Anyways my questions are, what is so bad about longbow in dungeons if the player is skilled and knows what they are doing? How is the dps low if you have room to go backwards?
Why is short bow only conditions? Can you not build it for better damage?
Would an axe/axe build be good for anything? Its seemed incredibly fun.
What about the other melee types? Can they be just as effective?
Longbow is fine in dungeons, but not for its basic attack. Right now, staying within melee range is either the optimal way to kill a boss, or the most commonly accepted strategy (Melee typically does more damage than range, and when everyone sitting in melee range, it’s easier to share boons, making the whole party more effective.) I use Longbow in dungeons because of a trait called Quick Draw, which reduces the cooldown of your next weapon skill by 75% after switching weapons. Basically, switch to longbow, use Rapid Fire (which will now have a 2.5 second cooldown), use Barrage, then use Rapid Fire again. By that point, you’ll only have about 2 seconds left until you can swap weapons back to a melee weapon, and you’ll have applied +20 stacks of vulnerability, making it a fantastic burst weapon. You can also do this in melee range without losing damage.
What makes a weapon ‘condition based’ or ‘damage based’ depends purely on what its skills do. Shortbow has a bleed on auto attack, a poison on its second skill, and a bleed on its fourth skill – power builds make no real use of those bleeds, which are fundamental to getting the best out of the Shortbow. On the other hand, the Longbow has vulnerability on its second skill, and the utility of a stealth on its third, something berserker builds appreciate since it gives them some form of active defense. Longbow also has no damaging conditions, meaning a power build’s the only way to really use the weapon well.
Axe/Axe certainly isn’t optimal, but if you really like it, then there’s no reason not to use it. Axe main hand works best in areas where there are 2+ enemies to hit, or where you need some wide range AoE damage (Like the bomb golems in Crucible of Eternity). Mainhand axe’s second skill is a short cooldown bleed that does more bleeding at close range, so condition damage would be a good way to increase its damage. On the other hand, Offhand axe is more pure damage, with Path of Scars doing seriously stupid damage if it hits both ways. Whirling Defense is very situational – it doesn’t do enough damage to justify using it whenever its off cooldown, but it does reflect projectiles, so you can use it as a defensive mechanism or to do lots of damage to enemies with high damage range attacks. I’d reccomend making armor with the Sinister prefix (++Condition Damage, +Power, +Precision) for Axe/Axe, simply due to how well it scales with both condition and raw damage.
The Ranger has 2 melee weapons – Sword and Greatsword. Sword is the highest damage option, and has two built in evades, which is useful for keeping up the Steady Focus trait (+10% damage when your endurance is full.) However, the Sword has a nasty auto attack, which roots you in place during the 2nd and 3rd attack in the chain, and can make dodging very difficult. Kind of a high-risk-high-reward weapon. Greatsword on the other hand is a safer melee weapon, which allows you to move during auto attack, has evades on auto attack, and a block. Its damage is good, but not quite as good as Sword. Both Sword and Greatsword lack any real conditions, and are favoured as power weapons.
Who’s a good boy? Not you, since you aggro’d the BLOODY CHAMP-
