF dps by 60%*20% = 12%.
If we assume that the DPS is 30% of the ranger, than increasing it by 12% gives 33,6%…
… So Jaguar’s ability increases your total DPS by 3,5% roughly.

Jungle Stalker gives 5 targets 5 might. That equals 150 power for 5 people. 150 power increase the DPS by roughly 6,8%. For NO ONE BUT YOU.
And you ignore that this goes to 5 people. While your pet is going to get the very same amount of DPS boost since Nature Magic.

If we assume everyone has the same Direct DPS – than Jungle Stalker increases the DPS of one of you (we can assume yours) by 34%.

Beat that with the Jaguar, Sir. Maths disagree with you.

5 might for 10s is worse than 2 blast finishers. If your 5-man group can’t somehow manage 2 blast finishers you have much bigger problems than pet choice.
So it’s not a math issue. It’s a common sense issue!

It’s 15s, so it’s not THAT awful. Having said, it’s mostly obsolete due to phalanx warriors being more common and meta than before. It was also never good in any organized group since they had might taken care of by their 1-2 eles.

I was one of the people originally encouraging it over Jaguar, but Jaguar > Jungle Stalker any day right now. It still has it’s niche use for solo/open world content

robertul.3679:

5 might for 10s is worse than 2 blast finishers. If your 5-man group can’t somehow manage 2 blast finishers you have much bigger problems than pet choice.
So it’s not a math issue. It’s a common sense issue!

What does it have in common with the Maths?
And what does have Jaguar’s ability have in common with blast finishers…?

If you want to shadow the Jungle Stalker that much, you can as well say that Jungle Stalker is useless because you can play a Mesmer… This is about the choices we have. Not about blast finishers or meta warriors or what not.
… There’s no logic in that statement. Not even a common sense.

I’ll go with a somewhat comprehensive list of pets I’ve found useful in various builds. Some pets have the best DPS, but others have their moments.

(White) Raven: Pet of choice for burst builds. Birds’ attacks have a wide range and are as such somewhat reliable. They also do the most damage in a single basic attack of any pet and the Raven has the highest command skill damage of any pet that isn’t a drake.

Owl: Niché use. Owl is the king of chill dealing the most chill of any command skill, even trumping the ice Ice Drake. It’s got the lowest cooldown of any chill command skill too. The pet of choice for the chill ranger, a niché and hilarious PvP build.

Jungle Stalker/Jaguar: Used when you want maximum single target DPS. Dungeons, catssassin, etc.

Wolf/Krytan Drakehound/Hyena: When you want your pet to have some hard CC, look no further than a good dog (or two, or three). Wolf’s terrifying howl is the strongest CC skill of any pet, ruining enemy positioning in teamfights, getting people off points or just plain saving you from a stealth stomp. The Krytan Hound replaces the fear with immobilization and the Hyena gives you two dogs harrassing your opponent with knockdowns.

Black Widow/Jungle Spider: Other spiders have poison (meh) or weakness and vuln (passable) on their venoms. These guys immobilize their sorry victim for 3 days while you saunter behind them, caress their thigh and give them kiss across their neck before plinking them 15 times in the back with your shortbow, tripping them up with mud, making this even more awkward with vines and finishing them off with a splitblade. You probably can only catch a noob with no cleanses in the full thing, but with some finesse you could bait their cleanses and hit ’em with a disgusting amount pain. Notably, they have the highest single hitting auto-attack.

Siamoth: They all forage different items, Siamoth find a blinding stealth item 2/3 of the time and all boons in a can 1/3 of the time. Porcine aren’t awful, but I’ve never seen people have success with them. Like using a Siamoth to give a thief more stealth or something. Their Brutal Charge is notably a 3 second AoE knockdown.

Red Moa: When you aren’t providing enough team-wide fury, it’s pretty sweet. Otherwise Moas are surprisingly tough, but conclusively weak I wouldn’t bother trying to use them.

Brown Bear: Party-wide condi cleanse, it comes in handy. No other pet choice can cleanse conditions, so if your build sorely needs the survivability you can count on the brown bear. No one in their right mind is gonna try and kill it anyhow. You can also use double bears to take down the risen abomination in CoE.

River/Marsh Drake: No pet can take on an army like a River Drake. Its lightning bounces making the damage incredible in a 2v1 and the projectiles have a wide range and track movements, making it difficult to dodge. Drakes are made of tougher stuff than most other pets too and actively draw enemy aggro. Marsh has a bouncing and homing projectile attack that’s even harder to dodge, but deals less damage upfront and makes up for it in poison. I’ve heard the Ice Drake is useful in a specific fractal, but ice, reef and salamander all use a cone breath and often underperform marsh and especially river. Oh, and if you weren’t sold already, Tail Swipe is the highest single hit a pet can made, weakens foes and is a blast finisher.

Whiptail Devourer: For crying at your class mechanic as your pet actively keeps its target away from it and you can never be sure it’s a good time to use its shotgun style command skill.

Shark: Less DPS than Armour Fish, makes up for it in dying faster so you realise you should switch to a different pet. Looks kitten though and it’s not like people are gonna hate you for being suboptimal in underwater combat.

Armour Fish: Haven’t touched it in years because Jellies. Its CC would probably be handy if underwater combat was actually a thing people considered.

Rainbow/Blue Jellyfish: Chilling Whirl, switch out, Chilling Whirl. Ignore the UI bugging out and spam Chilling Whirl when it looks like it’s on cooldown. Jellies put out blinding smoke fields and regenerating water fields while being our highest burst damage and CCing underwater companions. You jelly?