Guild Wars 2

Recently I have been playing a glassy Longbow ranger in tpvp. So far I am really liking the ranged burst and CC brought by the longbow, but I can’t decide on an offhand weapon to compliment my single handed sword on weapon swap. I have tried both warhorn and axe, the latter being my favorite at the moment.

I believe I can rule out warhorn, as both RaO and SotF provide me copious amours of fury. The swiftness is not essential as I also run SotH, the #4 skill is absolute kitten damage, and while the blast is nice I seem to do just fine without it.

That leave us with two options, offhand axe or dagger. I’m really liking the axe so far; the damage is much better than that of the warhorn and both the reflect and pull seem to give it an edge in terms of utility. I have not tried the dagger as of yet, but the evade seems like it could add another great survivability option and the cripple could contribute to my soft CC.

Thoughts?

I personally prefer the axe by a good margin, the dagger brings an extra dodge when you have a main hand with many dodges already and a cripple, while axe brings better damage, a pull, projectile reflection, retaliation, AoE vulnerability and hits many times so gives better chances to proc an on-crit effect.

Axe 4 can hit very high because of it hits twice, also pulling them into axe 5 can also deal some really quick burst damage. Dagger will not hit high at all when compared to axe, full glass or not. However, the evade is very nice if timed well and even with base condi duration it allows for perma poison, which can be usefull against regen bunkers. Dagger 5 is useful when chasing, but again, don’t expect large numbers.

If you want the big hits definitely go axe, it can hit very high with 4 alone. If you want a little bit more defense with the evade and perma poison for bunker busting, then choose dagger.

Dagger by a mile.

Poison, evade, a little bleed pressure and a ranged cripple? Yes, please.

Sevans.4619:

Dagger by a mile.

Poison, evade, a little bleed pressure and a ranged cripple? Yes, please.

Agree, I would take the dagger any day.

The poison+evade is so crucial against warriors. I also find the Axe 4 and 5 animations are both too slow to use effectively.

I also think if you’re using mainhand sword the damage will come from your aa, so save the offhand skills for staying alive.

In Zerg wvw where big damage is king go axe, otherwise dagger. Both are very good.

I don’t know, in a power build you’ll use the poison just to negate the healing, for that you already have sword #3, also you have your dodge, the sword #3 and you ckittene the sword #2 as dodge, so that extra dodge on dagger #4 isn’t really a big deal, I see an AoE reflect + retaliation + damage and extra damage + a pull more useful more often than an extra dodge, extra poison and extra cripple.

The extra dodge and poison is a huge deal. There is no such thing as too much dodge or too much poison. What if you miss with Serpent’s Strike? What if it that poison gets cleansed?

I agree with Kilger, though, that a traited offhand axe is superior to dagger when in zerg warfare.

So after playing with both weapons for a little while longer I prefer the axe in most situations. With so many three shot lich necros out there I find the reflect invaluable. Same goes for other power based longbow rangers, and even condi thieves and engis. The whirl is a perfect skill for fighting thieves, as it forces them to lose around half of their hp to carry out their rotation or wait until the skill finishes ( which at that point they will most likely have to stealth again). Path of scars is great for fighting pretty much any class, as it provides some serious damage. Really the only class I would take dagger against is warriors, as I have trouble keeping a 100% poison uptime on them with all their cleanses and what not.

Kilger.5490:

In Zerg wvw where big damage is king go axe, otherwise dagger. Both are very good.

In a Zerg or any largish group, war horn for the blast and AOE effects. You can never have too many blasts.