Guild Wars 2

I am rather new to the game, and just got my first character, a Ranger, to lv 80. I got invited to my first dungeon by a friend. I suppose I did as well as possible for a dungeon noob. I obviously was not perfect. My biggest issue, however, was my pet. I was specced bm and survivability, but I could not keep my pet up. It was so bad that I just did not send my pet in, and just used f2 for buffs. Regardless, it would still go down quit a bit. Now, I realize that I am a total noob, so it is probably my fault, but it is still ticking me off. What am I supposed to do to keep them alive? I mean, I could solo champions using a cat in the world, but my bear gets nuked in a dungeon. Please give me some pointers on how to improve. Thank you!

It is very hard keeping your pet alive even in full BM spec. you have to cycle it in and out of combat , burn heals for the pet and swap pets at optimal times . Even then, sometimes it will get instagibbed

Well to begin with you need to become a little familiar with the fights before you become a master micro management BM whose pet never goes down (REALLY hard, requires a ton of micro, but totally possible.

What’s pets are you using? If you’re using cats/birds your pet CAN NOT be in melee as long as any other pet unless you have a lot of other Melee players in your group (or you have a jag + stealth + carnivorous appetite). If you’re wanting to go full on balls to the wall damage pets (bird/cat) you absolutely want pets Prowess and Carnivorous Apetite from skirmishing, it’ll help keep them up big time.

If you’re not too good at pet micro to begin with try using wolves, moas, pigs, or bears they’re A LOT sturdier than the other melee pets (in increasing order), bears are REALLY easy to keep up and a 25 MB bear + sig of stone can shrug off an ungodly amount of punishment that’d make a bunker guardian envious, keep in mind bear pets will never deal as much potential damage as a cat, but, they can stay alive and eat the bosses attacks in most scenarios, and with proper micro that means your group just flat out doesn’t need to worry about them throwing their heavy hitting attacks at them.

Once you get the micro down you can use pretty much whatever, and just swap depending on the needs of the group, I -normally- use a fern hound for the heal, the control all canines have, and the decent damage, and then Hyenas because they have twice the meat shield, twice the spirit procing chance, twice the control, and equal damage (when you add both of their attacks up) than the rest of the canine family.

PS: ranged pets (especially devourers) are REALLY easy to keep up, not to mention devourers deal a good amount of damage (especially when paired with rending attacks and expertise/malicious training) with good survivability and self preservation skills, and then spiders have amazing condition application and control making them very valuable for keeping the enemy where you want them.

EDIT: I almost forgot, in fights where micro management is absolute key (boss fights that aren’t super add oriented/just about every mob in TA) keep your pet on passive so you KNOW where your pet is, and if you lose track of your pet ALWAYS swap him if his health is low or call him back if its ~ 75%. I don’t like the defensive stance unless I always need to be throwing him in/out of combat against a bunch of squishy mobs and I can’t use the move Guard/require more control than that.

“Now, I realize that I am a total noob, so it is probably my fault, but it is still ticking me off.”

There are probably some things you can do better but essentially the fault is with the game design. Players are meant to avoid damage with well time active defense – blocks, evades, dodge, movement. Pets never dodge or block but they do walk around oblivious to red circles so they die. The harder the content, the more damage is dealt for missing a dodge, the faster the pets die. This is even without mentioning fractal agony which is again, through a failure of design, an absolute pet slayer.

In conclusion, don’t feel bad but do still look for ways to get value from your pets in dungeons.

See a red circle? pet swap. See another red circle? F3.

There is a time to use pets and there are times to keep them back. 90% of the time your healing skill isn’t even meant to be for you.

Dont do fractals until the next patch. They will add agony resist to pets then.

KensaiZen.3740:

See a red circle? pet swap. See another red circle? F3.

There is a time to use pets and there are times to keep them back. 90% of the time your healing skill isn’t even meant to be for you.

Dont do fractals until the next patch. They will add agony resist to pets then.

There’s no reason he can’t do low level fractals though they don’t have agony ‘til level 10 and even then it’s fairly easy to keep your pet up most the time I’d say easier than explorers actually, above 20 is probably a much diffrent story I imagine (not that high myself)

Manekk.6981:

KensaiZen.3740:

See a red circle? pet swap. See another red circle? F3.

There is a time to use pets and there are times to keep them back. 90% of the time your healing skill isn’t even meant to be for you.

Dont do fractals until the next patch. They will add agony resist to pets then.

There’s no reason he can’t do low level fractals though they don’t have agony ‘til level 10 and even then it’s fairly easy to keep your pet up most the time I’d say easier than explorers actually, above 20 is probably a much diffrent story I imagine (not that high myself)

You can do up to lv 17 easy, bosses don’t use their agony moves more than ~15s, or are easy for you to get your pet away from (cliff side fractal) so it’s a pretty non issue, I haven’t done past 17 myself due to having 0 AR.