Guild Wars 2

Just a for fun topic (:

Which pet(s) do you most enjoy and why?

I’ll go first; Siamooth: It’s tanky enough to survive in zergs and while roaming has awesome F2 utility. Consume Plasma or two stealths which I very much enjoy. It’s not always easy to get to the item it forges but Consume Plasma + Rampage As One is a pretty amazing combination capable of carrying you through some nasty situations.

Salamander Drake: Although the F2 is extremely difficult to land it can deal some hefty damage when it does. It’s plenty tanky and has great DPS as well. One of my favorites because of how well balanced between defense and offense it is, and the cleave is great too!

I’m fully aware these aren’t ideal pets. I’ve spent a lot of time playing Ranger and have experimented with all the pets our profession has to offer. The wolf is of course, hands down, our best pet, but these two are my favorites regardless. Don’t judge a Ranger by their pets! Judge them by how they’re used (:

My trapper ranger’s jungle spider Greagoir and marsh drake Keallach. They are his babies. The spider’s immobilize has been a huge benefit to keeping people in the traps and the marsh drake’s poison breath has just fun to use. On the rare occasion I get him to use his blast finisher in my healing spring I always wish I could give him a drake treat for his good work. Really, I just love all the drakes. They are probably my favorite pets in both visual design and abilities.

On my BM ranger I started off with the usual raven/wolf combo, but I’ve come to enjoy the extra regen and heal from the sylvan hound as well. Traited the sylvan hound still causes cripple and so is a decent crowd control, but it also improves my sustain which I like.

Canine pets for the win!! The knockdown attack is awesome, and the AoE effects (Drakehound: immobilize – Wolf: fear) can be the difference between life and death (either for your or your opponent).

The wolf is almost always with me, but I love the fern hound

The ones that are useful outside its one gimmick (none).

Land: Jaguar – <3 that stealthy S.O.B. … funny as hell against glass enemies.
Water: Shark – Decent damage, bleeds for days.

Black widow on pet 1 wolf on pet 2.

I play glassbow and this naturally works with the play style. You open as ranged with a slightly tankier ranged pet that is going to stay alive longer sitting next to you instead of running out to die. Then when you close to melee you have the melee pet on swap for the fear etc.

This helps to make sure you have the wolf when you need it and also makes your enemy change their dodge pattern when you swap from the range to the melee pet. The wolf tends to insta kd on swap too so it’s much better on pet 2.

Red Moa (on passive)
It’s the closest thing to not having a pet and it gives the Ranger on-demand Fury.

Brown Bear
The condition removal is pretty good. (2 every 25s. 1/2s casttime)

I vote for Land Shark.

Jaguar, my pvp damage pet of choice!
for PVE it has to be Reef Drake, 1 word. CLEAVE, more pets need cleave!
i never switch pets, but on standby i have my trusty wolf “Lastchance” if i go down!
that AoE fear is great!

For wvw its wolf + jungle spider or ferny + river drake and pve its river drake + one of the birds. Just love that lightning breath!

In pve I use double drakes for almost everything, marsh and river, in pvp I usually go marsh drake and wolf.

Would love nothing more than some work on the more or less useless pets, a cleave on boars and other tanky pets would raise their stock a fair bit and I would love to use boar for estethic reasons.

For functionality, Wolf/Jungle Spider because longbow kiting pew-pew.

Aesthetically, my wolf Buster. ’Cause ROCK YOU! BUSTUH WOLF! Are you okay?

I run raven just cause it’s my favorite animal in real life. I then run wolf because it’s the most useful pet imo.

Siamoth is probably one of our best pets. 2 items that give stealth and 1 that gives most boons for 10s. I’d advice everyone to try it for a while.

I’ve been playing around with the pigs for fun. I’m liking warthog too: 3 good condition attacks, 2 providing fields. Chaos armored pig is not uncommon.

Birds and the Wolf…. I made a Norn and assumed that the pets would have gotten bigger with me (this was on release). Got to 80 and I’ve got kittenedly small pets, I do need to resize my Norn so the pets aren’t so tiny but I’d wish Anet would just adjust them accordingly to character size.

Birds are good because they are birds and isn’t as easy to pick out the size difference. I’m not really keen on their attack animations.

Aesthetically, I love the birds. If they’d stop using that annoying swiftness shriek so much they’d be awesome attacking pets. I wish that the hawk and the eagle had some difference between them besides their skins, almost no reason to even find a hawk -.-

Battle wise, I love my wolf or a drake. Those drakes can take a bit of hits and the blast finisher is a nice add (when they manage to use it). Wolf’s fear is nice to have when dealing with other players.

Drakes are wonderful for Cleave … plus they can be relied on to use their blast finisher when you swap to them. So if you are in melee and use Healing Spring + Drake, swap to your [other] Drake while standing in healing spring and reap the extra heal

Canines are wonderful for keeping your opponent on their butt. I’m the biggest fan of Wolf + Drakehound, but I like both the Fern and Hyena sometimes.

Cats are for PvE straight single-target DPS. Period.

My favorite pets are the Drakehound and the Wolf. Your F2 are life savers and their knockbacks are so good especially when you actually take advantage of them to apply your maximum damage. You can also play with your F3 to cancel your pet’s F2 and knockbacks to make the enemy waste his dodge rolls.

Drakes are a close second for me for the blast finisher, cleave and the F2 bursts.

But yeah I mainly do pvp so they are my favorite pets. I’d take cats for PvE.

Mr Snotty Pants.3980:

I’ve been playing around with the pigs for fun. I’m liking warthog too: 3 good condition attacks, 2 providing fields. Chaos armored pig is not uncommon.

The problem with Warthog and Boar is that they can forage Skull Fear twice in a row, but you can’t use it twice in a row because the skull has its own cooldown of like 3 minutes. While anything Siamoth forages can always be used and can also have a big influence on the outcome of the fight. I’m not too fond of the Pig, since the stuff he forages don’t seem overly useful.

Siamoth is the only porcine pet worth using, IMO. Even then I think you’ll get more mileage out of a canine or a spider.

At least siamoths are cute.

I like the sylvan/fern hounds. Even if I don’t use them much, they’re charming and quite beautiful.

I also like the jaguar, which has great DPS in a sleek, graceful package.

Marsh drake is awesome for flipping camps in WvW, tanky, poison spam. If you use rampage as one his f2 will give you your might stacks real fast.

Holland.9351:

The problem with Warthog and Boar is that they can forage Skull Fear twice in a row, but you can’t use it twice in a row because the skull has its own cooldown of like 3 minutes.

I’ve done a half dozen play sessions with Warthog and have yet to see a skull. I think that’s a misprint on the wiki.

I’m using Siamoth too.

Mr Snotty Pants.3980:

Holland.9351:

The problem with Warthog and Boar is that they can forage Skull Fear twice in a row, but you can’t use it twice in a row because the skull has its own cooldown of like 3 minutes.

I’ve done a half dozen play sessions with Warthog and have yet to see a skull. I think that’s a misprint on the wiki.

I’m using Siamoth too.

Only boar drops skull.

Since I posted, favorite pet is the white wolf, cause it’s a white wolf.

Practically speaking, favorite pets: fear wolf, river drake, immob spiders, drake hound.

When pets had all the deeeeps, dual ravens <3.

Eurantien.4632:

Since I posted, favorite pet is the white wolf, cause it’s a white wolf.

Practically speaking, favorite pets: fear wolf, river drake, immob spiders, drake hound.

Practically speaking, the snow leopard’s chill used to be the most effective pet F2 skill against a moving target. It reduced the time to kill a moving target from 290% to 170% that of a stationary target. Or put another way, it reduced the DPS loss against a moving target by 40%. Pretty good for a chill that lasted 8 sec on a 30 sec cooldown (~25% uptime if spammed).

IMHO that was about the right amount considering the massive DPS hit pets take against a moving target. But then rather than bring the other pet chills (owl, alpine wolf, polar bear, icy drake) up to par with the snow leopard, Anet nerfed the snow leopard down to match the other pets (4s vs 3s for the others). With that change they basically guaranteed those five pets would never be used in regular gameplay except by people who think they look cool.

(Yes opponents could argue that an 8s chill was broken and too long. But that it took an 8s chill to make a pet semi-effective against a moving target should tell you that pets against moving targets is likewise broken.)

www/aesthetics
wolf – knockdown, F2 fear
jungle spider – immobs and poison

pve
river drake – tanky, blast finish that’s easy to predict, F2 that can do massive dmg
jungle stalker-strong single target attacks, F2 that grants 5 might stacks