Guild Wars 2

For what it’s worth, I’d just as soon see the pet dodge bound to my dodge as separate. I’m not sure I could hit two dodge keys fast enough when we are both imperiled. I realize this could be seen as a waste of my endurance, but wilderness survival gives a lot of endurance regen. I know this isn’t everyone’s ideal.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I am still here and watching. …

Things to investigate:

Could you please ask someone to make sure drakes (and other pets with a life steal “bite” attack) don’t heal the enemy? It isn’t game-breaking, but it is an obvious error, if it’s still happening.

I have dabbled in sPvP & WvW, but I still mostly qualify as PvE only. I’ll bite.

1) I chose it randomly out of the less populated US servers. I’ve stayed because I’ve made friends. Why would I move?

2) It would have to be fun, rewarding, or both, in order to be a good use of my time.

Zergs are not fun, as you can’t tell what value you are contributing. My lowly laptop goes bananas over zergs, and between the culling and FPS drop, it’s hard to tell what the heck is happening. Not fun. Being part of an overwhelming force? Not fun. Being overwhelmed? Not fun.

I have had fun tearing up supply camps as part of an organized 5-man guild team using voice comms. I have had fun defending a camp against slightly larger forces, manning siege. I’d do that again, but I only like that specific, limited part of WvW, and only because of the guild I was running with.

WvW tokens are, for me, harder to get and no more desirable than dungeon tokens. The reward just isn’t there to compensate for the overall lack of a good time. Incidently, dragon fights are are not fun either, but I suffer through them for the loot, at least occasionally.

3) I don’t really care about buffs, WvW or guild. They may fractionally make my rewards better, but they don’t make the game more fun or interesting. The notion that I’m going to spend my gaming time to help support WvW buffs that I don’t care about is ridiculous.

4) The repair bill doesn’t really factor into it. If it was fun, I wouldn’t care.

5) People pay attention to the opponent’s equipment skins in WvW? You’re pulling my leg, right? Well, maybe if your opponent had a legendary that left footprints, it would be easier to find them. I’d notice THAT, but it’s not exactly desirable.

6) I have zero sense that my playing or not playing WvW makes any material difference to anything.

Robert Hrouda talked about why addressing pets in dungeons is difficult: http://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/dungeons/Dungeon-Patch-Discussion-2-26/page/6#post1568959 It’s worth a read.

Thumbnail synopsis: rangers are already strong in open-world PvE, and making pets more survivable in dungeons would make them stronger in open-world.

I still wish pets could somehow gain agony resistance, preferably by inheriting the master’s AR.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

If we buff rangers just for dungeons, than they are too strong for the open world. Considering I can solo most content in the open world by letting my pet tank, I feel ranger is very powerful outside of dungeons. We can’t have rangers that change based on PvP, open world, and dungeons because that gets too confusing for players and puts us on a slippery slope. Whatever we do to the ranger, it has to happen in both the open world and dungeons, so it requires more than just number tweaks. You see a lot of bots as rangers for that very reason – they are really strong open world classes, and buffing them for the sake of dungeons doesn’t work out to being a good fix.

Makes sense. I think it’s kind of ridiculous that there are champions (in Frostgorge & Orr) that my pet can solo based solely on my build and passive healing. I understand the problem.

Could we possibly have a way to get agony resistance onto the pet? Unless you intend to introduce agony outside of Fractals, that would have no impact on open world PvE, sPvP, WvW, or anything else. I suggest that the pet inherit the master’s resistance, rather than have inherent resistance of it’s own, so as not to unfairly advantage rangers. Might you consider that?

Any class can get a combat pet temporarily with an ogre pet whistle. Fire elemental powder is similar, but gives you an ember, not an animal.

If you just want something for fun, the pirate outfit can summon a bird, and there are loads of minipets that are animals.

Thanks!

That’s some food for thought.

I’ve been looking over your screenshots trying to figure out how you pulled this off. Mind answering a few questions?

Is the 10 marksman for signet mastery to reduce cooldown on the active effect of signet of stone? I see you keep that on your bar, but I don’t see it in cooldown anywhere. Are you using signet of stone mainly for the active, and signet of the wild mainly for the passive?

I’m guessing that your other adept traits are vigorous renewal (for more dodges hence more protection), nature’s bounty (as you mentioned 83% regen duration elsewhere), and shout mastery (more uptime on guard or sic ’em). Close? What are your other two picks from beastmastery, or do you swap them out with your pets?

You mentioned an attack bird on one of the clips. Are you using runes of the flock? Full set, or mixed with something for boon duration?

Enough nosy questions for now. Thanks for sharing that!

misterdevious.6482:

Daemon Hawk.9406:

P.S. If I was a melee ranger with those stats, I could use healing spring to give the pet 27 seconds of 230 regen every 30 from the spring, plus 27 seconds every 30 from fortifying bond, and the fern hound’s F2 would be irrelevant. Plus, the pet could regain health long after I was dead….

I can give my distant guard pet 45s of regen remotely with one Healing Spring (50% boon duration). With 83% duration, 55 seconds. Appears to be 6 pulses of ~7.5s and ~9.2s respectively.

I —really-- need to get in the habit of validating things.

misterdevious.6482:

When I use food that grants Might on Dodge, my pet gets Might with a duration twice as long as what I receive.

10 seconds for you, 20 for the pet, or something else? That sounds worth using.

misterdevious.6482:

I will test a bit more later, but for right now… these are the numbers I was finding…

…

In these kinds of transfers, Might transfers at 100% strength, Regen at 50%, and other boons at less. I don’t know why these results are so different from Healing Spring.

Wow. Thanks for the heavy spading!

I don’t understand it at all, but I’ll try to replicate your results tonight, and validate my own results. Something is not straightforward.

paleeshi.1924:

Not a single condition removal. =/

Healing spring.

Unspecified.9142:

Not sure I have any sympathy for a build based entirely on a consumable getting broken.

It’s not even broken, just toned down with a 1 sec proc CD, which limits it to only 325 HPS. It’s still ahead of mango pie at 85 HPS, assuming you can land a crit every 3 seconds or so.

Errm, no. You’re thinking of sharpened edges. Rending attacks is a 5 sec bleed. My drake, using only the 30 points in beastmastery, crits enough to keep 2-3 stacks up most of the time. Varden’s cat will make even better use of it.

Mighty swap affects only the pet. 3 stacks, 10 seconds, unless you have boon duration. Has nothing to do with where the pet is when you swap it, and nothing to do with fortifying bond. I find it counter productive to fortifying bond as swapping the pet wipes all the boons.

It won’t save spirits if something wants to kill them, but healing spring will help them survive a bit of AOE. I use immobile spirits in PvE and do that.

Apparently for a GC warrior, 100 blades was the best healing skill in the game.

Waah, you only want to buff bows! No fair!

Can axes’ autoattack have 12 bounces and 50% chance of knockdown? My toon is a norn, and has big muscles, so it would be realistic…

I thought that the wiki used to claim 133 every 2 secs on the player, but now it says nothing about player healing.

That looks like a lot of burst pain. Is this for PvP?

I wonder how Sic ’em and SotW stack. Multiplicatively?

The 16 quick hits from your Hunter’s Call will spin up the pet’s might under RaO. The pet’s attacks with fort bond will help keep the stacks up, but giving it a good shove in the right direction helps. I’m sure you already know that.

Not unless you have a live pet with compassion training. Then it’s a tad more.

Looking at your numbers for harmonic cry, it looks to be getting ~ 210 improvement on 350 healing power, for a 60% factor. 60% on a 40 sec AOE is probably what the balance team decided on. It would be too low if it was a single target spike heal or if it was healing over time, but I don’t know what AOE spike heal to even compare it to.

Is bite still healing enemies with drakes? I haven’t checked. That’s annoying, and ought to be addressed. Also, if you’re rounding up the healing that pets do, you might want to consider the drake’s blast finisher in a water field. That’s worth something, even if it’s not a pet skill per se. Compassion training should improve that.

Fern Hound’s regeneration ought to be ticking for 130 + healing power / 8, which is right where your numbers are. Looks fine to me.

I think the scaling is probably right where it should be, certainly in comparison to healing power scaling with player skills. Furthermore, 350 healing power for a adept trait is right in line with the traits giving 300 condition damage or +30% critical damage. The traits for +50% boon duration and +50% condition duration are even better deals.

That said, I use none of those traits, nor would I have any use for a moa or fern hound to start with. I could see trying it, perhaps, if I was a melee ranger without healing power and wanted some extra healing. Some people like them.

I am confused by your comments about fortifying bond.

My understanding is as follows: when I get a boon from the list, my pet gets a fresh copy of the boon, with a base duration specified by the type of boon. I am the “source” of the boon passed through fortifying bond, so it’s modified by my boon duration (and healing power if it’s regeneration). Examples, assuming an untraited pet, and that I have +50% boon duration and 800 healing power, I would expect the following:

• On casting Rampage as One, I get 20 seconds of swiftness and fury, modified to 30 seconds. My pet gets the same, plus an additional 3 seconds of each (their fortifying bond base duration) modified to 4.5 seconds by my boon duration for a total of 34.5 seconds of swiftness & fury on the pet.
• While RaO is up (20 seconds) hits by me give 1 stack of might to my pet for 8 seconds modified to 12. Hits by the pet give me 1 stack of might for 8 seconds (unmodified as it has no boon duration), and through fortifying bond, it gets a stack for 10 seconds (base fortifying bond duration) modified to 15 (by my boon duration).
• When healing spring pulses and I am in the field, I get 3 seconds of regeneration, modified to 4.5, healing (130 + 800 / 8 = 230) per second. Through fortifying bond, the pet also gets 3 seconds (base fortifying bond duration) modified to 4.5 seconds, of regeneration healing 230 HPS.
• If healing spring gets both of us in the field, the pet gets 4.5 seconds directly and 4.5 seconds through fortifying bond, for a total of 9 seconds of 230 HPS regeneration.

The above is consistent with my own observations, and took a bit of banging to get into my skull. What I don’t understand is the statement “With Fortifying Bond, you give back 50% of what the duration would be with your boon duration stat, and give it back at your healing power”.

Based on my understanding of the mechanics, with an untraited Fern Hound, and +50% boon duration, 800 healing power, and fortfying bond, I would expect:

• If I am out of range, the hound gives itself 10 seconds of regeneration for 130 HPS. Hound: 1300, me: 0.
• If I am in range of the hound, the hound gives itself 10 seconds of 130 HPS, and me the same. Fortifying bond also gives the hound 4.5 seconds of 230 HPS. The higher intensity gets used first. Hound: 2335, me: 1300.

With both traits, I would expect:

• If I am out of range, the hound gives itself 15 seconds of regeneration for (130 + 350/800 = 174) HPS. Hound: 2610, me: 0.
• If I am in range of the hound, the hound gives itself 15 seconds of 174 HPS, and me the same. Fortifying bond still gives the hound 4.5 seconds of 230 HPS. Hound: 3645, me: 2610.

Is that not how it works? What am I misunderstanding?

P.S. If I was a melee ranger with those stats, I could use healing spring to give the pet 27 seconds of 230 regen every 30 from the spring, plus 27 seconds every 30 from fortifying bond, and the fern hound’s F2 would be irrelevant. Plus, the pet could regain health long after I was dead….

You could test it, but I believe it should. Fortifying bond doesn’t really share boons with the pet. What it does is give your pet a new copy of a boon, with a fixed duration, whenever you get a copy of one of the boons it affects. This new copy is affected by your boon duration, not the boon duration of where you got your boon from. It should be affected by your healing power. Your fern hound should pick up regen from itself, modified by its boon duration and healing power, as well as 3 seconds of regen from you, modified by your boon duration and healing power. If your healing power is greater, it should first use the copy from you, then the regen from itself.

I find the vets fun, and I’ll go out of my way to kill them. The champs, on the other hand, are too much for me to solo. I like that there exists thing I can’t solo.

You must have had some fun spading this! How do you measure ranges at those distances? Did you encounter range limits for F2 skills, healing, Fortifying Bond, etc?

I get what you mean about feeling cheap. I always feel that way about using Guard. One use of one skill is all you need for a lower level “defend this location” type dynamic event? Then your job is to run around and loot corpses? Or dance? It’s not like helping the pet makes the event take less time or go better in any way. How can that not be cheesy?

Holland.9351:

also maybe add the trait that transfers boons to pet and the 33% regeneration trait together with healing spring.

I do something like that when I’m actively healing it. My build notes are at http://garik.fastmail.fm/boon_swap.html if you have an interest.

Prysin.8542:

AOE “Condition trap”
By wielding a longbow, you can create a AOE “Condition trap” that will seriously hurt your enemy.
To “set” the trap, you will need to utilize multiple skills, but the effect can be devastating.
First you need a longbow, the more condition damage on it, the better (dont use this bow for anything but this trap).
The skills you need to use (in this order) is
Sun spirit (preferably with 15% spirit bonus trait)
Sharpening Stone (for bleeding)
Pet F2 – use a Forest spider with it’s F2 ability (next three strikes poisons your foe)
Quickening Zephyr (4 second quickness burst, makes the whole barrage fire in less then 2 seconds, instead of 5)
Barrage

This chain is quite good against gate attackers in W3 or against large numbers of mobs (Since you apply Bleed, burn, cripple and poison)

Sun Spirit will add three seconds of burn to at most two enemies, one for you and one for your pet, until the 10 sec proc cooldown expires. I use Sun spirit, and like it, but fail to see the synergy with barrage. It’s not like the cripple is going to hold them in a fire field. You’re just randomizing where your burn proc goes.

I also don’t understand why you’re interested in the Forest spider’s F2. 6 secs of poison added to its next 3 attacks is nice, but won’t that just stack 18 secs of poison on a single target? Are you planning on redirecting it to 3 targets with F1 during your barrage channel? Otherwise, how is this helping to spread poison to a group?

Daemon.4295:

I want to hear the results, these are interesting experiments Although I would be spamming F2, it makes the results more relevant.

Sounds like a good idea. F2 might make a difference for the Fern Hound, in particular. I might try some tests with that, especially in marginal cases.

Let me start of by saying this really just boils down to a stupid stat test, and it’s slow. This is also not an exploit — I’m not really AFK.

That said, I’ve been amusing myself by setting up pet vs. champion fights. The rules are:

• If the champion goes under 1/3 health, the pet wins.
• If the pet dies, the champion wins, obviously.
• If I go under half health while not defending myself, the pet forfeits.
• The pet is allowed my traits and Signet of the Wild, but no other assistance.
• The champion is allowed adds that it summons, but no others.

Results with the Champ Icebrood Fish:

• Armor Fish: Pet wins.
• Devourer: Pet wins.
• Drake: Champ wins, tested twice. This was sad.
• Bear: Ignored, as expected. I used polar as it has a bit more power.
• Cat: LOL
• Shark: Mostly ignored. Repeatedly feared the champ into me. Bloody fish!
• Jellyfish: Ignored. Somehow I thought it wouldn’t be.

Results with the Champ Ice Drake Broodmother:

• Devourer: Champ wins.
• Drake: Champ wins, tested twice.
  If it didn’t have ice breath, it probably would be possible. No further testing planned.

Results with the Champion Corrupted Quaggan:

• Devourer: Would have won. Had it under 50% health when another player jumped in. It’s a DE, and jumping in is completely understandable, but further testing had to be postponed.

Results with the Champion Ooze King:

• Devourer: Likely would have won. Had it to 60% health when another ranger jumped in. I pulled back, letting him take it. It completely ignored his bear. The other ranger struggled with it for a while, and then the Champ Risen Giant joined the fray. We both watched the Champs duke it out, but the giant won, of course. Testing with DE champions is hard.

Results with the Champion Risen Megalodon:

• Armor Fish: Instantly obliterated.
• Devourer: Nearly instantly obliterated.
  No further testing planned.

Like I said, this basically boils down to whether or not the pet can hold aggro (mostly through toughness) and can mitigate enough damage (through toughness) to let passive healing be sufficient to keep it alive. If so, it wins, as none of these champions do any healing. It’s stupid, but I find it funny.

I plan to do more pet vs. champion. Do you want to hear the results? Maybe contribute some of your own? Give me ideas for champions to sacrifice my pets to?

“Boon Swap”

This is a turret, supportive beastmaster build. It is strong in world PvE, capable of soloing veteran karkas, veteran risen giants, and most world champions, despite my modest playing skills.

By “turret”, I mean that I tend to pick a spot and fight from there. I don’t like moving unless I have a need to. I know this is counter to GW2’s design, but it’s what works for me. In part, this is because I move exclusively with the mouse, so kiting and strafing are nearly out of the question.

Most of the build is oriented around healing & buffing my pet, myself (and through fortifying bond, my pet), & nearby allies (including my pet). Most fights for me are straight-up tank & spank: my pet holds the mobs’ attention, eats their attacks, and does the bulk of the damage while I buff, heal, and add my own damage. Obviously, I don’t get to stand still as much while fighting veteran karka.

Key features of the build:

+ Significant healing, especially of the pet.
+ Group support, both directly and through spirits.
+ The trait fortifying bond, to push more boons onto the pet.
+ The use of sigils of battle, to as an extra source of might.
+ The use of specific runes for boon duration & more might.

Without the stacking sigil, this build can heal the pet for 33,200 spread over the 30 second cycle. Even the strictly passive healing is high enough (595 HPS) to AFK-solo some champions.

Pets: Drake/Devourer
Weapons: Axe/Warhorn + Axe/Torch
Skills: Healing Spring, Sun Spirit, Stone Spirit, Signet of the Wild, Rampage as One
Traits: 0/0/20 (IV, VII)/20 (IV, VIII)/30 (II, VII, XII)
Gear: Cleric
Runes: 4 Altruism + 2 Water
Sigils on mainhand are Life, until 25 stacks, then Restoration or Slaying.
Sigils on both offhands are Battle

Skill calculator: http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mmozmzcz0obLgMmbLgM9MGGxmkmRMkb8kiU7khs7kiU7khs7kiU707qGJ70z7kNf7qGJ7kNf7qGJ7ofF70m

There is a full writeup at http://garik.fastmail.fm/boon_swap.html with the details of the interactions between skills, traits, and gear.

Please leave me feedback via PM here, in game mail, or at garik@fastmail.fm.

~ Garik Ravenclaw

saye.9304:

… anyway the bear pet is suppose to tank but when some of the mobs ignoring the bear and come directly for me i am like wtf((exp: trash mob like: cave troll and some orr mobs and some vets and even if ur bold enough to take on champ and die because the champ is after u,there are few champs u can kill but ranger can kill lesser cause some of them ignore the pet)).
and we all know the sad story of pets in dungeon,fractals etc.
… they remove those useless spirit skills …
… pet class without pet in middle of boss fight is stupid….

I’m a supportive BM ranger, and mostly don’t have the issues that you’re talking about. I use pets with toughness (drakes, devourers, etc.), buff them up with might & protection, and put a ton of healing into them (over 900 health per second, plus spike heals). I frequently end the fight with champions and bosses without having swapped pets at all, and almost never end up without a fresh pet ready to replace a fallen one. The flip side, or course, is that my own offensive stats are mostly a side-effect of buffing the pet, and the pet is accounting for the majority of my damage. Certainly not a role everyone would enjoy.

Incidently, I get a lot of value out of those “useless spirits”, especially stone & sun. I take care where I put them, and heal them, and they are usually up more than they are down. Some encounters are pretty brutal to spirits, and I can only put 300 HPS into them. Ironically, when I pull aggro, it seems to be related to bosses getting cheesed off about the spirits. I like their mechanic and think it’s just fine how it is.

Are you doing much healing? In PvE, my pets shake off most damage sources because of how efficiently pet healing over time scales with healing power. Then again, it’s not WvW, and I’m not using glass canon pets (or bears).

If “everything we need” is access to the juvenile pets, rest easy, you’re missing out on almost nothing. The only interesting one is the black moa, which is reskinned red moa. It’s interesting mostly as a reminder of my favorite GW1 pet, but it’s just a reskin, and I don’t use moas anyway. The rainbow jellyfish is just a renamed (not reskinned) blue jellyfish. The white raven & black widow are just reskinned versions of the raven & jungle spider, with greatly reduced health and nothing to recommend them but their looks.

There are, I think, two reasons that there is little gold to be made crafting in GW2.

First, there is little barrier to entry in terms of effort invested. The worst is probably cooking, but even that took me only part of a Saturday, discovering things naturally and never mass crafting anything. For the other professions, it takes what, a couple hours and a few gold following an easy guide? By contrast, in Dofus (another MMO), maxing Farmer/Baker involved HOURS and HOURS of doing nothing but swinging a scythe until you were too loaded to carry more grain, running to the mill, waiting forever to grind the flour, running to the bakery, waiting forever for the bread to bake, and then doing it all over and over. Oh and investment in buying gear to let you carry more weight than a sane toon would ever need.

Second, the rewards are much better from leveling a craft than practicing it. You get a lot of XP for levelling a craft, and there is no extra cost for levelling all the crafts. These factors combine to give the economy a surplus of crafters who mastered their craft for “free”, as a side effect of the real benefit (XP).

In my example with Dofus, bakers made bread, which sped up your out-of combat health recovery. Without bread, you had to waste time between fights, so everyone wanted bread. For most people, it was well worth paying a modest wage to a baker rather than level one themselves. It was possible to “earn the right to make money” by putting in the long-term labor.

That’s just not the case in GW2, because there are so many extra “master craftsmen” available. Any shortage of crafting labor can quickly sort itself out. The people who do make a little coin on crafting don’t do it by saving other people the hassle of crafting or the hassle of mastering a craft — they do it by saving other people the hassle of looking up a recipe on the wiki, pricing the mats, and waiting for the “buy” orders to be filled.

Having a Master crafting profession does make the option of assembling the parts for a thing you want slightly more convenient, and opens an extra door to playing the TP if that’s your thing, but the real benefit you got was the XP. And the fun factor…

In my case, when the crafting dailies hit, I play dress-up with my cook’s outfit, summon my sous chef so I can pretend he does something, throw down a roast pig for the sous chef to pretend to take care of, make four batches of mango pie, and put it all away. So worth the $8.75! Later on, I’ll pass out the pies to guildies who aren’t running their food buff in a dungeon. “Chef” is part of my main toon’s identity, and I like it. Discovering all the recipes was fun too, and I can’t wait for new seasonal content.

Eurantien.4632:

How do you people survive without empathic bond? I don’t get it.

Healing Spring.

Why do you want to play ranger if you’re not interested in working with a companion AI?

My suggestion for minimal pet headaches is to get a pair of devourers, specifically carrion & whiptail. They have very high armor, tunnel backward to evade melee, and can push back melee opponents. They will mostly stay out of trouble and add some damage & poison to your current target. Use their specials if you feel like more poison, swap them when you must, and don’t worry about it. I lose the majority of my DPS if my pet dies, but you won’t, and unlike GW1, nothing bad will happen to you.

Do “stow” them before jumping down barrier if you’re worried they might pull mobs. They have a weird swim animation, but they will work underwater just fine.

Durzlla.6295:

I thought I was the only person who used almost solely mainland axe xD, and Staff Eles also have a ranged AoE auto attack, which is why my ele uses a staff lol. I’ve always been more of a fan of WDing in my ice trap for chill, but then again I feel our builds fill vastly different roles!

Cool! I find Eles weapon sets confusing as heck, but then I’ve never played one. Learned something new. Thanks!

And yeah, I’m a supportive beastmaster, and half the reason I pump might is to load it on my pet with Fortifying Bond. That likely is very different from your focus.

To the OP, I use axe mainhand almost exclusively, apart from specialty situations like graveling burrows where the axe is bugged and I’m forced to use dreatsword . I normally use warhorn & torch offhands, each with a Sigil of Battle, which gives 20 sec (modified to 30) of 3 stacks of Might on weapon swap, which I do on the 10 second cooldown. I trait Offhand Training to shave the cooldown on Bonfire & Hunter’s Call to 20 seconds, so they don’t interfere with keeping Might up.

Given that setup, there are two PvE situations that I use an axe offhand (with another Battle sigil) rather than the warhorn. In both places, what I’m doing is throwing Bonfire, immediately switching to the axe offhand, then popping Whirling Defense. What this does is serve two helpings of ouch to the mobs on me, as well as throw a dozen or so fire bolts around from the whirl finish. These do no damage, but stack an extra second of burning on whatever they hit. Since I do this move when stuff is up on my face, the bolts are more likely to hit something.

This works nicely when getting overrun by melee mobs, as in CoF when defending Maggs. The other place that it’s handy is on Alpha in CoE. My guild likes to bumrush him into the one of the stacks of crates, both to avoid the red circles (he doesn’t do those at point blank range) and to make it easier to bust people out of crystals. Since he’s just one guy, he catches fewer flaming bolts, but WD will pop crystals, give him some pain, and stack vulnerability.

General PvE, though? Always an axe mainhand with torch & warhorn offhands.

To the comment about axe mainhand being lower DPS than shortbow, this is true only on a single target. The axe is slower, but harder hitting per shot. Against multiple targets, it’s more total direct DPS. They are different tools for different purposes. Shortbow is better at burning down a single target, especially if you can flank. Axe is better at bringing pressure on a group of mobs. What other class has a ranged aoe autoattack?

It might depend on your setup, but I like drakes and devourers for world PvE & dungeons, and canines for WvW. I’m full-out support beastmaster 0/0/20/20/30.

Drakes outlast bears on long fights because their higher toughness makes more efficient use of my constant healing. Both their basic attacks and their tail sweep are AoE, and against two opponents, they will out-damage a cat. They can grab and hold the attention of a pack of mobs without target switching, even with me flinging axes around. While not naturally high precision, the +300 from 30 points in Beastmastery puts them at over 39% crit rate, enough to make Rending Attacks (5 sec bleed on crit) useful. I don’t take the trait for +condition damage, but I am constantly piling Might on it. Fury & Master’s Bond just make it even better.

Drake breath weapons are super slow to cast and lock the drake while doing it. For this reason, I’m much less fond of drakes that bounce their breath weapons (river & marsh), which are better against big packs, and lean towards the cones (salamander, ice, & reef) for screwing over a single target locked into a tank & spank. Among those, I can already burn, but freezing and confusion are both useful. In the end, I use reef drake the most, and ice mostly when running double drakes.

Some mobs are not meant to be melee’d without dodging, and against those, any melee pet is going to die quickly. For that reason I find a ranged pet useful as a standby. Devourers, with their high armor and evasive retreat, survive far better than spiders. They also make use of the Rending Attacks trait, which is nice. Mongst devourers, I prefer the poison field of the carrion.

Most of the time I run drake/devourer, with the devourer out only when the drake can’t be. In areas where I must have a tank or die, I’ll run double drake. Against certain dungeon bosses, I’ll run double devourer.

They work well enough underwater that I keep the same pets there as well.

In WvW, however, the targets are constantly mobile, and there the canines shine. Their stats match the drake, but they are single target with nice CC rather than multitarget. Honestly, I don’t do enough WvW to have a strong preference which dog to use.