Guild Wars 2

So this is purely a personal issue. Both the 1hd Sword and the Axe are powerful tools in the Rangers’ arsenal, but I am just not a fan of either of them. I don’t like the mid-range and “bounce” of the axe, and I often find myself stuck in a bush or falling off of things when I use the 1h sword (klutzy player :P)

However, I adore all 4 of the off-hand weapons! They are all fun, useful, and have interesting effects. Aside from hoping for more 1h main weapons to choose from, what suggestions do you have for making use of the off-hand weapons while suffering with the main hand??

I agree, there needs to be another main hand weapon, sometimes I really want one of the off hands but none of my main hand options fills the role I am looking for.

Just use the axe. It’s a powerful ranged weapon. Better than the bows imo. I know you said you don’t like the bounce, but it’s more valuable than a positional bleed. With the sword, even when you get used to using it, it will never feel ‘right’. Just don’t have much of a choice.

I’m actually in almost the same camp as you. I hate our 1h sword. I like our axe very much. I LOVE our offhand weapons. I would love a different option to use with my 2nd offhand. Crossbow? Dagger main? I would take almost anything really…

This might be old but kitten I do miss another weapon as main hand, Axe is just ‘meh’ (I like the first attack even though it doesn’t deal that much damage, but the others aren’t really remarkable) and 1HSword is just a big no-no most of the time because I find myself spending more time jumping around than hitting things with it.

I’d use only greatsword and longbow if I didn’t miss the horn skills so much(buffs and area heal are my current love ). So I feel like we could REALLY use having Dagger as a main hand weapon as well, just a melee/single target weapon with a decent damage (maybe one condition attack or a combo finisher) and no jumping around would make me so happy… Though with an advanced class (and yet another two handed weapon) in the way I feel like I’m just hitting a wall with a feather here…

Eurantien.4632:

The only way I would run axe off hand is with dagger main hand.

I remember the time when I got… Oh… SO disappointed when I got into GW2 and found out that my ranger cannot play dual dagger setup.
… Neither dual sword (but that is different from the topic)

I can imagine Dagger being a fine Melee weapon. Not user-unfriendly like Sword. Unfortunately that’s never coming.

You can use the sword purely for the movement and evades, and still make use of the offhand. That’s what most condi rangers do.

Bonus: If you use it long enough like that, you’ll probably eventually feel comfortable with the autoattack. It’s like playing music, Long-Short-Loong-Long.

But I still find it amusing that Rangers are the only ones who keep MainHand sword in PvP as a utility stick.

Honestly, the only reason why we all got used to the sword is because we had no other choice. We were forced down the Sword path.
Picking Sword because of mobility is … Very diligent. You’d witness roughly 200 range advantage if you used it correctly. On an absurd control style with a semi-long CD and a subject for bug that will set you 500 range behind, too.
Greatsword is far superior in mobility. BUT – it does not open access to Conditions or utility. That’s why everyone takes Sword and claims it to have fine mobility.

It’s because it’s our ONLY mobility choice outside of Zerk. And pretty meh too.

Well, the mobility, on demand evades and it can be paired with an OH, which is more useful for condi builds. Sometimes I wish they left the bleeds on the GS.

It would be fine if the “on demand” evades really worked on demand.

Well, you don’t generally use the AA or even have it toggled for sPvP, so they do generally work on demand when used in that instance. Assumed we were referring to sPvP usage.

Actively avoiding a weapon’s AA in some formats should have been a red flag a long time ago :-/

The evades would be much better “on demand” if #2 didn’t have a delay. With the delay you are forced to anticipate instead of react because when you combine latency, reaction time, and the delay it can be too late and you get hit before the evade actually occurs from the ability.

I honestly think sword works the way it does because of whoever first implemented it … there is no other weapon in the game suffering from the same issues and plenty who have very similarly functionality without those issues.

It just seems like it is stuck where it is because of bad initial coding that no other developer probably wants to deal with … because most of us hate dealing with someone else’s P.o.S. code.

I would like to see ranger get a main hand dagger.

Give the auto attack bleeds on the first 2 attacks and then a cripple on the 3rd. Dagger 2 should be a 600 range leap forward on a 6 second cooldown. Dagger 3 should be throwing a dagger to inflict torment while evading backwards.

So it should act like a combination of Ranger Sword and Thief Dagger w/ OH Pistol ?

I can’t say I’m opposed to the idea. I’d love a condition-focused weapon that doesn’t have a conditional on its application of conditions … and I’m sure our Torch and Dagger would love to have a MH that complimented them better than our MH Axe and Sword currently do.

Atherakhia.4086:

Just use the axe. It’s a powerful ranged weapon. Better than the bows imo. I know you said you don’t like the bounce, but it’s more valuable than a positional bleed. With the sword, even when you get used to using it, it will never feel ‘right’. Just don’t have much of a choice.

It has lowest dps of all ranger’s weapons unless there’re at least 2 targets close together.
Tried it before and couldn’t stand the dps even though I’m a zerker.

Aye, Toxsa is quite right. I did the math for everyone … it’s floating around the Ranger forums somewhere … just look up my name and “math” and you’ll find several math-related posts.

Tragic Positive.9356:

I remember the time when I got… Oh… SO disappointed when I got into GW2 and found out that my ranger cannot play dual dagger setup.

Me too. I remember picking up a dagger while leveling, and the disappointment was huge when I realized I could only wield it as an off-hand. I like sword and axe, but I do agree that it would be awesome with a third choice when we have such good off-hand weapons.

I actually do think we’re getting a mainhand dagger with a future specialization. Either that or an off-hand sword. IMO, it only makes sense to expand the ranger archtype by adding a second dagger.. not only thematically, but we’re seriously lacking a steady main hand weapon to fight on point with. It’s a perfect match, more so than most other weapons – unless they wanna reintroduce the hammer and bunny thumper

I believe I’ll save the search and say that Axe hit and Greatsword hit have almost the same damage and ratio, but Axe has lower.
(base 168 vs 203 … coefficients 0,5 vs 0,55)

In PvE there usually is 25 might provided by eles and Warriors and … Greatsword obviously has Maul and Swoop. Not to mention that hits 5 targets.
And an icing on the cake is that Greatsword is still behind in damage, and that’s a Standard Zerk weapon for all WvW,PvP and casual PvE.

Axe is just plain bad Power Weapon. It’s an okay hybrid one, but definitely not the Power weapon.

Mute Herald.8541:

1hd _ Axe____powerful tool

@Tragic Positive:
Please go see the damage posts I did for ALL ranger weapons … that base damage is being calculated using the actual weapon damage calculations which use the coefficient and the weapon strength. If you look at Axe’s weapon strength, it is actually a good bit lower than Greatsword’s (in sPvP 995-1100 versus 857-1048). That large difference in weapon strength makes an enormous difference.

Now, you are free to “save the search and just say” whatever you want, but the numbers will show that you are quite wrong :-/

Sebrent.3625:

@Tragic Positive:
Please go see the damage posts I did for ALL ranger weapons … that base damage is being calculated using the actual weapon damage calculations which use the coefficient and the weapon strength. If you look at Axe’s weapon strength, it is actually a good bit lower than Greatsword’s (in sPvP 995-1100 versus 857-1048). That large difference in weapon strength makes an enormous difference.

Now, you are free to s"ave the search and just say" whatever you want, but the numbers will show that you are quite wrong :-/

Well… I mean … We both basically said the same thing.
I said Axe is weaker by a bunch, the numbers fit the ratio…

What exactly do you have in mind? Are we both wrong or a misunderstanding happened?

Bold added by me…

Tragic Positive.9356:

I believe I’ll save the search and say that Axe hit and Greatsword hit have almost the same damage and ratio, but Axe has lower.
(base 168 vs 203 … coefficients 0,5 vs 0,55)

Tragic Positive.9356:

Sebrent.3625:

@Tragic Positive:
Please go see the damage posts I did for ALL ranger weapons … that base damage is being calculated using the actual weapon damage calculations which use the coefficient and the weapon strength. If you look at Axe’s weapon strength, it is actually a good bit lower than Greatsword’s (in sPvP 995-1100 versus 857-1048). That large difference in weapon strength makes an enormous difference.

Now, you are free to “save the search and just say” whatever you want, but the numbers will show that you are quite wrong :-/

Well… I mean … We both basically said the same thing.
I said Axe is weaker by a bunch, the numbers fit the ratio…

What exactly do you have in mind? Are we both wrong or a misunderstanding happened?

Perhaps it’s the statement I put in bold.

Another thing not taken into account there is the attack speed of the weapons.

Greatsword, while less than most power weapons, does still do considerably more DPS than Axe.

Sebrent.3625:

Bold added by me…

Tragic Positive.9356:

I believe I’ll save the search and say that Axe hit and Greatsword hit have almost the same damage and ratio, but Axe has lower.
(base 168 vs 203 … coefficients 0,5 vs 0,55)

Tragic Positive.9356:

Sebrent.3625:

@Tragic Positive:
Please go see the damage posts I did for ALL ranger weapons … that base damage is being calculated using the actual weapon damage calculations which use the coefficient and the weapon strength. If you look at Axe’s weapon strength, it is actually a good bit lower than Greatsword’s (in sPvP 995-1100 versus 857-1048). That large difference in weapon strength makes an enormous difference.

Now, you are free to “save the search and just say” whatever you want, but the numbers will show that you are quite wrong :-/

Well… I mean … We both basically said the same thing.
I said Axe is weaker by a bunch, the numbers fit the ratio…

What exactly do you have in mind? Are we both wrong or a misunderstanding happened?

Perhaps it’s the statement I put in bold.

Another thing not taken into account there is the attack speed of the weapons.

Greatsword, while less than most power weapons, does still do considerably more DPS than Axe.

You left the most important part out. Look just a tiny centimeter to the right of the statement in bold.
The numbers have exactly the ratio you mentioned. Yours is given in true numbers, mine in shrank. The numbers are irrelevant, the ratio matters. I believe everyone knows the basics in damage math here in GW2.

But I still fail to understand.
Maybe I’ll try to explain step by step. And repeat everything over again.
Axe hits are almost same numbers as the greatsword’s are. Because you know… 9 might. That’s why I mentioned that it’s useless in PvE where you are going to end up with 25 anyways. That’s another point I made about Axe being weaker.

And how the numbers that we both provided are wrong only for me? … Maybe I had too much chemistry the past few days … But this is out of logic for me.

Lazze.9870:

Tragic Positive.9356:

I remember the time when I got… Oh… SO disappointed when I got into GW2 and found out that my ranger cannot play dual dagger setup.

Me too. I remember picking up a dagger while leveling, and the disappointment was huge when I realized I could only wield it as an off-hand. I like sword and axe, but I do agree that it would be awesome with a third choice when we have such good off-hand weapons.

I actually do think we’re getting a mainhand dagger with a future specialization. Either that or an off-hand sword. IMO, it only makes sense to expand the ranger archtype by adding a second dagger.. not only thematically, but we’re seriously lacking a steady main hand weapon to fight on point with. It’s a perfect match, more so than most other weapons – unless they wanna reintroduce the hammer and bunny thumper

I also think that a dual-dagger ranger is super fitting to the archetype. It made me so frustrated to see that I could equip the dagger off-hand but not main, it was the first class I used on GW2 and this limitation made no sense for me, I can understand why you don’t actively hit things with a horn or a torch, but I can’t understand why you can wield a sword but not stab things with a dagger.

I must say the 1HSword is tempting because it has a higher damage than the axe and few times I managed to make good use of the jumping and evading (most of the time I jumped back I hit something while returning and didn’t hit the second attack or just jumped back down a cliff and well… it was stupid), but I feel SO limited to have only these two weapons as single main, ugh.