Guild Wars 2

I play shortbow, axe+warhorn or torch, and Greatsword primarily. I like the 1h sword, but don’t like the dodge bug, so don’t bother, and longbow just seems pointless to me when I have shortbow. Any thoughts?

While we’re at it, anybody have nay ideas on decent trap builds? I love the idea of a trap build, but only in theory. In practice I’m moving around way too much and end up with the regen signet, QZ, and the speed buff signet 99% of the time.

Thanks.

If you are satisfied with short bow, then there’s no real need. Longbow is pretty nice in WvW and for farming in PvE. You can wipe out an entire pack of mobs pretty quick with the AoE barrage hitting them, while farming.

I usually use longbow, myself. I’m not a huge fan of the shortbow with the flanking system it requires.

Longbow has some nice things. The longer range(traited) feels so much more freeing. The knockback and AoE cripple are pretty great. 10 stacks of vulnerability is nice since it’s about the only debuff we have(not a very spectacular ability though). The major drawback is how slow the arrows travel, and rapid fire could certainly use a dps buff.
Rapid fire + piercing arrows is pretty fun too if you are able to line up your shots.

I think shortbow is alot more commonly used in everyday life. Alot of people only use longbow for WvW.

You trade the leap evade for knockback, and trade bleeds for more direct damage. And only have the long cooldown AoE snare instead of a fast single-target snare. I usually have frost trap or something up, so the snare is never a huge deal for me, but it’s something you might have to worry about.

Experiment with those 2 Bows in the mists with the Golems.

My conclusion:
Ideal position for LB (far away) kills the Golem at the same rate/little slower than the SB in an unideal position (from the front, so no bleed; everything untraited, no additional bonus in anything). The skills 2 and 3 on LB don’t make the Golem die faster than autoattack(only a tiny bit). The 2nd skill is only better than autoattack if there is a combofield as the chance of activating a combofield is higher. The 3rd skill is good if you are in a group as everyone gets something from that.

Overall i must say that the Skills on LB are much more fun/useful/interesting than on the SB, but when you are going full on dmg (doesn’t even have to be conditiondmg) you are better served with the SB. Unless that extra range is really important for you.

But i hope you/someone can back this up. Try it out yourself

It depends on what you actually do in GW2, for general PvE/Dungeons you probably won’t really need longbow except to use barrage every now and then.

If you do WvW…i wouldn’t even go WvW without a longbow, i rarely use shortbow there with a power/crit buils, but that’s just me.

Machiners.1297:

Experiment with those 2 Bows in the mists with the Golems.

My conclusion:
Ideal position for LB (far away) kills the Golem at the same rate/little slower than the SB in an unideal position (from the front, so no bleed; everything untraited, no additional bonus in anything). The skills 2 and 3 on LB don’t make the Golem die faster than autoattack(only a tiny bit). The 2nd skill is only better than autoattack if there is a combofield as the chance of activating a combofield is higher. The 3rd skill is good if you are in a group as everyone gets something from that.

Overall i must say that the Skills on LB are much more fun/useful/interesting than on the SB, but when you are going full on dmg (doesn’t even have to be conditiondmg) you are better served with the SB. Unless that extra range is really important for you.

But i hope you/someone can back this up. Try it out yourself

Ideal position = 1100 range, over 1200 autoattack isn’t automatic have to spam 1 to get it to trigger in deadtime.

Damage – Longbow can burst in a power crit build for 7-8 seconds more damage that SB san’s utilities(even using SB from behind). However the amount of damage done while sufficient to drop the ehavily armored golem won’t drop most players unless they built incompetently, likewise it’s dependent on the target staying in barrage. Combo is 5,3,2 – It kills the golem on average .5 – .75 seconds faster than a SB in an identical power crit build. If you are under 1200 range and miss your combo animation timing you ate least get an autoattack filler damage(reason for ideal range listed above). You get the damage equivalency because barrage leaves over half it’s damage in the air when the animation finishes, enabling 4 for additional vulnerability(For ther est of that damage) and then 2 to have the barrage and rapid fire hitting at the same time with a large vulnerability on the target.

Mainly Longbow is a control weapon with a brief damage spurt under ideal conditions that matches/slightly exceeds SB during this spurt. Much as a SB user shouldn’t ignore power a longbow user does benefit from condition damage as a damage add on the back end of it’s attacks armor bypasser…

Still it’s a control weapon and horrible the second a target is inside 1000 unless you are knocking back to barrage 4 2. It has it’s place.

The autoattack not working between 1200-1500 at least last I tested is a huge DPS downside if you don’t spam 1.

The best use I’ve found for longbow’s rapid fire skill is in WvW, for sniping downed players. It’s a nice quick long-range burst to take them down before their friends run over and revive them.
Obviously, ranger isn’t going to outdamage reviving teammates though, but usually a teammate of yours will drop an aoe or attack and scatter them, so even then it can tick the downed player’s health down long enough to keep them from getting up before the rezzers scatter.

It’s not particularly useful against living players since our master archers apparently aren’t skilled enough using their bow, after shooting it 30 million times, to lead their targets, and all the shots just fall behind a moving target. But, it’s great against downed players…

Longbows are useful in certain situations. AOE damage in PVE and in WvW the longbow is great for siege.

For now I’ve settled on Sword+Torch and Shortbow, with a flame trap for maximum burning uptime on mobs. I’ve got a Longbow available to me at next level, I’ll see how that goes.

Edit – tried the longbow, still hate it. Skill 2 is nice, but honestly I think I just prefer a closer kiting and mixed melee/range kind of game. I find the longbow boring overall, just my own preference. Already bought a new shortbow.

Atm no, shortbow is better in nearly every single way except range. Stick with shortbow for now, when patch comes lets see what they do with longbow and then decide. I pvp and pve with a longbow and it just isnt worth it. Only reason I stick with it is because I like the skills and big kitten skins.

On your question about a trap build: cc traps really work well with a mobile ranger playstyle. They basically compliment any build; you can go full condition spec and use traps as cc and high damage, or as very useful cc in a power or support spec. I like to take spike and cold nearly all the time now; very useful against thieves.

Also I never take the three utlities you mention- QZ you can get from 5 points in beastmaster; speed signet is too slow (use horn); regen signet doesn’t give much compared to many other utilities.

I don’t really play pve though, so maybe your set up works well there.

WvWvW the longbow is great. Knockback and vulnerability is great utility. AOE is useful for snaring an area if you have people bottlenecked, and it hits people up on walls. The range is really nice when traited as well.

The one downside is the speed of the arrows makes dodging them relatively easy if the enemy concentrates on it. Thats usually not the case, but when you are hitting hard but slow, and each miss negates 1-3k damage, it hurts your dps a lot.

Dante Dragonhand.2538:

Atm no, shortbow is better in nearly every single way except range. Stick with shortbow for now, when patch comes lets see what they do with longbow and then decide. I pvp and pve with a longbow and it just isnt worth it. Only reason I stick with it is because I like the skills and big kitten skins.

Every single way apart from highest damage per strike, range and aoe…