Guild Wars 2

Star Ace.5207:

In short, your comment should read “Sword/xx is the optimal PvE melee option for Rangers”.

FTFY

Anything is viable, I could clear every PvE content in the game with 0/0/0/0/0 clerics Axe/Dagger if I really wanted to. In terms of speed running, Sword/MH is the only viable option since you’re better off taking any other class over a GS/LB/Axe/whatever ranger.

Here’s another Evolved Destroyer video, this time featuring 8.7k sword autos

Build is 30/25/0/15/0 Berserker/Scholar with night/force sigils
100prec/10% crit damage food, destroyer slaying potion, 25 bloodlust stacks
92% crit chance, strength booster. 15-25 vuln.

For reference here’s the same fight with GS instead

On a side note: on both videos i forget to swap the pet in for a few seconds lol. Anet fix pathing issues pls.

Sarision.6347:

Chrispy, you might want to recalculate because the autoattack animation is 1.8 seconds for sword and 2.56 for GS according to the wiki.

I get 33% higher damage for sword/wh over greatsword when I plug in those numbers

ord auto: 2188 / 2.56 = 855
maul additional dps: (1875 – 855*0.75)/6.75 = 183
=> GS dps: 855 + 183 = 1038

sword auto: 2375 / 1.8 = 1319
hornet/monarch additional dps: (2125 – 1319*1.75)/9.25 = -20
serpent sting additional dps: (1379 – 1319*1)/16 = 4
hunter’s call additional dps: (612 – 1319*1.5)/26.5 = -52
call of the wild (fury: +10% dps, might +1.5% dps) additional dps: ((1.1*1.015-1)*1319*15 – 1319*0.5)/30 = 55
=> sword dps: 1319 + 4 + 55 = 1378

greatsword evade uptime (power stab is a 0.75s or 1s evade?):
autoattack: 1/2.56 = 0.39
maul: (0-0.39*0.75)/6.75 = -0.04
autoattack: 0.75/2.56 = 0.29
maul: (0-0.29*0.75)/6.75 = -0.03
=> GS evades: 26% or 35%

sword evade uptime
both hornet/monarch keeps you away from enemy: 1.75/9.25 = 0.19
only hornet: 1/9.25 = 0.11
serpent sting: 1/16 = 0.06
=> sword evades: 17% or 25%

the numbers look so much better for the sword….

I only use GS in wvw… its beautiful weapon for roaming… swop is a great low CD gap closer

GS 3 out of of danger and GS4 to block out any kind of ranged CC, switch over to sword and Sword 2 out of there completely.

Very good for wvw roaming imo.

But thats it lol

I prefer my sword in every other scenario unless i wanna play around in spvp with some dumb combs like GC burst with maul + signets + moment of clarity stuff

Greatsword
Slash (0.55c) : 688 (1/2 sec)
Slice (.55c) : 688 (1/2 sec)
Power Stab(0.65c) : 812(3/4 sec)

688 + 688 + 812 = 2188 / 1.75 seconds = 1250 DPS Plus 1 second Evade

Maul : 1875 (3/4 sec)
also a 6 second recharge

1875 / 6.75 seconds = 278 DPS

You didn’t add the 5 stack of 5% vulnerability?.

WilliCalifornia.1837:

You didn’t add the 5 stack of 5% vulnerability?.

oops, forgot to.

I love sword/WH. The only issue I had was with the fast auto-attack interfering with my evades. So I turned off auto-attack and bound the attack to my mouse’s forward button. Yes, it requires a little more button mashing, but I can stop attacking fairly quickly when I need to evade. I also re-bound the E key to sheath/unsheath weapon as a back-up attack stopper.

I wish the GS was a bit more viable. I love the animations and just enjoy the fights with it.
Actually, I like the sword too, but that freeze in the main attack rotation I don’t like. I know I’m not a “pro” player for dealing with it, but I just don’t like it either. It’s like the ranger is crazy mobile, except for this tiny window in which I’m stuck.

Honestly I like the GS a lot too, it’s one of the best feel weapons in the whole game to me when wielded by the ranger. So yes you do wish it worked just a little better as a focus to build around for damage.

WilliCalifornia.1837:

Greatsword
Slash (0.55c) : 688 (1/2 sec)
Slice (.55c) : 688 (1/2 sec)
Power Stab(0.65c) : 812(3/4 sec)

688 + 688 + 812 = 2188 / 1.75 seconds = 1250 DPS Plus 1 second Evade

You can’t just use the skill cast times. There are hidden after-cast animation delays which slow skills down more. The exact cycle time for GS everyone is using is 2.56. That’s pretty close to the 2.54 sec I got (from sitting there with a stopwatch and letting autoattack cycle 100 times – I did it three times, but maybe I counted only 99 all three times). So I’d go with it, not 1.75 sec.

Adrian Guardian.9480:

Sarision.6347:

Chrispy, you might want to recalculate because the autoattack animation is 1.8 seconds for sword and 2.56 for GS according to the wiki.

I get 33% higher damage for sword/wh over greatsword when I plug in those numbers

greatsword auto: 2188 / 2.56 = 855
maul additional dps: (1875 – 855*0.75)/6.75 = 183
=> GS dps: 855 + 183 = 1038

sword auto: 2375 / 1.8 = 1319

You’re making the same mistake I initially did. GS (being a 2h weapon) has a 10% higher base weapon strength than sword. So it actually does slightly more damage per cycle than sword despite its skills having lower coefficients.

Correct for that and your GS DPS is 1142. Add in the vulnerability from Maul (5.9%) and you’re at 1209 DPS.

hornet/monarch additional dps: (2125 – 1319*1.75)/9.25 = -20
serpent sting additional dps: (1379 – 1319*1)/16 = 4
hunter’s call additional dps: (612 – 1319*1.5)/26.5 = -52
call of the wild (fury: +10% dps, might +1.5% dps) additional dps: ((1.1*1.015-1)*1319*15 – 1319*0.5)/30 = 55
=> sword dps: 1319 + 4 + 55 = 1378

1209 vs 1378 would seem to favor sword, except there are two traits which help GS.

Martial mastery reduces non-autoattack skill cooldowns. A good chunk of GS damage comes from Maul, which benefits from that trait. That gives another 5.3% and increases the vulnerability to 7.2%. Putting GS at 1289 DPS.

If you take 2h Training instead, that works out to about 8% extra damage for a power build, putting GS at 1306 DPS. If you took both (not that I recommend it since that requires 40 trait points, leaving only 30 points for Marksmanship and Skirmishing), you’d be at 1392 DPS.

Now factor in multiple targets. The middle autoattack on sword doesn’t cleave (neither do the evade attacks but I’ll ignore those since I need to get to sleep). That means sword’s damage scales 100%, 168%, 237% for 1, 2, and 3 targets. So you’re looking at:

Sword
1 target = 1378 DPS
2 targets = 2315 DPS
3 targets = 3766 DPS

All of GS’s attacks cleave, making it scale 100%, 200%, 300% against 1, 2, and 3 targets.

GS no traits
1 target = 1209 DPS (88% sword)
2 targets = 2418 DPS (104% sword)
3 targets = 3627 DPS (110% sword)

GS w/ Martial Mastery
1 target = 1289 DPS (94% sword)
2 targets = 2578 DPS (111% sword)
3 targets = 3867 DPS (118% sword)

GS w/ 2H Training
1 target = 1306 DPS (95% sword)
2 targets = 2611 DPS (113% sword)
3 targets = 3917 DPS (120% sword)

So any time you’re attacking more than a single target, GS actually beats sword (pretty handily too).

The gap doesn’t look so bad on paper, but it is much bigger in practical play.

TurtleDragon.3108:

The gap doesn’t look so bad on paper, but it is much bigger in practical play.

I don’t see how…the GS is much easier to DPS with since it doesn’t have all the issues with normal attacks that the 1h sword does. It also has a gap closer that lets you switch to attacking additional targets faster than the 1h sword does, meaning that you have less downtime.

edit
Nevermind, I think you mean that since the GS requires trait investment that’s deep in defensive trees, it offsets the damage boost of those traits.

Sword is a fun weapon, I just dislike that I can’t evade or break the constant stream of movement when I want to. Yes, I know 2 of its abilities have an evade to it, but when those are on CD, I still would like to be able to break away without having to wait for the end of an autoattack round.

Also, I’m not much for Warhorn in any scenario. It seems under powered for any kind of DPS build, and marginal for any kind of support build. I would rather have Axe or Dagger in my offhand, hell even torch!

Dahkeus.8243:

TurtleDragon.3108:

The gap doesn’t look so bad on paper, but it is much bigger in practical play.

I don’t see how…the GS is much easier to DPS with since it doesn’t have all the issues with normal attacks that the 1h sword does. It also has a gap closer that lets you switch to attacking additional targets faster than the 1h sword does, meaning that you have less downtime.

edit
Nevermind, I think you mean that since the GS requires trait investment that’s deep in defensive trees, it offsets the damage boost of those traits.

2H training is fairly accessible, 20/25/0/25/0 is still a meta build and pretty decent, but it’s hard to take Martial Mastery in a spotter/frost spirit build. You are pretty much right about wilderness survival offsetting the damage gain. It’s like saying “I’m lowering my Overall DPS from 9k to 7k just to make GS equal to sword!” (numbers are made up and have no basis)

Melee fights where you need good positioning and instantaneous dodges are far and few (ie. Lupi, Grawl Shaman), so the sword doesn’t show it’s control weakness that often. In those fights, it’s more common to range it than it is to melee as well. One shots really only happen in Arah and high level fractals anyways, you can facetank a few hits on most enemies in the game. Consider a stack and DPS fight that doesn’t require dodging while I explain why GS numbers don’t translate into real play.

1. Everyone is ignoring the effects of unshakeable, which most bosses have. This greatly reduces the effectiveness of Maul’s vulnerability stacking. Worst of all, the vuln won’t last long enough to affect your next Maul (unless you have martial mastery, then it might idk). It’s great on trash, but it’s also significantly easier to reach 25 vulnerability as a group on trash. You also have dungeons like SE p1, where you literally don’t fight any trash and the path is entirely bosses with unshakeable. You also have the issue of your party composition containing so much vulnerability stacking, that you don’t need the extra vuln from Maul.

2. Maul is a single hit. Single hits attacks have higher variance than channelled attacks (rapid fire, hundred blades). This isn’t so much an issue in organized groups, but it is a very big issue in PUGs. If you don’t have perma fury and your warrior decides to run banner of defense instead of discipline, you’ll have like 60% crit chance with only spotter active. In the GS video I linked, I’m playing with 100% crit chance.
See the bottom of Solandri’s post for more detail on this.

3. Perma fury is hard to get without a persisting flames ele, or stacking warriors. By taking GS instead of sword, you don’t get the benefits of Call of the Wild for your entire group, which is worth 1 blast finisher and ~49% fury uptime. Consider a group composition like 2 guard, 1 war, 1 thief, 1 ranger. Ignoring guardian book and thrill of the crime, fury is only going to come from the warrior and ranger. FGJ and Warhorn will give around 80% fury uptime, but if you decide to take GS instead of S/WH you’ll only have FGJ for group fury. Do note, I am only considering the effects of group fury, not personal fury. 100% personal fury uptime doesn’t mean much if your 2 guardians and thief are only gaining 8s of fury from the warrior every 25s. Obviously, there are ways to get around this (ie. have everyone pick up the disc banner and press 2 or make the thief switch his trickery trait) but it’s more effort and has a DPS cost that could have been avoided if you just went the optimal route.

4. You can’t double stack bloodlust/perception with a GS. GS is bad for trash unless you already stacked up 25 bloodlust/perception, or you need to stay stacked/max melee range.

5. Sword/WH has an extra sigil (modifier). ie. Force/Night on Sw/offhand vs. Force OR night only on GS. I run a balanced set up so I don’t have to carry 50 weapons, Force and Night on my sword set, Force on my GS set. My Sword/WH set has an additional 10% damage modifier that my GS does not have in night dungeons.

Let’s ignore Martial Mastery for a bit since we can all agree that investing in WS will cost you the ability to run spotter + frost spirit. Instead, let’s assume a 20/25/0/25/0 or 25/25/0/20/0 GS build that has 2h mastery:

1) Yes, unshakeable does diminish vuln, but vuln is a 1% dps increase per stack for all group members. This means that 5 stacks of vuln increases the dps of all 5 people hitting that target by 5%. This gives a net boost of dps that is much greater than most personal dps boosts. Yes, this does mean that the vuln will drop off before maul. With 25 in marks, the vuln on a boss will last 6.125 seconds and you have 6 second recharge + 3/4 sec cast time to reapply maul. If you have 20 in marks, then it’s a 6 second vuln. However, you still have the 5% group DPS boost up about 90% of the time, which is very substantial, especially in a high DPS group.

2) This is true, but with 2h mastery, you will have very high fury up-time, which negates this to a large extent.

3) This is a valid point, but you would really have to calculate the difference between the 90% up-time of a 5% group DPS boost vs the boost of the fury lost to the group without warhorn. Keep in mind that you still have moa fury available with GS.

4) True, although I would consider this rather minor.

5) Yes, but not for long. =P

So, considering all this along with the increase in cleave damage that the GS has and I don’t think that there is such a clear winner/loser. There are a lot of factors that could easily sway which weapon pulls out as better in practice: number of AoE fights, % of time fighting a boss with unshakeable, amount of vuln stacks the group can apply, up-time of fury from the group, etc.

I forgot #6.

6. Greatsword doesn’t scale well with Quickness. GS has a weak auto attack and is reliant on Maul for damage. Maul’s cd doesn’t get shortened with quickness, while Sword is completely auto attack reliant, and benefits a lot more from quickness than GS.

Your vulnerability numbers are a bit off as well. If you have 20 in marksmanship, then its (8 * 1.2) / 2 = 4.8s 25 marks = 5s. It’s ~ 71% uptime on bosses. This averages to a 3.5% party DPS boost, but you have to use a weapon that is at least 12% weaker. From personal exxperience playing in both PUGS and organized groups, I’d estimate the gs to be about 20-25% worst than the sword in organized groups, and 35% worst than the sword in bad PUGs. Everyone is focusing too much on the vuln, and ignoring the loss of the utility from the offhand.

I also feel that 30/25 is the stronger ranger spec, and that GS is not viable for that set up. Red moa is not really a good substitute for a cat and warhorn imo, its dps is not that good but the fury would make it worthwhile. Again, it’s another unnecessary dps loss that could have been prevented if you went the optimal route.

mehhh…i dont like the 30/25 set up, for what i need vul on trash mobs ? Oo
signet trait? no need, even to skip in arah

and vul is easy stacked up to 25 in organized groups.

it´s okay to play gs but its allways weaker than sword in boss fights

Solandri.9640:

WilliCalifornia.1837:

Greatsword
Slash (0.55c) : 688 (1/2 sec)
Slice (.55c) : 688 (1/2 sec)
Power Stab(0.65c) : 812(3/4 sec)

688 + 688 + 812 = 2188 / 1.75 seconds = 1250 DPS Plus 1 second Evade

You can’t just use the skill cast times. There are hidden after-cast animation delays which slow skills down more. The exact cycle time for GS everyone is using is 2.56. That’s pretty close to the 2.54 sec I got (from sitting there with a stopwatch and letting autoattack cycle 100 times – I did it three times, but maybe I counted only 99 all three times). So I’d go with it, not 1.75 sec.

Adrian Guardian.9480:

Sarision.6347:

Chrispy, you might want to recalculate because the autoattack animation is 1.8 seconds for sword and 2.56 for GS according to the wiki.

I get 33% higher damage for sword/wh over greatsword when I plug in those numbers

greatsword auto: 2188 / 2.56 = 855
maul additional dps: (1875 – 855*0.75)/6.75 = 183
=> GS dps: 855 + 183 = 1038

sword auto: 2375 / 1.8 = 1319

You’re making the same mistake I initially did. GS (being a 2h weapon) has a 10% higher base weapon strength than sword. So it actually does slightly more damage per cycle than sword despite its skills having lower coefficients.

Correct for that and your GS DPS is 1142. Add in the vulnerability from Maul (5.9%) and you’re at 1209 DPS.

hornet/monarch additional dps: (2125 – 1319*1.75)/9.25 = -20
serpent sting additional dps: (1379 – 1319*1)/16 = 4
hunter’s call additional dps: (612 – 1319*1.5)/26.5 = -52
call of the wild (fury: +10% dps, might +1.5% dps) additional dps: ((1.1*1.015-1)*1319*15 – 1319*0.5)/30 = 55
=> sword dps: 1319 + 4 + 55 = 1378

1209 vs 1378 would seem to favor sword, except there are two traits which help GS.

Martial mastery reduces non-autoattack skill cooldowns. A good chunk of GS damage comes from Maul, which benefits from that trait. That gives another 5.3% and increases the vulnerability to 7.2%. Putting GS at 1289 DPS.

If you take 2h Training instead, that works out to about 8% extra damage for a power build, putting GS at 1306 DPS. If you took both (not that I recommend it since that requires 40 trait points, leaving only 30 points for Marksmanship and Skirmishing), you’d be at 1392 DPS.

Now factor in multiple targets. The middle autoattack on sword doesn’t cleave (neither do the evade attacks but I’ll ignore those since I need to get to sleep). That means sword’s damage scales 100%, 168%, 237% for 1, 2, and 3 targets. So you’re looking at:

Sword
1 target = 1378 DPS
2 targets = 2315 DPS
3 targets = 3766 DPS

All of GS’s attacks cleave, making it scale 100%, 200%, 300% against 1, 2, and 3 targets.

GS no traits
1 target = 1209 DPS (88% sword)
2 targets = 2418 DPS (104% sword)
3 targets = 3627 DPS (110% sword)

GS w/ Martial Mastery
1 target = 1289 DPS (94% sword)
2 targets = 2578 DPS (111% sword)
3 targets = 3867 DPS (118% sword)

GS w/ 2H Training
1 target = 1306 DPS (95% sword)
2 targets = 2611 DPS (113% sword)
3 targets = 3917 DPS (120% sword)

So any time you’re attacking more than a single target, GS actually beats sword (pretty handily too).

U made mistakes too.

1. Tooltipdmg is including weapon dmg (or the dmg calculation which should be used anyway)
2. Traits: GS CD will cost some Modifiers/spotter/pettraits/criticaldmg and precision.
This trait is not a DPS Boost.

5% GS dmg costs you about 130 Power which is increasing the 1h sword dps anymore or the signet traits if u are using a 30/25/0/15 build.

U can´t compare maxtraited GS with untraited Sword if u forget all the other dmg/support increasing traits.

It´s not only fury. 4 Stacks of might (finisher) too. It´s not so easy to get 25 fast without a dmg loss (FGJ is a dmg loss for the warrior).

In short fights the warrior can use signet of fury instead of FGS, or the Ele can switch traits to get ~ 5% more dps.
Anyway the sword will shine. Except maxmeleerange fights like Melandu Melee (Arah P4) or Grawl shaman.
GS needs a buff, at least to give ranger´s a second viable weapon to make them more fun to play.

@Bambula in short fights (without a Mesmer, so always xD) the 30/25/0/15/0 with Signet of the wild, zephyr and FS will do a bit more dps. Especially if u get conjoured weapons. But i still prefer 20/25/0/25/0…

Next patch will be great when we can just retrait inside the dungeon to 20/25/0/25/0 for max melee range GS fights like Alphard and Grawl Shaman. And for 30/25 vs. 20/25, it’s basically
30/25: Better for short fights and trash
20/25: Better for long fights and/or GS fights

Hoping for a worthwhile skirmishing or nature magic grandmaster trait, since those are relatively “accessible” in PvE builds. The other thing I keep hoping for is that rangers get Mainhand Dagger, and that it’s a god kitten power melee weapon. None of that throwing daggers stuff, we already have axe for that.

Norjena.5172:

Solandri.9640:

[snip]
So any time you’re attacking more than a single target, GS actually beats sword (pretty handily too).

U made mistakes too.

1. Tooltipdmg is including weapon dmg (or the dmg calculation which should be used anyway)

That’s why I did my calcs based on weapon coefficient. I’m not sure where the damage numbers Adrian Guardian used came from, but it wasn’t the tooltip. The tooltip damage for the three GS auto skills actually exceed the tooltip damage for the three sword auto skills. In Adrian’s numbers it was the other way around, which is how I spotted his error. Once you add 10% to his GS numbers, that correctly puts GS ahead for the 3 skills. (Sword pulls ahead only after you divide by the time needed to fire the 3 autoattack skills.)

2. Traits: GS CD will cost some Modifiers/spotter/pettraits/criticaldmg and precision.
This trait is not a DPS Boost.

5% GS dmg costs you about 130 Power which is increasing the 1h sword dps anymore or the signet traits if u are using a 30/25/0/15 build.

U can´t compare maxtraited GS with untraited Sword if u forget all the other dmg/support increasing traits.

That’s why I included a “GS no traits” list.

My point is that there are traits which increase GS DPS. There are no traits which increase sword DPS (that don’t also increase GS DPS). So comparing only the “no traits” situation unfairly favors sword. If you wish to or have free traits, you have the option of enhancing GS DPS but not sword DPS. (Note: Off-hand training could be considered to improve sword DPS if you think of s/x as a single weapon set.)

It´s not only fury. 4 Stacks of might (finisher) too. It´s not so easy to get 25 fast without a dmg loss (FGJ is a dmg loss for the warrior).

In short fights the warrior can use signet of fury instead of FGS, or the Ele can switch traits to get ~ 5% more dps.

Blast finishers give 3 stacks of might. And in a short fight, couldn’t you just start with x/horn, use horn 5 as a blast finisher for the might stacks, then swap to GS? Horn 5 has a 35 sec cooldown, and most dungeon boss kills I’ve done have finished before it recycles. So there’s no point keeping horn equipped after you’ve used it.

Even if you were using sword/horn, you’d be better off swapping to sword/torch or sword/dagger right after horn 5. Like elementalist, you’re not supposed to sit on weapons waiting for cooldowns to expire. You’re supposed to swap to an alternate weapon to take advantage of its fresh cooldowns to increase DPS, while the first weapon set’s cooldowns tick away.

I consider sword “broken” in that regard because neither its #2 or #3 skills improve DPS (for a typical power build), meaning you don’t gain DPS by swapping to or away from it to gain fresh cooldowns. Shortbow is the same way. Longbow would be too if it weren’t for Barrage. GS’ Maul has a 6 sec cooldown so you lose almost 2 Mauls swapping away from it. Same with Axe and Splitblade. You know, now that I think about it, this is a problem with Ranger weapon skills in general. It’s primarily the off-hand weapons which benefit from frequent swapping, which would help explain why s/t + s/h worked so well when I played around with it.

Anyhow, I don’t advocate one weapon as “better” than another. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses. It’s up to the player to learn to take advantage of those strengths and avoid the weaknesses depending on the situation. So I think pointing out these strong and weak situations is more useful than anointing one weapon as “best”. e.g. GS turns out to be supremely effective against multiple targets.

Dahkeus.8243:

Let’s ignore Martial Mastery for a bit since we can all agree that investing in WS will cost you the ability to run spotter + frost spirit.

Do note that lacking Vigorous Spirits doesn’t prevent you from running spotter + frost spirit. It just means it’s a 3.5% party damage boost, instead of a 7% party damage boost. (A bit less on longer fights due to spirit downtime.)

That is still a pretty substantial decrease in damage. But a lot of people mistakenly think you lose 7% if you don’t put any points into NM. You don’t; you only lose 3.5%.