Well i can deal with the fact of not being able to disengage with only the smokescale which is the pet I already only use while actively fighting, but Raven or Wolf could indeed be interesting options to try. I could also give a try to GS (that I didn’t use for ages) with sword/axe (but I would lost might stacking), and “on pet swap” traits that I didn’t use anymore for a long time. Even if the latest seems a bit gimmicky to me, but we’ll see (if you take the smokescale, good players already always dodge Takedown and avoid , in a way or another, pretty much everything that come in a short time after Smoke Assault even if you got boons, superspeed etc). Yes, im not probably very clear. You can find to types of LB/GS rangers in wvw (all together 90% of the ranger population), the squishies Unblockable SicEm and the ones more boons oriented, but it’s the same playstyle, they will try to burst you, if they can’t or if they are to heavily focus they will disengage with birds and GS. Power creep is not all about damage and sustain, mobility is a very huge part in wvw and I feel like for this type of gameplay there is no real tradeoff because they will use 100% birds to the point, in my opinion, where there will not have incentive to unmerge anymore, lowering the skill celling (and as far as I read in some other threads , even for different reasons, it is a shared feeling). I shouldn’t have spoken about “buff”, but it’s the philosophy of the patch, if it’s not a hard nerf it’s a buff and buy extension, if it’s not a real tradeoff, it’s a buff. Buy comparison If you play off meta, the lost of one pet is huge. But like Lugh said, I could be wrong.