Guild Wars 2

I’ve always been a big fan of greatswords, and honestly the ranger’s ability to use them is part of what attracted me to the profession in the first place (I found mesmer to be unsatisfying to my play style, and I have a guardian alt). Sadly, from everything that I’ve read (that wasn’t from the beta weekends), ranger’s greatsword is garbage because of terrible dps, but is this really the case?

I went into the mists to test it out against a golem dummy, using greatsword, a raven, and a quick trait build that seemed to both compliment greatswords but was also practical for how I might like playing. Compared to my guardian, also using a quick trait build, I was very surprised to find that ranger’s greatsword dps was consistantly higher than guardian’s greatsword (with pet damage included, obviously). Not only this, but compared to my warrior alt, ranger’s greatsword + pet damage really wasn’t that much lower.

Now, I should qualify this, as I’m still fairly new to the game. I’ve only had it for a week or so, my guardian is only level 39, and my ranger is only level 17. Because of this, I don’t know the optimal trait builds or skill rotations. I do know, however, that I have no interest in running glass cannon, because a dead dps is no dps, and that I’m not particularily a fan of pvp.

What is the meaning of my ranger getting such good dps from greatsword? Am I simply playing warrior and guardian all wrong? Is the mist a totally different experience from endgame pve? Are pets dead so frequently that they can’t be relied on for sustained dps? Was there a patch that buffed ranger’s greatsword that nobody’s talking about? I know there was one back in November that buffed maul and counterattack, but people were still saying that the dps was lackluster.

Ideally, if I can get away with it, I would run with a greatsword as my main, with shortbow as backup for when I need the distance. I just find melee so much more satisfying.

The greatsword is more about adaptability than dps. My ranger uses (I use three weapon sets), longbow, sword/axe, and greatsword…And of the three, greatsword does the least DPS, except maybe against a crowd of 3-4 mobs. However, they each have their tradeoffs.

Sword/axe keeps me glued to my target. Very, very hard for them to escape. By that same token, it’s hard for me to break away due to the kick pretty much overriding other commands. For melee DPS, it does more than GS, but has extra dodges and jumparounds, and with #5 it even has the ability for a huge vulnerability debuff while deflecting all projectiles.

Longbow does the most DPS, and has range, as well as other goodies…we’re all familiar with it, I’m sure. Don’t have to explain, it’s kind of iconic to the class.

Greatsword? Adaptability. Decent damage, but its #1 skill (the one that REPEATS RAPIDLY), has an evade etched RIGHT IN with its third strike. That’s honestly pretty uber. Has a decent bleed skill, a leap, a counter (or snare, if you throw it before blocking) that knocks down, and a daze. With all of these combined you have some really powerful adabability in the weapon.

Anyway, your question seems to be if greatsword as a main weapon is viable and it’s plain and simple to say that yes, it’s very, very viable. Only that it’s not the highest dps melee weapon, but it’s cool that you’re meeting such success.

I’m glad to hear that others are finding greatsword viable as well. dps is important to me, but since I solo pve a lot, dps isn’t as important as survivability. I find greatsword to be deliciously flexible, great at blocking if I need it, and swoop is just plain wonderful.

I notice you said that longbow has the most dps, but most of what I’ve read said that shortbow has the most dps because it’s so much faster. Could you elaborate on differences between them that you’ve seen?

Candlemaster.3986:

I’m glad to hear that others are finding greatsword viable as well. dps is important to me, but since I solo pve a lot, dps isn’t as important as survivability. I find greatsword to be deliciously flexible, great at blocking if I need it, and swoop is just plain wonderful.

Yeah, I like greatsword’s flexibility too, and have been running with it for about a month now.

The autoattack DPS is slightly worse than 1h sword’s autoattack. If you spam Maul a lot it’s about equal to 1h sword on autoattack. 1h sword can pull ahead if you use the poison skill, but that’s tied to the quicker evade which people try to save for when needed, so I suspect it doesn’t get used as often as it could. So the slightly lower DPS is partly theoretical IMHO and doesn’t hurt that badly in practical use.

To me, 1h sword’s benefit is more that you can pick and choose your off-hand weapon (axe, horn, dagger, torch) for the #4 and #5 skills you like. Not DPS. With GS you’re locked into one set of #4 and #5 skills.

I notice you said that longbow has the most dps, but most of what I’ve read said that shortbow has the most dps because it’s so much faster. Could you elaborate on differences between them that you’ve seen?

Most every claim about one weapon being better than another is highly situational. The fans of each weapon just tend to leave out the situations.

If your target is mobile and not at max range, longbow is the worst weapon. At max range it’s a decent weapon. OTOH barrage is one of if not the best damage skill rangers get, provided the target stays inside for the full 5 seconds. Rapid fire DPS is not much better than longbow’s autoattack at max range, but it gives you that damage at short and medium range, and it can track stealthed players. Vulnerability can be a good damage multiplier for groups.

Shortbow’s forte is single targets who are not focused on you. If the target is facing you, shortbow’s autoattack is slightly worse than longbow’s autoattack at max range. But if you can flank the target to inflict bleed, it’s no contest. In that situation, shortbow delivers nearly 50% more DPS than longbow. It’s even better than melee weapons against single targets. Only longbow’s barrage does better, and that as I said is dependent on the target staying in the barrage the full 5 seconds.

So learn the situations where each weapon shines, and use whatever weapon is most appropriate for whatever situation you find yourself in. Don’t try to oversimplify it to “weapon A is always better than weapon B.”

don’t try to make it sound like GS is good on ranger because it only has one useful skill, skill 5.

Nuka Cola.8520:

don’t try to make it sound like GS is good on ranger because it only has one useful skill, skill 5.

All I can say is that you must not use ranger Greatsword ever.

Swoop is fantastic for mobility. Being able to close to melee range from max range for most classes (1200) so rapidly really turns the tide of battle. #4 is like a Warrior’s shield stance, but better (you can still move) if you keep moving. Standing still, it’s a great interrupt.

And yeah, #5 is fairly good. More for the pet damage boost regardless of if you hit with it or not, though.

Candlemaster.3986:

I notice you said that longbow has the most dps, but most of what I’ve read said that shortbow has the most dps because it’s so much faster. Could you elaborate on differences between them that you’ve seen?

Ezekiel.1985

My ranger uses (I use three weapon sets), longbow, sword/axe, and greatsword…

The utility of the greatsword is underrated, but the damage is not. As it is now, the greatsword is a great second hand weapon, for when you need to escape or get close to a target (Swoop), when you need a block (Counterattack), or you need a quick interrupt (Hilt Bash). But as a main weapon, the damage is just too low.

I use longbow/greatsword and that combo works great for me. Love GS <3

Some say sword outclasses greatsword in every way, but I have to disagree. It has less damage, we all know, but the damage is still there (I got an optimal hit and hit a 3800 with the counterattack yesterday. I know it was me because my pet was dead). It is easier to swing around while chasing mesmers or thieves that like to hop back and stealth for me. It can blow away 100b or thief burst with the 4 skill. Excellent chase and escape. The escapes are beautiful. I have had 3 players or so spiking me down alone, then I dodge away, hit the 4 so none of their projectiles hit, or I blow away a heartseeking thief, then I swoop away and repeat. Even without reduced cooldowns it is very easy. The adaptability is rare. In my new build I have it as my secondary just for that reason.

If looking at greatsword for damage alone, then I say it isn’t viable at all.

It does bring utility to the table that can be used in lots of different ways though. An easy to use leap to leap through healing spring and other combo fields, a fairly hard hitting bleed that’s easy to use, a block/knockback.
Could some of the skills be better, yes. But I feel greatsword is a good compliment for builds lacking certain utilities that the greatsword offers, but I would never argue that it has a good damage output and I would never use it as a primary weapon because of that factor right there.
If the auto attack damage was increased though…

Well you can’t use the GS alone meaning as a primary weapon due to the damage it does. Its sufficient if you run in full berserker gear. If you add Beastmaster the main damage is been done by the pet. Since GS has almost no condition damage you can’t really combine it with traps as well. So i see bad game design there. Whats a weapons purpose at all if not damage?

raubvogel.5071:

Well you can’t use the GS alone meaning as a primary weapon due to the damage it does. Its sufficient if you run in full berserker gear. If you add Beastmaster the main damage is been done by the pet. Since GS has almost no condition damage you can’t really combine it with traps as well. So i see bad game design there. Whats a weapons purpose at all if not damage?

Utility, defense, escape, mobility. It works in a build where you don’t plan on putting out boomboom damage yourself. You have two weapon sets for a reason, slot damage in the other one if you feel the need. Again, though the damage isn’t as high, probably the weakest outside of single target axe, it still can do some. Maul, swoop, and counter attack can all put out 1000+ hits easy, I hit a 3800 yesterday. It just isn’t the best fit for some conventional builds. Similar to how not many bunkers slot longbow.

Jazenn.7526:

raubvogel.5071:

Well you can’t use the GS alone meaning as a primary weapon due to the damage it does. Its sufficient if you run in full berserker gear. If you add Beastmaster the main damage is been done by the pet. Since GS has almost no condition damage you can’t really combine it with traps as well. So i see bad game design there. Whats a weapons purpose at all if not damage?

Utility, defense, escape, mobility. It works in a build where you don’t plan on putting out boomboom damage yourself. You have two weapon sets for a reason, slot damage in the other one if you feel the need. Again, though the damage isn’t as high, probably the weakest outside of single target axe, it still can do some. Maul, swoop, and counter attack can all put out 1000+ hits easy, I hit a 3800 yesterday. It just isn’t the best fit for some conventional builds. Similar to how not many bunkers slot longbow.

in addition, gap closing is pretty great with the great sword using swoop. i have short bow for damage, in combination with field effects from traps. swoops also triggers a field effect, and great sword is a pretty good weapon to use against d/d thieves at least for defensive purposes.

i tend to maximize my rangers utility over raw damage, so different designs and gaming philosophy’s will always differ from “what is best”

Dps is important but it’s far from being the only worthwhile factor in the game. I run solo a lot, so survivability is very important to me, and the greatsword has saved my life more than a few times. When pet damage is factored in, the dps, from what I’ve seen, honestly isn’t even that bad. I can out-dps my guardian against the training dummy in the mists every time. If they could just either buff gs damage so we’re not so reliant on the pet, or else improve the pet’s ai and survivability, then we’d be set.

I’m not quite at the level where it matters yet, but I have been looking into which armor set to use that would compliment the greatsword. I was thinking Knight’s. Berserker’s is always popular, but I don’t want to run glass cannon. A dead dps is no dps. Any thoughts?

Greatsword is good. I’m not running the build now but suffice to say, it has a lot of synergy with BM. It

Lets you swoop to target, then when you pet swap your pet can immediately start attacking.

Makes you able to soak damage while your pet does the dirty work.

Causes melee characters to stand in one spot while they square off with you, completely forgetting about that wolf gnawing their butt.

It has cons too: Mainly lack of good snares. If you don’t have a ranged secondary most people will just kite you. If swoop is the only attack you are landing, you’re losing.

edit: “A dead dps is no dps. Any thoughts?”

Yeah, Knight/soldier mixed gear is good dps and tank. I think you will get more bang for your buck with precision then healing power with Ranger.

I remember during beta the only thing rangers used was the greatsword. Its damage was outrageous.

Kasama.8941:

The utility of the greatsword is underrated, but the damage is not. As it is now, the greatsword is a great second hand weapon, for when you need to escape or get close to a target (Swoop), when you need a block (Counterattack), or you need a quick interrupt (Hilt Bash). But as a main weapon, the damage is just too low.

Like I said in my first post, most of the damage difference with 1h sword disappears if you spam Maul as often as you can.

I’ve been putting together a bunch of weapon stats and tests (including skill coefficients) that I’ll post when they’re done. But for now, the extrapolated DPS against the heavy golem with vanilla weapons, 916 power, 1018 precision, 0 condition damage (only wearing PvP armor) is:

greatsword: 267 DPS
1h sword: 363 DPS

But if you spam maul, you actually gain a bit of DPS because it does about twice the damage of an autoattack. And it adds 12 ticks of bleed at 43 damage each. Over the 6.75 sec cycle time of Maul, that’s an additional 76 DPS which brings the greatsword up to 343 DPS. Just shy of 1h sword’s autoattack. Maul and its bleed are AOE too, so this DPS gain works against multiple targets too.

OTOH, serpent’s strike on 1h sword will add 6 ticks of poison at 84 damage each with a 16 sec cycle time, for an additional 31 DPS. But as I stated, I think most people try to keep this skill in reserve to evade big attacks, since the other evade (hornet sting) is slow to react. So the DPS gained from serpent’s strike in practical gameplay is probably less.

The other advantages of 1h sword are (1) pet gains 2-8 stacks of might from autoattack depending on skill use and number of targets, and (2) the cripple is really handy in PvP. Greatsword gives you an up to 3 sec block, an interrupt, and a really long-range jump. So I don’t really worry about the DPS, I just spam maul when using GS and pick whichever weapon seems like it’ll work better in the situation. (I learned the hard way that 1h sword on CoF bridges = bad)

I looked into my tests against the heavy golem and found the reason why guardian’s dps was so poor – I hadn’t considered amulets. So, while my ranger had a nice default amulet that gave something like 700 power, my guardian’s default was nothing but toughness, vitality, and healing. Once I gave them both berserker, the dps was much closer to even. With this, it feels as if the practical sustained dps of all 3 melee greatsword classes are about even (I didn’t have a stopwatch to test anything out unfortunately). With ranger, the bulk of the dps comes from Maul and it’s bleed, so having the 20% cooldown reduction is very important, but with guardian it’s more from auto-attack, leaving more leeway in traits if you don’t use 2-5 as often. Most of warrior’s gs dps is from hundred blades, which pins you to the ground, never works in pvp, and makes you a sitting duck in pve, so you can’t really rely on it in my experience.

So, if we assume that guardian and ranger are capable of about even dps using greatsword (which is what it feels like, but I don’t have concrete numbers to back up), then the question of which is better falls on the other features inherent to the classes. A good portion of that gs dps from ranger comes from our pet. Pets are handy when used right, but let’s be honest, they’re dead way too often to really be reliable. When I’m fighting ettins, or anything else with a noticable aoe, it only takes 2 or 3 hits until my bird is down (I use bird for aesthetic reasons, not because it’s the best choice). Once one pet goes down I hit f4 to bring out my other one, but it’s not long before they’re down too, and then i have to wait on a fairly significant cooldown before I can use any pet again. This is really detrimental to a class/build that relies on the pet so much. Is it worth taking traits and choosing pets carefully to ensure they’re more competant and survivable, at the cost of my own performance? Is a non-pet ranger build practical in the first place? My intuition tells me that a lot of really poor ranger builds are running around because they’re trying to ignore their pet.

Another issue is simply the attack pattern of ranger gs vs guardian gs. Like I said earlier, the bulk of guardian gs’s dps comes from the auto-attack, which has a decent aoe, and most importantly is very easy to use. The bulk of ranger’s gs dps comes from maul, which you have to remember to use (not difficult by any means, but not as easy as auto-attack), and has a much smaller aoe (it does have aoe, I hit 2 or 3 mobs at once with it all the time by lining them up cleverly). Guardian’s 2 is a good aoe skill but the dps isn’t honestly much higher than auto-attack. Overall, when just considering 1 and 2 for sustained dps, I feel like I enjoy using the guardian’s setup more, not considering ranger’s evasion on their 1 chain.

I find that ranger’s 1’s dodge works very frequently, saving quite a bit of damage, while between aegis and the extra heals, guardian is much more capable of soaking up hits. Guardian’s 3 has blind, while ranger’s 3 has the delicious ridiculous distance (I definitely like ranger’s 3 better than guardian’s 3). Ranger’s 4 is invaluable for avoiding projectiles and countering melee attacks, but guardian’s 4 offers retaliation (again, I prefer ranger’s here). I never use guardian’s 5, though that may be because I don’t really pvp where I’m guessing it really shines, but I do use ranger’s 5 quite frequently, and I enjoy the interrupts.

[/rant]

Sorry for the rant, but to contribute to the discussion – Is relying on the pet worth it in order to get dps that can compete with a guardian’s?

tbh i always had problems to find GS any use outside roaming pve.

spvp: 1h sword does more damage, has cripple, evades and you get 2 more slots for an offhand (dagger and torch are very good, warhorn has one of the nicest buffs in the game)

wvw: while swoop SEEMS like a good skill to get moving around, 1h sword 2 is much better to cover distances in and outside of fights….its only a lil bit ankward to use. Combat wise, i still prefer 1h, gs has aoe, but i dont really think getting inside a zerg is a good idea with a ranger

dungeons and high end pve: running melee ranger here is mostly a bad idea, you’re just a weaker and squishier warrior, giving up a bow means less utility and control for your team, giving up the warhorn means you’re precluding your team one of the very few reasons to even group a ranger in the first place (seriously, why would you NOT run warhorn in a dungeon)

Nuka Cola.8520:

don’t try to make it sound like GS is good on ranger because it only has one useful skill, skill 5.

Actually 3 is pretty good. And 4, if used correctly, also…

Since ranger’s greatsword is inherently a defensive weapon, how would a ranger’s greatsword survivability compare to a guardian’s greatsword survivability?

GS blows if you’re condition build, I know that…

It’s great for bursting with pet though (see NN Volume 3 for example)

Maul needs to be a blast finisher I think to make it really viable for Condition builds (this would give it a use for Trap Builds)

I’m sure it’s actually a decent weapon if you’re Knights/Cleric/Magi setup though.

Xsorus.2507:

GS blows if you’re condition build, I know that…

It’s great for bursting with pet though (see NN Volume 3 for example)

Maul needs to be a blast finisher I think to make it really viable for Condition builds (this would give it a use for Trap Builds)

I’m sure it’s actually a decent weapon if you’re Knights/Cleric/Magi setup though.

I hope you mean for pve? because its the perfect compliment to shortbow in wvw for a trap/condition build.

No other weapon lets ju close distance to trap or leave after like greatsword. also you can run into a zerg and then block your way out after dropping your traps and elite on them..

Xsorus.2507:

GS blows if you’re condition build, I know that…

It’s great for bursting with pet though (see NN Volume 3 for example)

Maul needs to be a blast finisher I think to make it really viable for Condition builds (this would give it a use for Trap Builds)

I’m sure it’s actually a decent weapon if you’re Knights/Cleric/Magi setup though.

Maul+Torch(bonfire)