Guild Wars 2

Great tier: These pets are a must have in your build.

Good tier: These pets have hidden potential but they are just not as appealing as great tier.

Kitty tier: These pets need work to be brought up to the good tier.

Label clearly if you are rating by PvE, WvW or sPvP

Mine: sPvP

Great:

• Wolf
• Jaguar
• River Drake

Good:

• Fern Hound
• Marsh Drake
• Krytan Drakehound
• Hyena

Kitty tier:

• All pig pets.
• All moa pets
• Every other pets

So much depends on your build, so for me the utility is tied to not putting many points in beastmastery.

I use them more as supplemental damage and for the utility they can sometimes bring. Overall, pet damage is way too low and it hits way too infrequently. (That or our ranger’s damage is too low).

Great (situationally)

• Spiders (WvW and Spvp) with immobilize and weakness. Hit more too.
• Jungle Stalker (all the benefits of a cat + extreme might)
  *Red Moa (long lasting fury can be great in small teams)
• River Drake and Drakes in General
• Birds (hit hard)
• Brown Bear (pulling conditions helps)
  *SHARK

Good:
Porcine (the improvised weapons can be great if clunky) Siamoth is quite good to get stealth. Tough to play well though!!! Don’t help all builds either.
Dogs (wolf could be great but depends on how you play) Love knockdowns!
Cats (especially with condition orientation and bleeds)
Jellyfish (good for escape especially the blue one that chills and you can use horn to blast off the smoke screen)
Bears (they do suck up damage in certain situations that helps such as camps, PvE etc)

Bad:
Devourers (too many of their skills are protecting the Devourer versus utility I can could on being useful). I do like ranged basic attacks though.
Moas with short boons or conditions

I’ve played a ranger for 3027 hours over the past 444 days.
Below is my choice of pet for the 3 types of mode based on my actual experience for credibility.

TPVP Mode- Actual experience=605 tournaments won using a ranger

The Great- Wolf, fear has many application and game changing effects. Deny a stomp,clear enemies whilst ur going in for a stomp,fear enemies away from a capture point or off the map,etc.
The Good- pre nerf Jaguar for dps,Krytan Hound for immobilise on low cd,but due to F2 slowcast and its around the pet, its not a reliable skill on very mobile opponents,Hawk for power/cond dps.
The underutilized- No pets are bad,their use is situational and should complement your build. I don’t use the other pets since they don’t synergize with my build that’s all.

For PVE- Actual Experience= Experienced nearly all there is in the game in pursuit of Achievement points, currently at 15627 achievement points.

The great- Wolf- Fear
The Good- any pet that has advantage over the current objective- depends on what you are doing, dungeon,map exploration,champ farming,etc.
The Bad-any pet that has disadvantage over the current objective.

For WVW-Actual Experience= Rank 176 Bronze Invader- Don’t have enough experience in organised wvw to give any comments. I’m mostly a roamer and do wvw for achievements only.For roaming i use my TPVP set up.

Mostly from Roaming perspective:

The Great:

-Spiders – most reactive F2, nice damage, good health, ranged attack, poison, good F2 choices, awesome web, best pvp pet
-Wolf – KD, good stats, cripple, godlike F2 Fear for 3 seconds. Best pvp pet for small groups
-Drakehound – when F2 is laggy, offers everything what wolf does and short cd AoE 3 second immobilize which is quite helpful
- Drakes – not really a huge fan of running them, but I see their strenghts
- Sharks – coz they’re sharks and eat people alive underwater 1v1

Good:
- Porcines – very strong pets when used right or in a group. Good defensive stats. Amazing F2, but takes time to use. Nice KD charge
- Bears – strong tanks for zergy encounters, can take some hits, best used on passive as damage sponges via Protect Me and condi cleanses
- Cats – can deal some damage but they have terrible athing and no utility outside of dealing damage
- Moas – good source of long-lasting fury, used just to quickly buff boon up before fight when prepairing and then change them to something more useful.

The Kitten :
- Birds – they never hit, they’re squishy and they grant swiftness, useless boon for me. Dead slot
- Devouers – no worth utility, they only shine underwater
- Other, not listed pets

I rank pets based on my experiences. Notice that rank depends very much on pet’s utility. I’m not any fun of dealing damage with pets, where I can use DPS ones for PvE, I can’t vs. other, mobile players who port a lot. I want a pet synergy, to help me or my allies executing my tactic . F2 with damage attached to it or unworthy bad, short condition is terrible choice for me.