Ranger Pets in Hard Mode

Fluffy, my Hearty Dune Lizard, has been hither and yon with my Ranger for over five years... good time, to be sure.

Then there's Hard Mode.

Poor Fluffy's only purpose seems to be as a corpse for my minion bomber.

Yes, I've tried Call of Protection, Predator's Pounce, Heal as One, Never Rampage Alone... and many combinations of the above. The AI seems determined to focus on Fluffy, I suspect due to his 540HP, as compared to my character and heroes with 600+ HP.

At this point, I'm forced to leave Fluffy behind when I do hard mode. It doesn't "feel" right, but I see no alternative.

Any suggestions?

Hate to break it to you, but yeah, it is. You can't really justify running a pet.

Anyway, it's probably due to the builds of you and your heroes. Pets tend to be weak, but with decent builds they shouldn't be dying every fight. Post them and we can help you.

Pets leave exploitable corpses again?

I admit to getting somewhat irked by the new trend of bringing a pet to enable RaO.... the IAS/IMS are nice but that shutdown's a killer...

Actually, I'm very happy with my iguana "Rover" in hard mode. He makes an excellent tank - good enough that with the addition of an ebon vanguard sin I hardly ever bring any melee heroes along.

I run a discord caller sin with 2 rits and 1 necro for heroes and a high beast master secondary. Rover does die now and then but most of the time he does an excellent job of keeping the bad guys away from me and my heroes so that we can totally whip the mobs into shape. I don't think it makes much difference but I usually bring the interrupt, prot monk, earth ele and mes henchies along if they are available.

Together we have completely vanquished the 3 continents and mastered EotN. About halfway through legendary Guardian now with the same build for most of it. Just finished oola's lab for about the 20th time in HM. Rover died 3 times because of the derv/golems but did his job of hardly ever letting them attack me or my heroes.

So, yeah, i find a pet very useful in HM.

Oh, and just a note, fluffy isn't providing a corpse for your minion bomber as pet corpses are not exploitable.

My pet rarely gets focused and I usually bring him as an afterthought or for utility when I run marksmanship or ws.

Bring Otyugh's Cry and call of protection. Otyugh's Cry alone will make mobs never focus him.

In all fairness the pets and the minions wern't ever looked into too much, especially the controls. though we are looking at 'Hard Mode' so what do you expect them to do, you want a bit of a challenge.

A pet by itself can't do enough dps to justify usage, because of enemy AI but pets are quite viable in conjunction with the ranger actually doing something to boost damage. You need to adopt a policy of "I'm going to kill you before you kill my pet." My pet is dire evolved, and still doesn't die very often. You can do enraged lunge+death blossom spam (this is what I used to get legendary guardian), a spear with heal as one for life stealing and ranged ability; you can even use a bow with a pet and still manage to beat 75 dps. My ranger loves her rainbow phoenix in pve, and she consistently out damages most people, as well as gets decent survivability for herself and her pet.

Congrats to anyone who has found a use for pets in HM.

I play Ranger as my main and I find having a pet in HM to be very ineffective. I believe it COULD work, but you would have to force it just so you could bring your pet, and it wouldn't be as effective as a non-pet build in my opinion.

AC

Ah! That's what I was looking for. Thank you.

I've been away from the game for over a year; I didn't know that pet corpses weren't exploitable anymore.

I can make Fluffy "work", but even a 14 BM build just isn't as effective as a Marks build.

I'm not fond of hard mode; my ranger is just working on a few more titles before GW2. Otherwise, I prefer normal mode, where I have much more flexibility.

I too love bringing my pets along, because I find that the most optimal build isn't necessarily the most fun build.

Sytherek, try this: Bring your pet, and throw Great Dwarf Weapon on him. That plus Otyugh's Cry make him a fairly decent tank and pretty darn good damage dealer. It's easily maintainable, and makes each of your pet's attacks do some real hurt. Plus, with higher Dwarf ranks, it's fun to watch Mighty Bob (my faithful Melandru's Stalker who I kept from pre and never abandoned these 4-ish years) constantly knocking enemies down with a swipe of his mighty paw.

EDIT: Just noticed that http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Great_Dwarf_Weapon specifically refers to it as a "great pet buff". So there you go.

Pets suck...as a source of damage. If you try to use a pet for that, you will fail. The purpose of pets is much the same as minions; they absorb damage. Use them for that.

Or I can use them for utility to increase my own damage and kill enemies much faster.

You can use a ranger pet scythe, works pretty well with discord. in HM even if ur H/H

As a primary Bow Ranger, I use my pet Flippie frequently in HM for the following purposes:

-Energy Management through Scavenger Strike;
-A source of interruption when Daze is applied (synergizes with the above);
-An extra frontliner;
-As damage when Strength and Honor is applied, only in teams with 2+ more melee.

As you can see, even for a bow ranger, pets can be quite useful. Personally, I'm not a big fan of running Zealous with Barrage every time, so I like having Flippie more for energy management. At the same time, it works great with EVAS+Broad Head Arrow or Technobabble. The best thing is that pet attacks and behaviour doesn't take time away from you spamming Barrage.

I run at 600 health, my caster heroes have 550, so technically, I should expect my hearty Flippie to be targeted frequently. Then again, I find it not too troubling, as I always have a MM or a SoS with me, absorbing most of the damage.

Pets got a beef up a while back but sadly they still ain't as useful as a necro with minions. Rangers pets should get a serious beef to make it even worth it.

Poor fluffy

I prefer summons anyway.

Satisfied?

Personally I do just fine in HM with my pet, for the moment. And I really like when he takes most of the damage as I almost never bring melee h/h, so he's the party melee.
And yeah, there's many ways to protect him. Recently I've been using also Predator's pounce so that he can refill his own health and I can forget comfort animal. Not the best damage source but it works for the moment.
Oh, and I think heal as one is really bad unless you're only looking for a self heal...by the time it recharges the pet is dead already, comfort is much better for that and isn't elite.

Give poor Fluffy a chance

Pets are sweetness in pvp, I think.
those spear chucker Heal As One Rangers Beat stuff down!

I dunno, I did about 1/2 of the vanquishes in the game (Eotn + Leg vanquisher) using a R/P spear chucker build prior to the pet buff. Since the buff its just even more awesome. Great single target damage, daze, permanent IAS, energy the works.

YMLAD, Scavengers, Spear of Fury, Stunning Strike, Blazing Spear, Merciless Spear, Never Rampage Alone, Comfort Animal.

Before the pet buff I ran charm instead of blazing. Pretty good damage, can afford to use YMLAD on recharge. Fury charges stunning like a fiend, so plenty of daze. Deepwound whoever your focusing on.

I didnt use Discordway with this, but with a couple of tweaks could work quite nicely with it.

Erm, how can you have a pet with you without having Comfort on your bar (in PvE)? I am assuming that you use Charm Animal, but you do know that Comfort now allows you to bring your pet, so charm is useless unless you're actually in the process of charming a pet?
Unless you have Heal as One, which also includes the functionality of bringing your pet, comfort should be required. In PvE, comfort is just charm + healing. So whether something is better than comfort is irrelevant, because comfort needs to be on your bar anyway.