Guild Wars 2

So with specializations I was excited for some new variety and we got a lot. But I kind of feel like this weapon was thrown behind a dumpster and forgotten. I mean.. I realize staff is the new cool shiny but really? Ranger, thief and rev have it? Where only engi and war have rifle? I mean rifle has been around for years yet it still completely sucks (doesn’t even cause bleed now) on warrior. And if an engineer is using he could spend his time better with a kit.

For one of the coolest legendary skins it just makes me sad how completely useless it is to use and how much it is forgotten.

RIP rifle.

(Which is ironic because shouldn’t it have the most attack potential out of anything in this game???)

My only hope is that in future elite specializations they open up rifle to other professions.

I’m still sad they dropped the idea of giving Chronomancer a rifle. At least the Shield turned out really good.

What are they going to turn rifle into? Thief? lots of Stealth and a Rifle (that many people want a kill shot style skill on) to turn into the cheesiest of cheesy builds in the game? How about no. And how will it work with other professions? Tranquilizer gun? Elemental bullets? Death ray…gun? If Anet can’t find a way to make it work yet then they can’t find a way to make it work yet. I do feel your pain though, since it will be 2018 before we see another expansion that will expand the game by 1 specialization per profession, 3 legendary weapons, 5 maps, half an elder dragon, and horrendously out of date directx 9 graphics.

eh, give it time. shortbow’s only used on two classes too, and it looks like it might be irrelevant on one of those soon.

(plus maces, pistols, longbows* and hammers* are only used by 3 classes, (* 2 classes and 1 elite spec) )

Maybe it’s a little far fetched, but if implemented well I think any weapon could be justifiably used by any profession. :P Immediately the Caster Gun from the Outlaw Star anime I used to watch when I was a kid comes to mind. Outlandish? Absolutely, but it’s still pretty cool!

Yeah. I was going to take the rifle away from warrior, not that he ever used it after I found out how much better longbow was, and give it to my thief. It will have to sit in his inventory for another year or two I guess. The annoying part is I enjoy rifle so much more on warrior than longbow, but it’s not worth using.

Short answer: yes. The rifle has been abandoned completely. Sucks, but there’s nothing we can do about it.

Ermagerd. One whole wave of Especs and the prognostication of doom can begin!

What are they going to turn rifle into? Thief? lots of Stealth and a Rifle (that many people want a kill shot style skill on) to turn into the cheesiest of cheesy builds in the game?

While I’m not a fan of Thief Rifle (I’m totally about Thief OH Sword first), they can easily offset the potential of the untouchable Thief sniper by using a combination of a long channel on the hardest hitting shots, and having them apply revealed debuffs, making it impossible to stealth after. It wouldn’t be hard to design the spec in such a way that you could get off one really pummeling shot, but it would leave you wide open for a little bit, or you could instead use the rifle “from the hip” to deliver CCing and quick damaging shots. I think a balanced sniper could be reasonably handled if they wanted to.

To be fair longbow was the same pre expansion. Only 2 classes could use it, luckily for us we got another one with Dragon hunter. Unfortunately not a lot of people seem happy with it so I don’t see it getting much use. On the other hand greatsword is used by almost every class and now one more with expansion, guess that is why they got 2 (3 if you combine them) legendarys.

Watch, in a patch midway through HoT they’ll surprises us all with a trailer showing six (yes I said six) different variations of the rifle and you’ll see every single variation of it standing on a hill and gunning people down in ways that will make you think you’re watching a western.

Well it depends how ANet goes about designing the elites. If they design concept first and then choose weapon and skills from that, then no simply none of the concepts fit well with a rifle. If ANet goes about designing the elites by deciding the weapon / skill first and then slapping a name on it, then yes.
Alas I’m not privy to the secret inner workings of ANet.

Staff is the new shiny?

• It’s been the meta choice for several professions for ages.
• I don’t think we can count it as being ‘new’ for revenants, since that’s a completely new profession. Plus, it’s ‘elite’ uses shields.
• It’s only new to thieves.

Further, there are lots of other weapons that (so far) haven’t had any major updates or elites, including axes, pistols, hammer, bows (both sorts), and (of course), the underwater weapons don’t even get BL weapon skins.

I main a warrior and rifle is my main weapon.

Would be nice if more classes could use it, its a really fun weapon with a lot of potential

I’m sure there will be elite specs that use the Rifle in the future. Just because its not in “round 1” of the elite specs doesn’t mean it’ll NEVER be. If that were the case, there would be plenty of other weapons that are also “abandoned”.

It’s less about the ‘Round 1’ thing as it is the fact that the Rifle is one of the least-used weapon types in the game, with only the warrior and engineer making use of it, and neither of those classes use it worth a snot.

We now have a first round of elite specs with no new rifle users, while we got two staff users – Staves being one of the most populous and well-represented weapons in the game, next to greatswords. Three years from now when we get Elite Specs Round 2, there had best be rifle users because by then we will have gone for six years in this game without any viable rifle builds*, and some of us are seriously dismayed by that fact.

Especially on a class like Thief, which already did everything this new melee Staff does but which had a severe lack of useful ranged abilities. The Dragonhunter patched up the Guardian’s lack of ranged capabilities very well – the entire spec was built on the concept ‘Ranged Guardian’, so some Thief players are just going to be ticked off that we got a junky AoE melee weapon trying (and failing) to compete with Sword.

*that actually use the rifle. yes, there are Engineer builds that are good, and which use the rifle, but the rifle is an afterthought to their kits and is not a key component of their function. And let’s face it – Engineer rifle is not even remotely a RIFLE.

The only classes I could see using the rifle in future expansions are the Thief and the Mesmer and maybe… Revenant. All the other classes seem more appropriate with ancient or archaic weapon styles.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

• It’s only new to thieves.

And rangers

It wouldn’t sting so much to have no new rifle or pistol classes if Anet hadn’t also been removing support for those weapons and failing to make using them a competitive option next to other weapons and builds.

I didn’t want rifle for the thief. I really, really didn’t. However I couldn’t deny that the thief needs better ranged options. And I pretty much joined the rifle camp once I heard the early rumors about staff thieves.

Why do you do this to me, Anet?

I can’t think of a more over-powered, unbalanced, ridiculous weapon to put on the thief. I can’t grasp why anyone would actually think it could be on the thief.

high-damage, long range weapon on a high-mobility, stealth-ready character… yeah.. that makes sense..

Right. Because its just outright impossible to balance a rifle on a thief to keep it from being OP. Lets give them a stick instead.

Whatever dude.

The Greyhawk.9107:

Right. Because its just outright impossible to balance a rifle on a thief to keep it from being OP. Lets give them a stick instead.

Whatever dude.

A stick is much easier to balance (with).

Joke asside, you do know there’s quite a lot of thief players that would rather get a melee weapon than a rifle right? And it’s only one specialisation, they can’t make everyone happy anyway.

I think it has to do with synergy with certain other elements of the expansion.
Specifically the new legendary’s.
We know we don’t get a new one for all weapons. So it makes sense that they do this round of specialisations in such way that you can get a new legendary that matches your new specialisation weapon.
so I would expect that the new legendary will be a staff.

Keep in mind that this is just the first round of specialisations. in the future they want to add more, as well as more legendaries. So nothing is forgotten, just other choices have been made for this round.

Nope, rifle with berserker looks like God mode to me

I didn’t want rifle for the thief. I really, really didn’t. However I couldn’t deny that the thief needs better ranged options. And I pretty much joined the rifle camp once I heard the early rumors about staff thieves.

Why do you do this to me, Anet?

They just need to fix what they broke in pistols.

And maybe give back the range SB had at launch.

high-damage, long range weapon on a high-mobility, stealth-ready character… yeah.. that makes sense..

As I said above, it would be fairly easy for them to build limitations into the rifle if they wanted to go that route. Have the strong attacks have long channels, forcing them to “post-up.” Have the attacks cause Revealed, and perhaps even something like Crippled, to limit their ability to bounce afterwards. There would still be options, but this would reduce them a bit. I would give them only 1-2 “devastating” attacks, which they could only use with extreme care, and then the rest would be shorter range, more limited “hip fire” skills for skirmishing combat.

IMO the rifle right now is done the wrong way, only two profs can use them and even they only use them as a blunderbuss. (a mid aged shotgun)
for one they should rename it to blunderbuss, then they can always add the rifle again but this time the right way.

Your rife and my shortbow. Still only two professions use each. As much as I love my Dreamer, only being able to use it on Thief…and to an extent Ranger (but no one uses SB on a ranger in PvE), sucks. All these professions get to run around with their huge ugly GS on like almost all of them…but Predator and Dreamer owners are stuck. /sigh

Nah, see, none of us are getting it, gaiz.

Nobody actually wants good, fun, useful ranged options. We’re all supposed to be stacking in corners, remember? Remember?! Anything with a reach longer than that of my German sausage here is a frivolous waste of time. We should all be happy the Daredevil got staff! Any melee option, however weak or redundant – and the Staff is really weak and awfully redundant – is better than any ranged option, no matter how interesting or well-executed!

…and just in case that wasn’t clear enough: [/sarcasm]

Thief is using the Staff as a Polearm. It’s basically completely different usage than any other class that uses a Staff.

Think of The Monkey King, or Guan Yu.

So you can almost (almost) make the point that the Thief has a completely different weapon.

Having said that, I’ma bit meh on the new weapons.

I main an Ele and was hyped for Sword or Greatsword (Battlemage) and when Warhorn was confirmed that hype evaporated. I can only think of one weapon worse than Warhorn on an Ele and that would be Torch.

Same thing with LB on Guardian, Torch on Warrior (Though that Spec looks awesome, so good job there).

Yes it has.

Rifle hasn’t been abandoned. None of the new elite specializations are using it this time around.

What happens when none of them use it the next time around in three more years?

How long does a thing have to be completely useless before people are allowed to be tweaked off that the thing is completely useless?

DevilLordLaser.8619:

What happens when none of them use it the next time around in three more years?

How long does a thing have to be completely useless before people are allowed to be tweaked off that the thing is completely useless?

If every other weapon type has been used, then I’d be wondering.

Aside from Dargonhurrdurr so far, there have been a lot of indications that the devs want us to group up more. Certain AoE supports have dropped in range, and most of the new weapons are focusing on close-range attacks.

DevilLordLaser.8619:

What happens when none of them use it the next time around in three more years?

How long does a thing have to be completely useless before people are allowed to be tweaked off that the thing is completely useless?

Why do you keep saying that the next round is in three years like you know anet’s business model on elite specs? For all you know they are iterating new elite specs atm and are going to release single elite specs. They don’t have to come out in giant batches 9 at a time.

sebradle.7034:

DevilLordLaser.8619:

What happens when none of them use it the next time around in three more years?

How long does a thing have to be completely useless before people are allowed to be tweaked off that the thing is completely useless?

Why do you keep saying that the next round is in three years like you know anet’s business model on elite specs? For all you know they are iterating new elite specs atm and are going to release single elite specs. They don’t have to come out in giant batches 9 at a time.

Do you want to be the guy at the end of a nine profession long chain of single spec releases dribbled out over the course of the next three years?

You thought people flipped tables in this cesspit before. Yes, singleton releases on a less-than-three-year schedule are certainly possible, but folks are already losing their minds over simply being at the end of the juicy-deets blog chain for a lump-sum release. Can you imagine if the Chronomancer, Dragonhunter, and Reaper had all been released and playable for several months prior to the Ranger and Engineer players so much as knowing what they’re getting?

Trust me – elite specs will come in nine-strong batches, and they’ll come more or less as expansion dealies, because it’ll take ArenaNet three more years to work up a new set of nine. Hope you like what you’re getting on HoT’s release, because it’s what you’ll have to work with for a while.

All the new specs are tied to the story.

Taimi training to add inscriptions to metals -> Forge
Braham finding Eir’s bow -> Avenger
Marjory with her sister’s soul in her sword -> Reaper
Rytlock finding a connection to Glint -> Herald
Canach enraged by racism and such -> Berserker

Rox, Kasmeer and Caithe are probably getting their elite specs too by something story-related (maybe Marjory dies and Kasmeer turns time back like in the old Superman movie lol).

So of course there is no really a place for rifle in the current elite spec rotation. Maybe next.

IMO the rifle right now is done the wrong way, only two profs can use them and even they only use them as a blunderbuss. (a mid aged shotgun)
for one they should rename it to blunderbuss, then they can always add the rifle again but this time the right way.

Well, there are limits to how much they can do with a rifle. I mean, realistically, rifles should be like 5000 range weapons, Longbows too, but that would be OP. Rifles in GW2 are just slightly longer range and less flexible pistols.

I main an Ele and was hyped for Sword or Greatsword (Battlemage) and when Warhorn was confirmed that hype evaporated. I can only think of one weapon worse than Warhorn on an Ele and that would be Torch.

The funny thing is, the people on the Ele boards are whining that Tempest is “just another melee build option,” so swords would not have helped there (and would be unlikely since ele mainhand offers as many skills as 2.5 two-handers on any other class, not even considerd what an ele two-hander is worth).

How long does a thing have to be completely useless before people are allowed to be tweaked off that the thing is completely useless?

There are also no daggers, swords, scepters, foci, short bows, or pistols in this round of elites. They don’t have to spread them evenly.

Ohoni.6057:

…There are also no daggers, swords, scepters, foci, short bows, or pistols in this round of elites. They don’t have to spread them evenly.

My point isn’t so much that there isn’t a new elite spec for every weapon type – clearly that wasn’t going to happen – but that weapon types which have gone ignored since the start of the game got no help on classes which would’ve been obvious fits for them.

Daggers and swords, for example, are common, popular weapons which multiple professions use well – there’s plenty of options for people who like stabbings. Scepters could use some help, but they have niches today. Foci are everywhere. Shortbows and pistols are both in similar boats as the rifle, certainly, though I’d argue that the Shortbow being omnipresent on Thieves is at least some counterbalance. That said, I will accept and concede the argument that the Thief’s shortbow is no more a bow than the Engineer’s rifle is a rifle – both of them are basically gadget-flingers, though at least the Thief’s shortbow is a believable gadget-flinger, and also a useful one.

It’s just sad to me to see a weapon as over-represented as the staff get the nod over something in dire need of a boost, like rifle. The Dodgedevil spec as a whole actually looks intriguing, if not as oh-God-give-that-to-me-NYAOW as the Reaper or Berserker, but the staff is pretty much just a weak Sword that locks out offhands. Which I’d pretty much said it was going to be since the first datamined images of the Dodgedevil’s stuff.

It’s just sad to me to see a weapon as over-represented as the staff get the nod over something in dire need of a boost, like rifle.

Well, I just don’t think we need to consider the “fairness” to the weapons themselves. They don’t mind. Things like Staff and GS tend to get “over” used because they are weapons with a lot of versatility and style to them. The staff in particular can be used as a “hardcore spell flinger,” as after HoT five of the seven classes will use it, OR it can be a melee head cracker, which is how two of the three new classes use it, and that’s effectively an entirely new weapon, really. I for one have been wanting a melee staff for a while now, although I wanted it on Warrior.

A rifle just flings projectiles. We’ve already got a “straight” rifle in the Warriors, and a “gimmick” rifle in the Engis, and while other classes could use it, they would just be doubling up on those functions in some ways.

I think it more of use for Rifle for other Professions.

Other than giving Thief Rifle for a Sniper Elite Specialization what else can they do with th e other Elite Specializations?

Of course a Sniper Elite Specialization for Thief may have a weakness for close range combat for the Rifle skills only making the Sniper skill benefits only if enemies are far away.

As for other Professions what can they even give them that would use Rifle?

May be…

Exorcists for Revenant.

Hunter for Ranger.

Beyond that can’t think of much that would have Rifle fit into other Elite Specialization’s themes.

Unless ArenaNet backflips again, it’s not going to be another three years before the next specialisation batch. For the first year and a half at least of GW1’s life, they were pretty much insistent that they could make Living Story and gemstore work so well that they wouldn’t need the expansion model to deliver content and raise revenue. Even after they decided to go with HoT, they’ve had to rebuild some elements of the game to suit the new model they’ve taken (specialisations, for instance).

I’d guesstimate that we’ll start seeing LWS3 cropping up around February next year, another expansion announced in the second half of next year, and a considerably shorter timeframe between announcing the expansion and revealing substantial details pushing for an early 2017 release for the next expansion. Sure, that’s still over a year, but it’s possible that they’ll move faster (shorter bridging Living World seasons, for instance), and it’s not going to be another three.

CureForLiving.5360:

Well it depends how ANet goes about designing the elites. If they design concept first and then choose weapon and skills from that, then no simply none of the concepts fit well with a rifle. If ANet goes about designing the elites by deciding the weapon / skill first and then slapping a name on it, then yes.
Alas I’m not privy to the secret inner workings of ANet.

I think they’ve mostly been doing the former, although I don’t think it’s coincidence that dragonhunter has longbow when so many people had been demanding guardian longbow for so long.

Ranger makes the most sense for rifle.

I think it would be good with elementalist. it would obviously be a magic type rifle. Air attune rifle could have knockbacks. Fire would act more like a flamethrower but different from engineer. Earth would be heavy bleeding and movement impairing. Water would give slows and heals.

I think there is a lot of potential for rifle in a magic world.

-During the whole Zhaitan thing they were using huge cannons essentially charged by eles… and who says rifles only shoot bullets with gunpowder? This is a magic world, charge your bullets with elements, lightning bullets or exploding fire attunement shots… etc etc the list could go on for just about ever.
-The ghost problem with the char they are all playing ghostbusters, which in my mind is very related to the revenant as he has been to the other side. (you could have all kinds of cool ghost themed skills with it) Just imagine playing ghostbusters ALL the time.. sounds fantastic!
-Thief.. kind of obvious the uses.
-Mesmer using a chrono rifle sounds pretty sweet to me, a lot better then a shield (at least in my opinion). Who knows maybe they could go in that direction now?
-I see no reason why guardian cant assist and defend allies with a rifle, the military has been doing it for a while now.
-Necro thematically I personally don’t see it in this class as much but only thematically. Though I’ll be perfectly honest, if a zombie Apocalypse happens and I gain the ability to summon and control the dead I am totally going to control a huge army of meat shields and sit in the back with a rifle picking off anything that gets in my way. World domination guesstimate…. probably a week…. yep

Basically I think all in all every class should be able to use and kind of weapon they want. Just because I can shoot fireballs why cant I use a plasma cannon? Just because I’m good with knives why cant I occasionally pick someone off from a distance just for fun? If its there why not use it?

Oops forgot ranger in the list… well its kind of self explanatory also… yea…

I think elementalist rifle certainly has legs. We see a lot of environmental items which are basically the asura binding elemental energies into a rifle form. I could easily see an elementalist picking up a rifle and doing that on the fly. You’d need to make sure it remains distinct from engineer, but I think that’s doable.

Similar arguments apply to mesmer, but since mesmers are generally more reliant on autoattacks than elementalists, care should probably be taken to avoid the ‘feels less like a magic-user and more like a gunslinger that happens to shoot pink bullets’ effect.

Guardian and necro I don’t see – both professions seem to lean towards using more traditional weapons. The argument that soldiers “assist and defend allies with a rifle” is, in my mind, a weak one: such assistance usually boils down to shooting the other guy before they can shoot your ally, or at least threatening to (suppressive fire…) rather than shields and symbols and various other things guardians do.

Revenant: I see the connection you’re making, but on the other hand, despite being the newest profession, revenant is possibly the profession most rooted in the past. Any new revenant specialisation is probably going to come with a new legend to give it a theme; off the top of my head, I can’t think of any legendary rifle-wielders that could serve as the basis for a legend. I’d expect the revenant to stick to weapons that, at least in principle if not in mechanics, were around in the time of Guild Wars 1. On the other hand, it’s possible that we’ll see a legendary rifle-using NPC crop up opening the way for rifle revenant… on the gripping hand, though, it might feel pretty weak for a “legend” to be just some guy who was good with a rifle alongside the likes of Mallyx, Shiro and Glint. It’d probably need to be some powerful boss rather than an ally.

Thief and ranger are both fairly obvious (ranger has been said in the past to be more traditionalist and ‘back-to-nature’, but I could see a specialisation being for rangers that are the exception to this). I recognise the concerns people have regarding a thief rifle ‘sniper’ concept, but I think there are ways to make it work.

The Greyhawk.9107:

Right. Because its just outright impossible to balance a rifle on a thief to keep it from being OP. Lets give them a stick instead.

Whatever dude.

If they did balance it, you’d be crying it was too weak. You’d whine that it removed stealth or crippled you or didn’t do enough damage. You can balance a nuclear bomb, doesn’t mean it’ll be fun or that you wouldn’t whine about it. The drawbacks would have to be monstrous.

DarksunG.9537:

If they did balance it, you’d be crying it was too weak. You’d whine that it removed stealth or crippled you or didn’t do enough damage. You can balance a nuclear bomb, doesn’t mean it’ll be fun or that you wouldn’t whine about it. The drawbacks would have to be monstrous.

Or, on the “let’s not insult everyone who wants one decent rifle set in the entirety of GW2” side of things…

Just make it such that the Thief’s rifle requires multiple hits to deal its damage. Either some sort of delayed-blow explosive bullet payoff where every hit builds up the eventual damage of a delayed hit, a’la Pulmonary Impact, or even simply weaker single hits with a high attack rate/attacks like Pistol Whip that dole out multiple hits – ‘SMG’ style set rather than a sniper. No weapon stealth, or weapon stealth BUT no weapon mobility.

That could have been a ton of fun depending on execution. Instead we got a weak knockoff of our existing Sword. Awesomesauce. Just what I wanted, Santa.