Guild Wars 2

Up until now, I’ve pretty much exclusively used my jungle stalker pet, but I got asked during an AC run if I had a bear to use for tanking, which got me thinking: What pets are best suited for what situations? I have one pet of every family now (feline, canine, bird, spider, bear, porcine)

and as well as the different uses for each pet, do the different pets within each family have good strengths? (for example, what is the difference between a stalker and a jaguar?)

I think the brown bear is far and away the best tank for the Ranger. If you are WVW or PVP, it probably matters a whole lot more. For most things PVE, you can run with whatever you like. I have run with all of them at some point in PVE and I think what happens is you begin to develop favorites.

Well while i run BM tbh i rarely switch pet, I run a snow leopard and a jungle stalker mainly because SL has a long range leap that freeze people so finish off runners and stalker got a shout for might ability.

To conclude id say switching pet is prety much only good when you run a build that doesnt rely on their ability to kill but more on their special ability (such as bear)

Stick with your cats in PvE. Some people use drakes since they have a small amount of AoE. Sometimes your party needs a particular buff due to a bad random grouping so on extremely rare occasions you might break out a pet for that utility (red moa for fury if no one in your group can provide it for example.)

For PvP/WvW, people have all sorts of personal preferences to compliment their builds. There are barely any wrong choices here, just think about the pet’s ability and ask if it compliments what your goal is.

Poor bear is the one pet that has almost no role in any format, just a few niches.

I also encourage you to test multiple pets, including less-popular ones like Porcines, Hyenas and more. Pet should always be part of your build, but keep in mind you can also do “pet preparation” before fights and such, like buffing yourself/allies up with pet’s special abilities, dropping useful stuff with pigs etc. and then swapping to “regular” pet.

The bear is more of a joke in the community because most rangers using bear are terrible, don’t use them. cat/cat is usually the best for pve, you can use bears for soloing belka or tanking big old tom in fractals, and then there’s not much else to take.

Fluffball.8307:

Stick with your cats in PvE. Some people use drakes since they have a small amount of AoE.

Cats have the best single-target DPS.

Drakes are the best all-around pet.

• Good hp and toughness.
• Average single-target DPS (on par with the canines, beaten only by cats and birds).
• Best multi-target DPS. It’s not a small amount of AOE. All of its attacks are AOE and can hit 5 targets. If you’re fighting 2 targets, its DPS is as good as a cat’s. 3+ targets and it’s better than a cat.
• Blast finisher when you summon them. If you need an extra heal, drop healing spring and swap to a drake pet. Its first attack will be a blast finisher.
• Breath attack on River Drake bounces between 2+ targets and gives you a huge amount of might very quickly with Rampage as One.

I usually run Jungle Stalker / River Drake.

Poor bear is the one pet that has almost no role in any format, just a few niches.

The only times I use bears are:

• When facing something which kills regular pets before I can swap them. I figure having the pet alive and doing some damage is better than just having two dead pets.
• When facing a boss mob where the players may need a break from combat to wait for cooldowns or to reposition. The bears can usually tank well enough to distract the boss for 5-10 sec.

It’s gonna depend on your build. As many suggest, either stating they are BM or stating they use cat/cat, if you are traited for a BM type ranger chances are your pet is highly survivable and has high damage (comparitively) and the only reason you would want a bear would be as a party hero cleansing tool. If you are a dps build, bears are the better tanks but they will pale in comparison to a BM pet of just about any type.

Within the past few months I was trying the ranged pets on a zerker ranger and I found that most still get too close and do not survive well. You seriously have to control the pet in a zerker build.

Does anyone use birds enough to comment on them?

From an animation viewpoint they irritate me less than any of the others on land. And they seem to be quick to engage fast moving mobs like in Orr. In fact they seem to pick up aggro pretty easy, maybe that is just me. I use a parrot on my warrior, maybe that biases me. I don’t count on pet DPS so much as want them to run interference.

Birds are nice for WvW. For PvE they do slightly less damage than cats. Sometimes I’ll use birds for open world screwing around, just to get that extra speed.

Whether you count on it or not, pets usually contribute quite a lot of DPS unless you’re in lower level areas or zergs. That’s why everyone runs cats even in coordinated dungeon groups.

Red moa / jungle stalker if you just like pewpewing from walls in wvw ;-)

Me, I run eagle/wolf. Birds land so many more hits. Wolf is great for the obvious fear but also for when you down a thief in shadow refuge and cant find them. After a few seconds swap to wolf and f2. It strikes them for dmg stopping their healing.

PvE:
On land I stick with Jaguar main (Love the dps/stealth setup on ‘im.)
Usually Raven or Drake secondary, depending on the situation.
Water’s Shark/Armor Fish.

WvW:
I’ll swap my secondary for more CC (Wolf, Snow Leopard), so it’s easier to land the Jaguar’s stealth attacks.

bear for pve tanking,
cat (sustain dps)/wolf (fear+knockdown)/bird (burst)/spider (immobilize + poison) for pvp, depending on your build and what you need.
drake for literally EVERYTHING else (the cleave outways everything, and they’re rather tanky)

imho all pets should have 3 target cleave

Spiders are your best option for PvP – regardless.
The reason is darn simple – They have the highest ranged damage and the strongest utility combined with respectable sustain. They’re ranged pet’s, so their hit rate is high, this is very important.

RollingBob.8502:

Does anyone use birds enough to comment on them?

From an animation viewpoint they irritate me less than any of the others on land. And they seem to be quick to engage fast moving mobs like in Orr. In fact they seem to pick up aggro pretty easy, maybe that is just me. I use a parrot on my warrior, maybe that biases me. I don’t count on pet DPS so much as want them to run interference.

Birds are weird. Quickening Screech has a longer animation time than the actual cast, so they’re slow to get into combat. They’re also pretty squishy. That said, they shell out immense damage – almost double that of most other pet classes, making them synergize nicely with RoA power builds since their crit rate is also quite high. I’ve personally had my Raven stacked with RoA might hit for along the lines of 6-7k per strike. From my experience, their F2 abilities once in combat have some of the fastest response time, also making the blinding birds useful for clutch damage avoidance or preventing stomps since they’re usable while downed.

I find them great as an alternate pet, and prefer Wolf/Raven the most due to reliable AoE fear and durability on the wolf with the raven providing a lot of skirmishing potential and damage.

Dogs are my preference for small scale right now, dps nearly equal cats because they cripple and knockdown so their attacks land very often, but the cc is just great in itself. And the f2 are some of the best. With all that they can totally deny stomps with a little luck. Ive beaten full health people while downed using dogs (ragequit!)

Lizards are best all-round wvw pet for reasons mentioned, marsh or river more-so because of the ranged F2. I still keep a wolf on swap. Just wish I could get a shark to swim on land.

Cool to see the wide range of favorite pets, means they are doing something right. Underrepresented right now are the porcines and devourers…

The above posters all have some good points. I run a Drake/Devourer for PvE for the options of tankiness and range (the Devourer is also surprisingly tanky).

In PvP I run the Krytan Drakehound and the Wolf for their cripples, knockdowns and special abilities. The Drakehound’s immobilize is great for pinning down foes while you unleash Rapid Fire/Barrage on them, and you can follow that up with Entangle for even more immobilize duration. Likewise, the Wolf’s fear is handy for AoE interrupts and chasing off enemies trying to stomp your allies (or off the edge in Skyhammer).

Kilger.5490:

Underrepresented right now are the porcines and devourers…

I like the little red carrion devourers not those ugly as hell lashtail/whiptails ;-(
Shame devourers are kitten y pets though. Their damage isn’t high, they have huge toughness but fight at range and then evade away when something gets close. Their f2 skills are lame. They need a change. Right now they are the pvt bearbow ranger of pets.

I’ve started playing with double drake in PVP. River and marsh specifically for the ranged F2. It’s amazing how well it works with the new Rapid Fire. With a knights amulet my Rapid Fire will hit for about 3-4K damage, and with my BM build and some might on my drake Lightning Breath will hit for anywhere between 3-8K depending on crits. So a total of 6-12K in roughly 3 seconds, while still being built tanky.

It’s really hard to set up properly though. Still great fun when successful.

For PVE I always run dual cats for the deeps.

In WVW/PVP I usually go Raven/Wolf. Birds can do a lot of damage and it feels like a lot of human players don’t really notice them all that easily in chaotic fights, thus they get a lot of hits in. Bird dps is hindered by the long animation for the swiftness move, but you can get around that by activating their F2 as they start the animation. The raven blind is really useful for interrupting enemy combos and securing stomps. Wolf on swap is godly. That knockdown and AOE fear are sooooo good against human players.