Guild Wars 2

Assuming that Melee is my primary Combat style , with a Longbow in my second weapon slot as a backup.

Thought?

Sword mainhand has the strongest potential single target dps a ranger has access to and GS barely outdoes it in the aoe department. The fact that you won’t have a useless skill against bosses when using S/x (GS 4 attempts to knock back when countering and 5 is a daze/stun) makes it even more appealing. Its auto attack also grants your pet might on the 3rd chain and you can time the evades with big damage.

I guess in the end it’s all up to your taste. I like to have access to all potential weapons depending on my needs.

I personally have ran with the sword/warhorn/dagger combo for the longest time. I always prefer it over the greatsword, but whenever I need to do damage without a target, I go with the GS because with the sword, you’ll be flying everywhere, and quite frankly that is about the only thing I don’t like about the sword.

It really depends. Since GS has a more “traditional” autoattack, it is far more user-friendly than Sword/X. But you’ll eventually want to graduate to Sword/X since it is all-around better than GS, with the exception of bursting.

Play with what you feel most comfortable. If you choose sword+off make sure you turn auto-attack off.

I find the Sword/Dagger combo to work the best for me in melee with offhand training turning stalker’s strike into a passable gap closer.

Ultimately you will want to look at how much you want to use condition damage sword/dagger/torch are pretty reliant on it where as the GS no longer even has any condition damage so it would go well with the LB on a pure physical build.