Guild Wars 2

Hey folks,

I’m a pretty obsessive experimentalist. Whenever I hear someone claim something, I always remain skeptical until I do some tests myself.

So anyone who frequent these boards must have heard the common saying, “Rifles Warriors do more damage.” Well, do they actually? I ran some tests to see if this actually applies or not.

Note though, these tests aren’t meant to prove it right or wrong. Nor are they perfect. Simply done in the spirit of science and to satiate my curiosity.

Experimental Methodology
I took my Warrior and Ranger to the mists, gave them each a weapon, and made them kill a Heavy, Medium, and Light armor golem while using a pre-set attack pattern. This was repeated 3 times and the time it took to kill all the golems were averaged.

Equipment
Both were equipped with a PvP Berserker amulet. Both had no runes on armor. No Sigils on weapons either.

Traits
Ranger was traited 20/25/10/0/15.
I, VIII
II, X
VI
VI

Warrior was traited 10/30/0/10/20.
V,
III, VII, IX
I
V, VII

Utilities/Buffs used
Ranger: Call of the WIld, Sharpened Edges, Rampage as One. Also equipped with Lashtail Devourer.
Warrior: For Great Justice, Signet of Might, Signet of Rage

Procedure
Ranger:
1. Use Call of the Wild, Sharpened Edges, Rampage as One.
2. Swap to Shortbow. Swap pet for quickness
3. Crossfire.
4. Swap pet again when CD is up.

Warrior: (Adrenaline full at start)
1. Use FGJ, SoM, SoR
2. Use Brutal Shot
3. Use Kill Shot
4. Use Volley
5. Autoattack.
6. Use Volley when CD is up
7. Use Kill Shot if enough Adrenaline

Results (Average time to kill all 3 golems.
Ranger:
Rabid:
From front, with pet: 23.3s
From back, with pet: 20.4s
From front, without pet: 40.7s
From back, without pet: 27.0s
Zerkers:
Front, with pet: 21.9s
Back, with pet: 18.8s
Front, no pet: 27.5s
Back, no pet: 23.2s
Warrior:
Zerkers
Adrenaline full at start: 24.6s
Adrenaline empty: 29.0s

Thoughts
The results were somewhat surprising. I was expecting the Rifle to kill a lot faster, especially when you consider crossfire was not used from behind the enemy. I feel the reason is most likely because between the volley/killshot CDs, the warrior autoattack’s attack rate is much slower than Crossfire and thus the DPS falls off significantly.

Thoughts part 2

The damage difference between Rabid and Zerkers is pretty interesting. Though of course, Rabid only has 2 offensive stats vs 3 for Zerkers. But the difference is very stark when attacking from the front (no bleed stacks). Smaller when attacking from the back. Want to try out Rampager’s stat next.

Also, it seems bleeds constitute around ~15% of our damage, with pets taking up another 20%.

Again, this isn’t perfect. There’s several things that can easily change the outcome of this test.

1. Obstruction problems
2. Conditions from traps
3. Pet death
4. Different trait builds/runes

I encourage people here to try to reproduce results or point out any error I have in my methodology! Perhaps try other weapons also (Longbow? Axe? Sword?)

ADDENDUM

Just like to post this screenshot to show that the flanking range is actually quite large!

Redo the ranger with your pet on passive. That’ll be more realistic.

Arsenic Touch.7960:

Redo the ranger with your pet on passive. That’ll be more realistic.

He used ranged pet. Ranged pets does not suffer from moving targets issue.

Bohun Martell.8963:

Arsenic Touch.7960:

Redo the ranger with your pet on passive. That’ll be more realistic.

He used ranged pet. Ranged pets does not suffer from moving targets issue.

Not what I’m talking about. But since you brought up the moving target issues, due to the vast difference in projectile speed with the ranger arrows vs the warrior rifle, a warrior will still hit something while the target is strafing where as the ranger will miss.

I was actually referring to the fact that the pet is going to be dead in most fights, so if you want to compare the killing speed, you need to take that out of the equation.

Arsenic Touch.7960:

Bohun Martell.8963:

Arsenic Touch.7960:

Redo the ranger with your pet on passive. That’ll be more realistic.

He used ranged pet. Ranged pets does not suffer from moving targets issue.

Not what I’m talking about. But since you brought up the moving target issues, due to the vast difference in projectile speed with the ranger arrows vs the warrior rifle, a warrior will still hit something while the target is strafing where as the ranger will miss.

I was actually referring to the fact that the pet is going to be dead in most fights, so if you want to compare the killing speed, you need to take that out of the equation.

With 15 points in beastmastery, pet does not die that easily (especially ranged one) and ranged pet damage is weak anyway.

Agreed about projectile speed, but:

1. Ranger damage is almost constant while Warrior does have spikes (kill shot) that can be dodged.
2. In real combat crossfire will proc bleed quite often and it was not included in this test.
   I think it makes up for some missed/obstructed attacks.

Wait, how does a weapons test include pet damage? Shouldn’t your title read “Ranger Short bow and Pet vs Warrior Rifle DPS Test” ?

Also, our Pets do different degrees of damage, which pet was used? Was a pet used? I’m still a bit confused on this.

As easily as we can all argue which weapon is better situationally, I think what tests of this nature point out is that the raw damage on ranger weapons is probably in line with other prof’s weapons – in an ideal battle.

Obviously there are other factors that are holding back the ranger’s damage potential a little bit (wonky pet mechanics, even wonkier arrow mechanics), so if those are addressed satisfactorily many of the folks playing ranger should find it easy to compete.

Please test it with a Longbow next time. One test with pet and one without it.

I think there are too many variables involved for this test to be valid. To me this doesn’t prove anything. Not trying to bash anyone, good on ya for trying to sort things out. I wonder if for this to be fair that no armor or runes or traits be used at all. Different setups are going to yield different results. I would think they should be stripped of everything but the weapon, pet included.

This is not a personal attack or an insult post or anything. Just wanted to clear that up first.

This test has so many holes in it that it can’t hold water. There are several things that you need to do in order to test this properly.

First, your comparing warrior rifle, you need to compare it to the rifle counterpart which is the longbow. You can’t compare rifle to a mix of longbow and shortbow, you have to keep it the same, long delay weapons.

Second, you need to, at least, start the test un-traited. This will give you a base as to the damage capabilities of the weapon. Once you have this base you can then redo the test traited and see if you get a difference result. You can also see the difference in damage output and see if it’s because of traits or if it’s just because it’s a better weapon choice.

Third, you can’t use a pet. Your comparing weapons here. If you insist on using pet’s then you have to make it more ‘real world’ applicable. In other words, run the test on moving targets.

fourth, speaking of ‘real world’ application, you will need to run the test while moving in and out of difference ranges. Since it’s impossible to stay at max range for the entire battle, the number’s will not be correct, you’ll either be simulating a ‘best case’ or a ‘worse case’ scenario by staying at one fixed range.

I’m not trying to attack you, I actually applaud you for your time in testing this. However, the only thing this test proves, is that ranger’s can do just a little bit more damage using pets, and two different bows (a fast delay and a slow delay weapon) while hasting themselves during pet swaps, then a warrior can using a slow delay weapon and no hasting. If you would like to run the test’s again and would like help and are in the Tarnished Coast Server, drop me a line, I’d be more then happy to lend you a hand.

Qixilver.3784:

I think there are too many variables involved for this test to be valid. To me this doesn’t prove anything. Not trying to bash anyone, good on ya for trying to sort things out. I wonder if for this to be fair that no armor or runes or traits be used at all. Different setups are going to yield different results. I would think they should be stripped of everything but the weapon, pet included.

You are right – the methodology leaves a lot to be desired. I don’t think anyone will cite this as definitive proof that rangers can out-dps a warrior or anything, but it does show that under ideal conditions, both profs are pumping out a similar amount of damage.

While not perfect, I think tests like this are good for at least helping to show where the ranger community should be devoting its energy. If we focus on reminding devs that we still need the big bug fixes rather than watering down posts with outlandish requests, maybe we’ll see movement where it makes a difference. Considering that ANet seems to be pushing things in the right direction so far, I’m staying hopeful.

At least you trying to do something rather than just cry how about how bad rangers are. At first I would have to agree that the title doesnt fit. But then it dawn on me all ranger damage was meant to include pets. So while people complain the other classes have better bow damage than the ranger the forget that pet damage should always be include in overall dps. While people debate which pets do better damage like cat crit better or wolves kd so they can do more damage. The spider is a great choice becuase of the para and ranged attacks (has a better change of hit a moving target.)

Well done.

Akisame.9508:

Third, you can’t use a pet. Your comparing weapons here. If you insist on using pet’s then you have to make it more ‘real world’ applicable. In other words, run the test on moving targets.

fourth, speaking of ‘real world’ application, you will need to run the test while moving in and out of difference ranges. Since it’s impossible to stay at max range for the entire battle, the number’s will not be correct, you’ll either be simulating a ‘best case’ or a ‘worse case’ scenario by staying at one fixed range.

However, the only thing this test proves, is that ranger’s can do just a little bit more damage using pets, and two different bows (a fast delay and a slow delay weapon) while hasting themselves during pet swaps, then a warrior can using a slow delay weapon and no hasting. If you would like to run the test’s again and would like help and are in the Tarnished Coast Server, drop me a line, I’d be more then happy to lend you a hand.

About the pet…yeah, because in PvE your target dodges your arrows and your pet so much…not.

About the range, shortbow gives a kitten about range, and longbow can avoid the close range penalty by using RF/barrage. And rifle is not the counterpart of longbow, longbow is. Rifle is a mix of shortbow/longbow so you are asking for the impossible.

About quickness, that’s rangers features, you are asking for an unrealistic test either way because Rangers are capable of having quickness quite often and warriors can’t.

I don’t know how the OP did that test, but i can guarantee you that you can make these 23s without the need of using any of the skills he listed, pet quickness included. I can also tell you that longbow kills faster mist golems at close range not flanking than shortbow.

To my understanding, Longbow is like the rifle, slower fire rate. Gun is like the short bow, quicker fire rate. Therefore, you have an eng and a ranger, what is the engineer’s equivalent of a longbow? the rifle. What is the engineer’s equivalent to the short bow? the gun. Thus is why I said it’s counterpart. I do understand that fire rates vary between the 4 weapons and honestly that seems to be more of a design flaw then anything else. The Rifle even has the rapid fire that the longbow has. I mean, sorry, it’s the equivalent in this situation/scenario.

I was primarily thinking of PvP/WvW when I was typing that, which is why I was saying real world because you would be playing with real people, but since I didn’t spell it out you got me, touche. But even in PvE, my pet doesn’t hit kitten because the mob is always chasing me around in a circle, so my pet doesn’t get a chance to get a hit in. I always have to start the fight with the pet attacking first before I can begin the attack in order to get my pet to do something before they run towards me.

Quickness is a ranger’s feature, however, for the Base damage, you can’t use it, it’s traited. And not something everyone is traited for. I wasn’t traited for it till just recently when I started doing WvW. In order to get a base damage stat, you need to stripped of everything or have everything the same. I say shoot naked and untraited first to get the base numbers, then gear up with the same gear and trait up and see what you get. But you can’t gear/trait one up as a tank and the other as a glass cannon, otherwise the test is a joke.

By the way Sleepy, I was in no way attacking or insulting the OP, nor am I trying to attack you either. Like I said before, I applaud him for taking the time to do this test. Honestly, I believe until someone creates a parser for GW2 we might never know the true answer.

Actually, this comparison is useful. It compares one properly specced and equipped class versus another.

I have a fully exotic equipped Ranger and Warrior (both in Berserker gear), and these test results are very consistent with the play I’ve experienced on my characters. In other words, both take about the same amount of time to ranged down a mob in PVE.

The difference between the two characters is, if I don’t feel like taking ten seconds to range down an Orr mob on my Warrior, I can use my Greatsword to effectively one-shot the mob with 100 Blades. I can repeat this every six seconds, and can do it in the exact same spec that makes my Rifle dangerous.

I cannot do something like that on a Shortbow specced Ranger, no matter what weapon I equip. The closest I can come is to swap to Axe/Torch or Greatsword and try to burst the mob down, but doing so takes about five seconds of button mashing and requires every cooldown on my bar (including both my traps).

Good luck repeating THAT on the next mob.

Also, in PVE, Orr mobs run around like chickens. They actually DO dodge my pet quite a bit, since they spend the whole fight ignoring the pet and chasing me, which means my pet is chasing them, so they are doing almost no damage.

To counter this, I switched to a pair of Devourers. Their damage is kittened as hell compared to what my cats or birds could put out if they could actually hit their targets… but they can’t, so it doesn’t matter.

The much weaker pet is doing far greater effective damage because the stronger pets simply cannot hit the targets much of the time. That’s not good.

You need 30 in critical strikes to get most from rifle…

Hello all. Thanks for the feedback.

Just a quick update, the following are some tests I want to do later tonight.
1. Warrior with no adrenaline from start
2. Ranger, no pet, attack from front of golems.
3. Ranger, with pet, attack from behind golems.
4.Ranger, no pet, attack from behind golems.

The no pet test will be done. “Pet is always dead” or “Pet is always alive” are extreme cases which don’t apply 100% of the time. However, it’ll be interesting to see what the difference will be between the cases.

Also, this isn’t meant to be a rifle vs shortbow test. This is a Ranger wielding a Shortbow vs a Warrior wielding a Rifle test. I can untrait everything and test it, but the results aren’t as interesting. This is a dps test designed to look at Rangers wielding a shortbow (as a whole) vs a Warrior wielding a rifle (as a whole.)

Forgive me for not mentioning this, but the reason why I used the Ranger’s pet swap quickness was because both Warrior and Ranger has a 4s quickness (QZ, Frenzy) so I just ignored it on both classes.

Again, I’d like to repeat that I am not trying to prove anything. This test should NOT be used as rock solid proof that Rangers do more damage than Warriors. The measured margin (1.2s) is well within the experimental error (1.3 StanDev for Ranger, 2.1 Stan Dev for Warrior). What it should do, however, is give a little bit of perspective the next time someone says something like “Warrior Rifle far out DPSs Ranger.”

The pet beeing kitten is the problem. Since the golems don’t move it doesnt take it into consideration. Also they die too easilly.
If next patch only fixes our pets, it would be such a huge step.

There is no way a short bow can out damage warrior’s rifle, warriors have a much higher critical chance then you do, warriors have high damage abilities and easy ways to refill those damaging abilities, you are even taking into account signet of rage, which you need -20% Signet duration for to get the most of for the fury buff for even more damage.

Kill Shot itself has a 10 second, 8 second if traited, recast, and with precision signet you can refill adrenaline instantly and fire again.

Not even that, rifle has a longer range built-into the weapon, 900 range vs 1200.

There’s a factor a lot of people are leaving out of this:
Piercing Arrows

Considering how often you have multiple targets (at least in PvE), it’s easy to at least have your bow damage doubled for much of the time, so even if your pet is dead and even if you are missing a few attacks, you’re doing more damage than a warrior in any realistic situation.

Dahkeus.8243:

There’s a factor a lot of people are leaving out of this:
Piercing Arrows

Considering how often you have multiple targets (at least in PvE), it’s easy to at least have your bow damage doubled for much of the time, so even if your pet is dead and even if you are missing a few attacks, you’re doing more damage than a warrior in any realistic situation.

Well, that’s right except warriors rifle also pierce if traited.

The pet doesn’t “die” that fast in PvE unless you have no clue about how to manage your pet. In PvP it can die to certain bursts…just like you do but it doesn’t die that often either unless you send it to a zerg.

Even in Fractals where the agony at higher levels is insta death your pet can still be alive the majority of time.

Warriors make great melee damage, playing a rifle warrior is imo completely trash…it’s like playing a spirits ranger build.

@Akisame, this is no engi…this is warrior/ranger, rifle is the shortbow counterpart, longbow is the equivalent to longbow, there is no argument about this even if rifle has a similar skill compared to longbow.
Even if you think longbow is worse than SB…that’s actually what some people believes but it’s far from being right tho :P

No, I don’t think longbow is worse, I actually run a glass cannon build with SB/LB. I don’t use melee weapons. For me I believe the bow’s are situational and you have to adjust according to the conditions of the battle.

And I thought that warriors piercing didn’t have to be traited? I guess I read it wrong somewhere.

Sleepy.2647:

Dahkeus.8243:

There’s a factor a lot of people are leaving out of this:
Piercing Arrows

Considering how often you have multiple targets (at least in PvE), it’s easy to at least have your bow damage doubled for much of the time, so even if your pet is dead and even if you are missing a few attacks, you’re doing more damage than a warrior in any realistic situation.

Well, that’s right except warriors rifle also pierce if traited.

…well kitten there goes that argument then, lol!!

Akisame.9508:

No, I don’t think longbow is worse, I actually run a glass cannon build with SB/LB. I don’t use melee weapons. For me I believe the bow’s are situational and you have to adjust according to the conditions of the battle.

And I thought that warriors piercing didn’t have to be traited? I guess I read it wrong somewhere.

If you’re comparing utility, then it’s debateable whether the long bow or short bow is better, but if we’re talking dps, the short bow deals more damage regardless of whether you’re running a direct damage or condition build.

Akisame.9508:

And I thought that warriors piercing didn’t have to be traited? I guess I read it wrong somewhere.

You need 20 points into “Arms” for rifle to be able to pierce.

@Calavero

Well yes, Warriors can swap to a GS, and yes, will probably do a lot more damage.

But that’s not the point of this study. The point of these tests is just do a rough comparison on the amount of single-target, ranged dps that a ranger and warrior can dish out.

@Daecollo

If you don’t believe the results, feel free to attempt to reproduce it, and post your results! Peer review is very important in science after all.

However, Warriors do have very very large numbers. But Crossfire has a much higher rate of fire. Just from pure observation, Crossfire fires at a similar rate as Volley.

Also, Crossfire is 1200 range.

I’d like to stress again, this test isn’t meant to prove anything. Just to provide some numbers for comparison and to give people a better perspective on the dps ability of the shortbow ranger vs rifle warrior

From a pvp perspective, burst damage is far more important than consistent damage over time.
Let’s say class A can hit for 20,000 in one shot, the follow up with normal attacks of 100 damage/hit, it’s that big, burst attack that’s interesting, and what’s going to count.

If class B is hitting for 1,000 damage/hit and have no real burst ability, they’re eventually going to land on the same dps within a set amount of time (if the cooldown on the burst ability for class A is balanced enough).

If you can use an attack every second, it would look like this between class A (burst) and class B:

1 second:
A: 20,000 dps
B: 1,000 dps

10 seconds:
A: 2,090 dps
B: 1,000 dps

20 seconds:
A: 1,095 dps
B: 1,000 dps

60 seconds:
A: ~431 dps
B: 1,000 dps

So, imho, burst damage is far, far superior and much more important in pvp, compared to regular measurements of dps.

Vs a big boss mob in pve with millions of hp, that’s a whole other story. For that, you’d want as high dps as possible.

That depends, if your target can mitigate, block, evade or do anything to avoid your burst then the burst was completely used/wasted where as sustained DPS will always be there so no, burst is not always the best for PvP…

Well, warrior probably wins in burst, but don’t quote me on that since my experience is limited with warriors.

Rangers tend to have two options for burst, QZ and pets. Since QZ+Short Bow has been toned down, it’s not as effective on its own as it used to be. Pet burst has some good potential, but tends to benefit more from something like a 1h sword melee build and regardless of what build you run. However, you are a lot more limited in when you can pull off because of their limitations/

Sleepy.2647:

Dahkeus.8243:

There’s a factor a lot of people are leaving out of this:
Piercing Arrows

Considering how often you have multiple targets (at least in PvE), it’s easy to at least have your bow damage doubled for much of the time, so even if your pet is dead and even if you are missing a few attacks, you’re doing more damage than a warrior in any realistic situation.

Well, that’s right except warriors rifle also pierce if traited.

The pet doesn’t “die” that fast in PvE unless you have no clue about how to manage your pet. In PvP it can die to certain bursts…just like you do but it doesn’t die that often either unless you send it to a zerg.

Even in Fractals where the agony at higher levels is insta death your pet can still be alive the majority of time.

Warriors make great melee damage, playing a rifle warrior is imo completely trakitten’s like playing a spirits ranger build.

@Akisame, this is no engi…this is warrior/ranger, rifle is the shortbow counterpart, longbow is the equivalent to longbow, there is no argument about this even if rifle has a similar skill compared to longbow.
Even if you think longbow is worse than SB…that’s actually what some people believes but it’s far from being right tho :P

How is shortbow the counterpart to the rifle? If anything, dual pistols is the shortbow equal: shorter range, higher rate of fire. The longbow is specced for distance attacks, and riles come closest to that range. Granted rifle can be used effectively at any range, but it can shoot farther than a shortbow can.

Both rifle and longbow have a knockback and a volley/rapid fire skill. Both apply similar conditions. And both have comparable ranges and rate of fire. Dual pistols and shortbow both apply bleeds and dazes, both have an escape mechanism (blind, evade), and both have similar ranges. The only advantage pistol has is a burst function but shortbow kind of makes up for that by having a slightly higher rate of fire and a spray pattern skill that applies poison.

Obsidian.1328:

How is shortbow the counterpart to the rifle? If anything, dual pistols is the shortbow equal: shorter range, higher rate of fire. The longbow is specced for distance attacks, and riles come closest to that range. Granted rifle can be used effectively at any range, but it can shoot farther than a shortbow can.

Both rifle and longbow have a knockback and a volley/rapid fire skill. Both apply similar conditions. And both have comparable ranges and rate of fire. Dual pistols and shortbow both apply bleeds and dazes, both have an escape mechanism (blind, evade), and both have similar ranges. The only advantage pistol has is a burst function but shortbow kind of makes up for that by having a slightly higher rate of fire and a spray pattern skill that applies poison.

That’s what I have been saying but they keep on telling me no But I agree with you.

OGDeadHead.8326:

From a pvp perspective, burst damage is far more important than consistent damage over time.
Let’s say class A can hit for 20,000 in one shot, the follow up with normal attacks of 100 damage/hit, it’s that big, burst attack that’s interesting, and what’s going to count.

If class B is hitting for 1,000 damage/hit and have no real burst ability, they’re eventually going to land on the same dps within a set amount of time (if the cooldown on the burst ability for class A is balanced enough).

If you can use an attack every second, it would look like this between class A (burst) and class B:

1 second:
A: 20,000 dps
B: 1,000 dps

10 seconds:
A: 2,090 dps
B: 1,000 dps

20 seconds:
A: 1,095 dps
B: 1,000 dps

60 seconds:
A: ~431 dps
B: 1,000 dps

So, imho, burst damage is far, far superior and much more important in pvp, compared to regular measurements of dps.

Vs a big boss mob in pve with millions of hp, that’s a whole other story. For that, you’d want as high dps as possible.

I understand what you’re saying, but burst attacks can be dodged.

Sustained DPS doesn’t suffer as much from your opponent dodging one or two key attacks, because there aren’t really any ‘key’ attacks.

Obsidian.1328:

How is shortbow the counterpart to the rifle? If anything, dual pistols is the shortbow equal: shorter range, higher rate of fire. The longbow is specced for distance attacks, and riles come closest to that range. Granted rifle can be used effectively at any range, but it can shoot farther than a shortbow can.

Both rifle and longbow have a knockback and a volley/rapid fire skill. Both apply similar conditions. And both have comparable ranges and rate of fire. Dual pistols and shortbow both apply bleeds and dazes, both have an escape mechanism (blind, evade), and both have similar ranges. The only advantage pistol has is a burst function but shortbow kind of makes up for that by having a slightly higher rate of fire and a spray pattern skill that applies poison.

YEAH, because warriors USE PISTOLS, right?
I already said rifle is a mix between shortbow/longbow, but in this case warrior rifle is the counterpart of ranger shortbow.

As far as i can tell it only has a skill similar (not even close) to Rapid Fire, the rest is nothing like a longbow.

Our longbow fires at a slower rate than rifle, our longbow has huge AoE and rifle doesn’t, our longbow doesn’t apply bleed and rifle does, our longbow has 1.500 units traited and rifle doesn’t.

So what does rifle have exactly that our longbow has? Right, a similar channeling skill.

Hey guys, thanks for the discussion. But whether rifle/longbow/pistol/shortbow are counterparts really misses the point. It doesn’t matter, really. I simply chose a shortbow because it’s what I use, and from my experiences, did the most single target damage. I chose the rifle War because it’s their best option for ranged single target DPS.

Just because warriors can’t use it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Which is why I mentioned Engineer, because it’s the closest class to the ranger when it comes to ranged combat, they have the pistol, which is like our short bow, and they have the rifle which is like our longbow. Just because you move the rifle over to another class doesn’t mean that the weapon becomes reclassified as a faster firing weapon. It still has the same slow delay as a longbow does and similar attacks as the longbow. Your trying to compare warriors offhand sword to ranger’s offhand dagger and saying they are the same because ranger’s do not have an offhand sword. It doesn’t work that way. You have to compare it to a similar weapon, luckily for this one the rifle is like the longbow.

If you insist to say that the rifle is like the short bow then please tell me what the pistol’s counterpart is?

Who cares about the pistol, warriors can’t use pistol, and longbow is nothing like rifle, your point is?

Rifle is the only ranged weapon a Warrior has that it’s similar to our shortbow. Same range, volley is similar to SB autoattacks, single target weapon, it applies bleeds, slower fire rate than SB but faster than LB, similar cripple skill.

Longbow is nothing like it no matter how you look at it.

Either way, one thing to take into consideration as well is that rifle piercing is much worse than arrows piercing because we don’t lose damage as the arrows pierce through targets…with rifle you will notice an huge decrease in damage (50%+ for each target the bullet goes through?). Kill shot avoids this penalty tho.

Sleepy.2647:

That depends, if your target can mitigate, block, evade or do anything to avoid your burst then the burst was completely used/wasted where as sustained DPS will always be there so no, burst is not always the best for PvP…

That’s true of course, but I’d say it’s mostly the case anyway!

Hello guys, did some more tests just now. Editted the first posts with more thoughts.

I think one thing I personally learned from this test was.

1. Pets are pretty darn important for your dps.
2. Bleed (positioning) is pretty darn important for your dps.

@Ursan – yeah, I didn’t mean to detract from what you were doing with my additional commentary. Sorry for the unintentional sidetrack there.

Calavero.3420:

@Ursan – yeah, I didn’t mean to detract from what you were doing with my additional commentary. Sorry for the unintentional sidetrack there.

Don’t worry about it. Your point is very true: melee Warriors weapons probably do a ton more damage. But then we get into the whole melee vs ranged debate and the pros/cons become a lot more than just damage.

It’s an unfortunate truth that the vast majority of mmo players have “big number syndrome.” That is, larger single numbers are always perceived as better overall damage over time. How many times have you heard stuff along the line of “wow class x is so much more powerful, I get hits of 10k while on class y I’m lucky to see 4k!” It goes for any mmo. Why do you think Anet changed the way rapid attack skills are displayed so that they sum up the damage of the many small hits? People like seeing big numbers.

Oh and longbow kills all 3 dummies in less than 10 seconds due to barrage. Not a realistic damage expectation for non stupid targets but it’s a factor that shouldn’t be ignored.

I don’t know if i like your test OP. This isn’t a DPS test and it includes critical chance so it isn’t all that accurate.

I don’t feel like doing the tests myself but the proper way to do this would be to
1) find out the damage of each attack without crits.
2) find out how long each skill takes to complete
3) use this to calculate the DPS of each skill
3) do a few skill rotations and time how long it takes you to complete them.
4) count the total seconds each skill takes up in a rotation
5) multiply each skills DPS by the time it takes in a rotation
6) add up all the damage numbers
7) divide by the time it takes for a rotation

That’s your DPS. Including critical hits and buffs in there makes it much more complicated to get accurate results.

Division.9618:

I don’t know if i like your test OP. This isn’t a DPS test and it includes critical chance so it isn’t all that accurate.

I don’t feel like doing the tests myself but the proper way to do this would be to
1) find out the damage of each attack without crits.
2) find out how long each skill takes to complete
3) use this to calculate the DPS of each skill
3) do a few skill rotations and time how long it takes you to complete them.
4) count how many times you use each skill, and figure out what % of your rotation time is made up of each skill
5) take a weighted average

That’s your DPS. Including critical hits and buffs in there makes it much more complicated to get accurate results.

Your ideas are very neat and good ones. One of the things I’ll be particularly interested in is measuring the full time for a “skill rotation” and measuring just how much each skill contributes to it. For a Ranger, this is easy (Crossfire Crossfire Crossfire Crossfire). For a Warrior, just based on pure observation I believe Killshot + Volley does about maybe 40-50% of the damage in these tests.

But then that goes back to the beginning. What is your motivation behind doing these tests? Why remove crit (Fear of randomness? That’s why I ran 3 tests each)? Your method will result in a more “accurate” measure of dps, sure, because you calculate all the values instead of actually testing them out. But why is this important? What is your motivation?

My motivation is spurred on mainly by many posts I see in this subforums, of users claiming that “Warriors have better ranged DPS why bother with Ranger…” To me, the purpose of these tests were to provide some rough numbers for perspective when people make these statements. The tests are to compare a realistically-traited Ranger vs a realistically-traited Warrior, and to observe the amount of damage they are able to deal out.

But after all this rambling, your method does perk up my interest. Do you mind going over in more detail why you think your method is a more accurate test? Because I remain unconvinced, but I remain curious nonetheless.

Ursan.7846:

Your ideas are very neat and good ones. One of the things I’ll be particularly interested in is measuring the full time for a “skill rotation” and measuring just how much each skill contributes to it. For a Ranger, this is easy (Crossfire Crossfire Crossfire Crossfire). For a Warrior, just based on pure observation I believe Killshot + Volley does about maybe 40-50% of the damage in these tests.

But then that goes back to the beginning. What is your motivation behind doing these tests? Why remove crit (Fear of randomness? That’s why I ran 3 tests each)? Your method will result in a more “accurate” measure of dps, sure, because you calculate all the values instead of actually testing them out. But why is this important? What is your motivation?

My motivation is spurred on mainly by many posts I see in this subforums, of users claiming that “Warriors have better ranged DPS why bother with Ranger…” To me, the purpose of these tests were to provide some rough numbers for perspective when people make these statements. The tests are to compare a realistically-traited Ranger vs a realistically-traited Warrior, and to observe the amount of damage they are able to deal out.

But after all this rambling, your method does perk up my interest. Do you mind going over in more detail why you think your method is a more accurate test? Because I remain unconvinced, but I remain curious nonetheless.

About the crit. The reason i don’t like crit is that it adds unneccesary randomness. Even with your 3 tests your margin of error is still very large. Crit can be added into the calculations afterwards ( DPS increase from crit = crit chance( in decimals) * bonus crit damage) . This makes adding crit into the test pretty unnecessary and gives the test an unreliable random factor.

There’s also the fact that your pet crits too, adding in a lot more unreliable numbers.

That’s my primary reason why i think my method is better. With inaccuracy it means that some of these numbers could give the wrong perspective. For example, your numbers for front with pet and adrenaline full at start are pretty close. If the error margin is 10% (it’s probably more though), it could turn out that adrenaline full kill time is actually shorter than front with pet.

Also with DPS you can calculate a lot more things, for example, you can take a rough guess of how often you think your pet will miss their attacks and calculate that in, or a guess of how often your crossfire will hit from the sides or behind.

Well, DPS is “easy” to figure out but you need a target that doesn’t die fast (LA dummies would be great, except they are not affected by vulnerability and you need true geared 80’s to do that).
Just calculate the hits you do over…i don’t know…30-60 seconds and then make the calculation based on the damage these skills/autoattacks do without crits…and then apply the % of crit and crit damage.

Either way, too much of a headache to already know the result…warrior rifle has good burst but worse DPS unless the ranger doesn’t use a pet.

So here’s just a sampling of the data.
Rabid, Pet, Back: 20.4, 20.8, 20.1
Standard Deviation of 0.35 (about…..1.75%)
Rabid, No Pet, Front: 42.4, 39.0, 40.7
Standard Devation of 2.4 (about 6%)

Warrior, Zerkers, no adren: 27.1, 27.4, 27.0
Standard Deviation of 0.208 (about 0.2%)

The crits have a certain degree of randomness, yes, but after many tests I noticed it actually doesn’t affect the results very much. What I mean is, the results are very very consistent.

Also in a pure dps test like yours, it’s hard to take into account bleed, which is important both for rifle and shortbow. Unless you have a good idea how you can incorporate bleed damage into your calculations?

Ursan.7846:

So here’s just a sampling of the data.
Rabid, Pet, Back: 20.4, 20.8, 20.1
Standard Deviation of 0.35 (about…..1.75%)
Rabid, No Pet, Front: 42.4, 39.0, 40.7
Standard Devation of 2.4 (about 6%)

Warrior, Zerkers, no adren: 27.1, 27.4, 27.0
Standard Deviation of 0.208 (about 0.2%)

The crits have a certain degree of randomness, yes, but after many tests I noticed it actually doesn’t affect the results very much. What I mean is, the results are very very consistent.

Also in a pure dps test like yours, it’s hard to take into account bleed, which is important both for rifle and shortbow. Unless you have a good idea how you can incorporate bleed damage into your calculations?

Each bleed stack does individual damage. If one stack of bleed does 83 damage per second, adding a second stack of bleed would just do 83 damage twice per second, so you can calculate it as an extra attack that runs parallel to each autoattack.

I think i’ll try to calculate the DPS. See how my results match up with yours.

Ursan.7846:

Also in a pure dps test like yours, it’s hard to take into account bleed, which is important both for rifle and shortbow. Unless you have a good idea how you can incorporate bleed damage into your calculations?

It’s simple, first you have to know which attacks cause bleed and then count how many of those attacks you did during those 30-60 seconds. Then calculate the bleed damage (this is harder to calculate for warriors because their bleed lasts 10 seconds, so you could simply average “X” stacks for each class and calculate the DPS of those stacks). For example, warrior can keep 6 stacks by using only autoattack, using skills would make that even less stacks…a ranger can keep 6 stacks when flanking. Let’s say warriors bleed ticks for 55 dmg and rangers for 45, that would be 55×6 and 45×6 DPS just from the bleed itself.
In the case of Rangers it’s autoattacks only when flanking, as for warrior it’s autoattack anytime.

You can’t just add the bleed damage to individual damage though. Bleed damage happens after the direct damage, and takes a few moment to do complete damage. So say if a target dies while it has 10 stacks of bleed, those 10 stacks will not do their full damage.

Would love to see some of your results though, Division. It’ll be interesting to see. Also what are you assuming for stats like power/crit damage/cond damage? None at all?