Guild Wars 2

I remember reading somewhere that pets were supposed to be about 30% of the total dps that a ranger outputs. That seemed high compared to what I thought was happening in my build, so I decided to collect some data.
http://youtu.be/sLlGMDtoams

In case you want to save the five minutes, in all three of my tests the ranger did 88% of the total damage and the pet did 12%. The tests are not “controlled” tests in any way. I take out a sentry, then capture a camp, and then captured some video from a chaotic fight that had a couple significant parts that were 1v1 and some parts with multiple targets. I’m not trying to optimize for one kind of damage over the other during the tests – I’m just playing how I normally play. I use the pet F2 skills at times and count the damage as the pet’s damage.

I’m using drakes, so they aren’t heavy dps pets. The only trait augmenting the pets is “agility training”. The other interesting observation is that, against human opponents, the pets do about 8100 of the 31,000 damage against opponents who are downed. If you take that damage out of the totals, the pets are doing about nine percent of the total. Doing damage to downed opponents is valuable, but it’s interesting that it makes up more than a quarter of the pets total output even with agility training.

The questions this leaves for me are:
- Is agility training worth it? (My tests on moving golems showed about a 25% increase in dps for the drakes – but the pet numbers are pretty small in the bigger picture)
- If I managed the pets better, would they be a lot more dps?
- Should I try to add in a higher dps pet? (the big value for me in the drakes is that they are good at soaking up condition damage)
- Maybe the right strategy for me is to think of the pets purely for utility value?

I’m really happy with the build I have now. I don’t think I actually need more damage from the pets. I’m just thinking about whether their are better options. This is how the build looks right now:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNQQNAnfVjEq0ua3KmrQ1aABhYVQ73wW2RZbp8jR82D-TFyCABA8AAO+QAAo+gw3fwT1fm4MAkoSwsU+FAABwRP6RP6RPazcmzcmzcmFCYxaA-w

Ah, I think you’re a bit confused. Pet’s used to do 30% of rangers damage on non pet centric power build. Since a long time now, pet’s damage have been nerfed to the ground due to the fact that pet centric build’s were to good in both damage and survivability.

Now, sure, 12% is a bit low but you’re in a condition build which is more effective for rangers than power build (I mean when you play solo) because condition damage ain’t affected by the specific balance on ranger’s weapon.

In your build, I’m not sure agility training is worth it. You probably should use a spider instead of the marsh drake (for more controle). If you end up with 2 range pet, use pet prowess instead of agility training, you will probably end up with a pet doing more than 12% of your damage.

Edit : just looked at your video. most of your drake blast happen before or after you got a firefield, that’s something you need to fix in your gameplay.

Thx! I’m pretty new to ranger (just a couple of months), so I guess I was seeing something from older times when I saw the 30% stat.

I agree I need to get better with the pets. Given this data, I’m thinking about trying something really different. If the best a tanky pet is going to output is around 12% of my total dps, I might consider giving up more pet dps in exchange for some other benefit.

Thx again

Which only makes the argument “your attacks do 70-80% of the damage of the other classes because of the pet” laughable.

That’s why you see such an amount of rangers simply running condi builds, because their condition damage is not reduced to accommodate the pet while the base values of their power based weapons are.

Zenith.7301:

Which only makes the argument “your attacks do 70-80% of the damage of the other classes because of the pet” laughable.

That’s why you see such an amount of rangers simply running condi builds, because their condition damage is not reduced to accommodate the pet while the base values of their power based weapons are.

Well, this is the pet class of GW2. Thus, it’s bound to be balanced around the fact that you play with a pet. Beside, the pet can dish out some pretty amazing dps when you use it well even after the nerf to their damage.