Guild Wars 2

Hello all, I am planning to start playing GW2 in a few weeks, and I have narrowed down my choices for what Class I am going to play to the Warrior (Using either the Shortbow or Rifle) or the Ranger (Using either the Longbow or Shortbow). Which is better for sPvP as a Ranged burst damage dealer?

Thank you in advance,

-Thelyssa

I started out thinking that I’d play a Rifle warrior in pvp at the start of the game. Quickly I found out that the rifle is by no means a great pvp weapon. All those warrior traits that seem to fit perfectly with a rifle bleed and vulnerability spam setup don’t really work that well when most of the time a good player will LoS you or just dodge the shots. I also find that a lot of the utilities that buff rifle dps the most tend to make you a two dimensional player — in other words, utilities focused on buffing personal dps and nothing more. In that case, I personally felt as though I didn’t really bring much to the team in terms of all around usability.

I then rolled a ranger, and while it was rough at first finding an optimal trait setup, I grew to love the survivability and the ability to enter and exit a fight on your terms. Traps in pvp are very good. I like to combine them with a shortbow power/crit build that might seem counter-intuitive for a trap build, but in reality supplements each other very well.

If PvE is your thing and you want a more melee focused role, with pvp being a minor thing, I’d go warrior. The ranged options are good in pve but lack tremendously in pvp.

If pvp or wvw is your thing, I’d go ranger for sure. Once you master pet swapping and control, pve’ing monsters becomes trivial too. Dungeons, in terms of relying on a pet, still sucks though.

Thank you, Miflett! I have been leaning towards ranger a bit, too, and this just confirmed what I was thinking

The only two good things about rifle warriors are 1) style and 2) it’s actually a (sniper) rifle, unlike the engineer shotgun which is disguised as a rifle.
I really love the style of a charr rifle warrior. But that’s it.

Warrior uses longbow and rifle. The ranger has longbow, shortbow and main hand axe as range. Also, you will have two weapon sets and you will find yourself switching.

For warrior, the rifle has better range and deals good direct damage to single targets. The longbow has a shorter range but is all about burning and has decent AoE.

For ranger, longbow (when traited) has great range. The bow in general though is in need of work. It has not combo fields. It’s only AoE is a channel and has a fairly long CD. It does it’s best damage beyond a certain range and does decreased damage against closer enemies (this is only for the auto attack). Rapid fire does the same dps as the auto attack. It can knock back the enemy if they are close enough (closer they are, the further they get knocked back) and it just so happens that the cut off for the knock back is the distance you get top damage from your auto attack. There is also another skill that speeds your pet up but since pets stop moving to attack, if the opponent is running at normal forward running speed, the pet will miss anyway. A cripple would’ve been better since there are already ways to increase pet run speed.

Unless you trait for the extra range, you will get the same range as the short bow. Unless you keep the enemy at the best range for long shot’s damage, you will get more dps from the short bow.

Axe isn’t too bad. I’m not familiar with it all that much. I know in pve it is very annoying. Too many times you want it to bounce between two or three enemies but instead in bounces to nearby destroyable objects instead. This will also cause your pet to attack the object instead of the mob making it necessary for you to tell your pet to attack the mobs. Once the mob is dead, your pet with then move on to attack the object again. Set your pet to passive and now you have to remember to tell your pet to attack each and every mob.

However, you will find that mobility is very important in pvp and you’ll find that certain melee weapons offer better mobility.

It all depends what you want to do, like Miflett was saying. I do have a level 80 rangers and it is fun in PvP and World vs World. However, the ranger lacks the potential in a large zerg. Sure you can pick off targets at a ranger, but I feel it more satisfying to be knee deep in bodies. The warrior can be speced in many different ways: critter, tanky, balanced, banner warrior, hybrid melee/ ranger. Both classes can burst down targets if you build the character that way here is the difference. A warrior can do a lot more damage than a ranger, however they have to be in close distance (using a melee weapon). The rifle or bow for the warrior will do less damage than the ranger can. If you want, add me in the game I can show you what both classes abilities can do.

For sPvP, ranger a billion times over. Warriors are pretty meh right now, and the rifle build is perhaps the worst build of them all, as its SO easy to counter, and because of the nature of being burst built, you will get destroyed in seconds.

Ranger on the other hand can put out nice damage whilst remaining pretty tough to take down.

But if your interested in being good and being ranged, Ranger is also a solid choice (longbow isnt great, but it can work to a point).

For burst though, the thief has the highest whilst remaining useful.

You could make both a Warrior and a Ranger.
Your account comes with 5 character slots from which you can make any of the classes and races. As far as weapons go, try them all out for a while. You may find that you actually like an using dual Axes the most on a Warrior and a Greatsword on a Ranger. Even though there are only two weapons swaps, it does not limit you to what and how many weapons you can use.

The only weapon limit is based on class of a character. For example; Ranger cannot use a staff or scepter where a Mesmer can’t use short or long bow, etc.

As far as sPvP goes I can’t help you there since I’m not a pvp player. But I’m sure someone else can answer that question for you

I have a Warrior and Ranger, both level 80 and they’re both good classes. To me the Ranger is the better of the 2 for PvP, the Warrior better in PvE and dungeons and both are pretty equal in WvW. The Warrior has better survivability than my berserker Ranger but the Ranger is more mobile if you’re using ranged weaps, like I do. (Longbow, Shortbow and sometimes Axe/Warhorn in place of the Shortbow.)

I mainly use Axe/Warhorn and Rifle on my Warrior though sometimes I switch from Rifle to Axe/Mace. Both combos work pretty well for me. I slot a Rifle a lot because many boss mobs are almost impossible to melee without the meleer getting quickly demolished. BTW, Warriors cant use the Shortbow, only the Longbow and Rifle for ranged weaps.

I like both classes equally well. Suggestion; Try them both out at least to level 15. By then you’ll know if you like the class or not and you wont have expended a lot of time on it. Good hunting and have fun!

Yeah, I would suggest trying them both out and then not limiting yourself to either. I have all 8 proffs at 80 and play them all on occasion.

In general Warrior is king of PvE and a Warrior can be very effective in WvW. Ranger is great for solo PvE but nobody will be beating a path to your door for group play. Rangers have only one viable role in WvW: bait for an ambush, and can contribute marginally in PvP.

A larger issue for you personally is what playstyle do you prefer. Either can play ranged or Melee, but the Warrior is natively melee and, I would argue, that the Ranger is natively ranged (though you’d never guess this through Anet’s treatment of the longbow) and some prefer to play it melee.

I will say that the bad rap that rangers get in PvE comes from their absolute zero amount of utility skills that really benefit a team. While arena net focused greatly on the ranger and his pet interactions, they missed the mark entirely on bringing something to the table for group play. Some say that spirit builds were meant to serve this role in PvE, but you can really tell that they were a last minute addition in response to this concern as the game development was nearing completion.

They’ve made statements to help spirits out, but simply increasing their chance to proc (while ignoring the internal cooldown timer, lol) and meagerly buffing their already low health didn’t quite cut it. For starters, making spirits follow you by default without trait should be the first thing they do. Spirits really should work more like how banners currently work. They provide great passives to the group and mean something in a fight. I wish we would see spirit actives move away from cc abilities and focus more on group buffing.

That’s what I have to say about that, lol, but spirit talk could get its own thread entirely and doesn’t really concern anyone much for sPvP.