Guild Wars 2

My jaguar would like a word with you

I can’t wait until people realize how hard our pets can hit now. The longbow changes seem trivial in comparison.

The other day I was fighting a guardian in the clocktower. She eventually had to pull a retreat because my pet’s damage was too much combined with my sustain. So she ran off. I let her go and stayed to cap the point, but my pet pursued. The pet ended up downing her on her way to home point because I used F2 to cripple her and my pet got in a few extra 3K auto attacks.

I was able to chase her and get her down while capturing the point simultaneously.

That’s not even mentioning all the off-point skirmishes I’ve been able to fight in while capturing the point at my leisure. Longbow’s range is nothing compared to the range your pet can travel without you.

Yep.. Honestly I’ve always loved my pets. They could definitely use some work here and there but I’m happy with them being a part of our profession. All the pet haters aren’t real Rangers (:

My drake rarely gets any good hits because of how slow she is but dat cleave… Friggin’ awesome for flipping camps.

I remember when the jaguar maul hit for good damage without 4 skills on cooldown and 25 stacks of bond.

Them’s where the days…

I still prefer my wolf – knockdown, fear, cripple . . .

Works pretty well so far.

I genuinely think they’re useless in DPS builds – except for tanking mobs in PvE.

They’re too slow in all regards. The utility is really never on time and the damage would just be better served coming from my own character’s skills.

I’ve been playing axe/bm quite a bit in yoloq and whilst they can hit hard they still get cc’d too often to apply real pressure.

Moving targets, bad pathfinding, lots of random cc = pet does not connect very often.

People create selfish (aimed strictly at buffing the Ranger) builds so they can roleplay an archer and the complain that Pet sucks, dies to easy, is worthless, etc. Pet’s have been able to do great amounts a damage for a long time and are very capable of staying alive in good hands. Most of them have more health and/or toughness than the Ranger himself. Their primary downfall is not being able to attack while moving. All of these ‘let me perma-stow’ kind of complaints are simple L2P/L2Build issues.

In PvE, against bosses, Ranger/Pet is capable of dishing out 100k+ bursts with very short setup time. I’m also very happy the FS nerf was reverted in such a short time.

Now if only opposing players would stand still like the test golems.

Pets arent useless, they absorb my conditions like champs! And yea Sparky the river drake does have some mean cleaves!

To those that know how to use them, birds are very very terrifying.

TBH, with all the rangers using RF. The reality to me is that BM is still one of, if not our strongest specs.

I’ve had games where I’ve terrorized entire teams with my BM and demoralized them to the point of rage quits in tournaments.

lordhelmos.7623:

To those that know how to use them, birds are very very terrifying.

TBH, with all the rangers using RF. The reality to me is that BM is still one of, if not our strongest specs.

I’ve had games where I’ve terrorized entire teams with my BM and demoralized them to the point of rage quits in tournaments.

The birds are brutal and the ammount of QQ you get for using them is, amazing.

Jaguar crits for 8k with no point on BM. So I guess that 12k could get a lot higher with full buffs.

On point: pets were never useless. They were weak before the health buff sure, but they were far from useless. A ranger that actually knows how and when to command or swap his pets never complained about them being totally useless…

The problem with pets is that they have no player brain. In some ocasions you can call them back to avoid AoE with F3, as you evade it, but in other ocasions they are not that fast.

A good counter to that would be to either make ranger pets immune to damage when the ranger rolls a dodge for 2 seconds at least so the pet will have time returning to you and not staying in the AoE.

Slavi.9137:

My jaguar would like a word with you

Wow, that golem dude is such a noob.

Golems should move … and learn to dodge :-p

Please keep in mind that this game does have more to offer than just small group combat in PvP. In WvW pets really do have very legitimate issues due to all the AE that’s spammed without cause or concern. I would actually consider them useless there. Especially in GvGs or guild zerg groups.

Atherakhia.4086:

Please keep in mind that this game does have more to offer than just small group combat in PvP. In WvW pets really do have very legitimate issues due to all the AE that’s spammed without cause or concern. I would actually consider them useless there. Especially in GvGs or guild zerg groups.

They really are kind of squishy in WvW when in zerg situations. But then again, a lot of things turn surprisingly squishy when zergs are involved. Pets, thieves . . . gates . . . walls . . .

… insert anything without some sort of damage immunity skill.

Slavi.9137:

My jaguar would like a word with you

Call us when your jaguar can hit a moving target.

The issue has never been that pets are useless, the issue has always been that they are far less useful than they are required to be. We need them to hit moving targets, to be alive in dungeons and alive in zergs and alive in team fights are they can do none of that. Their survivability is reasonable for 1v1’s and open world pve and thats about it.

There might be some leeway if you are full on BM and running SotW, or if you are super bunker and sharing your regen with the pet, but really, the state of pets is pretty unacceptable. 2 years in and we cant hit moving targets, mitigate aoe damage, mitigate insta-death boss mechanics or save pet names? GG.

Amusingly (at least to me) … I am most bothered by the inability to save pet names. Heck, let me save them client-side!

Atherakhia.4086:

Please keep in mind that this game does have more to offer than just small group combat in PvP. In WvW pets really do have very legitimate issues due to all the AE that’s spammed without cause or concern. I would actually consider them useless there. Especially in GvGs or guild zerg groups.

The game is ballanced for a 5 man group. It is not ballanced for 30 ppl group nor a 60 ppl group. You do not need skills to win in those situations. If in ANY game AoE caps exist, the raid vs raid outcome will be won by the side with more numbers.

Zergs require no class knowledge or skill.

Not a class issue.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

You do not need skills to win in those situations. If in ANY game AoE caps exist, the raid vs raid outcome will be won by the side with more numbers.

Zergs require no class knowledge or skill.

Not a class issue.

I’m sorry but this is just not true. The term zerg-busting rings a bell? Raid vs raid will be won based on group comp and coordination. Unless numbers are skewed unrealistically. 10 vs 100 is of course a numbers game.

Raven.9603:

Call us when your jaguar can hit a moving target.

The issue has never been that pets are useless, the issue has always been that they are far less useful than they are required to be. We need them to hit moving targets, to be alive in dungeons and alive in zergs and alive in team fights are they can do none of that. Their survivability is reasonable for 1v1’s and open world pve and thats about it.

There might be some leeway if you are full on BM and running SotW, or if you are super bunker and sharing your regen with the pet, but really, the state of pets is pretty unacceptable. 2 years in and we cant hit moving targets, mitigate aoe damage, mitigate insta-death boss mechanics or save pet names? GG.

This hits the nail on the head. It doesn’t matter if you pet can hit for 12k or 120k if it never hits. Pets are great in PvE, and are even useful in a lot of boss fights if used well. However, any fair to good PvP/WvW player will completely avoid the pet by always moving. I’ve run into a ton of wolf pets and only ever been knocked down once.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Atherakhia.4086:

Please keep in mind that this game does have more to offer than just small group combat in PvP. In WvW pets really do have very legitimate issues due to all the AE that’s spammed without cause or concern. I would actually consider them useless there. Especially in GvGs or guild zerg groups.

The game is ballanced for a 5 man group. It is not ballanced for 30 ppl group nor a 60 ppl group. You do not need skills to win in those situations. If in ANY game AoE caps exist, the raid vs raid outcome will be won by the side with more numbers.

Zergs require no class knowledge or skill.

Not a class issue.

Even with just your 5 people on a point, the pet’s value is diminished to the point of being nearly useless. I’d also question if this game is balanced at all let alone at a 5v5 or even 1v1 level. But that said, this is why there’s so much support for a petless ranger option. Balanced or not, the largest segment of the population plays WvW at some level and the pets range from ineffective to useless there. I believe it was during it was the ToL tournament where GW2, at its highest viewership, was still dwarfed by the player ran GvG tournament hosted around the same time?

I also strongly disagree with your comment about skill or knowledge being involved.

Ever since they improved pet AI in that patch a few months ago, it’s been mostly a L2p issue for pets. Even more so in ranger’s current situation. Post-patch, the only time my ranger’s pet dies in wvw is when I die as well or come close to it. Now granted I use my moa as a buffbot and spiders to be ranged but it makes sense that some pets are better than others when the nature of the fight itself changes.

The only they need is more aoe. But that applies to the ranger in general.

My bird can hit pretty reliably, actually. Between Intimidation Training, my sylvan hound’s cripple, and my axe’s chill my opponent isn’t moving fast enough to kite my raven, who almost always has swiftness, without blowing cleanses and dodges left and right.

I also find people don’t actively try to avoid my raven most of the time anyway. They are too use to it not being a threat. In team fights people might not even notice it approaching.

Raven.9603:

Slavi.9137:

My jaguar would like a word with you

Call us when your jaguar can hit a moving target.

The issue has never been that pets are useless, the issue has always been that they are far less useful than they are required to be. We need them to hit moving targets, to be alive in dungeons and alive in zergs and alive in team fights are they can do none of that. Their survivability is reasonable for 1v1’s and open world pve and thats about it.

There might be some leeway if you are full on BM and running SotW, or if you are super bunker and sharing your regen with the pet, but really, the state of pets is pretty unacceptable. 2 years in and we cant hit moving targets, mitigate aoe damage, mitigate insta-death boss mechanics or save pet names? GG.

It’s not like we have access to 2 stuns, great chill uptime, immobilize, and permanent cripple right? Or how about the fact that there are ranged pets which don’t have to chase the target around to hit them. Oh and there is that trait that gives our pets stability every 10 seconds if they are disabled. I’m not saying they can’t be improved, but they are far from useless like many here believe, to the point where they say you should be able to disable them completely. People need to understand that yes when they are using a longbow and trying to kite their opponent and knocking them around with point blank shot maybe they shouldn’t be using a jaguar.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Atherakhia.4086:

Please keep in mind that this game does have more to offer than just small group combat in PvP. In WvW pets really do have very legitimate issues due to all the AE that’s spammed without cause or concern. I would actually consider them useless there. Especially in GvGs or guild zerg groups.

The game is ballanced for a 5 man group. It is not ballanced for 30 ppl group nor a 60 ppl group. You do not need skills to win in those situations. If in ANY game AoE caps exist, the raid vs raid outcome will be won by the side with more numbers.

Zergs require no class knowledge or skill.

Not a class issue.

This 100% not true and the only people who believe this are either awful in WvW to the point that they simply die because the enemy has more hammers or have never played it.

Pvp Pet tip , Moment of Clarity Pink MoA f2 cone daze , increased by 100% . hits targets inside a cone , Risky but can lockdown just like a Aoe.

Gs moment of Clarity Ranger 6/6/2, GS main , Second weapon S/A or LB spider+Moa , muddy terrain , SoR and Qz.
don’t use zerk use Kights for this set up.

off-hand axe for on point Whirling defence and skill 4 inturrupt pull even more Effective while target is dazed.

provides eavy CC, Daze , AoE heal(a heal is a heal and is always useful) will allow the ranger to use Troll ungent and still maintaince Evades/Rng Condi removal.

Pets are not useless but a (unrealistically set up) fully buffed pet with an immobile PVP golem…?

I can’t begin to say how wrong this thread is…

Ehecatl.9172 and DavyMcB.1603 hit two separate nails on the head.

This has been discussed before … several years (2) ago. And a year ago. And multiple times in between.

This is why I think screenshots are largely useless for these things.

Now, if you want to do some pet damage analysis … record video and have it chase the golem that is running without swiftness.

Then, figure out how to get it to chase someone with swiftness (or at least 25% movespeed).

Pet’s aren’t useless, but they are not the crazy monsters the pic shows either.

Well even witheout the stack of pet bloodlust wich require pet never or near to be switched you gota remember that with axe, might on crit from trait, might on crit from weapon, shared boon a pet can prety much perma cap 25 might.

My snow leopard doesnt always cap the 10k in pvp but can easily pwn the hell out of you with a fair 8k bite (ive seen so many people rage about this ahahah even one calling me hack)!
Why snow leopard? because the leap is icy and pin you immobile wich allow him to chain you to the death, people constantly get destroyed by my cat when in spvp because the thing can easily topple the hp of a player within seconds (icy axe + pet constantly smashing you = your prety much dead especialy if squishy)

Swiftness and movement speed are irelevent once you walk from behing frozen back in those years axe was unreliable due to no advantage save for the ice axe, now that i spam pulling grabs freeze and might on hit you might revise your statement especialy since ive been chain killing people like mesmer rangers and even signet hambow warriors of late the most hilarous behing thief who scream in horror as they are revealed out of stealth by sick em.

I must admit however ive so far been running zerker with this build, maybe its high time i move on to something running on precision and tankyness

I don’t think I’ve seen that golem in any fractal… which is the only action my Ranger sees now-a-days.

I still keep my pet on passive 100% of the time in any level fractal I am in. Only pets worth a kitten is the F2 on the 5 might stack cat and the F2 fury on the red bird…. That’s about the only thing I use pets for because they just are NOT good enough yet even with the improvements they made last patch.

Want to make pets better? Make them perma-stowable with or without buff. Don’t care. Or, give me an F5 on the active/guard button.

I prefer the river drake actually…. no stacks still gives a 5k opening strike, it survives quite well and its f2 is a long range bouncing burst that can take down the heavy golem to medium health. It works well on people that try to rez

thefantasticg.3984:

I don’t think I’ve seen that golem in any fractal… which is the only action my Ranger sees now-a-days.

I still keep my pet on passive 100% of the time in any level fractal I am in. Only pets worth a kitten is the F2 on the 5 might stack cat and the F2 fury on the red bird…. That’s about the only thing I use pets for because they just are NOT good enough yet even with the improvements they made last patch.

Want to make pets better? Make them perma-stowable with or without buff. Don’t care. Or, give me an F5 on the active/guard button.

seems we got a hater there.. well sadly for you bro pet will never be perma stowable… also its very likely you may see a few beastmasters in PVE dungeon in the future

Beastmaster in dungeon? I’d be interesting to see how that goes. If one of you does that, please record (if you can).

I always appreciate seeing new things be tried out with an actual effort behind them.

actualy i ran it before patch and it could pack up quite a fairly good amount of damage the problem was actualy related to might instability (old axe bm build ran on a similar principe to what we have now using the critical might sigil so you ned a lot of hit to cap the 25. now if you rune critical might rune + critical might trait and boonshare axe becomes the one weapon to perma stack might on pet in about any circonstance

Axe: +1 to 3 might per attack to yourself
crit sigil: +1 might per attack for yourself max 2 (because of the 1 second cooldown)
Crit trait: +1 might per attack for pet, max 3
Result: maximum 7 might per strike wich generaly last long enought to perma 25

Just so to make sure you gain as much might as necesary i recommand using a rune of strenght or hoelback

If you use the horn buff you increase your crit rate by 20% wich likely is already quite high from running a zerker based build so youl likely gain might on most hit

Now for the pet bloodlust stacking it can be usefull at time or suckish at another if your pet is the kind to constantly die. A cat can do an amazing job but if youd rather run something hard to kill i recommand you switch to wolf drake or in the WORSE case scenario a bear, Bear is somewhat tanky but lack serious damage as such it is a poor choice for damage.

Ill mention that if you run the might on signet marksmanship option you can actualy pack in a 10 free vulnerability as well as 3 might per signet use for quite a duration (likely signet of the hunter and signet of the wild for pve) By all mean make sure you got sic em in your skill bar.

how about a build?

Sebrent.3625:

Beastmaster in dungeon? I’d be interesting to see how that goes. If one of you does that, please record (if you can).

I always appreciate seeing new things be tried out with an actual effort behind them.

No matter how much you could buff the pet to even out damage a zerk meta ranger, the fact that so much pve content relies on dodges means the dps pets won’t last long and F4’ing the pets wipes might and bond stacks.

There might be some fights where it works but I’m pretty sure most content would have you rotating pets due to aoe’s too much for it to out dps a player focused build.

kyubi.3620:

Well even witheout the stack of pet bloodlust wich require pet never or near to be switched you gota remember that with axe, might on crit from trait, might on crit from weapon, shared boon a pet can prety much perma cap 25 might.

My snow leopard doesnt always cap the 10k in pvp but can easily pwn the hell out of you with a fair 8k bite (ive seen so many people rage about this ahahah even one calling me hack)!
Why snow leopard? because the leap is icy and pin you immobile wich allow him to chain you to the death, people constantly get destroyed by my cat when in spvp because the thing can easily topple the hp of a player within seconds (icy axe + pet constantly smashing you = your prety much dead especialy if squishy)

Swiftness and movement speed are irelevent once you walk from behing frozen back in those years axe was unreliable due to no advantage save for the ice axe, now that i spam pulling grabs freeze and might on hit you might revise your statement especialy since ive been chain killing people like mesmer rangers and even signet hambow warriors of late the most hilarous behing thief who scream in horror as they are revealed out of stealth by sick em.

I must admit however ive so far been running zerker with this build, maybe its high time i move on to something running on precision and tankyness

In my experience the snow leopard and alpine wolf are never even close enough to have their f2 connect.

Substance E.4852:

Sebrent.3625:

Beastmaster in dungeon? I’d be interesting to see how that goes. If one of you does that, please record (if you can).

I always appreciate seeing new things be tried out with an actual effort behind them.

No matter how much you could buff the pet to even out damage a zerk meta ranger, the fact that so much pve content relies on dodges means the dps pets won’t last long and F4’ing the pets wipes might and bond stacks.

There might be some fights where it works but I’m pretty sure most content would have you rotating pets due to aoe’s too much for it to out dps a player focused build.

You may very well be right, but I’d still enjoy seeing a skilled player try it. I’ve been away from dungeons too long to be a good measure of it myself. Maybe after I get back into them I’ll experiment with it.

Slavi.9137:

My jaguar would like a word with you

Practice dummies don’t fight back or evade or have 3k armor.

DeathPanel.8362:

Slavi.9137:

My jaguar would like a word with you

Practice dummies don’t fight back or evade or have 3k armor.

The heavy golems have 2.6k armor 3k is only ~13% better. Once again, we as rangers have a ton of access to cc, we have great chill uptime, access to permanent cripple, immobilize, and 2 stuns. So having your pet hit them is not so hard. Of course if you are trying to kite them with a longbow and keep knocking them around with point blank shot your jaguar won’t be hitting much. You have to use the right pet for the situation.

Pets are not as useful as they could be how’s that? Personally I find them annoying.

What I want to make the pet useful to me is for them to add a “Guard” mode in addition to “Attack” and “Passive”.

Put the pet in Guard Mode and it will stay near you and attack that which attacks you. That way it won’t run off and get itself killed but it won’t sit there and be passive like my mini-pet.

Rather than that guard mode, I’d prefer to just be able to set the Passive/Aggressive button to a hotkey. I hate having to click it … any other class have a class mechanic they have to click the button for? Nope :-p

Hotkey, please.

As far as pets, weapons, etc. … yes, you need to pick the correct pet for the job. If knocking opponents around, a ranged pet might serve you better … especially spider given its extra immobilize as well as the poison field for firing arrows through.

If needing help kiting, that dog on passive till you want him on your target is your friend.

Personally, when I’m on my Mesmer, the Ranger pet is the most aggravating part for me about fighting a Ranger. It keeps me from having my leisurely pace where I try to wear them down … now I have this pet nipping at me causing me to have a sort of “time limit”. Not to mention it’s a giant “here’s the real one!” if the Ranger was smart enough to tell it to attack me before I started to “be Mesmer” :-p