Several types of pets with different purposes. List time.
Birds: Your glass cannon of pets. Birds have the undisputed HIGHEST damage per second ratio. Yes, HIGHEST. I have tested extensively and if you use skills correctly and actively birds are top of the line. However, they are squishy and die to stiff breezes. To top this off, birds currently have an “I have been summoned” animation that needs to go. I don’t care that my bird is excited and needs to do victory loops in the air, I need it to go attack my target. Only birds have this problem.
Bears And Arcodotus(er whatever it is): Your utility tanks. Do no damage, take tons of damage, somehow gather aggro. Usually have utility (clear a condi, weaken a crowd, etc). Not much else to say.
Boars: Main purpose is to be Search Tanks. Same thing as bears, but instead of utility they will find random objects that may or may not help you in any conceivable manner. However, finding Stick has to be the most gratifying feeling.
Devourer: Ranged condi applicants. In need of buffs. They are supposed to be half tank, half condi- the Dire attribute chart among pets. Problem is, they fill neither role. They do not aggro very heavily, they do not apply conditions in an effective manner, and they do not provide any sourt of peel.
Drakes: Your Crowd Control tanks. Skills range from confusion to burning, often have tail sweep (a knockdown or stun, not sure which). They are high stat, high damage, high tank…just cumbersome. They fit their theme, but the pvp meta has sped up and they see little to no gameplay in this area. Speed up drakes, you will see them played far more often. Taunt was a good way to do so WITHOUT running over toes. This directly buffs fire drakes.
Hounds: Second place dps, often provide utility. Might, Stealth, Weakness, Clones. All of them have a knockdown. If you need crowd control with a high dps output, grab these. Hyena, Wolf, and Drakehound do well. Hyena needs buffs, but because of the double knockdown possibility they are unlikely to receive any. Fern Hound is fantastic imo, but it needs a better regeneration number.
Moa: They…uh…Utility. Nothing else to say. Protection to daze to weakness, they channel some kind of ability to some moderate effect. Radius is far too low and whenever they go off seem to be telling everyone “BACK THE F@#$ OFF” which is counter productive as their effects are often too weak. Needs buffs. Fun to use, hardly effective.
Spiders: Sneaky bug fixes are sneaky. Pre specialization patch, these spiders did NOT apply their venoms 100% of the time. Now, they are perfect. They are squishy high condition application units from far away. IF you are playing condi, you want THIS or Drake. Always, no exceptions. Devourer is too weak, and with Taunt Drakes do fantastic jobs. I apply Spiders when I want a bit more hidability in my pet and Drake when I want people to know that they done F@#$ed up.
Those are my takes, all in all I stated what needed to be done. I don’t think I missed any pet category, and if I did it clearly needs buffs. I playtested every one of these while I was remaking builds ranging from speed nuke, to high burst, to condi destruction, and then ending in the tankiest thing on the known Tyrian universe. Yes, I outtanked a 1v3 (I did not win, but I did not DIE). It was rather dumb. Grain of salt with my post, but nothing I said was wrong. Pets are not garbage, our dps is not garbage, we are the Utility class. We bring things others do not. Mesmers and Rangers do so differently. Rangers are more durable utility and mesmers are more burst. Guess who wins an evenly matched fight despite Mesmer buff? Rangers. I have not lost a 1v1 on any Mesmer duels thus far. Especially against power or stun Mesmers.