Guild Wars 2

I haven’t seen too many other Rangers use this weapon combo. Is there an obvious reason that I am missing? I like the speed boost and the one handed sword offers some decent damage from melee. I use this in PVE and WVW with good result.

While I never use it I can see them going together well, in fact I was actually going to try it out today.

Normally I only go 1 hand sword in PvE though where I combine it with off hand Axe for the Vuln and combine that with fire trap for the combos.

The Warhorn is probably the most used offhand for Rangers, but normally with an Axe MH. My guess is that people avoid the sword because of the rooting when you auto attack (at least thats why I have avoided it ever since unlocking the weapon skills).

1H Sword + Torch is great combo in sPVP.

You only use Warhorn for Call of the Wild, just switch to Torch when its on CD.

The point of fighting with a warhorn is that people get tired of switching to it for running and back to their axe for fighting. Both warhorn and offhand axe have a useless “4” and the single remaining skill has a long cooldown and isn’t really going to influence the fight either way.

Whirling defense is epic against swarm type encounters though. Have the bear tank half a dozen spiders, get in behind them and spin2win.

Warhorn and Axe 4 useless? Nope.

In PvE I use Axe/Torch and swap out the WH when I’m running. The burning damage, at least at level 20, does huge amounts of damage to mobs while the bear is tanking them. Add in the Axe MH for more AE damage and stuff dies pretty fast. The Axe #2 also goes well with the GS #2 for bleed stacks in PvE which is what I use.

In PvP though, I run SB/Axe+WH because SB is our best single target weapon for both power and condition builds. I run power and axe does really awesome AE damage and is effective against single targets as well. The #4 on WH hits for around 2-3k and has never “missed” just had the damage reduced—so it’s a guaranteed hit regardless. The #5 WH skill buffs everyone around you which is amazing in team fights, especially if your teammates are running crit builds. If I were running a condition build I’d definitely swap it out for torch though.

Chesire.9043:

In PvE I use Axe/Torch and swap out the WH when I’m running. The burning damage, at least at level 20, does huge amounts of damage to mobs while the bear is tanking them. Add in the Axe MH for more AE damage and stuff dies pretty fast. The Axe #2 also goes well with the GS #2 for bleed stacks in PvE which is what I use.

In PvP though, I run SB/Axe+WH because SB is our best single target weapon for both power and condition builds. I run power and axe does really awesome AE damage and is effective against single targets as well. The #4 on WH hits for around 2-3k and has never “missed” just had the damage reduced—so it’s a guaranteed hit regardless. The #5 WH skill buffs everyone around you which is amazing in team fights, especially if your teammates are running crit builds. If I were running a condition build I’d definitely swap it out for torch though.

I never really liked the axe but now I know why players are surprised when I charge them with the sword and warhorn. The axe does do more damage overall.

Levetty.1279:

Warhorn and Axe 4 useless? Nope.

The point of a minor dot that deals less dps than “1” due to a huge cast time or a minor bleed with a cast time is…?

If you can’t see the advantages of a multi hit attack that does its thing while you carry on using whatever skills you want then I don’t even

No idea what this cast time bleed attack you are talking about is.

It doesn’t matter that it’s over time, but its damage is not enough for the lengthy cast time…

I don’t recall it taking particularly long, and it doesn’t root you either.
It’s only one or two axe throws at most, since we seem to throw fairly slowly.

Anywho, back to the original subject….

The sword is very nice for avoiding damage. You have the decent/constant damage on 4 and the swift/might boon on 5 for the warhorn. The sword then gives you a backward evade (2) which you can choose to either keep running away or leap back at your foe, and 3 gives you a nice skill evade that brings you to the back of the opponent and poisons them.

I use sword/warhorn & shortbow combo in sPvP mainly as an annoyance character. I try to get some damage in with my shortbow and if they turn to target me I use the sword/warhorn to avoid them.

Bleed on Crit trait
Pet Might on Crit trait
Weapon sigils
Rampage as One
Spirits

A multi hit attack that counts as coming from us but doesn’t actually come from us.

Seems good to me.

Gonna say this now… A lot of people don’t use a lot of good things, that’s because it’s either 1) “Not the meta” or 2) Not stupid player friendly.

Short Sword +Warhorn is more of the first, the combo does AMAZINGLY well, the warhorn allows you to stay ontop of your target really easily and gives you and your pet some bonus damage, not to mention the 4 skill just flat out hurts people… A LOT

EnaiSiaion.8072:

It doesn’t matter that it’s over time, but its damage is not enough for the lengthy cast time…

That’s why you cast it as your running in at your opponent and watch them freak out at all them birds. If you also trait right you will stack a bunch of bleeds from the crits which you will get bunch of. The damage is not to bad either. Hunter’s Call is good ability. The Horn is a great off hand period.

As for the Sword well its kitten fun weapon to use paired with many things! The #1 spam attack is what keeps it from being use a lot imo because the ability is broken and roots you in place. The damage vs speed of the weapon is amazing though, hits hard, fast and can hit multiple targets in front of you. Pop Call of the Wild from Horn and watch you hit even faster, believe me Swiftness actually makes the Sword #1 land faster because of the movement animations involved.

Mog.1589:

EnaiSiaion.8072:

It doesn’t matter that it’s over time, but its damage is not enough for the lengthy cast time…

That’s why you cast it as your running in at your opponent and watch them freak out at all them birds. If you also trait right you will stack a bunch of bleeds from the crits which you will get bunch of. The damage is not to bad either. Hunter’s Call is good ability. The Horn is a great off hand period.

As for the Sword well its kitten fun weapon to use paired with many things! The #1 spam attack is what keeps it from being use a lot imo because the ability is broken and roots you in place. The damage vs speed of the weapon is amazing though, hits hard, fast and can hit multiple targets in front of you. Pop Call of the Wild from Horn and watch you hit even faster, believe me Swiftness actually makes the Sword #1 land faster because of the movement animations involved.

PFFFFT!! Why would you trait for the birds to bleed when you can trait for them to have longbow range and a 20% less CD?! NONSENSE!! (actually you can do both, i have, it’s hilarious!!)

When I am not Longbow/Shortbow’ing it up. I use Longbow/Sword-Warhorn. I love the combination, maneuverability like a theif, quick attacks, range damage, and buffs. Pretty win all around, and it supplements my Longbow when stuff is on cooldown.

Edit: It’s also great for speed-tanking temporarily, when you need extra control over a situation when the rest of your group needs to recover a bit.

ilJumperMT.4871:

1H Sword + Torch is great combo in sPVP.

You only use Warhorn for Call of the Wild, just switch to Torch when its on CD.

You can’t just say things without knowing if they are true at all. You cannot use 1H sword in sPVP because it roots you, which means you die the moment you start auto attacking with the 1H sword.

You can use the 1H sword against trash mobs in solo pve, but that’s its only use. The moment you start auto attacking, you cannot move or even dodge anymore, and that means in any situation but solo pve against trash monsters, you will die.

Giving your enemy a free immobilize that lasts as long as you attack = you die.

All a warrior has to do for example is run up to you and click #2, then you are dead, because you cannot even move or dodge out of the way, he doesn’t even have to bolas or bull charge you, you rooted yourself for him as a nice gift.

Even if you turn off auto attack, each attack still roots you for its duration, greatly limiting your movement, it’s just not a weapon any ranger should ever use in any kind of pvp. Against tough monsters it’s just as lethal, because you can’t get away from the heavy attacks then, and if you have AA off, you’ll get a really painful finger from hitting #1 thousands of times a day.

As long as Anet doesn’t say that this is just intended bad design, I still have hope they will fix the root. I do hope they don’t do it half-arsed by allowing dodging but still not moving.. imo the only way to fix this is by removing the root.. if it takes removing the cripple condition on the chain then I will gladly take that. No auto attack is viable if it stops you from moving.

i found that the only time warhorn is useful is when speedbuffing yaks, or speedbuffing zergs… lol

The +20% crit chance from the warhorn is quite nice too though isn’t it?

If you spec for 40-50% crit chance like most, then that gets you up to 60-70% crit for 15 seconds. A nice quickening zephyr and that’s a lot of crits in 4 seconds time. If you have a superior sigil of purity, then you become immune to bleeds and burns and don’t need any condition removal utlity or pet. Crit proc sigils work real nice on shortbows with warhorn buff.

Zsymon, while 1h Swords auto attack is a problem you are massively overstating it. The other 2 skills are the ones that get you out of there. Two will fling you away then back in again and 3 will move you out of the way and keep you attacking the target.

That is actually why I think that they did this on purpose and they meant 1h Sword to be designed for some quick bursts of damage (probably combined with quickness) and then swap back to our main weapon so we can move about again. Flawed but I can see where they were coming from.

I tried out 1h Sword and Warhorn in some PvE today and didn’t really like it. I still think its an effective combo but I didn’t like the lack of stuff to do once you were meleeing them so going to stick to Sword/Axe or Greatsword for when I want to go melee.

those thinking the warhorn 4 isn’t beneficial are somewhat missing a point. Even if you don’t spec(add sigils, I personally prefer blood to get life with a lifesteal back as I crit) to benefit it, it’s layered damage that you can trigger front end(Particularly when you get the jump) that delivers it’s damage in conjunction with SB or longbow.

So using a heavy golem as a test subject using warhorn 4 weapon swith sb(which autofires on switch) at my current power condition 2800+ mainly weapon dmg drops the golem in right around 10 seconds crit varies I’m running at 49 buffing up with fury to 69%.

SB1 alone drops the same target at right around 11 seconds. The bigger difference is perceptual as I stopwatch from hitting the key. Perceptually to the target 69% crit birds to sb1 kills 2 seconds faster when you factor the 1 second bird activation time. In pvp that’s human response time and perceptually burstier by 2 seconds.

Horn 4 to barrage 3,2 on longbow kills perhaps .25 to .5 faster than horn 4 to SB at (all tests from behind of course) but at the point stopwatch activation may be the difference despite remapping my naga to do it 1 handed. Longbow is also ahrder as you have to time the cast animation break from 5 to 3 perfectly as well as the weapon switch to achieve equivalent results to SB while SB autoattack is essentially swap weapons with good timing. In PvP you also need to arrange for your pet to stun KD the target in the barrage zone etc if you use longbow… Stationary golems not being the best rw test subjects.

Layered damage is beneficial. And that’s without buffing up bird damage beyond having fury might up from warhorn 5 for all tests.

delayed damage abilities that add 2.4k on the front end before the enemy knows your there aren’t worthless. Our pets are also good fire and forget damage front end. Same principle different activation method.

Using sword is much more subjective but quite defensive. Against a fast attacker at 1200 condition damage the flame shield hits for 650ish against a slow attacker they maybe hit you twice, if your carrying a fire trap not a bad damage reflect briefly. Testing on the necromancer double daggers it procced well. Painful test to isolate damage. at 300 condition damage in a 2800 atk build doing 419 reflected back per hit. Not a horrible damage add using say protect me which it also procs through. Definite haste/100 blades defense/offense application properly timed. Or even against warhorn 4’s 16 small attacks. We have the field 2 ways and easily accesible leap finishers on the sword(s).

I’ve been playing with 1h Sword as my offset since the beginning, and I love it. lately, due to SB/LB-itis, i’ve been running full melee sets and playing around with all the offhands and here’s how I feel:

I hate Dagger. Everyone does.
Horn is really great for an opener, bird cotw swap
Torch #4 is a lot like horn #4 (dot) but the #5 skill is great in a group (leap out, back in for aura)
Axe offhand is my newest love. I rarely use the #4 unless it’s to drop a fleeing foe, but the real magic is #5. Drop a field (torch, trap, etc) and go to town.

All of these work great with the 1h sword. And warhorn is easily the best fight-opener offhand.

i use 1h sword +warhorn and with quickening zephyr is extremely powerful , sucks being rooted with animation for sword though

I use the sword as a completely defensive hand weapon for just the fact that it makes me one of the most mobile classes, and puts a distance between me and my enemy, and if used properly you will dodge more than a greatsword block.

Shortbow/Sword+Warhorn Ranger

Pets: Fern Hound, Bear
Healing: Troll Unguent
Skills: Spike Trap, Signet of Stone, Signet of the Hunt
Elite: Rampage As One
20/20/25/5

-=-=-=-

• What i generally do in WvWvW is actually not even join in major skirmishes, and basically run down people who are running to the front. usually i try to avoid more than 1v1 engagements, and basically kill every dolyk and take out the veteran outposts. Also Kill people trying to do the “kill the mob + leader” quests.

i try to play axe + shortbow but compared to how i usually feel i’m not that mobile.

If i switch spike trap for Lightning Reflexes i can pretty much chain a 6 dodge chain where i end off on my short bow.

But lately i’ve been using spike trap with the two evasion skills offered by using a sword to basically mitigate the theif burst (on activation hit 3, hit 2 once, ~, shortbow 3, shortbow 5, short bow 4, heal, fern hound healing).

I don’t run QZ because i tend to crit enough that i can at least activate the rage rune on my bow, atleast 1 in a battle.

I like Sword+Torch and Axe+Warhorn.

The torch is a much better compliment to sword because of #5 skill. No sense in pairing a ranged weapon (warhorn) with a melee weapon when you can use a melee skill. Warhorn skill can be used near or far, for both skills, but 50% of Torch skills are melee range.

That said, I completely disagree with the sentiment that sword is a trash PvP weapon, and whomever thinks so is really not trying to use it to their advantage, and is probably more comfortable with auto-attack. Sword only has ONE skill set (#1) that potential roots then, yet has 2 (#2 #3) that move them around, and there ARE methods to help cut back on the rooting.

That being said, I tend to use Sword for burst damage and not on 1vX (PvE). I use Axe and traps for that. If I want to finish someone off, I switch into my sword (paired with Torch which I have a Superior sigil of Power on – 3 stacks of might) for some nice burst damage, and since my sword is paired with torch, I can trop some fire. I have superb condition damage. Most of my damage is actually condition damage.