Guild Wars 2

I have all the available pets in the game, but I have a hard time figuring out what ones to use.. So I thought I would post here for Input from other rangers…

I think the only thing I have figured out is that I don’t like Devourers because of their habit of randomly retreating..

Currently I use a Black Bear and Wolf and a Shark and Armored Fish..

Any other input would be appreciated.

Fern hound/ brown bear in PvE & dungeon for quick regen and condition removal.
Lakittenail devourer/ wolf/ Krytan drakehound in WvWvW and PvP for their CC abilities.
Jelly fish/ armor fish/ salamander drake/ underwater because why not.

I’ve got names for each of them, and it’s really annoying to rename them every time I change pets.

For PvE/Dungeons i use two devourers most of the time. Sometimes jaguar/hawk, and in a few situations two bears.

For PvP two canines for the most part, wolf + dog usually.

Why devourers? They are probably the best pet for dungeons and needs little management to do well.

Why jaguar/hawk? They are my top DPS pets, but only used if melee won’t hurt them much

Why two bears? There are fights where you benefit from having bears, for example Asura Fractal with the golem that spreads poison…you send the pet and stay behind your bear to not get hit.

As for canines in PvP, their knockback is great and the fear from wolf is sweet.

Devourer/Devourer for their range.

WvW and general PvE: Krytan Drakehound and Wolf for the CC, durability, and decent damage. Canines can run people down and tackle them pretty well in WvW with good speed boosts.

Dungeons: Same as above or Red and Blue Moas for the Vigor on swap, Healing, and Boons (also decent survivability with high vitality).

Underwater: Rainbow and Blue Jellyfish. AoE regen, AoE blind/smoke field, 3k-4k AoE damage with a 2 second chill (F2) and good survivability.

I guess it depends on your traits. I have traits that buffs pets condition dmg and duration.

pve: eagle & hawk. They have awesome bleed skill with a short cooldown and u get swiftness!

dungeon: Brown bear (condition remover) & either murellow (poison combo field) or jungle spider (immobilize).

www: Krytan (immobilize) & brown bear (condition remover + “protect me” -shout)

water: armor fish ( tank) & shark (looks awesome!)

pig
cause its cute

I’ve started to branch out all over the place with my pets, testing different things.
I still say you can’t go wrong with 2x birds, but right now I’m running Fern Hound/Siamoth. All I do is WvW so this is all from that perspective.

Fern Hound’s (somewhat) on demand regeneration is pretty nice, I can pop it at the start of encounters to keep me going, and dogs have 2k+ Power when specced full Beastmastery. They hurt, and while they don’t have the crit rate of birds by any means, with all that extra power, when they DO crit, especially with the 30% pet crit trait, they crit hard. Not to mention the knockdown is very nice. The only problem with dogs is that their howls can become very unresponsive at all the wrong times. I can’t count how many times I have had to play the constant calling back, trying to clear target so it won’t run off, please just use the Regen howl please, game. And I found it was even worse with Wolf. I literally stopped running it because unlike Regen, which I usually pop pre-encounter to stabilize me during the battle, the Fear howl is an on-demand, I need this RIGHT NOW, skill, and well.. it doesn’t have an on-demand activation. I have literally successfully feared enemies away from me when I needed it… Once. And only once. It was becoming too much of a joke to justify a pet slot. Anyone out there using wolf successfully, I salute you.

I need to make a video of all the shenanigans going on with Pet AI, especially dog howls. It seems like if you press F2 while the pet is doing ANYTHING besides standing still, it will self-cancel in favor of taking a few steps forward or some other idiotic behavior. And this goes for just about everything.

But moving on, Siamoth. I’ve bashed on pig pets before, because they have the same AI problems as all the other pets, but giving it a bit more patience, I’ve found that this pet has saved my life more times than any successful Fear howl ever could. Again, that’s because this pet has an F2 that can be pre-popped, used out of combat when the pressure is off, because pet AI is a general failure in the heat of battle.

But yes, carrying precious supply, but the entrance to the keep is being camped by 30 invaders with sharp sticks? Siamoth has your back. Stealth up and Greatsword swoop through them. No one expects a Ranger to stealth, they probably will think you disconnected for all they know. Fine with me, as long as I make it. The Plasma is also AMAZING. I think we can all agree on that.

I’ve used Siamoth a bit in small scale combat too, I find the larger the battle, the harder it is to get the ability used. The best thing about it, is that truly every single one of the items it drops is useful. When I was playing around with Warthog, if it dropped a Poison Sac I would groan. I -never- needed it. But two stealth items and one that grants all boons? All 3 of those are perfect escape tools. If you are the kind of person who finds yourself in bad situations (so if you solo a lot), Siamoth is going to take care of you, granted the AI is on your side.

Ursan.7846:

Devourer/Devourer for their range.

This^^^

(Plus they look awesome when they are swimming underwater lol)

I use lynx and eagle wvwvw because they have the best dps, and the skill with F2 greater damage, the main point of the damage, because I have a Longbow glasscannon pg / greatsword and with these animals and my fammo build a nice dps, very condition and I also have a good resistance!

in pve and use dng polar bear and brown bear

I run a 20/20/30 build and use Shorbow/Greatsword.

> Solo pve:
Fernhound (for the regen) and Devourer for the range. I’ve soloed many “Group” tagged event “bosses” with a combination of Brown Bear and Devourer. (it’s better if the bosses are mellee cause you can kite them around with shortbow. Ranged bosses hit pretty hard).

If you can time the healing with Troll Unguent and pet swapping you won’t have a problem at pve.

> Dungeons:
Devourer or Spider is a must due to their range so the don’t get 1 shotted from bosses.
and
Brown Bear is excellent choice due to high vitality and removal condition (F2)

>Underwater:
Armored Fish : tank “n” spank
and
Shark: come on he looks bad kitten /p>

> WvWvW , PvP:
Krytan Drakehound: Imobilize + Knockdowns are awesome
and
Jaguar / Eagle / Owl / Hawk: high dps pets

duel dogs: fern hound, wolf

i run this almost all the time, except on bosses where i’ll probably switch to ranged pets.

Eagle/Hawk for DPS….6 second F2 Cooldowns make me happy as I swap out pets often for Quickness so allows a couple of F2 attacks per swap.

For anyone who does WvW and doesn’t put any points into Beastmastery, I would recommend Owl and Winter Wolf. I use the “increase pet condition duration” trait(Marks, tier 1) to make chill last around 4 seconds for each pet. The owl lands it fairly easy, the wolf is a little trickier but it’s an aoe so it makes up for it somewhat. Add in the 2ndary swiftness and knockdown skills and the Owl/Winter Wolf combo comes in very handy.

I’ve always used a Bear in WvWvW, because I also use the “pet takes all damage” signet and I need something with a lot of HP while i’m AoE casting up on a wall.

WvW and PvP I use wolves. The fear occasionally saves me from being stomped.

PvE I use brown bear and arctodus. They are tanky and I like them and their names are Moon Pie and Whackadoodle and I am just emotionally attached. lol

In water I use jellyfish. I try to be in water as little as possible and I like the jellyfish the best out of the water pets. No other reason.

Dungeons….hmmm…in most dungeons I hate using my pets at all so I probably have it on passive whatever I am using.

PvE – Bear (keep aggro and tons of health)
PvP – Jag (they stealth)

Still leveling up and questing on my Hunter (about to hit 40) and I alternate between my Lynx – high dps, and Black Bear – who can tank small groups and a debuff to weaken mobs.

I love my Lynx though – his name is Manx.

The pet I use changes a lot depending on the situation, but here’s a general list of rules I go by when choosing a pet:

PvE:
Bow build – Wolf/Krytan Drakehound
(Canines have a fast attack rate and give good dps while also bringing CC and good defensive stats to survive)

Sword build with 20-30 points in BM – Raven/Jaguar

Orr farming with a tagging build – Carrion Devourer/Forest Spider
(The AoE poison of Carrion Devourers has a fast cast and works well to tag multiple mobs quickly. Ranged pets are also generally more effective on mobs that will die quickly.)

Fights where melee gets chewed up – Lakittenail Devourer/Forest Spider

Fights with lots of conditions – Brown Bear

Fights with lots of AoE – River Drake

PvP:
Bow Build – Jungle Spider or Krytan Drakehound/Wolf

Sword Build – Raven/Wolf

If they ever buff spirits so that they don’t die so quickly, I’ll probably try a support build that uses blue moa/red moa.

Dahkeus.8243:

The pet I use changes a lot depending on the situation, but here’s a general list of rules I go by when choosing a pet:

PvE:
Bow build – Wolf/Krytan Drakehound
(Canines have a fast attack rate and give good dps while also bringing CC and good defensive stats to survive)

Sword build with 20-30 points in BM – Raven/Jaguar

Orr farming with a tagging build – Carrion Devourer/Forest Spider
(The AoE poison of Carrion Devourers has a fast cast and works well to tag multiple mobs quickly. Ranged pets are also generally more effective on mobs that will die quickly.)

Fights where melee gets chewed up – Lakittenail Devourer/Forest Spider

Fights with lots of conditions – Brown Bear

Fights with lots of AoE – River Drake

PvP:
Bow Build – Jungle Spider or Krytan Drakehound/Wolf

Sword Build – Raven/Wolf

If they ever buff spirits so that they don’t die so quickly, I’ll probably try a support build that uses blue moa/red moa.

Hmmm … a Lakittenail devourer, don’t think I’ve seen that one lol … gotta love the filter

Brown Bear and Krytan Hound. Tank and condition removal for one, damage and knockdown for the other.

Nashaan.3160:

Dahkeus.8243:

The pet I use changes a lot depending on the situation, but here’s a general list of rules I go by when choosing a pet:

PvE:
Bow build – Wolf/Krytan Drakehound
(Canines have a fast attack rate and give good dps while also bringing CC and good defensive stats to survive)

Sword build with 20-30 points in BM – Raven/Jaguar

Orr farming with a tagging build – Carrion Devourer/Forest Spider
(The AoE poison of Carrion Devourers has a fast cast and works well to tag multiple mobs quickly. Ranged pets are also generally more effective on mobs that will die quickly.)

Fights where melee gets chewed up – Lakittenail Devourer/Forest Spider

Fights with lots of conditions – Brown Bear

Fights with lots of AoE – River Drake

PvP:
Bow Build – Jungle Spider or Krytan Drakehound/Wolf

Sword Build – Raven/Wolf

If they ever buff spirits so that they don’t die so quickly, I’ll probably try a support build that uses blue moa/red moa.

Hmmm … a Lakittenail devourer, don’t think I’ve seen that one lol … gotta love the filter

ROFL! I didn’t notice that, haha!

Underwater Jellyfish they are by far the best underwater pets and they AoE heal themselves and everyone else..

As req i use
Bear/Arcturus – Tanking
Lynx/Jag – DPS/ Conditions
Birds – DPS/ Conditions
Wolves Various / DPS Knock downs
Spider /Devourers I find quite useless even in dungeons cause the cant take damage at all and no matter what they all take damage at some point.

Ice Drake (tanking, plus I like the way they look) and Lakittenail Devourer (ranged and bleed stacks) for land, Armored Fish (tanking) and Rainbow Jellyfish (AoE damage and heals) underwater.

Oh! Forgot to mention, but any build with a heavy investment into BM along with at least 15 in Nature Magic does well with a Jungle Stalker since it will get 10 stacks of might on F2 cast (5 stacks from casting it on themselves and another 5 stacks from matching the stacks that you get when they cast it on you).