Guild Wars 2

I’m posting about this again because is such a glaring flaw in the game that single-handedly causes a lot of balance issues and inhibits build variety.

Virtually all ranged weapons (the exclusions are Rifle, Ranger Shortbow, and Mesmer Greatsword) have #1 skills that are on too log of a recast cycle for the damage they do. On top of this, they often have too slow of a projectile to reliably hit mobile targets. This double-whammy of fail screws up the usability of most ranged weapons substantially, especially in PvP.

This is the main reason why it’s very difficult to use these weapons effectively and they are seldom seen in competitive play. For clarity, this affects the following weapons to some degree or another, usually regardless of the profession:

Longbow
Shortbow (Thief only)
Pistol
Staff
Scepter

I also want to point out something else. I first noticed this issue because I main a Thief. This problem impacts all classes to some extent but it especially impacts the thief, for two reasons:

a.) Both of their ranged options suffer from it extensively, which means that thieves have no viable ranged options despite (other than Cluster bomb for trash clearing) despite being very squishy in melee. This is part of the reason Thieves are pigeon-holed into the same arguably OP builds because they get too much benefit from how Stealth synergizes with glass-cannon while having no incentive to try anything more versatile.

b.) The Thief’s unique Initiative mechanic means that outside of what comes from their autoattack, their DPS and utility share a resource. This presents a huge problem where, as in the case with P/P, the #1 skill fails to provide a sufficient level of DPS on its own and has to be continually compensated by sinking all Intiative into the only other DPS skill (Unload), leaving the set with zero utility and making it a boring spamfest to play.

Is there an answer as to why this is? It is an oversight? An issue of bad tuning? Regardless, it is something that needs to be addressed as I can’t possibly begin to fathom how it could be working as intended.

Agreed. If they had fixed the longbow with the last patch (along with all the other improvements), they would have gone a long way towards making the Ranger a competitive profession.

If you look through the dev posts, I believe they address this very issue. Good luck. =)

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

If you look through the dev posts, I believe they address this very issue. Good luck. =)

Jon indicated the other day on the board while testing the Guardian Scepter that it’s the strongest autoattack in the game when it very clearly doesn’t even come close to matching most melee autoattacks. I think he later clarified that he meant the strongest ranged autoattack, but why is there such a huge difference?

I understand the risk vs. reward sentiment but the problem is that some classes can handle melee range better than others. It creates imbalance when, say, an Elementalist’s DPS is handicapped by being at range when they’re supposed to be at range because their attrition is too poor to be in melee. This doesn’t really seem like something that was thought out very well.

It would be nice if the standard #1 on the long bow was decreased in its cycle time to about half way between where it is now, and #1 on the short bow.
It does a fair amount of damage, but only at greatest range, which, in many cases, lasts about 1 to 2 shots before the damage drops too much for it to be useful.
I’m not saying the Longbow should be so powerful that you could drop weapon swapping, but if you swap between Longbow and GS, you’ve got a substantial gap between your long range and melee damages.

Mesmer scepter #1 is beyond broken, it doesn’t even do what the tooltip says, not to mention all the other issues, and it’s the only ranged mainhand we have.

This just isn’t a game where you are meant to stay in just either ranged or melee.

Kichwas.7152:

This just isn’t a game where you are meant to stay in just either ranged or melee.

If true, “Play how you want” gets another kick in the teeth.

So they implemented broken ranged skills. Sounds legit.

Kichwas.7152:

This just isn’t a game where you are meant to stay in just either ranged or melee.

Tell that to eles. We don’t have a choice. Because of our lack of weapon swap we are locked into either melee or range. Scepter/dagger is the only thing that comes close to giving us the choice, and it still can’t manage a range over 900. Not to mention the fact that if you don’t like scepter dagger you have nothing else to choose from for melee/range balance. Terrible design flaw imo.

Or maybe ranged weapons are just supposed to do significantly less damage on their #1 skill than melee weapons, and mesmer greatsword / rifles / ranger shortbow are just overtuned.

If ranged was as good as lets say, dagger speed, why would anyone melee? I dont want to play Ranged Wars 2. Keep status quo please. Dont let Anet Wannabe developers try to change mechanics

Softspoken.2410:

Or maybe ranged weapons are just supposed to do significantly less damage on their #1 skill than melee weapons, and mesmer greatsword / rifles / ranger shortbow are just overtuned.

Ranger shortbow may meet the OP’s criteria for attack speed, but I assure you it is not over-tuned with respect to damage per second. Melee weapons taken as a whole do significantly more damage than ranged weapons as a whole. While this should stay that way, there’s plenty of room for some modification to ranged auto-attacks so they are balanced versus each other while leaving melee superior.

Kichwas.7152:

This just isn’t a game where you are meant to stay in just either ranged or melee.

I’ll remember this on my Engineer. Next time I think “Oh man, my ranged weapon sucks compared to that melee weapon!”, I’ll just switch to my melee weapon and roflstomp them!

…

Oh, wait…

The damage isn’t the issue, it’s the reliability. They shouldn’t miss unless you’re blinded.

emikochan.8504:

The damage isn’t the issue, it’s the reliability. They shouldn’t miss unless you’re blinded.

Not quite. They designed the game to be about pseudo positioning. Projectile “missiles” track your target at a certain position. If the target you are attacking with that missile is at a certain distance, they have a chance to avoid that damage by repositioning themselves. Same with melee. A melee attack is not a guaranteed hit if you can reposition yourself in time, but of course, it is much much harder in melee range for various reasons. So, are you arguing that the game shouldn’t function this way? Some projectiles don’t really track your target the entire time but remember that not all projectiles function that way. You’ll have a harder time repositioning yourself away from a projectile depending on its travel speed.

completely agree.

The ranged speed isn’t limited to just those weapons on rangers and thieves tho. Rifles on engineers are nowhere near equal in damage or speed to the rifles on warriors. Their supposed to be the same type of weapon right? nope apparently they change the moment engineers put them on.

The other problem is pistols. Thieves suffer from this too, rifles and pistols are supposed to have different cast times, well they don’t my engi and my thief both suffer at the hands of slow cast times, ie my pistols cast as slow as my rifle does on my engineer. That’s not right in any fantasy and should be fixed ASAP.

It’s what I and many others like me have been saying about the physics in the game not being equal.

Then to top it all off, they make one of our shots miss no matter the gear we’re wearing. My poison shot on the engineer misses 2-3 shots all the time! Talk about crazy meanwhile the rifle multishot not only goes off without a hitch it kills something in 2 shots before it’s animation can complete like all the time on the warrior. spssh.