Guild Wars 2

I’ve decided to start WvWing using my Ranger. I’ve been on the receiving end of some pretty impressing long range attacks, so I wanted to try it out. Aside from a Glass Cannon build, what pet combo works best for WvW?

I don’t play Ranger often, so forgive me for such a noob question.

Hi, pet choice is based on the build you are using and your prefered activites on WvW. Wolf is probably the most common pet for WvW roaming.
Bear is the most common for WvW zerging.

Drakes are also pretty solid overall as well. Great for camps/towers (especially with RaO) as they’re pretty tanky, cleave, and have an AE F2.

If you’re running Empathic Bond, Spiders and Drakes are a good choice for the high HP (alongside good damage/utility).

For roaming Krytan Drakehound or Jungle Spider are often chosen alongside Wolf for their Immobilize F2.

I see a lot of LB rangers running Devourers, but haven’t played with them myself.

Hmmmm, I guess I should take some time to read up on each pet’s F2 skills. I didn’t know there were so many options. That’s my fault for making a lv 80 charr Ranger just for the Cultural Armor.

High maintenance/High DPS: Felines, Birds, Jellyfish.

Moderate maintenance/Moderate – High DPS: Drakes, Canines, Spiders, Shark

Moderate maintenance/Moderate – Low DPS: Moas, Devourers

Low maintenance/Low DPS: Bears, Porcine, Armor Fish

Best tanks: Bears, Porcine, Drakes, Armor Fish.
Best DPS: Felines, Birds, Drakes, Canines, Spiders, Jellyfish, Shark.
Versatile pets: Drakes, Canines, Spiders, Jellyfish. Versatile pets are good for tanking damage, dealing damage, F2 utility and their own attack rotations (eg. canine knockdowns, drake cleave).

As someone who has clocked over 2k hours in to their Ranger, I am very biased towards the drakes. They’re the most reliable pets, dealing moderate to high damage, they can tank nearly as good as bears and porcine, they’re the only pets with cleave and a blast finisher, their tail swipe often deals surprisingly high damage and is a moderately reliable source of weakness. Although all of them have very long cast times on their F2 abilities, they also deal very high damage if they connect. With a little bit invested in to Beast Mastery and some might stacks I’ve seen River Drake and Salamander Drake F2’s crit in the 5 and 6k’s. Canines, Felines and Spiders are the most commonly used DPS pets with Drakes being not far behind in popularity. I have used all pets and I change my secondary pet often depending on the situation but my primary pet always stays a Drake. I cannot recommend choosing one of them to fall in love with highly enough.
Drakes for life <3.

Assuming you’re talking about roaming/small group, canines are generally the most popular choice, for their aoe F2’s (in particular, wolf for an aoe fear, and krytan drakehound for aoe immob)

other popular choices are birds for beastmaster builds, drakes for tankiness (not too useful in pvp though) and blast finishers, and cats for dps

only canines. hound for the immob and wolf for the fear. everything else is garbage. river drake is okay if the zerg is standing still.

So with what was said so far, a Hound/Wolf combo would be pretty good for the AOE CC. Esp. with the changes to Stab coming with the X-pac, right? The more CCs the zerg throws, the higher chance for Stab to run out of stacks.

SpellofIniquity touched on important points, but as someone new to rangers, I feel you should listen to me as I shamelessly plug a guide I wrote a long time ago: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Pet-Explanations/first#post2547101

Basically, this guide doesn’t outright give you recommendations, but it does give you an informed opinion on the various pet types that are around. That said, I’ll agree with spell – Drakes are my pet of choice. If there’s no particular condition you’re going for, Marsh and River Drakes have the strongest F2 abilities.

I think SpellofIniquity pretty much nailed it.

Personally I use wolf, raven and marsh drake. Always have wolf, swap to marshdrake when I’m about to hit a camp or tower and then swap it to raven in case I have to fight. The raven f2 hits hard and the blind is great for stomping.

For running with a zerg I prefer the marsh drake or murrelow for tankiness, might stacking( drake f2) and poison spam on downed players.

Great info. Thanks for the details on pets. Rangers seem more complicated to play than Thief, which I main. I might have to swap one of my mouse buttons for F2 for quick pet controls.

Edit – Ranger might be my new main once I get used to the play style

I can’t help but feel there should be a sticky detailing the uses of each pet class. This question comes up a lot, and unlike some other topics it’s pretty universally agreed by all experienced Rangers what each pet is good for.

If the search box actually worked, I wouldn’t have to post my nub question that was already asked. At least now I have links to detailed analysis of each useful pet.

For my ranged play I use a Forest Spider to burst with poison, and Wolf. Wolf has the fear that can be used when you’re downed to avoid a stomp.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

If the search box actually worked, I wouldn’t have to post my nub question that was already asked. At least now I have links to detailed analysis of each useful pet.

Glad to help Penguin

Cufufalating.8479:

I can’t help but feel there should be a sticky detailing the uses of each pet class. This question comes up a lot, and unlike some other topics it’s pretty universally agreed by all experienced Rangers what each pet is good for.

I dunno, for some reason we still get the occasional person trying to argue that devourer is useful.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

High maintenance/High DPS: Jellyfish.

Jellyfish are surprisingly tanky. The have an aoe blind (dark) field and AoE regen + waterfield which makes them able to tank just about anything as well as giving you some combo options. I use them when soloing underwater champs or for super annoying fights like if some ungodly reason I’m in HotW.

And as a bonus, their whirling tentacles is a quick 25 stacks of might with RaO.

If you take concentration training, moa + jungle stalker are a niche combo that can keep almost perma fury and 5 might stacks up (unfortunately concentration training triggers in combat only, really really dumb)

spiders.. for WvW they mostly stay out of aoe range, hit pretty hard and have great abilities.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Cufufalating.8479:

I can’t help but feel there should be a sticky detailing the uses of each pet class. This question comes up a lot, and unlike some other topics it’s pretty universally agreed by all experienced Rangers what each pet is good for.

I dunno, for some reason we still get the occasional person trying to argue that devourer is useful.

Lmao, agreed. I mean, to each their own. If someone wants to use Devourer’s fine but their usefulness is about the same tier as Bears if not less so. Bears tank better and two of them (brown and black) have decent F2’s. Devourer’s have tanking POTENTIAL… But because they’re ranged attackers and retreat underground when they’re melee’d it goes to waste. Over all, I would place Devourer’s at the very bottom of the list in terms of usefulness.

This whole “they’re good for might stacking with RAO” thing… Yeah, they are. But that means they’re only useful every 120 seconds for the 20second duration of RAO… Outside of the elite, they suck :P.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

This whole “they’re good for might stacking with RAO” thing… Yeah, they are. But that means they’re only useful every 120 seconds for the 20second duration of RAO… Outside of the elite, they suck :P.

Yeah I tested that out awhile back and found that devourers were pretty mediocre for might stacking. They were only good (still not the best) against completely immobile targets. Against another player using any kind of movement buff you’ll be lucky to land any attacks at all.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Cufufalating.8479:

I can’t help but feel there should be a sticky detailing the uses of each pet class. This question comes up a lot, and unlike some other topics it’s pretty universally agreed by all experienced Rangers what each pet is good for.

I dunno, for some reason we still get the occasional person trying to argue that devourer is useful.

Devourers are useful… in water