A couple of questions

Hey I'm a newer player,1: What's the best pet for level 40 ?2: Has ranger got no way to remove condition damage from him self? I had a look through specializations and could only see the 1 heal spell that does that.3: longbow vs short which is best for later game? I wanna make sure I practice using the better one since I have no preference between them.

1. Level doesn't matter much. Cats do more damage, bears are tanky, and those are the most common ones used before level 80. But you can try out different ones and see what you like, while you're leveling up is a great time to experiment!

2. Nature Magic has Evasive Purity: (Dodging removes a damaging condition and a non-damaging condition from you.) Wilderness Survival has Wilderness Knowledge (Survival skills have reduced recharge, grant fury, and remove conditions. ) and a couple of other skills that reduce condition time instead of removing them. Signet of Renewal (Signet Active: Grant resistance to your pet; it pulls conditions from nearby allies to itself. )

3. Heh, I'm not sure, I never warmed up to short bow. But I believe that if you are making your build around condition damage, short bow is preferred due to the poison attack.

@Belgarion.2678 said:Hey I'm a newer player,1: What's the best pet for level 40 ?2: Has ranger got no way to remove condition damage from him self? I had a look through specializations and could only see the 1 heal spell that does that.3: longbow vs short which is best for later game? I wanna make sure I practice using the better one since I have no preference between them.

1) that really depends on what your goal is for your pet, if you’re going for CC probably a wolf (aoe fear), however if your goal is damage either a cat, Lynx specifically, or an eagle/hawk.

2) Rangers actually have quite a few ways to remove condis, we have Healing Spring, and Signet of Removal Vaseline, as well as brown bear should you be interested in taking a bear. And then if you invest into Wilderness Survival like and take Wilderness Knowledge ALL Survival skills clear 2 condis, pair that with the soften the fall trait and Troll Unguent clear 4 condis on cast.

3) in PvE I think SB May be better overall since you can still stack with it without jeopardizing your damage, but I’m not 100% sure on that. However, Condi damage/hybrid damage you use SB, for pure power LB. SB, CAN be used for power, but I feel like it just is overall weaker than LB for that role, regardless of game mode. LB is overall more useful though in PvP and WvW due to the very long range.

Hope it helps.

A couple of answers:

1. Take the pet you like for leveling and open PvE, only matters in fractals/raids on higher levels.
2. Nature magic, wilderness survival have several options to cleanse condis. Also you can use sigils to provide you with cleanses later on in the game and you have 1 signet that deals with condis.
3. Power-> LB , Condi dmg-> SBLB has pure dmg, higher range, but it i think it feels a little clunky and it has more uses in WvW than in PvE because you can get something from every skill.SB has shorter range and is more a mid range skirmish weapon. The condi dmg is nice and it has synergy with condi druid and condi Soulbeast.Both have good CC, but SBs CC is more group friendly. SB punishes static gameplay/rewards flanking.In the end it depends on the playstyle you want and your preference when you tried them more out.

Thanks guys for your replies :)