Guild Wars 2

Videos:

• Ranger Dazer Hybrid Build 2.0 Movie - Latest patch confusion/condition/hybrid build (build details inside)

Videos before Aug 21, 2013 patch:

• [Video] Post patch skirmishes
• 23k Maul and more / WvW Max Dmg Ranger Video

NOTE: The videos listed here were recorded before the June 25 Patch. They may or may not be possible anymore. They are still a good resource of what the ranger class was like before the patch and can be used as a basis for comparison to newer builds.

• [Vid] Solo Trap Ranger - Solo trap ranger roamin in WvW
• My first Ranger WvW video [LB/GS]
• Skirmish With a Longbow - LB/GS vid designed for 1v1 fights in WvW
• Capuchin monkey evasion/power/precision video - A group of videos displaying the dodging prowess of sword/dagger. Recommended watch if you’re interested in evasion tanking.
• Nature’s Wrath – Ranger burst vid - Video showcasing a full glass cannon ranger in WvW maximizing burst damage with a greatsword.
• Tupro: BM+Condi Video
• Technobabble Volume 2 – Daze Build
• kitten But Determined II Bow Ranger WvW Vid
• [Vid] Belthza – Solo WvW - contains a spirit wvw build! :o
• (Video) Exploits – WvW Melee BM Ranger
• Faux’s “RRR” Build – Videos
• Aodh Nitola [RIOT] – Solo WvW Commentary
• Maul Ranger - Semi-Glass Build that can hit up to 15k crits with maul

I’m sure the Ranger-is-“kitten”-useless people will have a lot of counterpoints for what I listed, they might be valid, but pets aren’t as bad as they make it seem. Now, we move on to the lighter side of the guide, the Pros of having a Pet!

Why Pets Are Good For You

The best thing about being a Ranger is that there is two of you, all day, everyday. You spawned into the game with your pet and your pet will stay with you until you logout. It will keep you company for better and for worse! Ok, I tried to make that sound dramatic, but you get the point. What this means is:

1. There will always be 2 targets for your enemies. If they go for your pet, that’s 100% damage reduction on your Ranger. If they focus you, your pet gets more hits in (provided you snared the enemy, of course). Also, if you take an Ursine pet you have a sturdy tank in the PvE maps!

2. You can do 2 things at once. Some really good examples of this would be:
– you can make your pet aggro the Champion Karka boss guarding the rich ori node while you mine. This works for commune skill challenges and some guarded chests too.
– You can rez a teammate while your pet continues to attack an enemy (or the other way around if you have Search and Rescue).
– Your pet can free you from the Crystal Imprisonment that Subject Alpha makes.
– And one of the more fun stuff to do with pets is when you’re guarding a tower in WvW and nothing’s happening, you can send your pet off to fight the monsters just outside your tower and collect the loot since they spawn right on your feet.

No other class can do these things.

3. People say that Pets account for 30-50% of a Rangers damage. This means when you’re in the downed state, you still have 30-50% of your damage still standing! Even better is that your pet still has access to all of its skills when you’re downed, so you have an additional 2 skills available to you (taking into account the swap timer of course).

Pet Roles

Now here’s where most people encounter problems. There are people that use pets for the wrong purposes and complain that they are useless. The way I see it, choosing pets is just like choosing which set of gear your going for. We have several pets that great for certain roles and absolutely horrible in others. They can be categorized into offensive, defensive and support, while some are a mix of 2 categories.

Offensive pets would include the Feline, Drake, Shark and Bird Families. Felines and Birds, in particular, can be likened to glass cannons as they have the highest precision of all pets, but they also have the worst toughness and vitality. Seeing 2k crits from these guys are pretty common and account for a LOT of Ranger DPS.

Defensive pets would include Ursine, Canine and Boar Families. They have respectable defensive stats, average Power and Precision and their abilities are mostly designed to negate damage or to disable enemies. Special mention goes to the hyena because it can summon more knockdown machines for you!

Support pets would be pets that are designed to either assist you, or hinder enemies. These would be the Moa Family, which is basically a walking buff station, the Spider family with a plethora of immobilizes and conditions, and the tanky Devourer family with their racial knockdown abilities and condition based activated skills.

Picking the appropriate pet for the situation is something a lot of players lack, thus they cry that “pets are useless.” One of these scenarios is when defending or attacking a tower or castle in WvW, melee pets that attack defended doors die. Of course it will, not even players can survive 2-3 Elementalists spamming spells on that. In this situation, opting for a ranged pet would be better as it is away from the AoE damage that is intended to destroy rams. Sometimes it can even hit defenders up on the walls!

So now you’ve captured the tower and you’re defending it. You then find that Ranged pets cannot hit enemies below walls because their range is too short and have now become useless. Melee pets sent to the zerg will die in an instant and are now useless as well. The appropriate pet to switch to here would be Moas as they can buff your fellow defenders on the wall and still be safe.

Basically, I’m saying appropriate pets should be used whenever needed. Pets should be swapped around as necessary. We’ve got over 10 pet families and over 30 pets to choose from, so we have a LOT of options! (Barring the Drake family as they’re bugged to only use one attack atm). Drakes got fixed on the January Major patch, so they’re viable now as well! (I love those AoE heals from Healing Spring + Tail Swipe)

Closing:

If this little guide still didn’t make you like pets, I strongly suggest trying it anyway. Nothing like test driving a car to get a feel for it yourself. Just keep in mind all the problems and the workarounds I’ve listed here while doing it. If you still don’t like pets, but still prefer ranged combat, maybe a Rifle Warrior would be a better profession for you. Pets are here to stay for Rangers and they won’t go away (even if you stow them!)

About the Author:
I have played 400+ hours on my ranger and I’ve tried several builds on the Ranger. I dabbled a bit in sPvP and spent a modest amount of time in dungeons and WvW so I experienced pretty much everything the game has to offer on my Ranger. Everything I listed here is from personal experience and influenced by the posts I’ve read on the GW2 main forums and on r/Guildwars2.

Builds:

• Mighty Ranger High Level FOTM Build
• Shortbow/Longbow setup for Zerging
• [BUILD] Boon Tank Ranger (BTR) + Variations
• My new BM Bunker Build i’m running
• Ranger DPS Longbow/Spirits Build, June 25th
• Roaming Regen Ranger (RRR) Build - Condition Damage/Regen Based WvW Build.
• The DDR, A Power Ranger Guide - A very comprehensive PvE/Dungeon/WvW guide building based on 30/30/x/x/x
• Precision Build - Might Stacking/Boon Duration build.
• Viable TPvP/SPvP Build’s
• Hyjaxx’s Re-Port331
• WvW Power House Ranger
• 10k Autoattack Longbow PvE Build +WvW fun
• Ranger Build & Guide – Critically Powerful!
• My Spirit Build (sPvP)
• The “Beast Cannon” build
• A Ranger Guide – Power Build -
• [Bleeding Hearts Build] Condi Master w/ video
• Lots of luv – A healing ranger guide

NOTE: All of the old builds listed here are moved to this post. They may or may not work anymore, but they are still a good resource for checking what was good before the June 25 Patch.

Ranger:

• Entangle: Updated the damage and bleeding skill facts to properly display their actual effects.
• Rapid Fire: This skill now applies vulnerability on each hit.
• Hunter’s Shot: This skill no longer applies vulnerability on each hit, but now grantss the ranger stealth for 3 seconds.
• Point Blank Shot: Increased the range from 600 to 900.
• Maul: This skill now applies vulnerability instead of bleeding.
• Counterattack—Crippling Throw: This skill can now be used while moving. Increased the cripple duration to 5 seconds.
• Whirling Defense: This skill now grants 4 seconds of retaliation for the duration of the skill.
• Call of the Wild: This skill is now a blast finisher.
• Remorseless: This trait now reapplies Opening Strike when the ranger gains stealth or kills an enemy.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/july-23-content-release-notes/

The Direct Damage Ranger (DDR)
A Comprehensive Glass Cannon Ranger Guide

Intro

A lot of focus has been given to WvW builds in the forums recently and there aren’t that many PvE/Dungeon builds listed so I thought I should write this more in detail as it was mentioned in the 4th episode of the SOAC podcast. Give it a listen! It has some really good info :D (/shamelessplug). Also, before you continue, this is going to be REALLY in-depth so be prepared read through a massive wall of text!

The DDR Build focuses mainly on power based attacks, hence “direct damage.” A link to a build website seems unnecessary so I’ll skip that. Instead, I’ll discuss in great detail the traits that can be used, along with the utilities that complement them. Afterwards I’ll finish the guide with a few sample builds that I use with DDR.

NOTE: This build was originall called “Dirty Dirty 505”, a slang pronunciation of 30/30/5/0/5. The June 25 Patch changed Zepyhr’s Speed, so the build had to be renamed since the 505 part won’t make sense anymore.

What can this build bring?

• Lots of crits, lots of single target damage, some AoE.
• Long lasting conditions.
• Rewards smart positioning.
• Rewards great timing.
• Permanent +50% endurance gain.
• More focus on the player, less focus on pets. Traits can be moved around to increase or decrease pet effectiveness while still maintaining good DPS.

What are the disadvantages?

• This is a glass build. It’s squishy.
• It relies on smart positioning to stay alive.
• It relies even more on dodging than when using tankier setups.

As you can see, most of the disadvantages are about survivability. This can be considered an “advanced” build since it requires the player to be familiar with a lot of the mechanics of the game, specifically which skills are absolutely crucial to dodge and when to dodge these deadly attacks.

I think these are fair trade-offs for the amount of damage that is picked up. I’ve played BM Bunker, Hybrid BeastMaster, Trapper and RRR, and while those are effective builds themselves, they can’t compare to the kill speed of a DDR in PvE/Dungeons.

Traits

Traits really make or break a build. Picking traits that synergize well with each other makes the character more interesting and fun to play. I’ll go through all the traits that I think are worth using and give my thoughts on their effectiveness and how/when you should use that trait.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Marksmanship Adept Traits
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

• Steady Focus (I) – Damage increases by 10% when endurance is full.
  This trait is the most effective at either the start of the fight, or when you are using bows. +10% damage is nothing to scoff at when we’re using a power build and this is one of my favored traits when running DDR.

• Malicious Training (II) – Increases duration for conditions applied by your pets. (Gives +50% condition duration to pets)
  Pets give the ranger so many choices for CC, ranging from the incredibly powerful Immobilize from spiders, to the long lasting Chill from Snow Owl and Snow Leopard to name a few. Using this trait will make their CC +50% more effective and that is always a good thing. This is the trait I usually go with whenever I roam solo in WvW, because more control is more valuable when fighting 1v1.

• Keen Edge (III) – Use Sharpening Stone when your foes health reaches 50%. Can only be triggered once every 45 seconds.
  I once listed this as a undesirable trait because of the unknown cooldown. The June 25 patch added the cooldown and changed the activation mechanic! With the it triggering off of enemy hp, instead of your own, you can now stay at max range with your bow and get the benefits from this trait. More on this in the Sharpening Stone section of the guide.

• Signet Mastery (IV) – Signets recharge 20% faster.
  This used to be a mandatory trait for Signet of the BeastMaster builds before they buffed the cooldowns. After that, this trait became a “nice to have” rather than mandatory. This is also nice to keep your burst options closer to each other if you use a DPS pet and Sic ’Em (40s cd) since it will lower the cooldown of SotW to 48s cd.

• Predator’s Instinct (V) – Apply cripple to foes you hit when they are below 25% health (15-second cooldown).
  This is more of a PvP/WvW trait than a PvE/Dungeon trait so it’s not really that used. And even in PvP/WvW, we have much better options than a 2 second cripple. This trait is designed for ranged weapons so they can hinder fleeing enemies as they try escape. It feels a bit unreliable though as sometimes the enemies that I’ve crippled with this healed up instead. I hope ANet can find a way to make this trait activate at the right time (like when a warrior is charging at me) as having a passive cripple is really nice for longbows.

Put on your flame suit! It’s gonna be a hot thread! XD

Also, you’re not alone :P I like the patch. Wanted more, but I’ll take what I can get :P

Since all the QQ posts have gotten stale, I’ve been thinking about the possible new combos for the new patch. These are all theoretical since we can’t test them yet, but some of these look pretty interesting. I’m pretty sure these are not the only ones and I would love to have discussions with the other creative ideas that people can come up with

1. Storm Spirit Bomb

• Call Lightning: Increased damage by 150%. (new)
• Nature’s Vengeance – Activated skills of spirits are larger and trigger when the spirit is killed. (existing)

The storm spirit can now do 1500-2000 damage in a 360 aoe. If it is able to use the skill and killed shortly after, thats a 3000-4000 damage nuke. The skill is used as a damage skill and not used for the buff. This can also work with sun spirit for a blind bomb.

Viability: not sure how well 3k~ damage would translate to, but it is in a 360 AoE

2. Do A Kholer

• Path of Scars: Now pulls enemies on the return flight. (new)
• Entangle (existing)
• Whirling Defense (existing)

Use Path of Scars to pull, use entangle as they get close and use Whirling Defense and make them eat the entire channel while they are bleeding from the roots.

Viability: We don’t really know how entangle and the pull interacts with each other (we might entangle them and the pull will make them leave the roots). If it works, you can switch whirling defense with any melee combo as well. (Like QZ + Sword#1 spam)

3. Ranger BURST+! :O

• Beastmasters Might: This trait now grants 3 stacks of might for 15 seconds. (new)

While running a full signet build, pop 3 signets (Wild, Stone and Hunt) before executing the tried and tested Swoop-Hilt Bash-Maul combo, but now you get 9 stacks of might

Viability: Ok, popping Stone might not be such a good idea as it is a panic button, but 6 stacks of might is still better than absolutely nothing before

4. I bleed it out digging deeper just to throw it away

• Keen Edge: This trait now activates when you strike a target that is below 50% health, instead of when your health reaches 75%. (new)

Additional bleeds for 10 points in Marksmanship sounds really good. Now all we need to know if it has decent internal cooldown so we can gauge how useful it will be.

Viability: depends on the internal cooldown. Its activation condition is so much better than what it was before

5. Evasive Purity

• Evasive Purity: This trait has been moved to the Master tier. (new)

Ok this has been ignored mostly because its a GM trait but it doesn’t have that wow factor that GM traits are supposed to have. I see this mostly as an effective way to remove poison which is the direct way to counter (or at the very least hamper) regen builds.

Viability: It’s much better than what it was before, but I really wish that it removed 1 condition on dodge instead of just poison and blind.

6. Perma Regen/Swiftness

• New Grandmaster trait – Nature’s Voice: Shouts apply 10 seconds of regeneration and swiftness to allies in a 360 radius. (new)
• Shout Mastery (existing)

This new GM trait is in the NM tree which means you get +30% boon duration with it. That means the swiftness and regen on you is actually 13 seconds. Adding shoutmastery to it, you can lower Guard’s cd to 12 seconds. Perma regen/swiftness yo.

Viability: Rangers can remove SotH from their bar and get near perma protection on pets and perma regen/swiftness on yourself and any allies within 360 AoE. The only thing limiting it is the x/x/x/30/10 requirement. With Faux already thinking of switching to 0/0/30/30/10 for an after patch RRR build, it might be a really good thing. (especially in small group WvW)

7. 12 seconds of no direct damage

• “Protect Me”: This ability now breaks stuns. (new)

With traited Signet of Stone and Protect Me, rangers now have 12 seconds of immunity from direct damage (provided pets survive the spike). Adding a stun breaker to it just further adds ranger survivability which is always good.

Viability: As pets are now being sent(forced?) towards utility instead of damage, they could serve rangers better as literal meat shields without minding the loss of damage too much. Pets surviving 6 seconds is a separate topic of discussion.

8. Mighty Pets

• Companion’s Might: This trait now grants 5 seconds of might to your pet, up from 1 second. (new)
• Barrage: Increased cripple duration by 50%. (new)

Barrage is a much better control tool which hits 5 people every 0.6 seconds. That means a potential 5 stacks of might on your pet every wave, for a potential 25 stacks of might if everything crits. Groovy.

Viability: With the pet nerf, 25 stacks of Might might not be a lot of damage, but pet condition damage wasn’t touched, so condition based pet damage will get quite a boost for the 5 seconds that they have it.

Pet Specific Guides:

• Pet Mini Guide #1: Porcine Pets - Pig guide about what they forage and how to use them in a group setting.
• The Pig Family - Pig guide with info on the frequency of getting specific items.
• Subject Alpha – Sword Ranger – No pet deaths - Drake centered approach to fighting Subject Alpha

Weapon Specific Guides:

• 1h Sword – “Autoattack” Explained - 2 very detailed videos explaining sword attacks and explains “sword root.”
• Ranger GS vs Warrior GS – direct comparison - mathematical comparison of the 2 weapons.
• Data: Crossfire vs Rapid Fire - Mathematical analysis of the shortbow and longbow skills.
• Ranger GS compared with War/Guard GS - Comparison of the GS for the 3 professions.
• Ranger Shortbow vs Greatsword DPS Tests - DPS test done in the mist against a heavy golem.

Some Red posts around the forums:

Robert Hrouda on perma-stow:

There have been some calls for perma-stowed pets, and while I have said this in other areas I will say it again here. I don’t think we will let you perma-stow pets – the main reason being we want the player to be interacting with the pet, and the pet to be part of the identity of the player. The role of ranger is to to have a pet in our game, and with that comes a bit of extra micromanagement that comes with the package. Right now the micromanage is difficult and more tools are desired, and I honestly feel that once we make micromanaging pets easier, more responsive, and better in general that players won’t mind that they don’t have perma-stow capabilities.

Robert Hrouda on blanket AoE Reduction:

We tried giving them reduced damage from AOE/attacks, and it opened up other problems – mainly that a team of 2 rangers could take on almost any boss in a dungeon by smart swapping of pets and letting the pet take aggro. It’s unfortunate, but we can’t just increase and decrease numbers until pets are perfect – we’ve tried really hard, but numbers are not going to fix pets without letting them break everything. We have to look deeper into mechanics, AI, player actions, and skills.

Links that don’t work anymore

• PvP and PvE Ranger Builds. - Boon Duration heavy build

nagymbear.5280:

What I would like to see:
- see a dev on the podcast who plays ranger

DO WANT!! O_O

Been to WvW, I absolutely love ranger stealth <3

Been backstabbed by a thief. As soon as he starts spamming, I use LB#3, reposition myself then use Rapid Fire. Most of the thieves that did that to me are squishy and went down after a Rapid Fire + some auto attacks

I just love the feeling of giving stealth thieves a taste of their own medicine <3

Best patch ever!

jcbroe.4329:

Bryzy.2719:

Jcbroe – your last sentence is the core of what is wrong with these updates. It seems that most players agree that pet damage, depending on build, is certainly at least 30% of a ranger’s output. Assuming these nerfs are true then Anet probably just made ranger the weakest profession in the game. They’re clearly paying little attention to the profession since they’ve just cut our total damage output by (assuming pet counts as at least 30%, and jaguar had its damage nerfed by half PLUS crit rate) at least 15%.

I know, that’s why I said it. BUT, that is only power based DPS. The pet really doesn’t account for much of, if any, of our condition based DPS.

I’ll just switch back to traps until somebody in the next SoTG complains our trap build is overpowered. At that point, I hope reality smacks ANet in the face; that maybe, they need to get some players on the SoTG that aren’t biased against rangers, because Traps are really going to be our last most viable option that haven’t been touched by a nerf yet, and if they nerf them without any improvements, then its like secretly admitting that they are trying to get rid of classes viability so that there are only 5 choices to pick from in PvP, and people don’t have to think anymore.

So yeah, normally I’m pretty easygoing until I focus my attention on those top players and the SoTGs, and then my allergies start acting up (I’m allergic to arrogance and BS).

START A PETITION TO GET BATTOUSAI ON SOTG!!!

Know what? I’m done. There is no way any of us will ever see eye to eye with these things and further discussion is futile. Go ahead and carry on with your self destructive path to “getting the ranger fixed.”

Lament your nerfs, I’ll celebrate my buffs.

With all of the QQ, i just thought this might amuse some people

To be fair, the other classes didn’t get Robert Hrouda to post in their respective forums. One problem at a time guys.

I’d gladly welcome pet changes over any of the other stuff you listed since they’re active all the time.

Nice podcast, although I noticed you kept going all over the place. Not that it’s a bad thing, I can definitely feel your enthusiasm to get out as much info as you can.

You might want to draft out an agenda to keep you on topic or to keep the discussion going

OP, don’t believe the “ranger sucks circlejerk.” If you visit any other profession section, you’ll see a lot of complaints and QQing. It’s not limited to just rangers. Heck, even warriors (that are considered DPS gods) are complaining about their class.

Best advice I can give you is just play whatever you want and form your own conclusions. As long as you’re having fun with your class, other’s opinions shouldn’t matter.

elprimo.4398:

the only problem I have with long range glass cannon is that you need to position in high places to be safe. thus making your pet useless and crippling your dps. If only birds could move freely(ignoring terrain elevation) I would see no reason not to have a long ranged sniper and go all pew pew with your birdy.

But well we all know anet have better stuff to do then fixing pets, but I can’t dream can’t I?

I hear ya! The only solution I found for it is to use Red Moa/Jungle Stalker so the pet can at least buff me if they can’t attack. It works well enough, but having the birds being able to ignore terrain would indeed be nice.

Paladin Jeff.9210:

After some playing I’m finding I’m much more comfortable with the shortbow for positioning and kiting. I platy solo so the added CC is useful as well.

That’s fine too! I used the shortbow almost exclusively while levelling, because in overworld PvE, small skirmishes with mobs is common and the shortbow is better suited for that. I fell in love with the longbow when I started doing dungeons/WvW. The update on the auto-attack aftercast just made me love it even more.

If you’re using Rampager’s armor (power/precision/condition damage), the shortbow is definitely better in terms of DPS. Just make sure to hit your enemy from an angle to get the bleeds (The angle required for shortbow “flanking” is very forgiving)

Kimbald.2697:

This is a wonderful write-up indeed.

Quite possibly next patch will stirr things up a little, if not a lot… But starting from this list it will be a lot more clear to see what pets are usable outside of BM or not.

Thanks for your time of doing this, a few months ago but still
I’m sure you’ll be adding the changes to this next week.

Personally, I don’t think much will change in terms of utility based pets as they weren’t depended on for damage (although having it was nice). Would be interesting to see if things do change though.

McWolfy.5924:

what i dont understant : why i forced to play with pets? why am i need to switch between 2 pets? why cant switch between a pet and a sniper mode (or something like that)

Sorry, wrong thread to ask this. Your question has already been asked multiple times in other threads, you can start your own or look for those instead.

Cuchullain.3104:

jubskie.3152:

What I understand from that is he sent his pet to assist allies while he did his duty to the team. It was never explicitly stated that the pet alone was downing enemies.

Also, you talk like the pet forcing someone to dodge is a bad thing. If your enemy uses a dodge to avoid the knockdown, he has one less dodge to use against your attacks.

He doesn’t have to dodge, he just has to move, which he should be doing anyway. This is all he has to do to “dodge” my longbow as well, just strafe sideways or run behind me. I have to dodge to avoid his attacks which don’t usually miss constantly like mine do, and pets not only do not dodge but when you stop they run forwards 50 feet ahead of you into aoe circles, or they lag behind and sit in them when you dodge or run out of them. Forcing me to run back 100 feet to get my pet out of aoe isn’t good for the enemy? Pets are also slow and will often die before they even reach the enemy.

The idea that our pets are in any way OP is a joke.

Sigh.

Another one of those people that greatly exaggerate their claims. No point replying to you, you’re just using me as a sounding board for your rants.

Cuchullain.3104:

jubskie.3152:

Sigh.

Another one of those people that greatly exaggerate their claims. No point replying to you, you’re just using me as a sounding board for your rants.

You are just using me and everyone else who complains about this class to minimize the problems everyone is reporting by making the problem about us, rather than the broken class design. You do this by tone trolling, launching ad hominem attacks, and deliberately exaggerating and obfuscating the points people present here. That was pretty much the tone of the Attk video as well.

Were you the one on the video claiming that the shotbow nerf was actually positive, because it is easier to flank in a 900 long arc than a 1200 arc? If so that was truly an exercise in cynical sophistry. You and the other people on that video remind me of those downsizing specialists whose jobs it is to explain why getting fired from your job of 20 years is really a positive, life-improving experience.

Did even you read my post above yours?

I want the ranger to get fixed just as much as you do. I just have a different approach, and it doesn’t include hyperboles like “pets run forward 50 feet ahead of me,” or “pets are also slow and will often die before they even reach the enemy.”

I have no issues with complaining about the class. I voiced out some of my own multiple times already. I just don’t color it with exaggeration like you and many of you “rangers suck” people do.

A build not based on just DPS? Preposterous! Don’t you know that Damage is the only thing that matters?! /sarcasm

On topic: This is a pretty interesting setup, what do you suggest for Weapon Sigils?

Following this subforum’s cynicism, any patch without a nerf is a good patch :P

Holland.9351:

Call of the Wild (Warhorn 5)
Can cause the pet to attack the nearest target.

This is caused by having auto-target active. Switch it off and the pet won’t insta-aggro. Having it off also gives the freedom of using Swoop and other leap skills as burst movement.

Also, to contribute to the thread:

• Pet names revert to Juvenile <pet type> when switched to a different pet, except for the pets that have underwater counterparts. If the underwater pet is named, the land version will remain named as well.

Guild Wars 2 Pet Mini Guide #1: Porcine Pets

Keeping with my first guide about pets, I’ve done another write up on one of the pets that I think is underused. And with good reason. For the longest time I thought that the Pigs were the most uninsteresting pets. They’re the pets with the 2nd highest Vitality stat, and they have a knockdown, but their F2 Skill looks really meh. The Dog F2 skills look so much better. Fear and Immobilize are just so useful… but that was before I learned what Forage actually does.

Each Pig has 3 different possible Forage items, each with different effects. They are actually the same skills that thieves get when they use their Steal skill with one exception: anyone can use them. Of course this would be troublesome in PvP, but in PvE, it is perfect.

Meet The Pigs

Here are the skills with a quick description and a corresponding wiki link.

1. Pig: Defensive/Healing Support
Egg – Eat Egg – heal and regain 6 initiative
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Eat_Egg
Seed Pod – Healing Seed – summon healing tree (water field)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Healing_Seed
Elixir of Heroes – Drink – 3sec invulnerability
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Drink

Given the Pig’s items, this pet is best suited for D/D thief allies as they can make the most out of the Egg, and being in melee range, they could use the heal or the invulnerability. Mostly a healing support hog (see what I did there? :P), the Pig is good for allies that are tanking for you.

2. Boar: Heavy CC/Interrupts
Skull – Skull Fear – 600 aoe fear (based on distance)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Skull_Fear
Bone – Bone Crack – Melee Stun
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bone_Crack
Rock – Throw Rock – 600 range knockdown
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Throw_Rock_

The Boar is a heavy CC pet and is best used if you need to constantly CC a big non-boss enemy, like the Scavengers or Breeders in AC. All of the item drops are good interrupts.

3. Warthog: Assorted Conditions
Scale – Throw Scale – bleed poison weakness
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Throw_Scale
Gunk – Throw Gunk – ethereal field
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Throw_Gunk
Exploding Venom Sack – 10s poison field
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Exploding_Venom_Sack

The Warthog on the other hand, is a condition damager and was the ranger’s only source of confusion via gunk being an etherial field. We now have The Drakes from Southsun Cove to directly cause confusion, but the charge up is way too long to be reliable. Granted, the ranger itself can probably get only 2 stacks of confusion via gunk, but its still pretty cool. Scale is also pretty good as it inflicts 3 different conditions.

4. Siamoth: Buff/Blind/Hide Support
Tuft of Hair – Blinding Tuft – stealth/blindness
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blinding_Tuft
Plasma – Consume Plasma – all boons
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Consume_Plasma
Feathers – Throw Feathers – stealth/blindness
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Throw_Feathers

The Siamoth is our one source of activatable Invisibility. I cant believe I missed how awesome this pet is. Tuft of Hair and Feathers both give 3sec stealth and blindness in a 160 AoE around the user. And Plasma is like a super buff item that gives you ALL the boons for 10 seconds. Arguably the best Porcine pet… if you dont mind the fugly look it has. Personally, I like it

How To Use Porcine Pets

There are 2 ways that I found the Forage skill to be the most effective:

1. Use Forage before entering combat. Best Used with the Warthog or Boar so you can start the fight with Conditions, CC or buffs.
2. Use it midcombat to drop the items and leave it there for until you need it (WARNING: PvE only). Best Used with the Pig and Siamoth.

Dont Be Selfish

Remember that Porcine pets are supposed to help both you and your allies. If you use bows, use your Porcine pets to support your melee allies. Dont get mad if they use your items!

Who’s going to guest?

Personally, I think we should have Search and Rescue resurrect the pet if its dead or bring it back up to full if it’s damaged. It’s on an 85 second cd anyway (much longer than the death timer), and it’ll give us a reason to use it. It’ll make it a pet-rez and ally-rez at the same time.

Still not convinced. Prove it!

We now focus on what pets can give even without points in Beastmastery.

If you go through the List of Pet Skills in the wiki, you will notice that nearly all of the pet skill have a bonus effect, which is either condition for the target, or a boon for itself/allies. Those are what needs to be utilized when there’s no points in BM.

IMPORTANT: It should be noted, however, that pets are particularly vulnerable in this state so they should be kept in passive mode permanently, and their skills should be used on command, even their non-F2 skills.

*Update Post April Patch: Since the survivability of pets have been improved, you can actually set your pets on agressive now, but you have to press F3 often to keep them in check. Its still a good idea to keep them on passive to control who/when pets attack though!

Contrary to popular belief, Pet AI is actually predictable and can be manipulated, to an extent. Pets will likely try use their high cooldown skill, if it is an offensive spell. This means that drakes will most likely use Tail Swipe first when they are activated, and Canines will likely use Brutal Charge first to knockdown enemies.

What this means, is we have Knock Down and a Blast Finisher available to us with 5/0 Points in Beastmastery. And it is not limited to just that. Here’s what each of the families/specific pets can bring to the table:

Bears:
Family Skills – none that can be manipulated
Black Bear – 10s Weakness in a 600 AoE, 45 second cd.
Brown Bear – Remove 1 condition in 600 AoE, 25s cd.
Murellow – 6 second poison field, 35s cd. This is my personal favorite, for reasons i will mention in the Carrion Devourer section.
Polar Bear – 3 second chill in a 600 AoE, 45 second cd.

Bears have been considered the worst pet for a while now because of they have the lowest DPS and really slow attack animations. With the recent changes to ranger utilities, things may have changed since then. The “Protect Me” shout is best used with bears because they are very likely to survive the 6 seconds that the shout is active. Murellow has always been my favorite because of the poison field, with Black Bear a close second because of the new Weakness. Rangers have been known to have really bad condition cleanse and Brown Bear happens to have an AoE condition cleanse every 25 seconds. The only bear that hasn’t changed in status is the Polar Bear because a 3 second chill on a kitten cd just doesn’t cut it.

Bird:
Family Skills – 10 seconds of Swiftness.
Owl – 6 second chill, with quite a bit of damage, 20s cd.
Raven (Regular/White) – 5 seconds of blindness, 18s cd.
Eagle/Hawk – 2 bleed stacks, 15 seconds duration, 6s cd.

In the first version of this guide, I strongly discouraged using birds because of their lower hp, even though Quickening Screech was useful. With the survivability of birds buffed, they are a very nice utility pet. The blind and chill they bring last a decent suration and are on pretty fast cooldowns. They used to be great for spike damage (dealing over 4k with their double crits), but they were toned down for the June patch. Special mention goes to Eagle/Hawk because they have really long bleeds on very short cooldowns. They are very nice pets to use when the enemy has really crazy condition cleanse.

note: Thanks to Indoles.1467 for pointing out Owl’s Chill is 6 seconds

Porcine:
Family Skills – 3 second AoE Knock Down in a small arc, 40s cd.
All the forage skills are unaffected by Beastmastery so they all are still working on 100% efficiency without it. Read up on pigs on my Porcine Pet Guide! /shameless plug

For our purposes though, the Warthog and the Siamoth are best suited for this, since their Forage items are usable at range and allows us to stay out of range for most of the nasty AoEs. Pigs are also one of the better pets to use on a BM 5/0 build because of it’s Knock Down, available on every swap!* The downside to them, though, is that their Brutal Charge seems less accurate than the Canine version, as the skill starts from about 600-900 range away from the target, while the Canine’s version makes them leap from 350 range away from the enemy and has a less noticeable charge up animation.
EDIT: A recent discovery shows that the Knockdown from pigs has a small AoE so it can knockdown multiple foes!
*Note: This no longer applies because ANet fixed pet cooldowns when stowed

Canine:
Family Skills – 2 second knockdown, 40s cd, more accurate as mentioned in the pig section, and 5 second cripple, 20s cd.
Alpine Wolf – 2 second chill in 500 AoE, 30s cd.
Fern Hound – 10 second Regenerate, 25s cd.
Hyena – Summons a hyena ally, 45 second cd. More knockdown machines!
Krytan Drakehound – 2 second immobilize in 500 AoE, 20s cd.
Wolf – 2 second fear in 500 AoE, 45 second cd.

The Canine Family is my personal favorite when running 5/0 BM Builds, because they add so much utility from their Knock Down alone. A recent thread has shown that they have the best kill time on moving targets because of their innate cripple. Drakehound + Wolf is what I usually use when roaming in WvW. Don’t be afraid to use the drakehound howl as it has a pretty big AoE and it has a fairly short cooldown.

note: Thanks to Indoles.1467 for pointing out Canine KnockDown is 2 seconds

Devourer:
Family Skills – none that can be manipulated, although 10% chance of poison from their normal attack is nice.
Carrion Devourer – 5 second Poison Field, 30s cd
Lashtail Devourer – 7 stacks of 5s bleeds, 30s cd
Whiptail Devourer – pet version of Shortbow #2, 30s cd. Fires 5 barbs, each barb puts 2 seconds of poison.

Devourers are the pets with the highest toughness and this is what keeps them viable even without points in Beastmastery. They are also the best pets to use for Rampage As One since their normal attack counts as 2 hits, and it gives out 2 stacks of Might per attack! Best of all, is that “hits” made by the Carrion Devourer’s Poison Field will also trigger the Might section of the elite skill. I could get 25 stacks of Might very quickly if the devourer is able to hit a mob of 3 or more inside the AoE of the Poison Cloud, in addition to it’s normal attack. This also applies to the Murellow’s, but the Murellow doesn’t have the double Might per attack that the Carrion Devourer gives.

Drake:
Family Skills – The Ranger’s only Blast Finisher!, 30s cd. It also deals weakness with quite a bit of damage in a small AoE.
Ice Drake – 5 stacks of chill in a 250 cone in front of it, 25s cd.
Marsh Drake – Fires 5 projectiles that bounce twice, and gives 3 seconds of poison per hit. 30s cd. This skill is one of the easier to aim because it tracks it’s enemies and can hit behind it!*
Reef Drake – 5 stacks of Confusion, 25s cd. The Ranger’s direct way to access confusion. With the cast time buff on pet F2 skills, it’s easier to hit this but it still requires the target to stand still for 1.5 seconds for the charge up, and another 1-2 seconds for the confusion to stack up.
River Drake – Damage!, 30s cd. I wasn’t planning on including a pet that didn’t have a condition, but River Drake gets a pass because it has an amazing F2 skill that can track enemies similar to the Marsh Drake’s. It’s also a really AoE attack so it’s worth mentioning.
Salamander Drake – 5 seconds of burning with quite a bit of damage, 30s cd. This is supposed to be the strongest Breathe attack, but it is really hard to aim that I don’t use it that much.

Ah the Drakes, once useless, now oh so useful! The Drakes are our only source of Blast Finishers and they are really good for that purpose. It isn’t a targetted blast finish though, so don’t expect to use it for pre-buffing on fire fields. It’s more useful for AoE Healing in conjunction with Healing Spring. The setup is cast Healing Spring near an enemy, and make your drake attack that enemy while it is on the water field. Easily pulled off during boss fights in Dungeons! Special mention goes to River Drake because even in its nerfed state, it’s still a really hard hitting skill.

*Update June 25: No longer tracks enemies behind it.

Feline:
Family Skills – 5 seconds of Vulnerability on auto attack, and 4 stacks of bleed (10s duration) every 20 seconds.
Jaguar – 6 seconds invisibility, +25% crit chance, 30s cd.
Jungle Stalker – 5 stacks of might with 5 second duration, 30s cd.
Lynx – 4 stacks of bleeds, 10s duration, 30s cd.
Snow Leopard – 8 second chill, a bit of damage, 30s cd.

I used to strongly discourage using Felines because of how squishy they were pre-April patch. Now that they’re much more survivable, they are viable pets for builds with no points in BM. They still deal the highest DPS out of all pets so whenever you need high DPS and there aren’t really that many threats, Felines are your best bet. Also, Lynx has a really long lasting bleed, along with pretty decent damage.

note: Thanks to Indoles.1467 for pointing out Icy Pounce is 8 seconds chill

Moa:
Family Skills – 2 stacks of Vulnerability for 10 seconds, 20s cd, and a 3k~ heal in a 240 AoE, 40s cd that is very hard to manipulate.
Black/Pink Moa – 2 second daze in a cone, 30s cd
Blue Moa – 3 second protection in a about 360 AoE, 40s cd
Red Moa – 15 seconds of Fury in 360 AoE! 30s cd One of the best pet buffs!
White Moa – 3 second chill in about 360 AoE, 24s cd
NOTE: The AoE is a personal observation, it might be wrong

Karl McLain.5604:

Precise Strike looks as though it’s requiring you to get out of combat first before you can crit again. We’ll look into this and get a fix in when we can. Thanks for the report!
Also, it’s good to make sure this sort of thing is reported in the game bugs section as well.

-Karl

Woot a quick response! <3

Ahh the cry-before-the-patch-even-gets-here-thread.

Seriously, you’re already complaining and you haven’t even seen the actual patch notes yet. If you’re basing it on the leak, then it’s severely lacking. J.Sharp mentioned a very vague “There will also be # changes to some of the Ranger weapons.” that isn’t mentioned in those leaks.

inb4 those changes will be nerfs.

Err… ok… thats a lot of data… o_O

To finish up the article, I’ll discuss the playstyle. After all, a dead pet is dead weight!

As mentioned earlier, the pet should be kept permanently on passive to increase it’s chances of survival. With this setup, you can actually trigger your pet’s Family Skill listed here by pressing F1. After they do their special attack, immediately press F3 to make them come back. Pets should not extend their stay inside melee range of the enemies as they will most likely die.

For ranged pets, you can make them act like a turret in the sense that you can “park” them in a spot and make them stay there by pressing F1 on spot you want them to stay in. They will stay in that spot until you either press F3 to call them back, or attempt to follow their target if it goes out of range. Remember that the pet will keep on attacking even if the enemy is in their face and is charging a nasty spell to 1 hit it! Make sure to call it back before the charge up finishes.

Oh-kay.. Is that it..?

One last thing: We can further improve our pets by using Malicious Training to increase the pet’s Condition Duration by 50%, and Concentration Training to increase our pet’s Boon Duration by 50%.

And that’s it! If you made it this far, thanks for reading my wonderful wall of text! I hope you gained some insight on pet uses as some of these applies to BM builds as well.

TL;DR – Use pets with conditions, keep pets on passive and press F1/F2 to use pet skills, press F3 after pet uses skill to keep it alive.

Sebrent.3625:

No. You cannot have two sigils of the same type (in this case, “on-swap”) on the same set and both work. You’ll get one or the other effect.

To be specific, you’ll get the effect on the mainhand.

Undertow.2389:

To me, that was the goal of this thread; to remember the upsides.

This, exactly. I check this forum everyday and I got so fed up with all the complaints about pets that I just had to write this up and quell the QQ. Everyday there will be a thread about permanently stowing pets, pets being a hindrance, pets dying too fast or the Nth thread about pets not hitting moving targets. This whining is from people that choose to work against the mechanic rather than work with it. I embraced it, took my time to understand it, and now I’m sharing what I’ve learned to everyone.

As for the people that still want to stay negative: I know that pets have issues, I acknowledged them on the first post.

I’ve experienced all of these as well and I know that these are all very valid and all very real.

However, they are not as useless and broken as people make them appear to be. They still have their uses and its up to ANet to help make pets more effective and helpful. I just hope Jon Peters’ update on melee pets hitting more reliably will be good.

To everyone else who enjoyed my post, thank you for reading! I hope you learned something new and I hope this would be the start of good, healthy discussion on pets and their uses.

What I understand from that is he sent his pet to assist allies while he did his duty to the team. It was never explicitly stated that the pet alone was downing enemies.

Also, you talk like the pet forcing someone to dodge is a bad thing. If your enemy uses a dodge to avoid the knockdown, he has one less dodge to use against your attacks.

woot finally out! <3 I’ve been waiting all week XD

And now, the “defenders” are the bad guys. Majority of the ranger players say that devs don’t listen to players and your post says that they do listen, but only to the defenders? How ironic.

If you read the guides I’ve made, I acknowledge that there are issues, but it is not as bad as players make them out to be. That is might biggest issue with this entire subforum. People have been saying that ANet broke Jaguars but they are still the best DPS pet and the nerf hardly touched their DPS. People have been saying that bows are broken, but LB only got buffs this patch. How does getting buffs on a weapon break it? Granted, it could still use more, but the buffs we got are a step in the right direction.

People have this preconceived vision of what a ranger should be, and it doesn’t align with ANet’s vision. That’s the main problem. Just look all of the “RANGE”-r threads. Until people can perma-stow their pet or their longbow does 20k rapid fires people will never stop QQing.

Sebrent.3625:

OGDeadHead, could you please make a video (or multiple) devoted to this little bit?

This is done by moving the camera around, and pressing 1. Since we don’t have a crosshair, it’s mostly guesswork until you hit the desired target.

I’ve been doing that with the burrows in AC. I manually aim my longbow with 1, then i press 2 as soon as I can hit it reliably. As for the treb, you just have to aim your camera higher (like he did in his screenie)

putting this here as feedback:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Tribune-Burntclaw-CoF-P3-and-no-res-mechanic/first#post1320997

tl;dr: no way to be rezzed when you die in lava in final boss fight in CoF p3

Nope, I’m pretty happy with my ranger despite all of it’s shortcomings and the perception of players in this forum.

I agree with jcbroe’s analysis of the ranger community in this forum. They take everything in a negative light and blow it out of proportion (see aquaman).

My personal gripe about the community is that the negative nancys believe that their opinion is absolutely correct and disagreeing with them gets you labeled as a troll or they start to question your intelligence. Present them with facts and they will ignore it or they will still try to enforce their belief that they are correct. (see 84% crit chance with Jaguar Stealth).

While I agree that some of their complaints are valid (I’m pretty upset about the pet damage nerfs just as much as they are), they present them in such a offensive and repulsive manner that it’s hard to take it seriously. More so for developers that want to see player feedback but get turned off by all the crap they have to slog through just to get the decent ones. And when one of them finally has the guts to participate in discussion, they get viciously attacked. (See Robert Hrouda)

I see these people as the kind of people that absolutely hate change. Their toy truck with big wheels got changed to a toy truck with small wheels, but in exchange they are given a new race car as an alternative. They will kitten and moan about the changes to their beloved toy truck and completely ignore the new race car.

I have never once said that the Ranger is perfect as it is right now. In fact I’m one of the people that badly want it to get fixed. What I am against, however, are people like Cucuhullain that greatly exaggerate the shortcomings of the Ranger class.

If I were to believe him, my longbow would never ever hit a moving target, which is false, and all of the people I’ve hit with my dog’s knockdown is afk or a noob. which is also false. Also, the pet range is 2000, so how can my pet be 50 feet ahead of me?

1. Trap Radius is the size of the area for the trap to trigger. Effective radius is the actual area affected by the trap
2. It lasts 8 seconds
3. It gains stealth and protection for 10 seconds, and guards the selected area for 3 minutes.

Nice vid, shows a lot of 1vX which I like

What I don’t like is the minute long dancing sequence that just eats up my bandwidth :P

Adding to the compilation thread!

Will you be updating this thread regularly? I’ll add it to the compilation thread!

Chokolata.1870:

he is asian so they presume he has skill :p

Dude, lets not go there. Things are messy enough as it is. o_O

Dahkeus.8243:

I made a pet dps guide a while back that compared numbers from tests I did on the mists. I haven’t touched it since the last patch, but I don’t think there has been anything that really changed for the data within:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Ranger-Pet-DPS-Comparison/first#post1539162

Also, for what it’s worth, I agree that this should be stickied.

This is what I was looking for! (I mentioned it on a post above :P) Thanks for posting it here I added it to the first post