Another Ranger Q

I'm a R/Me and was wondering(PvE):

-Is having a pet worth it overall and in the longrun?
-Is it best to have mostly Ranger skills in your bar rather than Mesmer skills?
-Should you put more atts. in your Ranger profession?


If anyone can think of anything else that is a common question and has the answer to it, let me know please.

Thanks!

1. I leave my pet behind almost all the time. Maybe someone who plays Beastmaster can answer that.
2. Yes.
3. Yes.

For a more comprehensive guide for beginners, I really like this thread:
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10231455
That guide is geared toward PvE, by the way.

1. Yes having a lvl 20 pet will grant you the ability to play a very very flexible ranger! Many fun builds involve pets.
2. Yes.
3. Yes, A few of the better known ranger builds will have a player running 12 hammer mastery and near 12 spear mastery but those would be the exception.

1: Having a level 20 pet allows for a lot of flexibility. Personally I hate using pets, but I have mine at 20 anyway in case I ever need it. Barrage/Pet is still a prominent ranger build, as are things like Bunny Thumpers and Pet Bombs. In other words, use it as the situation requires, but not on principle.

2: Depends on your build, but in general yes. It's almost always true that the only builds based on secondary class skills are specialty builds, and are almost always ones that require the main class's primary attribute to work (Bunny Thumpers and Touch Rangers are excellent examples of these types of builds.) Again, this is not a rule, but is very often true.

3: This depends entirely on your build. Pursuant to answer 2, you'll generally be running mostly Ranger skills, so in that sense you'll generally focus on Ranger attributes. In most cases, especially with a Ranger, you're going to want to have at least a handful of points in your primary attribute regardless of what you're running.

There are many ways to play a Ranger. Some people just take a pet without pet buffs to use as a meat shield. There are a few who run a dedicated Beastmaster build. I've been trying one lately on my Ranger and it works very well. Several people in my guild are currently running my Beastmaster build and really like it.

Well I really appreciate it yall. One more thing, are certain pets better than others?

There is a slight difference, but not much. Most people choose on looks.

Check here for an excelllent pet guide, and don't forget to check the Wiki

all pets do the same DPS (some piercing, some slashing) except black bears who have a lower DPS

1-No
2-Yes
3-Yes

Only thing I'll comment on is the use of skills from a secondary class. With the exception of builds like the ones noted above (Thumper, Toucher, etc.) you want a secondary class to compliment what the primary class does. This means you use little to no attribute points and very few skills. Mesmer has some nice skills that can work well with small attribute investment, or none. Consider the ability for a Ranger to inflict conditions (cripple, bleeding, poison, daze, blind). Mesmer offers skills like Fragility to increase the damage from those conditions. Or Epidemic to spread those conditions. Or you can even use Echo to do things like trapping. If you want to run an interrupt build, something like Arcane Conundrum and Frustration help a lot.

In general, you want no more than 1-2 skills from a secondary class, and no more than 8 to 10 attribute points invested.

I almost always bring a pet. I use the pet as basically a meat shield and/or minion fodder. But I run a pretty basic barrage/interrupt build most of the time too. My trapper build doesn't bring the pet, but I very seldom ever trap (it's too slow). You might not want to bring a pet with certain types of 'party' builds, but I usually play a different class in that case.

There is no big difference between pets. They all have the same stats. Some, like the various bears and the Rainbow Pheonix, are larger and therefore may act as a better 'blocker'. I've had almost every pet at some point, but I'm back to my old favourite, the Melandru's stalker.

I've also run a few different secondarys in the past - Ele plus Conjure, for example - but I'm back to being a R/Mo for the hard rez. (But I use some EotN skills like Pain Inverter, that don't require a secondary.)

No minion fodder anymore...

Oh right, I forgot about that.