Guild Wars 2

After giving in to the urge to use LB again, I came to realize how kitten this skill is. Why is it not a burst skill? It really needs to be. Longbow has been buffed well and now has good utility and decent dps, but it just can’t apply pressure. I don’t even understand the point of this skill and it completely goes against the idea of a slow, heavy hitting longbow.

Please make some burst…

Yeah, Rapid Fire is kitten poor, and the reason why I don’t use the longbow anymore. I used to suggest that the longbow needed an immobilize in order to setup the “burst” damage better, but the reality is that knockback shot already exists
as a burst setup, but Rapid Fire is just too bad to truly make that setup count.

Unfortunately, the only weapon I have to compare the rangers longbow to as far as function goes is the warriors longbow. So bare with me while I do my best to make sure that I maintain ANet’s Melee>Range philosophy.

Hundred Blades:
8 hits: 1624
Final Hit: 406

The final hit is 2 base hits worth of damage. So that is 10 hits worth of damage, coming to a total of:
2030

Or 203 damage per hit

Tooltip Channel time: 3.5s

A single hits worth of damage occurs every .35s

Rapid Fire:
10 hits: 1320
With Vulnerability: 1380

132 damage per hit, ends with the last hit doing 144 damage

Tooltip Channel time: 4.5 seconds

A single hits worth of damage occurs every .45 seconds

This is absolutely terrible to compare it against, because Hundred Blades is only of the strongest skills in the game, but obviously, it does more damage, and at a faster rate, than Rapid Fire.

Things that can be done about rapid fire:

-Improve how “rapid” it is. Maybe it should only have a 3 second channel time to compensate for it’s low damage per hit, while maintaining the Melee>Ranged based solely on how easily avoidable so much of Rapid Fires damage is.

-Improve how strong its “fire” is. Maybe the final channel should be doing around 1600 total base damage with it’s channels. The hits are going to need to be a little stronger than Styrofoam peanuts.

jcbroe.4329:

Yeah, Rapid Fire is kitten poor, and the reason why I don’t use the longbow anymore. I used to suggest that the longbow needed an immobilize in order to setup the “burst” damage better, but the reality is that knockback shot already exists
as a burst setup, but Rapid Fire is just too bad to truly make that setup count.

Unfortunately, the only weapon I have to compare the rangers longbow to as far as function goes is the warriors longbow. So bare with me while I do my best to make sure that I maintain ANet’s Melee>Range philosophy.

Hundred Blades:
8 hits: 1624
Final Hit: 406

The final hit is 2 base hits worth of damage. So that is 10 hits worth of damage, coming to a total of:
2030

Or 203 damage per hit

Tooltip Channel time: 3.5s

A single hits worth of damage occurs every .35s

Rapid Fire:
10 hits: 1320
With Vulnerability: 1380

132 damage per hit, ends with the last hit doing 144 damage

Tooltip Channel time: 4.5 seconds

A single hits worth of damage occurs every .45 seconds

This is absolutely terrible to compare it against, because Hundred Blades is only of the strongest skills in the game, but obviously, it does more damage, and at a faster rate, than Rapid Fire.

Things that can be done about rapid fire:

-Improve how “rapid” it is. Maybe it should only have a 3 second channel time to compensate for it’s low damage per hit, while maintaining the Melee>Ranged based solely on how easily avoidable so much of Rapid Fires damage is.

-Improve how strong its “fire” is. Maybe the final channel should be doing around 1600 total base damage with it’s channels. The hits are going to need to be a little stronger than Styrofoam peanuts.

You can’t compare it to hundred blades, thats got more risk/reward to it than rapid fire.

Only use rapid fire on classes that can stealth or if the targets within 1000 range and you aren’t able to switch to med-close combat.

Hundred blades gets interrupted if you move. That’s why the final hit is bigger – to reward you if you’re able to get the target to stay in range of the skill while you’re stationary the entire 3.5 sec channel.

The problem with Rapid Fire is that it’s not really a skill. It just makes ranger longbow act like every other autoattack in the game except mesmer greatsword. Your damage is not reduced at short/medium range if you use RF, whereas it is does get reduced if you use autoattack. That’s why it’s so underwhelming. For the 31% of the time you’re using RF, your longbow acts like it was a normal weapon. Whoop dee do.

Maybe I just expect less from rapid fire, but in my guilds small roaming groups 3-5 when I’m on my power ranger rapid fire is awesome. Often hits for 11-15k depending on crits and what not. Sure it can be avoided really well, but you can also use it every 8 seconds with a traited lb, hits pretty kitten hard for me I’m a fan of it really.

It just needs to be compressed from 4 seconds into 2 seconds . Perhaps add a blurr effect when channelig , like the mesmer blurred frenzy

Jhughes.8341:

Maybe I just expect less from rapid fire, but in my guilds small roaming groups 3-5 when I’m on my power ranger rapid fire is awesome. Often hits for 11-15k depending on crits and what not. Sure it can be avoided really well, but you can also use it every 8 seconds with a traited lb, hits pretty kitten hard for me I’m a fan of it really.

11-15k, but the cast time is 4.5 seconds. You’re probably autoattacking for 3-4k with a cast time of 0.75 seconds. Overall, your autoattack might have a higher dps than rapid fire. I think thats the problem people are having with LB.

If they did that they would make the cool down longer for sure. I just use it as pressure to try and force evades so our theif can go stabbystabby. If you try to ‘burst’ with it you have to use QZ

I am only making the comparison to Hundred Blades because from a mechanics standpoint, Rapid Fire is more similar to Hundred Blades than any other skill in the game that I can think of.

Unless you want to compare it to elementalist Scepter auto attack when attuned to air, but even then, you still have to balance according to one being a cooldown and one being an auto attack, so either way, it’s a hard comparison to make.

The point is, each of of the skills (Hundred Blades and Rapid Fire) are both designed to be the “burst” for their respective weaponsets, but it is quite apparent that only one of them is truly effective.

Melee is of course stronger than ranged. It makes total sense, which is why my suggestions made the skill only 80% as powerful as hundred blades.

Ideally though, comparison aside, there is never a time ever when an Auto Attack should be doing more DPS than it’s cooldown skills unless the cooldown is a strong utility skill, which Rapid Fire isn’t.

Long Range Shot does 317 damage at base, max range. By “spreading” this across the cast time of Rapid Fire (realistically, you would fire 4 shots, and the 5th would be in flight), you get that in 4.5 seconds, Long Range shot is dealing a base of 1426.5 to Rapid Fires 1380.

It’s just bad design. Even if you don’t “spread” it out across 4.5 seconds, and only account for long range shot doing 4 hits, that’s still 1268 damage being done by Auto Attacks.

It’s just bad skill design.

Solandri.9640:

Hundred blades gets interrupted if you move. That’s why the final hit is bigger – to reward you if you’re able to get the target to stay in range of the skill while you’re stationary the entire 3.5 sec channel.

The problem with Rapid Fire is that it’s not really a skill. It just makes ranger longbow act like every other autoattack in the game except mesmer greatsword. Your damage is not reduced at short/medium range if you use RF, whereas it is does get reduced if you use autoattack. That’s why it’s so underwhelming. For the 31% of the time you’re using RF, your longbow acts like it was a normal weapon. Whoop dee do.

Now, I’m sure you know that with the amount of ridiculously long lasting immobilizes, knockdowns, and/or a mainhand mace for it’s long stun, Warriors don’t really have an issue landing that final hit of their Hundred Blades.

I’d argue that it’s harder to land every hit of Rapid Fire, since there is really no good setup you can use to make all of the hits land easier, and you get no bonus damage, and as you said, it just makes the longbow like other auto attacks for it’s channel.

It’s just really hard for me to understand how anybody thought this weapon was good when they were designing it.

jcbroe.4329:

Solandri.9640:

Hundred blades gets interrupted if you move. That’s why the final hit is bigger – to reward you if you’re able to get the target to stay in range of the skill while you’re stationary the entire 3.5 sec channel.

The problem with Rapid Fire is that it’s not really a skill. It just makes ranger longbow act like every other autoattack in the game except mesmer greatsword. Your damage is not reduced at short/medium range if you use RF, whereas it is does get reduced if you use autoattack. That’s why it’s so underwhelming. For the 31% of the time you’re using RF, your longbow acts like it was a normal weapon. Whoop dee do.

Now, I’m sure you know that with the amount of ridiculously long lasting immobilizes, knockdowns, and/or a mainhand mace for it’s long stun, Warriors don’t really have an issue landing that final hit of their Hundred Blades.

That is exactly what I mean. To use Hundred Blades effectively, you are locked into another weapon/skill set. It’s synergy and interaction with other skills. The player has to successfully pull off a combo with his own skills or another player’s in order to land that final hit on Hundred Blades.

That’s what RF lacks. It doesn’t interact or combo with anything. It’s just a boring skill you use if you aren’t feeling lazy. I’ve posted the calcs here before, and even the vulnerability it adds is mostly canceled out by (1) its lower DPS than autoattack and (2) the likely chance that you’re going to interrupt the autoattack channel already in progress. It is for all intents and purposes longbow autoattack without the range-based damage reduction.

They tried to increase its viability by moving the vulnerability over to it, but it’s simply not enough. Even in a group setting the vulnerability increases the party’s damage, but sticking it on a weapon whose autoattack mechanics force the ranger away from the party’s buffs lowers the group’s damage by about the same amount. The skill needs to do something that makes it different and better than autoattack. Right now its effect ranges from very little benefit to actually hurting the ranger’s/party’s DPS. It is a meaningless skill whose primary benefit is that… its damage is not reduced at close range.

IMO Longbow #4 needs to be the burst skill. Make it like the #4 skill for the Scout in the Wintersday Snowball PvP thing. It charges up. Manage to charge it up all the way and it hits the enemy? Burst damage right there. Hell, the cooldown right now would encourage it being used as burst, while at the same time preventing it from being too OP. It also adds some strategy to the skill. Do you charge-up to full power, and give enough of an animation and time to have the enemy dodge it? Or do you do a quick tap to avoid the enemy dodging it, but for less damage?

While rapid fire doesn’t have as much damage as some of us would like. It has its uses. Its a channeling skill so that mean when fight thieves or Mesmer and they try to stealth you will still hit them while they are stealth most likey killing them.

A well time dog swich can also aid in landing all of your raid fire as well as quickness.

Fear works well with this skill too. I run two dogs and dual axes with my lb when im not running 1h sword. Between the 8k path of scar and the 10k rapid fire you can make quick work of an enemy.

The problem with ranger isn’t that we cant burst its just we have long cool downs.

Some of you wish we had a kills hot like warriors rifle, but I would not be willing to give up rapid fire for kill shot.

While Lb is mainly a power weapon one should not dismiss rapid fire as a quick way to stack conditions (sure there are better ways but it should not be dismissed)

Compare it to volley for rifle.

Volley: 2.1k dps.
Rapid Fire: 1.4k dps.

You really can’t get any closer than those 2 skills. They’re identical in design. One has a shorter channel and 30% more damage the other provides vulnerability (which is the only thing that makes Rapid Fire better than auto attack at max range) :/

Auto attack does hit harder than Rapid fire over the course of it’s channel time. The only thing I’ve found rapid fire is good for, so for the surprise effect. Players usually scatter when they’re getting hit that quick, especially if your hitting multiple targets with piercing arrows.

What players really should be thinking is “I’m sure glad they are hitting me with rapid fire instead of auto attack”

Take Rapid Fire off the longbow and put in on the shortbow, bring back “The Machine Gun” that you sorry excuses for Devs whined about being to strong….then shortbow will be somwhat on par with other weapons =D

Here is an idea for Rapid Fire:

- 1st hit applies 10 stacks of vulnerability
- 5th, causes an AoE burst where arrows split and hit 4 other targets in a 500 range
- 10th shot fires a special “noticeable” arrow that knocks the player down for 3s.

or

- 1st hit applies 10 stacks of vulnerability
- 10th hit fires an exploding arrow shot that hits 4 other players in a 1000 range for 50% of the total damage dealt to that player (ignoring armor), and causing burning

When i did some tests and i figured out that in max range is better to autoattack than using rapid fire i realized how bad they had designed this weapon..
They are litterally forcing us for 1 year to autoattack targets. they made strong autoattacks and neglected for the other skills..
“y put a nice auto in dat ranger and lets talk about the other classes that are important, we just put it in to fill the 8th slot” kittens

I believe they had in mind that Ranger will be an easy class for new players to start of…

Low skill floor and low skill ceiling..The pets after 1 year still feel like a burden sometimes…

Think about it, they had all the time to think of a good heal as they did for every class..And a new spirit was all that they though of…..The more passive play in the game..

It is a tough skill to balance.
I love it as is for a couple reasons (other reasons I hate it):
1. Lots of attacks to trigger “on hit effects”
2. Substantial vulnerability

If I had to choose, I would pick more burst damage though.
But it works to get vulnerability, it is great for RAO might stacking, etc.

Atherakhia.4086:

Compare it to volley for rifle.

Volley: 2.1k dps.
Rapid Fire: 1.4k dps.

You really can’t get any closer than those 2 skills. They’re identical in design. One has a shorter channel and 30% more damage the other provides vulnerability (which is the only thing that makes Rapid Fire better than auto attack at max range) :/

The only reason I didn’t compare these two weapons is because the rest of the Warriors rifle skills are actually really really bad for direct damage (not including Kill Shot).

Honestly, if you think about it with an open mind, Ranger Greatsword and Warrior Rifle are designed fairly similarly, with a bunch of utility type skills, and having to spam a single cooldown skill over and over again to do damage.

Not arguing, just my 2 cents, skill by skill, Volley and Rapid Fire are the better skills to compare haha.

Well if you want to compare Volley and Rapid Fire please remember rapid fire does more than just DPS.

Rapid Shot has the benefit of being 10 strikes (potential hits) for anything that procs (on hit or on crit).
This synergizes very well with RAO’s might stacking a pet or companion might or sharpened edges and can inflict up to 10 stacks of vulnerability with the effect of the skill itself.

Rapid shot is really good when used in a group targeted situation. YOU lose damage vs volley but having 2-3 of your friends and you hitting a guy for 10% more damage matters.

if you want to stake might, shortbow,sword,axe or just gs can be better, only good think to stack might on RaO is Barrage

LB rapid fire is fast. Sure you can stack might other ways but you still have to consider that if you have LB there is a benefit to 10x for rapid vs 5x for volley. That is my point.
It applies equally to any runes that are (on crit) chances. You have more chances with rapid.

Volley is great for might stacking but I tend to hold it back given the long refresh cycle for later in a fight.

And I really think the vulnerability stacks of rapid are too discounted especially when you are focusing on targets with a group.

But the versus side of it, from a competitive (WvW, PvP) perspective is that when the damage is spread across more hits, AND the vulnerability is spread across more hits, it gives enemies more opportunities to avoid more of the damage and vulnerability.

A shorter channel time alleviates that problem, and would actually make Rapid Fire better DPS than Long Range Shot, which is essentially eliminating all of the issues with it.

But nobody in their right mind is going to let you land all 10 hits. That literally means that they are just letting attacks hit them for almost 5 seconds straight without trying to strafe or dodge, something that rarely happens.

Volley is just better because it’s compressed time frame and channel time give it a higher rate of success for landing hits, making it more reliable damage.

If Rapid Fire switched to only five hits with a 2.75s-3s channel time, each doing like 250 base, and only applied 5 stacks of vulnerability each (I also want to make a push for a trait that applies vulnerability on crit, which is why each hit is only applying a single stack of vulnerability per hit), it would just outright be a better skill, even with the 5 stacks of vulnerability lost.

Even more ideally though, the vulnerability shouldn’t even be attached to rapid fire if rapid fire is supposed to be the burst skill. It’s the same exact issue I have with Maul, because it trades in a skill rotation which would end in using a skill to burst an opponent down for as much as possible, for just spamming the same skill over and over again, which not only is bad for a competitive environment, but makes the weapon extremely predictable.

When all an opponent has to do is know to counter play the longbow, all you have to do to avoid damage is get inside of 1000 range and avoid rapid fire, it makes the weapon extremely easy to play against (just like with the greatsword, all opponents have to do is avoid Maul and not let you flank them).

Rapid Fire desperately needs to channel for a shorter time frame regardless whether or not it receives any other changes, because right now there is only one game type (out of three) where it is actually reliable, and you still lose DPS when you use the skill, which is just /facepalm in itself.

No one is going to let a warrior land 100 blades either. You have to create the right opportunity.

Lowering the channel and increasing the damage creates an opportunity to negate more of the damge with a single dodge roll. while it hard to land all your rapid fire missing one or two isn’t that bad.

The other issue is that we do more damage with auto attack in most cases so if someone dodges my rapid fire I can land all of my auto attacks.

Good players create situations to land their big attack. Bad player buttons smash and hope they land.

So how do you create an opportunity to land an entire rapid fire channel then? Last time I checked, rangers only have access to a single 5 second immobilize option, which means that every single longbow user now has to use spiders.

And we don’t have 5 second knockdown options. So really, it’s basically spiders or gtfo.

There’s a reason why there hasn’t been a single top tier player that has run a power longbow in PvP since the game launched.

But if you people are happy with you’re kittenty little Rapid Fire skill, just remember that this is why we can’t have nice things the next time everybody is crying over another patch doing nothing for our class, because half the players don’t even realize how kittenty some of our skills are.

I’m not happy with rapid fire. The damage and utility are lacking, but in pvp it is pretty satisfying to be the only person on the field able to finish a thief off or just know where the jerk is going.

In pve the vulnerability is nice, but except in a longer fight(i.e. Champs or higher) it isn’t very useful and the damage isn’t worth the time. I would like to see a little more utility or a little more damage, then I think the skill would be decent.

Running a wolf is an easy way to get your rapid off Kd then fear. A second dog if need be. Yes they can have stability you have to some time wait for the right time rather than going through your rotation just because that the way you always do it.

Not everyone has aspiration of being on a top tier team. Some of us have lives outside of gw2.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

No one is going to let a warrior land 100 blades either. You have to create the right opportunity.

Lowering the channel and increasing the damage creates an opportunity to negate more of the damge with a single dodge roll. while it hard to land all your rapid fire missing one or two isn’t that bad.

The other issue is that we do more damage with auto attack in most cases so if someone dodges my rapid fire I can land all of my auto attacks.

Good players create situations to land their big attack. Bad player buttons smash and hope they land.

Skull crack being the exception of course?

Burst is burst… the ability to land it is up to the player. The class as a whole is deficient with burst and no one can really claim rapid fire is a burst option to begin with. To make Rapid Fire burst it needs to do the same damage over a much shorter span of time. We can worry about the class’ inability to land it once we have it.