How to deal damage with pets?

[SponTen.1267]

Is there some trick to having a pet that does more than ~1k dps?

Seems that no matter what I do, my pets' dps tops out around 1k. I've slotted Beastmastery, I've tried buffing with boons, I've tried with/out F2 and tried manual vs auto cast... nothing seems to increase their dps.

I've managed 1.2k with Tiger, but that's the highest I've seen.

[Dullahan.3762]

it's the most mediocre class, give up

[Trejgon.9367]

generally speaking most of pets are not going to do much more than that 😕

there are some outliers that can do more (f.e. Jacaranda), but generally speaking around 1k-ish is where you are going to expect them to be at.

[Zyreva.1078]

Beastmastery, boons on pet, 25 vuln on the (low toughness and stationary) golem and most pets can get above 1k dps (examples here). Make sure to use only skills that increase dps (more dmg than autoattacks and without disproportionally long cast time, avoid charge skills which put the pet out of position and ofc skills which don't deal dmg at all).

Also keep in mind that there are many traits in pretty much all traitlines and even a few skills (Signet of the Wild, Sic'Em) which can impact pet damage.

Edited September 13, 2022 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[SponTen.1267]

2 hours ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

Beastmastery, boons on pet, 25 vuln on the (low toughness and stationary) golem and most pets can get above 1k dps (examples here). Make sure to use only skills that increase dps (more dmg than autoattacks and without disproportionally long cast time, avoid charge skills which put the pet out of position and ofc skills which don't deal dmg at all).

Also keep in mind that there are many traits in pretty much all traitlines and even a few skills (Signet of the Wild, Sic'Em) which can impact pet damage.

Thanks so much for this info.

But I just tested with no boons vs permanent 15+ Might and Fury, and it seemed to make zero difference to my pets' dps for some reason. Your pets also seem to have nearly double the dps that mine do, even with 25 Vulnerability. Are you using "Sic 'Em!" at all? I'm just not sure how I'm missing out on so much of their damage.

[Abyssisis.3971]

Pretty easy to do damage with pets, just use mechanist use a real pet, like the jadebot. 😂

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

52 minutes ago, SponTen.1267 said:

Thanks so much for this info.

But I just tested with no boons vs permanent 15+ Might and Fury, and it seemed to make zero difference to my pets' dps for some reason. Your pets also seem to have nearly double the dps that mine do, even with 25 Vulnerability. Are you using "Sic 'Em!" at all? I'm just not sure how I'm missing out on so much of their damage.

Pets do very little damage. It might be the pet you've selected- some families just don't do good damage (relative to the others) no matter what you do.

 

Felines and the jacaranda should be your go tos, with the exception being white tiger due to its attack differences. Thanks anet for form over function.

[Zaret.1450]

pets need a full rework, from stats to traits and all that, i understand that ranger has 2 pets and the jade bit is alone... but pets arent even half of  the jade bot even if you had both at the same time XD

[Zyreva.1078]

4 hours ago, SponTen.1267 said:

Thanks so much for this info.

But I just tested with no boons vs permanent 15+ Might and Fury, and it seemed to make zero difference to my pets' dps for some reason. Your pets also seem to have nearly double the dps that mine do, even with 25 Vulnerability. Are you using "Sic 'Em!" at all? I'm just not sure how I'm missing out on so much of their damage.

I did not use Sic'Em in any of my tests.

Boons not having any noticeable impact is odd, in my tests they increased the dmg by a lot and i just checked again right now, to make sure there isn't some new bug that causes pets to be unaffected by boons. And it confirmed that applying fury and might increases dmg per hit and crit chance as expected. I also quickly did a run with the tiger (the regular one) in a BM/NM setup with all boons on player/pet and all condis on the golem, with all pet abilities and WHaO on autocast and it resulted in 3,4k dps (bit lower than the result in my previous test, because i had no boon duration this time, which results in worse boon uptime on the pet).

Did you check the combat log to monitor dmg before and after applying might or did you just look at the dps report?

Also just to be sure, because it has happened, you didn't accidentially apply boons to the golem?

Otherwise no idea what the problem could be. Maybe you could provide some more details? Whch pet exactly are you talking about? Which build exactly are you using? How is the golem set up? How are you maintaining boons on the pet?

Edited September 13, 2022 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[Infusion.7149]

SC's benchmark condi untamed seems to do 8K DPS with full boons assuming you use a lynx and the pet unleashed skills. Without those skills it will probably be way less.
https://dps.report/Mgwd-20220826-160333_golem

Simplified version from Kormir guild has a similar result :https://dps.report/53g9-20220909-013828_golem
(video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFM-1T8zBpM )

Alacrity version does about 6K or so:
Condi https://dps.report/48qt-20220824-193816_golem

Power https://dps.report/QzzX-20220806-002928_golem

People are meme-ing just a bit when they say to use a mechanist but the power alac mech does ~6K DPS with the mech (so no power trait since it uses alacrity trait Channeling Conduiits) and ~15K or so with rifle power DPS mech.

[anduriell.6280]

16 hours ago, SponTen.1267 said:

Is there some trick to having a pet that does more than ~1k dps?

Seems that no matter what I do, my pets' dps tops out around 1k. I've slotted Beastmastery, I've tried buffing with boons, I've tried with/out F2 and tried manual vs auto cast... nothing seems to increase their dps.

I've managed 1.2k with Tiger, but that's the highest I've seen.

Are you looking for an useful pet? Just play mechanist, you can reuse most of your equipment with it. 

[Gotejjeken.1267]

50 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

SC's benchmark condi untamed seems to do 8K DPS with full boons assuming you use a lynx and the pet unleashed skills. Without those skills it will probably be way less.
https://dps.report/Mgwd-20220826-160333_golem

Simplified version from Kormir guild has a similar result :https://dps.report/53g9-20220909-013828_golem
(video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFM-1T8zBpM )

Alacrity version does about 6K or so:
Condi https://dps.report/48qt-20220824-193816_golem

Power https://dps.report/QzzX-20220806-002928_golem

People are meme-ing just a bit when they say to use a mechanist but the power alac mech does ~6K DPS with the mech (so no power trait since it uses alacrity trait Channeling Conduiits) and ~15K or so with rifle power DPS mech.

 

It would be nice if one of these videos were against an actual boss.  Preferably one that moves, would love to see the actual benchmarks--instead of stationary golem all boons / all condis theoreticals.

Anyway, since OP didn't specify a mode--in competitive your pet is mostly used to setup CC.  That may or may not change in the future, but right now you don't pick pets for damage as they struggle mightily with pathing and hitting moving things.  

[Zyreva.1078]

1 hour ago, Infusion.7149 said:

SC's benchmark condi untamed seems to do 8K DPS with full boons assuming you use a lynx and the pet unleashed skills. Without those skills it will probably be way less.

Yes, the unleashed skills will obviously increase dps further (i did not use those in in any of my tests).

And since those rotations don't actually use bite or the leashed F2 as it seems, Jaguar should actually be the highest dps pet for condi untamed, not Lynx or other Felines. Because Jaguar F2 is instant, it would actually be possible to fit it into the rotation (with enough apm ...) and it does affect unleashed skills too. Whether it's worth making the rotation even more difficult and apm heavy is ofc another story.

 

Edit: Pets can still deal a lot of dmg in PvP, just gotta set them up properly (drake on marks untamed is a prime example). They do suffer in WvW tho, because players have much better stats there, pets don't, so relatively they become weaker.

Edited September 13, 2022 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[Infusion.7149]

5 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

 

It would be nice if one of these videos were against an actual boss.  Preferably one that moves, would love to see the actual benchmarks--instead of stationary golem all boons / all condis theoreticals.

Anyway, since OP didn't specify a mode--in competitive your pet is mostly used to setup CC.  That may or may not change in the future, but right now you don't pick pets for damage as they struggle mightily with pathing and hitting moving things.  

You do realize pets were nerfed in PVP because of birds and tigers killing players and the resulting complaining?

Anyway HT CM, 5K DPS eagle and ~2.6K DPS bear totals around 7.6K:
https://dps.report/JNqi-20220812-234818_void

 

[anduriell.6280]

1 hour ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Anyway HT CM, 5K DPS eagle and ~2.6K DPS bear totals around 7.6K:

I didn’t know you could have both pets out at the same time… otherwise you are doing the dps calculations wrong. 

[Infusion.7149]

8 minutes ago, anduriell.6280 said:

I didn’t know you could have both pets out at the same time… otherwise you are doing the dps calculations wrong. 

The pets are separate entities. You swap pets and the attribution changes.

[anduriell.6280]

3 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

The pets are separate entities. You swap pets and the attribution changes.

So please tell me how that translates to you adding 5k damage per second and 2k damage per second into 7k damage per second if they can not be at the same time on screen. 
 

seriously when I read stuff like this It really makes me think there are too many “ranger players” playing by the wiki in this subforum always asking for nerfs. 

[Infusion.7149]

32 minutes ago, anduriell.6280 said:

So please tell me how that translates to you adding 5k damage per second and 2k damage per second into 7k damage per second if they can not be at the same time on screen. 
 

seriously when I read stuff like this It really makes me think there are too many “ranger players” playing by the wiki in this subforum always asking for nerfs. 

Because they aren't doing the damage at the same time. The log clearly stated that the contribution of the pet is 5K for the first one (eagle) and the 2K damage is from the bear. The DPS is not at a given moment but over the entire encounter. It seems to me you don't know how logs work since if you use that thinking then you would not add the DPS contribution of say a greatsword and double axe in a benchmark despite swapping weapons.

If a given pet does X damage in a fight and another pet does Y damage in the fight, the total damage throughout the fight is X+Y. It isn't going to be X/(X pet time active)+Y/(Y pet time active) because the time is already factored in the log.

Moreover, if you look at per phase the eagle clearly is attributed 7K DPS in some phases when bear is stowed.

P.S. that is including all untamed unleashed pet skills attributed to each pet, not pets autoattacking
 

Edited September 13, 2022 by Infusion.7149

[SponTen.1267]

Okay couple things here. Firstly...

9 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Because they aren't doing the damage at the same time. The log clearly stated that the contribution of the pet is 5K for the first one (eagle) and the 2K damage is from the bear. The DPS is not at a given moment but over the entire encounter. It seems to me you don't know how logs work since if you use that thinking then you would not add the DPS contribution of say a greatsword and double axe in a benchmark despite swapping weapons.

If a given pet does X damage in a fight and another pet does Y damage in the fight, the total damage throughout the fight is X+Y. It isn't going to be X/(X pet time active)+Y/(Y pet time active) because the time is already factored in the log.

The maths you did in the last sentence is the correct one for average damage per second.

Let's take your greatsword and double axe example here. Say you did 20k dps with the greatsword for 10 seconds, and then swapped to the double axe and stopped attacking for 10 seconds, leaving you with 0 dps with that weapon set. Is your dps 20,000 + 0 = 20k? No, it's ((20,000 * 10) + (0 * 10)) / 20 = 10k.

You have to take the average. You did 200,000 damage over 20 seconds, leaving you with 10k average damage per second.

 

5 hours ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

I did not use Sic'Em in any of my tests.

Boons not having any noticeable impact is odd, in my tests they increased the dmg by a lot and i just checked again right now, to make sure there isn't some new bug that causes pets to be unaffected by boons. And it confirmed that applying fury and might increases dmg per hit and crit chance as expected. I also quickly did a run with the tiger (the regular one) in a BM/NM setup with all boons on player/pet and all condis on the golem, with all pet abilities and WHaO on autocast and it resulted in 3,4k dps (bit lower than the result in my previous test, because i had no boon duration this time, which results in worse boon uptime on the pet).

Did you check the combat log to monitor dmg before and after applying might or did you just look at the dps report?

Also just to be sure, because it has happened, you didn't accidentially apply boons to the golem?

Otherwise no idea what the problem could be. Maybe you could provide some more details? Whch pet exactly are you talking about? Which build exactly are you using? How is the golem set up? How are you maintaining boons on the pet?

Thanks for the extra info.

Firstly, I have to apologise; I typed out my initial post late at night and derped a bit. I'm using a Jungle Stalker, not Tiger.

Secondly, when I was testing with the boons, while I'm 100% certain I applied the boons to my pet, I stupidly used Druid in my Elite slot, so that would've been what counteracted the boons to some degree.

I re-tested again last night with no third spec (just to be safe), maintaining 15+ Might and Fury at all times, and 25 Vuln (from memory), and I got to 3k+ dps. I'll do some further testing, but yeah, seems things are working.

I'll test a bit further today and see how it goes with Quickness, though it will likely be inconsistent since it's hard to keep up permanent Quickness on Ranger pets.

 

Again, I'm sorry about my quality of testing; totally on me.

 

However, it still begs the question of why Ranger pets are so weak compared to Mech. My Mech hits ~3.5k dps solo, with no Vuln and only 5 Might. I'm probably just being bad here, but I struggle to hit more than about 6k total solo dps on Core Ranger (me + pet), and 8k on Soulbeast. Sure, I'm using Exotic weapons and armour, but it's the same with my Mech, whereas she hits 8k+ solo dps while afk lol.

[Infusion.7149]

45 minutes ago, SponTen.1267 said:

Okay couple things here. Firstly...

The maths you did in the last sentence is the correct one for average damage per second.

Let's take your greatsword and double axe example here. Say you did 20k dps with the greatsword for 10 seconds, and then swapped to the double axe and stopped attacking for 10 seconds, leaving you with 0 dps with that weapon set. Is your dps 20,000 + 0 = 20k? No, it's ((20,000 * 10) + (0 * 10)) / 20 = 10k.

You have to take the average. You did 200,000 damage over 20 seconds, leaving you with 10k average damage per second.

 

Thanks for the extra info.

Firstly, I have to apologise; I typed out my initial post late at night and derped a bit. I'm using a Jungle Stalker, not Tiger.

Secondly, when I was testing with the boons, while I'm 100% certain I applied the boons to my pet, I stupidly used Druid in my Elite slot, so that would've been what counteracted the boons to some degree.

I re-tested again last night with no third spec (just to be safe), maintaining 15+ Might and Fury at all times, and 25 Vuln (from memory), and I got to 3k+ dps. I'll do some further testing, but yeah, seems things are working.

I'll test a bit further today and see how it goes with Quickness, though it will likely be inconsistent since it's hard to keep up permanent Quickness on Ranger pets.

 

Again, I'm sorry about my quality of testing; totally on me.

 

However, it still begs the question of why Ranger pets are so weak compared to Mech. My Mech hits ~3.5k dps solo, with no Vuln and only 5 Might. I'm probably just being bad here, but I struggle to hit more than about 6k total solo dps on Core Ranger (me + pet), and 8k on Soulbeast. Sure, I'm using Exotic weapons and armour, but it's the same with my Mech, whereas she hits 8k+ solo dps while afk lol.

It isn't if you're going by what you're quoting.
Log structure would be pet X DPS /(total time of fight) + pet Y DPS / (total time for the entire fight) not pet X/ (time X active) + pet Y / (time Y active).

The way you're wording your example is (greatsword DPS * greatsword time + axe*axe time)/total time which is completely different since you're making a lowest common denominator fraction.

Regardless the pets are doing ~6K DPS in a phase of a fight while only using one pet so it's entirely possible to do higher on golem benchmarks (see the log with lynx doing 7K+). If there's anything indisputable it's that. Whether you can get boons/vuln/conditions is a separate matter.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

6 hours ago, SponTen.1267 said:

However, it still begs the question of why Ranger pets are so weak compared to Mech. My Mech hits ~3.5k dps solo, with no Vuln and only 5 Might. I'm probably just being bad here, but I struggle to hit more than about 6k total solo dps on Core Ranger (me + pet), and 8k on Soulbeast. Sure, I'm using Exotic weapons and armour, but it's the same with my Mech, whereas she hits 8k+ solo dps while afk lol.

 

I'm guessing it's because you are using core ranger--(mostly) everything discussed in this topic so far factors in the pet unleashed skills on untamed.  

If just using core then I would have a hard time believing any pet breaking a few thousand dps if all the stars align and the target has full condis / you have full boons.

This is what I meant before by the pet mostly being a breakbar / CC tool.  It's also not comparable to mechanist in any way shape or form, virtually apples to oranges.  It's why I hate using the term 'pet' for mechanist, as the mech is about as much a pet as necro minons or mesmer clones.  

[anduriell.6280]

There is no point to discuss this, if one pet does 5K dps and the other does 2K does then the average dps was 3.5K  from the pet. Simple math. 

It’s just this dude trying to straw man their own fantastical idea of ranger being  Wow because whatever hidden agenda he/she/they have in their head and any other reasons. 

Also think those numbers in an static golem. Moving targets take it down to 1-2K dps. 

Pets need a rebound to be more, but we know what anet devs do when their most despised class performs a little at the same level as not the worst: Nerf it to the ground.

It happened with smokescale, it happened to bristleback, to iboga and to gazelle. The nerfs to birds and   Drakes were needed, just not with the level of incompetency balance team has shown when doing it by nerfing what didn’t need to be nerfed. 

It is ok to have pets for utility. But is also ok to have pets for the extra damage. One new traitline named mechanist  and their marionette does both mechanics perfectly with very little investment from the engineer. One traitline should not be better than a whole class. 

But we already know they have zero interest into fixing or working on ranger. Too busy playing mechanist and firebrand. In fact i am sure we got the unDeveloped in this state because the same reason. 

Edited September 14, 2022 by anduriell.6280