Guild Wars 2

Hello all, it’s Grandma Newb again. During last night’s taco time I received an ascended weapon chest. Unfortunately, I am not sure it is worth changing out all my gear to try and make it work since the stats are not really desirable for me. So I have questions and need ideas.

My main is a bow Ranger as I’ve found melee very difficult for me in this game. Some MMOs I can melee, some I can’t. He is built with as much: power, precision, toughness as I can manage, in that order.

The weapon provides: toughness, power/ferocity. Thus if i use this weapon I will need to switch out a majority of my newly acquired gear in order to get back the stats i actually want. This is not an insignificant undertaking as I am new and not rich.

Here are my questions:

The weapon only provides 54 more weapon power than my current (ideal statted) weapon, is 54 points a significant amount? It sounds small to me but I really don’t know.

Can you recommend another ranged profession which has better dps AND good survivability? I could easily level another character and simply store the chest.

Since I doubt I will ever fractal or do any high lvl dungeons (my skills preclude this) the infusion slots also don’t impress me as I will more than likely be slotting 2 +4 Precision so it does seem to come down to whether or not the weapon power will provide granny with much better dps=)

Thanks for all your help!

I’m confused as to why you feel that all your armor and weapon stats must be of the same stat set? If someone has told you that’s in some way required, they have misled you. There is no reason to switch out the rest of your gear to use that weapon. Mixing stat sets is quite common (as long as you aren’t speed running Dungeons).

While that weapon stat set is not considered one of the more desirable ones, it could be useful in WvW or another setting where you wanted some increased direct damage protection. The other 2 stats are certainly desirable for any power and critical based build.

To be honest, it is generally considered that an Ascended weapon can give you somewhere between 5% and 12% DPS increase over an Exotic weapon, so the boost is not negligible (but it also certainly not a requirement to play in almost all areas of the game).

Brother Grimm.5176:

I’m confused as to why you feel that all your armor and weapon stats must be of the same stat set? If someone has told you that’s in some way required, they have misled you. There is no reason to switch out the rest of your gear to use that weapon. Mixing stat sets is quite common (as long as you aren’t speed running Dungeons).

While that weapon stat set is not considered one of the more desirable ones, it could be useful in WvW or another setting where you wanted some increased direct damage protection. The other 2 stats are certainly desirable for any power and critical based build.

To be honest, it is generally considered that an Ascended weapon can give you somewhere between 5% and 12% DPS increase over an Exotic weapon, so the boost is not negligible (but it also certainly not a requirement to play in almost all areas of the game).

Hello Brother Grimm — TY for the info about ascended vs exotic dps, that is what i was looking for. Since bow is 2-handed I’ll assume its increase is closer to 12% than 5% and that would be significant, yay!

To clear up your confusion, the reason I would need to regear is to regain all the +Precision I would be losing if i use the new bow. I do actually mix gear sets — atm I run Berserk and Soldiers armor to get the right mix of stats, but with all that added +Toughness on the new Bow, i would need to ditch the Soldiers to regain more dps and rework jewelry to ditch +Feroc since the new bow has way too much for my liking=)

It’s hard to have too much ferocity, unless you have no precision. Without knowing your exact build I can’t really give exact advice, using a site like: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/ to show all the numbers would help with specifics.

Ascended weapons are account bound also, so you could use a longbow on a Warrior alt as well (or a shortbow on a thief, or a rifle for war/engi, etc.).

As for ranged dps you’re going to be hard pressed to find another class capable of what a longbow ranger is currently. Rifle engineer with grenades can be pretty impressive but grenades have no auto-attack (rifle auto can be great ranged dps with the right build but all the burst skills are melee range ideally, grenades are more efficient at melee range, and even traited rifle range isn’t as long as ranger bow range). Ranged warrior is generally considered poor dps, killshot is still very damaging burst however.

FeralOne.1093:

Hello Brother Grimm — TY for the info about ascended vs exotic dps, that is what i was looking for. Since bow is 2-handed I’ll assume its increase is closer to 12% than 5% and that would be significant, yay!

The range has nothing to do with 1-hand vs 2-hand but how often you CRIT % is (PRECISION) and what your crit damage (FEROCITY) increase is. The percentage increase from EXOTIC to ASCENDED of the base weapon damage is just about 5% flat (as I recall) for all weapons.

Before assuming the weapon stat change will greatly effect your overall DPS, you should look at the numbers closer. Especially if you are stacking PRECISION to the point that you are often hitting the 100% CRIT chance cap….(some of your PRECISION is being WASTED in those cases).

Thrashbarg.9820:

It’s hard to have too much ferocity, unless you have no precision. Without knowing your exact build I can’t really give exact advice, using a site like: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/ to show all the numbers would help with specifics.

Hello Thrashbarg — regarding Ferocity, I’ve read on the forums that world bosses/champions can not be crit=( Since 3/4’s of my in-game time is spent fighting these mobs, I’ve started throttling back on Ferocity so I can get some +Condi.

It makes me sad, since I love crit-based builds, but I’m not sure what else to do in these situations. Power is already my #1 priority, Precision is #2 so I need something in that 3rd slot to provide damage when something can’t be crit. +Condi is not ideal since I have very few attacks that it will benefit but I assume my stats will affect my pets damage as well so it makes it a nip more useful.

[/quote]
The range has nothing to do with 1-hand vs 2-hand but how often you CRIT % is (PRECISION) and what your crit damage (FEROCITY) increase is. The percentage increase from EXOTIC to ASCENDED of the base weapon damage is just about 5% flat (as I recall) for all weapons.

Before assuming the weapon stat change will greatly effect your overall DPS, you should look at the numbers closer. Especially if you are stacking PRECISION to the point that you are often hitting the 100% CRIT chance cap….(some of your PRECISION is being WASTED in those cases).
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TY for clarifying your damage estimates. Further investigation will be necessary but atm I have no worries about hitting the Prec cap, especially if I use the new weapon.

I may have to look at a new alternate weapon set that still has range.

Many world bosses cannot be crit, as well as some “boss” structures in dungeons, but champions can. Pretty much anything that isn’t a dragon or some type of structure can be crit (svanir shaman, megadestroyer, “champ train” mobs, etc.).

For world bosses (with perhaps the exception of tequatl and tri-wurm) it doesn’t really matter whether your stats are optimized, in a group of 100 people having 5-10% more damage personally amounts to a 0.05%ish increase to group dps. Condi damage on these event bosses is mostly nullified by the game engine condition cap. Assuming you have a decent amount of power in your build (it sounds like you do) you are already doing about as much damage as you can against the non-crit “boss” structures (dragons, etc.).

Should you be concerned about maximum effectiveness for some reason, I’d suggest a full set of Soldier (Power/tough/vit) gear for dragons and the like. It’s pretty cheap to buy, or free to acquire through karma/badges/dungeons. For all other PvE areas, zerker (or as close as you can get without downing excessively) is generally ideal (broad generalization there, no flaming please and thanks.).

Thrashbarg.9820:

Many world bosses cannot be crit, as well as some “boss” structures in dungeons, but champions can. Pretty much anything that isn’t a dragon or some type of structure can be crit (svanir shaman, megadestroyer, “champ train” mobs, etc.).

For world bosses (with perhaps the exception of tequatl and tri-wurm) it doesn’t really matter whether your stats are optimized, in a group of 100 people having 5-10% more damage personally amounts to a 0.05%ish increase to group dps. Condi damage on these event bosses is mostly nullified by the game engine condition cap. Assuming you have a decent amount of power in your build (it sounds like you do) you are already doing about as much damage as you can against the non-crit “boss” structures (dragons, etc.).

Should you be concerned about maximum effectiveness for some reason, I’d suggest a full set of Soldier (Power/tough/vit) gear for dragons and the like. It’s pretty cheap to buy, or free to acquire through karma/badges/dungeons. For all other PvE areas, zerker (or as close as you can get without downing excessively) is generally ideal (broad generalization there, no flaming please and thanks.).

TY so much for this analysis! What you’ve said makes a great deal of sense and it is good to know that more mobs can be crit than I believed.

It was a most wonderful moment to get a weapon chest and I hate seeing it just sitting in my bank. It seems my original ideas about this character remain true and I will be able to keep a larger percent of my current gear and more importantly, use a new weapon.