Guild Wars 2

This morning I started to play on my ranger again and I am wondering why the most common rotations I find are using sword and axe.
Barrage -> Rapid fire -> Auto attack sword +Axe when off cooldown till enemy is dead.

For a situation that requires burst (<30 seconds) I understand this, but in long fights (Raids) it seems that longbow is nearly as good as sword.

Sword and Axe
Sword has a 1.9 power coefficient over 1.8 seconds
Path of Scars is 2.4 power coefficient over 1 second and 15 seconds cooldown (Not sure about time).
So this means that sword and axe has 1.145 power coefficient per second average.
(1.9/1.8 * 14/15 + 2.4 * 1/15)
Predators onslaught makes this 1.26 power coefficient per second average.

Longbow
Longbow with “Lead the Wind” and “Quick draw” does:
0.7 power coefficient in 0.9 seconds auto attacking.
4.8 power coefficient over 2.5 seconds with barrage on 9 sec cooldown.
3.75 power coefficient over 3.3 seconds with rapid fire on 9 sec cooldown.
So this means that Longbow has 1.23 power coefficient per second average.
(4.8 /9 + 3.75 /9 + 0.7/0.9 * (9 – 2.5 – 3.3)/9)

Quickness
Because bow damage is limit by cooldowns there is a larger difference caused by quickness.
Sword + Axe =1.26*1.5 = 1.88 power coefficient
Longbow = (4.8 /9 + 3.75 /9 + 0.7 * (9 – 2.5/1.5 – 3.3/1.5)/9*1.5) = 1.55 power coefficient

Point of discussion
From these calculations, quickness would be the only reason to pick sword over longbow. Assuming my calculations are correct. When ignoring quickness I see little reason to prefer one weapon over the other.

So my question is: Is there something I missed in the calculation or in my search for Ranger builds? Or is there another reason why people prefer one weapon over the other?

Sources
coefficients and sword chain time:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_ranger_skills

Barrage and Rapid fire channel times were determined by:
10 auto attacks in 9 seconds
5 auto attacks + barrage + 5 auto attacks in 11.5 seconds
5 auto attacks + Rapid Fire+ 5 auto attacks in 12.3 seconds

~ Sword increases your pet’s might.
~ Sword hits multiple targets
~ Sword makes sure you get 100% Predator’s Onslaught uptime
~ Sword procs more on-hit effects for faster attacks
~ Using sword puts you in the middle of all the fancy boons and boosts

Pretty much these. I’ll look into it further if I have more time.

and
~ sword will make you die instantly if you re not able to dodge and you will do nothing at all

Azzumy.7685 dont try to have a discussion about what weapons you should use on the forums at all but just try out what will work best for you and your group.
if you ask on forums 99% of the time you will get a copy past of of some guide on the web stating that tjis weapon is the best or this weapon is the best and now its meta until someone else (with a name) will post a build with a different weapon and then this weapon is meta and everything else is bad and so on, you get the point.

(btw i killed the first boss yesterday with longbow without any problem) its a pain in the kitten to not use your range. you force someone else to go to the green circles even if you have a potential range advantage and you might just get ported away or you need to dodge and .. Jesus Christ those horrible sword attacks that make my character move around and stick to your target like glue (even with shutting down autoattacks) its awful. its like i will cripple myself to a degree i have no control over my character anymore.

beside dungeons where you wont take dmg anyways i see no reason why you should use the sword over another weapon if do better with it.

Seems like SoftLight doesn’t like efficiency much…
… Do you really believe an answer “Do whatever you want” helps the discussion?

If you don’t want to help him then don’t. Everybody is aware of the downsides of the sword but no one is interested in the frustrated cries. We all have to go through the same problems. You are not special. If you just say you can’t deal with it it only points to your lack of skill getting around Ranger mechanics. I have tried to DPS as a sword ranger and I didn’t have a slightest problem doing my stuff.

Back onto discussion:
One more reason why Longbow has a downside > in Raids you don’t always have the opportunity to stay at 1000+ range. It lowers the damage significantly.

But when I think about it in a broad meaning… I don’t know how to answer the topic. There’s no build, rotation, game-play that would make you keep 1 weapon at all times, whatsoever.
You always do the standard rotation:
Rapid Fire > Barrage > Swap >

1. PoS > AA > PoS > Swap
2. Rapid Fire > AA > Rapid Fire > Swap > phase 1. >
3. Rapid Fire > Barrage > Rapid fire > Swap

By camping 1 of the weapons you lose DPS regardless of which you choose.

the difference between weapons in GW2 makes less than 30sec difference over the whole dungeon run, just play the weaps you like the most.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Seems like SoftLight doesn’t like efficiency much…
… Do you really believe an answer “Do whatever you want” helps the discussion?

A discussion about efficiency an a game, where no hard enrages exist and nothing stop you from finishing a dungeon is pointless.

Tyr.6097:

Tragic Positive.9356:

Seems like SoftLight doesn’t like efficiency much…
… Do you really believe an answer “Do whatever you want” helps the discussion?

A discussion about efficiency an a game, where no hard enrages exist and nothing stop you from finishing a dungeon is pointless.

Does time efficiency aka meta ring any bells?

long bow.
i also have gs as melee weapon but you can take sword.
long bow has decent dps with both hard hitting single target and aoe skills.
very good for first raid boss and excellent for rest of the game.

If your looking for the most efficient damage you go axe with torch. The reason to take this over anything else is because its higher damage and has the simplest rotation.

You throw 2> weap & swap throw 5>4> auto attack.

Frankly I am more of a fan of use whatever hell you want so long as you don’t spend the majority of the fight on the ground. Two people doing sub par dps is more dps than than two glasses having to stop and res each other constantly. For a lot of people this means avoid sword, even if it is higher dps.

There’s also that aspect that makes a player do significantly better if he gets to play what he enjoys, not to play what he is told to.

So if numbers are not the deal (which seemed that case since all the maths you gave yourself the trouble with) – it doesn’t matter.
If you can make it work, you can as well play anything including BM.

oh this will be fun. now Tragic Positive.9356 is getting out that meta talk while the same time he´s suggested clerics gear on druids because the dmg doesnt matter in the other post. (btw can you pls send me a screenshot of your character and the achievments that show that you actually killed any bosses by now so i know you actually know what you re talking about?)

also who the hell is talking about dungeons. no one cares about them anyways. to make it clear for the time efficiency thing for running a metabuild aka (cleric druid) in dungeons. if you play gw2 for more than 1 month you allready know 99,9% of the people run those meta builds in dungeons. so where s the point in running a build that allows you to complete a dungeon faster if everyone else is doing them faster aswell wich will result in everyone is making the same amount of money or rewards anyways. All this does is making trading post prices go up. There is zero point in getting more efficient from lets say 1g /h to 10g/h if everyone else is also doing those 10g/h. its like.. your boss decide to pay you twice as much money now in RL. but at the same time.. every boss on the plane decide to pay their people twice as much as well so everyone just has more money and everything will cost twice as much aswell to make up for it

SoftLight your posts are not contributing anything. The point of forums is to discuss things. You angrily yelling at people to do whatever they want is not why people come here.

Fluffball.8307:

SoftLight your posts are not contributing anything. The point of forums is to discuss things. You angrily yelling at people to do whatever they want is not why people come here.

^

My main issue with sword is that there is no way i can reach the on-paper DPS. I’m not a pro, so if i leave the auto-attack on, i’ll be locked out of a critical dodge and die (or on the SV guardian, be teleported away, wasting a lot of damage). If i disable the auto-attack, then i can be careful and dodge when needed, but at the cost of some downtime between each press of ‘1’.

I don’t care much for dps meters, but i’d be curious to see how i fare with sword vs what i get from GS: dodge on demand, and no dodge required either when the cue syncs with the auto-chain means less downtime so i should be closer to the on-paper GS DPS.

LB is a great weapon to rotate through with quickdraw, but isn’t a full replacement imho due to requiring distance to make the most of it and missing out on party stuff like boons, buffs and condi clears.

cafard.8953:

LB is a great weapon to rotate through with quickdraw, but isn’t a full replacement imho due to requiring distance to make the most of it and missing out on party stuff like boons, buffs and condi clears.

The damage from long bow is only slightly better at range compared to melee range, because most of its damage comes from Rapid fire and Barrage. This means missing some auto attacks due to dodging is a neglectable damage loss. However having to cancel Rapid fire or Barrage in order to dodge will have a massive effect on the damage.

The calculations I did in my first post were done for melee range and in this case bow was as strong as sword. So even if auto attack has more damage at longer range, it does not mean longer range is required.

Azzumy.7685:

This morning I started to play on my ranger again and I am wondering why the most common rotations I find are using sword and axe.
Barrage -> Rapid fire -> Auto attack sword +Axe when off cooldown till enemy is dead.

For a situation that requires burst (<30 seconds) I understand this, but in long fights (Raids) it seems that longbow is nearly as good as sword.

Sword and Axe
Sword has a 1.9 power coefficient over 1.8 seconds
Path of Scars is 2.4 power coefficient over 1 second and 15 seconds cooldown (Not sure about time).
So this means that sword and axe has 1.145 power coefficient per second average.
(1.9/1.8 * 14/15 + 2.4 * 1/15)
Predators onslaught makes this 1.26 power coefficient per second average.

Longbow
Longbow with “Lead the Wind” and “Quick draw” does:
0.7 power coefficient in 0.9 seconds auto attacking.
4.8 power coefficient over 2.5 seconds with barrage on 9 sec cooldown.
3.75 power coefficient over 3.3 seconds with rapid fire on 9 sec cooldown.
So this means that Longbow has 1.23 power coefficient per second average.
(4.8 /9 + 3.75 /9 + 0.7/0.9 * (9 – 2.5 – 3.3)/9)

Quickness
Because bow damage is limit by cooldowns there is a larger difference caused by quickness.
Sword + Axe =1.26*1.5 = 1.88 power coefficient
Longbow = (4.8 /9 + 3.75 /9 + 0.7 * (9 – 2.5/1.5 – 3.3/1.5)/9*1.5) = 1.55 power coefficient

Point of discussion
From these calculations, quickness would be the only reason to pick sword over longbow. Assuming my calculations are correct. When ignoring quickness I see little reason to prefer one weapon over the other.

So my question is: Is there something I missed in the calculation or in my search for Ranger builds? Or is there another reason why people prefer one weapon over the other?

Sources
coefficients and sword chain time:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_ranger_skills

Barrage and Rapid fire channel times were determined by:
10 auto attacks in 9 seconds
5 auto attacks + barrage + 5 auto attacks in 11.5 seconds
5 auto attacks + Rapid Fire+ 5 auto attacks in 12.3 seconds

Is it just me misreading it, or did you forget to factor in the 5% higher average weapon strength of the longbow, as well as the effect of quick draw on Path of Scars?

sword is awful while the bigged AA chain is there.you are no use if you die almost at the beginning. and your are wasting the sword if you cant keep the AA.

longbow is pretty bad in average damage if you cant keep the max range, bit then you wont have access to the boons from your team mater.

forget ranger go for dragon hunter instead.

anduriell.6280:

forget ranger go for dragon hunter instead.

Hurts, but if OP really does want to use a longbow, dragonhunter’s the way to go

I’m sorry, but I thought sword+ axe/ Longbow was power ranger meta for pve… Why are we talking about choosing?

Edit: if it makes you feel better, I generally run staff/Lb for raids. Although I feel like sword/warhorn would be the real support druid raid choice.

Jermoe Morrow.9501:

I’m sorry, but I thought sword+ axe/ Longbow was power ranger meta for pve… Why are we talking about choosing?

Edit: if it makes you feel better, I generally run staff/Lb for raids. Although I feel like sword/warhorn would be the real support druid raid choice.

The choice is between sword+axe/longbow or longbow/longbow. The reason for this is that Quick Draw is required in order to do any sustain damage with longbow.