Guild Wars 2

With all the recent updates, pets are been more of a burden to play with. Most of the time my pet is dead, they take so much damage that they dont survive longer than the 20 sec pet swap cooldown. Even ranged pets while live longer somehow end up in a bad spot at the wrong time. What pet are you guys using or strategies to keep it alive, is it better just to leave it passive and lose all that damage, which is like 40% i suppose.

Which they fixed a lot of things wrong with pets in the next patch but it wont happen sadly and i doubt it will in the near future.

In PvE I almost always have a fern hound and when paired with a longbow he gets perma swiftness which means my pet can get in and out quicker which I’ve found is an absolute god send for keeping him alive.

For general PvE I use River Drake + Cat.

For smaller scale WvW skirmishes I use Wolf/Spider + Jaguar/Snow Leopard.

WvW Zerging I use Drake + Carrion Devourer

Regarding keeping it alive, I’ve gotten significantly more skilled in recalling my pet back to me to avoid AoE circles and what not. Sure it’s difficult to keep track of in larger scaled situations, but it does boost their survival much more. I try to minimize swapping-for-survival as much as possible.

I just use two drakes and pray I can swap them fast enough to avoid the 60 second CD. Once the zergs get big enough, there’s just no hope for them really.

I’d like to use my black widow, but the attacks are so kitten slow I prefer others. But in the end it does not matter, you either have to recall or change pets all the time.

I used to use black and white ravens as beastmaster. As spirit-buttons-spammer ranger i use wolf and dog. For power zerker builds cats or birds. Pve and wvw…i prefer playing something else tbh.

I use wolves for roaming and bears for zerging. The bears F2 isnt even that bad in all honesty, and they are so cute and cuddley.. who can turn them down

Wolf and dog more often than not, sometimes fern hound… Their knockdowns are reasonably reliable, and wolf fear is good to have to buy time when downed.

When running with guild raids when knockdowns aren’t as useful I sometimes use bears, drakes, moas, but they are generally on passive and then just used for specific actions that can be controlled to the best of my ability.

For WvW I use drake (used swamp, now testing ice) and wolf on swap. Drake is best pet I can think of for soloing camps and wolf saved me several times when I got downed (sometimes by fearing enemy off cliff lol). I don’t bother to change them when I join zerg, they will be dead anyway >.>
In PvE I change every fight. Mostly drakes and cats, sometimes ranged ones.
s/tPvP? Canines all the way! Hyiena and wolf.

Fern Hound & Brown Bear on ground, with Shark & [soon-to-be-acquired] Armor Fish underwater.

PVE – Wolf, River Drake/Brown Bear
Dungeon – River Drake/Brown Bear
WvW – Wolf/Hound for roaming
WvW – Wolf/River Drake for small fights
WvW – Jungle Spider/River Drake for zerging… I like the wolf F2 but it’s worthless when there’s skill lag.
Water – Jelly/Shark
I wish they’d let you have pet pairings that you can switch on the fly with macros instead of going into a clunky window and change pet individually.

I use Reef and River drakes, the AoE, F2 skill, high HP, cure, blast finisher, all that makes them amazing at PvE.

ZvZ – Wolf/Black Bear or Brown Bear (based on what the group wants)
Roaming – Wolf/Drakehound or Cave Spider
PvE – I just use my PvP pets for practice because it really doesn’t matter what you choose.
Dungeons – Really depends on the dungeon, but usually a cave spider on at least one pet.

If you take a second you can see a pattern in my choices. I aim for pets that bring control and/or weakness (because the new weakness is very strong). They already bring poor damage to the table sine rangers have very short duration hard cc. so i scrap that factor from the start and pick pets that can help me land the skills i need (or reduce the enemies potential to deal damage) to win the fight.

Above water: reef drake, carrion devourer

They poison and confuse enemies, vour does two shots while drake does ape melee
The vour also does poison aor

In water: reef drake, shark

Reef drake does aoe confuse shark bleeds

By far my two most used ones are hound and wolf because of their CC. Used to use jags but since BM been destroyed i ignore them completely. For pve i use double spider for ranged immobilize/poison fields pretty much all the time. Underwater, Shark/Lashtail Devourer are with me permanently in pve/pvp. All other pets could be deleted and i wouldn’t care one bit, i ignore them completely.

On land:
Jaguar for main. I freaking love that little guy.
Usually Marsh Drake for secondary, but that slot switches.

Underwater:
Shark for Bleeds and damage
Armor Fish or Jellyfish for defense/CC

Double cats. Meldandru stalker for might, jaguar for damage.

jungle spider
i switch my second around a lot… but most often a jag
-in wvw

I recently discovered my love for the three tailed devourer strategy.
Running birds all the time was kinda boring and they can’t really pull their weight in crowded areas, so I just gave it a try.
As of now, Devourers are my new go-to pet.

In WvW I always use a River Drake “off-hand”. Then I change my main pet depending on what I do. When just running in a zerg, I’ll pick the Forest Spider, as it will generally survive for much longer. In 1v1 scenarios, the Snow Leopard is really good, as its F2 skill has a very long reach. I mostly keep pets in passive when running in a zerg, and then send it to attack stranglers. When just roaming, I keep pets in attack mode, as you’ll never know where an attack will come from.

In dungeon speed runs, I always go with River Drake+Marsh Drake. The River Drake has the hardest hitting F2 skill, and the March Drake is great for providing pressure. The fact that they deal AoE damage is also really useful.

In regular dungeon runs, I usually switch pets quite a lot, depending on the situations. I always start with Forest Spider+Cave Spider, though, as they survive for the longest. If there’s a lot of ranged damage, I’ll switch to Black Bear+Brown Bear, as they can handle the damage the best. And if a boss just needs to be killed quickly, I’ll switch to River Drake+Marsh Drake.

For underwater pets, I either use Whiptail Devourer+Lashtail Devourer, or Black Bear+Brown Bear.

In PvE, I use the Snow Owl, simply because it fits the look of my Ranger.

I never use Moas or Porcines. The Moas are just weird middle range pets, that neither deals enough damage or has enough survivability. And the Porcines F2 skill is just too random.

I use the same pets always, whether in PvE/PvP or WvW..
#1: Krytan Drakehound: has quite high DPS, melee, has an awesome knockdown attack, F2 = AoE immobilize
#2: Juvenile Jungle Spider: decent DPS, ranged, spams poison, F2 = target immobilisation

Reef Drake/River Drake. Carrion Devourer if I need a ranged pet, though I will swap to other pets if the situation calls for it. I run dungeons and open world PvE mostly, and my pets are alive the vast majority of the time.

I have 30 points invested in beastmastery for natural healing, and I almost always run with signet of the wild. Those two things, combined with the drake’s chomp, give my pets excellent survivability. Recalling them (if F3 isn’t working I’ll switch them to passive) to avoid particularly nasty situations is useful, but I don’t often have to do so. Well-timed heals and swapping when necessary come in handy as well.

As long as I’m paying attention, pets are a huge boon to me. When I invest in them, they can take quite a bit of heat and they do a good chunk of damage to boot. I’m happy to have them.

Pets could definitly use a buff to help them live longer. Heck, the entire Pet Trait tree could use a revamp in my opinion. Still, I run mostly with Polar bear and Arctic Wolf. The bear is a good tank for the most part and doesn’t die easy, the arctic wolf has that cool howl and knocks mobs down. So both are pretty cool imo.

Roaming around / Zerging – Two Devourers, just because they are ranged and can stay alive
Dungeons – Drake / Jaguar or Devourer
PvP – Wolf / Hound

I really like using Devourers just cause I feel like they fit my Charr Ranger more than other pets do

I mostly use reef drake/jaguar. Currently using hyena instead of jaguar, since it’s funny having 2 hyena’s with knockdown

Reef drake is just excellent on boss fights when I use GS.

2 Wolves (regular and alpine) for the aesthetic alone.