Guild Wars 2

Basing auto attack times and ideal builds for each weapon I am showing the following DPS/damage numbers for LB, GS, and S/A….

Assuming 2000 power vs. 0 armor

LB (6/5/0/3/0 no spotter):
Long Auto – 317 base, 0.9 scaling, 0.9s attack time – 2858 damage per (3175.5 DPS)
Medium Auto – 263 base, 0.65 scaling, 0.9 attack time – 2110 damage per (2344.5 DPS)
Short Auto – 211 base, 0.5 scaling, 0.9 attack time – 1635 damage per (1816.5 DPS)
RF (10s CD) – 1320 base, 3.75 scaling, 2.25 attack time – 11,907 damage per (5292 DPS)
Barrage (30s CD) – 1692 base, 4.8 scaling, 2.475 attack time – 15244 damage per (6159.3 DPS)

Ideal 30s rotation = 3 RF, 1 Barrage, and 23 Autos = 116,698 Damage (3889.9 DPS)
Medium 30s rotation = 99,496 Damage (3316.5 DPS)
Short 30s rotation = 88,567 Damage (2952.2 DPS)

S/A (6/5/0/3/0 w/ spotter):
Auto Chain – 639 Base, .6/.6/.7 scaling, 1.8 attack time, 6215 Damage per (3452.6 DPS)
Scars (15s CD) – 235 base, 1.2 scaling, 0.5 attack time, 3689 Damager per (7378 DPS)

Ideal 30s rotation = 2 Scars and 16 Auto Chains = 106,812 Damage (3560.4 DPS)

GS (4/5/0/5/0 w/ spotter):
Auto Chain – 646 base, .55/.55/.65 scaling, 2.56 attack time, 5390 Damage per (2105.4 DPS)
Maul – 434 base, 1.5 scaling, .75 attack time, 4464 Damage per (5952.3 DPS)

Ideal 30s rotation = 5 Mauls and 10 Auto Chains = 76219 Damage (2540.6 DPS)

I was bored and was playing with excel. Note that this doesn’t take into account any possible partials for auto attack chains and for the Longbow any leftover time for autos was rounded down. The data was fairly surprising for Longbow DPS, even at close range. If you aren’t all stacking on top of each other, the Longbow will possibly outdamage Sword.

Also note that this does not factor in any vulnerability stacking via Maul/Rapid Fire, nor does it factor in giving Might to your pet via Sword.

Lastly, note that the build used for Longbow sacrifices Spotter for 5% extra damage on Longbow and I was using RTW instead of the 10%/5% damage increase if vs. crippled target trait.

Feel free to correct me if I screwed anything up, this was just my first stab at it since I was noticing some odd damage discrepancies when doing solo stuff and swapping between Longbow and GS. It felt like I was doing a considerable amount more damage as Longbow and it turned out, according to these calculations, that I actually was.

it makes sense but as you said when you factor in Vun+might, the melee gains more Benfit over the long run from might + Vun being able to maintain more Might because of cleave and Radius effects so the LB’s base damage looks higher but quickly drops afters Vun+Might and bonuses of Aoe range boons ect by then the Gs and Sword will out dps the LB because of said flight time and lack of ways to sustain might and Vun unless the build is traited for Remoresless loosing the 10%dps increase and optional 10% damage from Predators .

over all you worked things out pretty well without other enviromental factors not included.

but thats how anet balance these things not in range of boons the base dps is slightly higher to account for flight time but when those boons and Vun are included it turns around again.

If you are talking about ideal builds, you probably should have 20% longbow skills cooldown. So RF and Barrage should have 8s and 24s cooldown respectively. Please fix :p

Can’t wait to see the numbers!

Good catch on the 20% LB cooldowns, it doesn’t affect the 30s damage calculations, but it would be a more ideal build. Probably just drop pet boon sharing for it and go 6/6/0/2/0.

You would actually stack far more vulnerability as LB than S or GS, but this obviously doesn’t matter if your group is getting 25 stacks reliably.

As you said, it is definitely an interesting comparison, there is little cleaving with it, to get spotter, you have to lose 5% LB damage, but it’s probably worth it since spotter is an 8-10% DPS increase for the entire party. My biggest revelation with it is that it can do more DPS than GS even at close range, which just seems weird.

Doesn’t seem weird to me. I’ve never known the GS to be anything other than a defensive weapon, not offensive. Just makes S+A/LB better than GS/LB or S+A/GS.

Just a detail: because of RF and Barrage cast time you can use only 1 barrage and 2 RF in 30 seconds of fight, which is minus 12k for longbow.

It’s close enough if you open with RF. The same thing also applies to Maul and Path of Scars.

I don’t know what your ‘base’ is. There is no base damage for attacks. The damage you see on the wiki is determined by the following formula and assumes base power of 915, a base armor of 2600, and an exotic weapon:

power * coefficient * weapon strength / armor == damage

So if we fill this in:
915 power * 0.9 coefficient * 1000 weapon strength / 2600 armor = 317 Long Range Shot damage

You don’t want to use that value. You want to use the one based off whatever power you’re assuming. That means for you:

2000 * .9 * 1000 (or 1050 for ascended) / 0 == damage. Since nothing has 0 armor, this isn’t realistic though. Plus no divide by 0

Good to know, thanks! 0 armor still works for comparison purposes though.

Did you calculate with the aftercast of the skills? LB have a very long one

Looks nice. I guess that means they finally leanred that melee stacking gives advantage so big that there is no more reason to kitten ranged DPS because of “risk vs reward”. I hope one day we will be able to play dungeons fully ranged xD

McWolfy.5924:

Did you calculate with the aftercast of the skills? LB have a very long one

Not “very”. It’s been reduced long time ago. I don’t remember how long it is now :/

This makes me wonder why won’t the term bearbow die.

Sword is awful due to the animation and greatsword is a crappy weapon meant for defensive/utility in pvp/wvw..

As a ranger main who wants to love the class, I hope HoT makes rangers useful in pve. Both my thief and ele have more utility and damage at current and it’s more something I play cause tired of ele or whatever.

As Atherakhia.4086 pointed out, I’m having trouble with your OP since you start with 2,000 Power versus 0 Armor.

• No one has 0 Armor
• You can’t divide by 0 … but the equation requires you to divide by the Armor … so you get undefined (or infinite) … neither of which are valid values for your damage.

@Hoffburger: how does 0 work for comparison purposes? The equation divides by the armor. If you can’t do the division, your math isn’t going to be correct.

What is essentially happening here is they are getting to multiply everything by the power … which is horribly wrong with 2,000 power … just far from even correct.

2,000 power versus 1,000 armor is going to give you 2,000 / 1,000 = 2. So you won’t get to multiple by that 2,000 without dividing by anything … you’d multiply by 2 without dividing anything (because you already applied the division).

You’re also not using the weapon strength.

Additionally, I don’t believe your DPS on barrage is using the correct duration for the time it takes to do that full damage.

Please see the spreadsheet I shared this week. I have left comments in it to explain some of the “less clear” aspects:

• https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tuDz1x50hIhREdfWni7Eim9MbG8cDRkIuuIsioXdruc/edit?usp=sharing

Please see the GW2 wiki for the equation on direct damage … it’s in the post I made this week sharing the above spreadsheet.