Guild Wars 2

OGDeadHead.8326:

Very nice writeup!

I like the idea behind forage, but I think the implementation leaves a lot to wish for – it’s a clumsy mechanic tbh.

If they’re going to keep it this way, I think the duration of some of the items picked up needs to be longer, and the cooldown of their F2 ability needs to be shorter.

I’d rather see either that you and your pet automatically gets a buff when using the skill (if it is a buff), and/or groupwide buff. If it is something that’s used offensively, it should be used automatically.

OR, third option – don’t force us to pick up the item, but rather replace the F2 ability of the pet with whatever it picked up, and let us trigger it that way.

I see a lot of room for improvements to their F2 skills to make them easier to use.

1. Pet swapping removes cd on F2 skills
2. That might have the unwanted effect of CC’ing something at a bad time. Timing the Forage to activate at the exact moment is quite hard given how pet queuing works atm.
3. That would prevent allies from using your item buffs.

I do agree that it could use some reworking, but what I want is for enemies to not be able to pick up the items so we can use them offensively in pvp or wvw

Asthenea.1546:

This is cool, are you doing more pets?

Gransasso.9842:

very good guide ! i m waiting for the others pets

I will! XD No definite date on publishing them though, any requests on which pet family i should do next?

Durzlla.6295:

Just going to throw this out there, but if you’re using off hand axe if you whirling defense in the etheral field with a target (the way whirls work is it will throw one bolt in a random direction and one at the target if you have one, other wise 2 go in random directions) and you can get up to 15 stacks of confusion if you DONT use quickness for whirling defense because whirls become MORE useful the longer they go. This is because bolts are thrown at time intervals not X move throws Y bolts.

Other than that, great post!!

wow i didn’t know that! I dont use axe of hand at all XD

Electro.4173:

I’ve tried to give items to allies during random world events before, but no one actually picks them up. I guess people have been conditioned to avoid random item pickups since they’re usually not worth it. Hell, I’d probably ignore them too if someone else was spawning them. Its clunky to need to notice the item on the ground, move over to it, interact to pick it up (hope there aren’t any lootable bodies in the area :p) then use it.

I assume it’d work much better in a coordinated dungeon, but I haven’t gotten to the point where I do anything like that yet. Figure I should get to level 80 before I start doing any dungeon runs so that I at least have the raw stats even if I don’t know what I’m doing having never done a proper dungeon.

Yes, it works better in coordinated teams. My guildmates always used to hate my pets, but they loved the plasma from the siamoth and i didn’t get one pet complaint from them the entire run :P

Field Use

I tried using the Siamoth on CoE because it was what my Guildmates wanted to run. At first I went with the pre-cast Forage and it worked out ok. Afterwards, we tried using the midcombat technique. What we did was I let my pet go up with my melee allies and drop the item right where they are. If they needed the blind/hide, they would pick it up and use it right there. Even better if a Plasma drops, the nearest teammate can stop attacking for a second to grab and eat it, then go back to killing with 10 seconds of stability and all the other boons available in the game.

Additional Tip
Inform your allies that you are going to use Forage and what each item does before hand so they can use the items to the best effect. I like calling out the item that the pig finds in chat so they know that an item is ready for them.

Conclusion

Porcine pets are a good mix of Offense (via their knockdowns), Defense (since they have the 2nd highest Vitality on pets) and Support (via their Forage items). If you’re going with a group that needs support, bring a pig along with your fern hound so you have a reliable regeneration and whatever skils the porcine you picked has.

tl;dr:
1. Let pet start attacking.
2. As soon as the charge animation starts going, press F2.
3. The pet should start foraging as soon as the enemy is knocked down.
4. Let your melee allies use up the item.

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!

bump for new rangers

Luffy.9365:

Hello guys,
As i can see, alot of classes got the 10—>25% running speed signet buff and(ofc) thiefs got the 33—>50%. So, do we know the running speed cap(or else the maximum running speed)?So basically doesnt change a thing vs classes with perma swift……

Do a bit of research before yiou QQ please

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fleet_Shadow

if you’re too lazy to click, it only works on stealth and it is 20 points deep in their defensive Vitality traitline.

EDIT: added more info for clarity

So I’ve tried the new pets, and they improved just a bit. I think it could be better, but this is definitely a step in the right direction

They can now atleast hit the flying owls and hawks in the WvW borderlands

Still hoping for more pet survivability on dungeons though, lets see what ANet has for us on the next few patches

Spent the past hour in sPvP i gotta say, I love these new changes to the bow speed!

I’m hitting people on the move now, especially those that i couldn’t hit before (like people moving up stairs and ramps).

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.

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.

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).

There are 2 traits specific to the Greatsword:

Martial Mastery – 20 in Wilderness Survival. This makes Greatsword and Spear skills recharge 20% faster.

Two Handed Training – 20 in Nature Magic. This increases Greatsword and Spear damage by 5%.

As for other effects, bleeding can be done by Sharpened Edges (chance to bleed on crit) with 10 points in Skirmishing. Faster attacks would come from Zephyr Speed coming from 5 points in Beast Mastery.

As for the Synergy, most of the bow traits are in Marksmanship and Skirmishing tree, which I think is right. Going for a GS means that you need toughness and vitality to survive, which Wilderness Survival and Nature Magic gives respectively so there’s pretty good stats-to-traits synergy.

Here’s a quick build I put together. This is mostly a variation of the 2 birds build where you become a distraction while your bird pets kill their targets with their 1.8k~ double crits, immediately swapping when available to gain quickness.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcoM0m0MzmvNgmmvogM9MxGGoaqcsza
(copy paste the link to your browser)

bump! no reply from mods?

Hi ANet Support,

This happened last week, around Nov 8, I couldn’t receive authentication emails. Luckily, my router just cycles through 3 IPs and I marked 1 of them to have permanent access. What I did was restart my router until I got that one IP. Later that night, it was fixed, so I saved all three.

BUT! The problem is my friend still isn’t getting any authentication emails. He already filed a ticket, but all he’s getting is support telling him that the email is in his spam folder. Its not there. He has a dynamic IP address so my solution isn’t going to work for him.

So I’m here to write on his behalf, Please check Squeakumz.3865 if the authentication emails are getting through for him. (It’s been a week now and he’s really displeased.)

Finally after several more times, I FINALLY MADE IT!

What I did differently is i just jumped in haphazardly. As soon as I saw the lightning hit, I jumped in knowing I’d fail anyway.

@Wethospu & Raap
Yes, I wait for the lightning to strike first before I jump in, and thats where the problems come because I never seem to be able to get it if I time it correctly.

I’m not sure if this is a bug or anything, but I’d like ANet to know that there is something up with the hitbox for getting inside.

I’ve spent over 5 hours in this jumping puzzle and I’ve gotten pretty good at getting to the last jump (right before jumping into the clock), but I still haven’t gotten inside the clock tower. I have a slight delay since I’m from asia and I’ve tried jumping pre-emptively but it still didn’t work.

Am I doing something wrong? Is it the lag? Any chance of increasing the hitbox for getting inside the clocktower?