Guild Wars 2

Let me be clear this is not a post to whine, or complain, but just to bring up discussion based on personal observations. Now, obviously I’m a ranger. I only have one level 80 character, the ranger. I’ve played it in various PvP forms, from Spvp to WvWvW, from the zerg to duels. I’ve optimized my build around my style; I acknowledge there are some weaknesses it can never overcome, but I try my best to cope with those. I won’t say I’m the most skilled ranger in the world, but I will say put in the same row as the average joe warrior, full burst thief, yes compared to most of them I am very skilled, not to sound obnoxious but that’s from observation and revealed in practical application. I can hold my own in most battles, I rarely complain about anything. However, today for the first time in a long time I got stuck in a 1 vs 1 battle where I realized I could absolutely not win, but not based on a skill difference or lagg or anything. See, as a shaman geared ranger with s/d and gs, I have mobility and healing that can enable me to survive at tank guardian levels if played right, however a large portion of my power, like most rangers is found in my pet. Now, its no problem pressing F3 and pulling my pet out of a zergy aoe, a warrior whirl attack if I see it coming. But what do you do when a player/players are intelligent enough to specifically target your pet before you? I have enough beast mastery invested to reduce the swap cooldown, but today for the first time this was truly a massive issue for me, when I fought a warrior who would immobilize my pet and destroy it in seconds and prioritize its death over mine, turning the battle into a slow but inevitable defeat 100% of the time, no matter how I played or which weapon I took. To be fair, this warrior was incredibly talented, and thinking on that level shows it. Maybe there were better builds, but I’ve never been in a situation where someone literally singled out my pet rather than hitting it by coincidence and completely eliminated half-70% of my damage for extended periods.

As I said earlier, I tried hitting f3 whenever this warrior would do this, but he was simply too intelligent for that to work. Granted I was using cats, which you would say are squishy, yet had I used just about any other pet, I wouldn’t even be able to outdamage his healing at all. (As long as my pet was around which was not often, I had a chance at victory.. at one point his hp was 2-3/10ths max with his heal on cooldown) .. but again, he killed my pet over and over, and alone without it I really am nothing.

So.. I ask the ranger community, when someone singles out your pet, what can you do? I need a non cookie-cutter response, I have dodge roll protection, I hit f3 and pull it out of what I can, I have the -cool down pet swap trait. Also, I wasn’t using “Protect me” during the fight, to be clear. I don’t need noob ranger advice, I need some kind of appropriate counter measure.

Dear lord, please add a tl;dr to this

Faux Sheaux.6179:

Dear lord, please add a tl;dr to this

I just cut out half of it, somehow it ended up kitten and repetitive.

Basically, need strats for when people specifically and intentionally target your pet.

Swap GS with SB. Try to keep your distance with SB most of the fight. When the pet is close to dying, call it back to you to let it heal a little or wait for the swap. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Swap your traits around so you are not the typical 0/0/30/10/30 BM.

Try running with pets that chill or fear. If they can’t get their burst out, they can’t kill pet before swap. If you notice your pet being targetted, try switching it to standby until opponent burns their burst. It is tougher to hit if the pet if the pet is running away. This would also be a good time to pop d5 to slow him down. Swap pet to agro between bursts.

Obviously this takes a good amount of knowledge of other classes. If the opponent is reallly glassy and persistant you can’t do much else either. There is no 100% method to keep it alive.

Hope this helps a bit.

Not sure if this helps ‘cause you already said you were using cats, but were you using a Jag and F2 to its fullest? An enemy that doesn’t see the pet coming and is getting hit for 7-8k from casper the hell-ghost is an enemy on the defensive. I’ve done this against players who have learned to target my pet and it’s worked very well. I use Jag F2 -> QZ -> Sick ’em then LB 3 (for the Vuln) just before kittie the ghost arrives with his opener for his can ’o whoop-kitten. Swap to SB to lay on the conditions and in 2-3 secs my foe is < 50% health and running around like his pants are on fire…….

-Thor

That’s the problem with running a power ranger. You have to go offensive enough to not let them get the chance or defensive enough that it only drags on the fight.

Middle ground is suicide.

This problem is mainly because of your build not the class. Your a pure melee BM so your dont normally put your pet in bad situations: unlike most ranged rangers. The same care an tankiness you take in keeping yourself alive you need to apply to your pet by way of boons.

If you cant use fortifing bond because of point requirements then consider using guard. It provides 10 seconds of protection for your pet.

Bottom line you won’t be able to beat everyone with a build so learn when you can win and not win. If you cant win disengage combat. The reason Ele, thieves and mesmers have success is they can pretty much disengage combat when they need too.

Well, after some investigation, I’ve made some changes to my typical pet set up and am putting it to the test. Namely rolling dual canine; a bit less dps output but the knockdown and greater tankiness are certainly worthy of consideration.

As per the questions, yes I was using the jaguar stealth to its fullest.

As for the question regarding Master’s bond, I have 20 and beast mastery so I can use it quite effectively in WvW.

And for the objections to the build.. I don’t think there’s that many problems with it at all, it was more an objection to a situation I’ve never encountered before. It’s also beneficial for team play in ways very different from the carrion ranger, it’s not like I constantly solo roam. I wouldn’t underestimate the effectiveness of the +vit/condi/healing combo.

Kudos to the warrior and people who target pets though, it takes a certain amount of brilliance to pinpoint weakpoints in a class most people underestimate by nature.

I’ll leave this post up if anyone else encounters a problem with this. Maybe the advice will help them out. TBH, I didn’t really figure out anything new from them. I think I’ll figure out the rest on my own.. I see this as another challenge to overcome, and I don’t think its impossible to deal with, just.. difficult.

Also, the reason I don’t roll shortbow typically is for the extra challenge.. to leave the ranger “comfort zone” so to speak. While it leaves some obvious weak points with engineers, its great in many other ways.

Good luck to all rangers out there.

I was just about to suggest canines.

I never run without them, the KDs are just too valuable. Chain your pet knockdowns, wolfs fear, and GS5 you should have enough time to down just about anyone other than bunker ele/guard.

I run the torch instead of dagger, mainly because if you time all of that right you can basically stun lock him inside of the firefield.

Obviously this isn’t a perfect solution, but I’ve been doing fine with it.

I target other rangers pets sometimes, when I see they play BM bunker. Other times, I put my pet on their pet, avoid the attacks from their pet (which is way too easy), and work on the ranger myself.

I’ve seen the occasional player actually focus on my pets as well, which, depending on the situation, I would say is a smart thing to do, just as I focus on mesmer phantasms in certain encounters.

If you notice the ranger hits you with attacks that barely makes your health bar move (when playing a bunker), while their pet hits like a truck – who is the greater threat?

I think the problem is related to your build, but not in the skill sense. With a full melee build you’re not really doing a lot to create gaps. That makes your F3 almost useless against another melee because you’re not calling your pet away, and there’s no aggro table against a player; it’s still following you around and so still not that far from that warrior if they want to keep whacking away at it.

You probably don’t need to go fully double-canine. Jaguar/Hyena would be a good middle ground because you’d have both a burst pet & a solid control pet (since you can call the buddy for the extra knockdown). But without any ranged attack, you’re always going to have that weak point where your pet is easily accessible to other melee.

You might try a Devourer too, and turn it into a bit of a chasing game to discourage them from hitting the pet.

A well played feline on a dps ranger tends to better than dual canines.
Getting rid of the cat is a pretty big loss in dps especially if you have the trait points to grab the 30% more pet dmg on crit along with 15~ points in beastmastery.

Timing your heal skill, pet swaps, and stealth well will do wonders at keeping the bugger alive. As fights get larger than one or two on twos though, or your against a grenading engi… I just wouldn’t count on any pet living long in melee.

Asthalon.6875:

…Jaguar/Hyena would be a good middle ground….

You might try a Devourer too, and turn it into a bit of a chasing game to discourage them from hitting the pet.

There is no reason for a hyena over wolf short of an intense dislike for time-able fears or a personal conviction that the double will make your main pet much more unkillable. They tend to be subpar and are rarely used to show for it.

Oh and I haven’t seen a devourer in instanced PvP since beta.

garethh.3518:

Oh and I haven’t seen a devourer in instanced PvP since beta.

For players that invest nothing in BM, and don’t like to manage or even think about their pets, I’d say the ranged pets, and in particular the devourers are their best bet of actually having a pet around at all.

For me, I am one of the few rangers still using full exotic/ascended beserker gear, so I would rather have my pets being taken down than me. I use duel dogs in wvw, which is helpful because of the knockdowns and cripples. Using lightning reflexes, lb #4, as well as sb #3/4/5 I am able to keep distance between me and my opponent. Different builds, but I would advise switching to dogs which have a lot of interrupt skills built into them which will help keep your pet’s survival up

I’m curious as to whether this was a duel or a random encounter because each requires different solutions.

If it was a duel and you noticed this the first time, swap pets. A wolf deals pretty high damage with great cc and durability so it won’t get blown up nearly as fast. After your wolf survives the burst, swap to your feline and burst him/her.

If it was a random encounter, you need to generalize your build a little more. You can still rock dual cats, but maybe bring a snow leopard for 8s chill as the other cats have no cc meaning the warrior is practically free to do as he/she pleases. I personally, would always have at least 1 canine with me regardless f the build simply due to there versatility and usefulness in every situation. Just remember to use the F2 at proper moments and canines can be very potent pets.

Honestly, this is part of the reason why the pet is never central to any of my builds. You can’t expect the AI to do everything right all the time. Instead my builds focus on me applying the primary source of damage and the pet bringing heavy cc and secondary damage to the targets.

Edit: Every time I see a ranger with a cat I actually focus the cat with soft cc and test the rangers defense. If he is healing too much or making things difficult I’ll just blow the pet up (twice as he will swap) and then finish him as builds like this tend to do zero damage without the pet.