Guild Wars 2

Yes i play rifle allot in PVP (Platinum)

I know its not a great weapon in PvP but i like it anyways.. but i do want to complain about its dmg.

-Gunflame is great
-Rifle butt can be great in some situations
-Volley is good (if more dmg on other skills.. NOT good if its the only dmg skill)
-Auto attack is terrible dmg
-Aimed shot is weak
-Brutal shot needs to be faster for an evade skill.

Since Anet buffed #4 on rifle with evade they stated that rifle is all about burst dmg. so they cant give to much dmg on other skills..

But i find this pretty stupid if you consider that warrior burst skills are its profession skills like DH has Virtues.

So besides its burst skill we have Volley. This skill is the ONLY skill on rifle that does dmg. but even this skill does pretty much no dmg on a 2,5sec casttime! i often do around 2500-3500 dmg on full volley because of all those dmg reduction traits/boon etc.

I really hope we get more options for PVP and rifle could be 1 of them..

But for now i think i would put my rifle down because i am letting my teammates down

I can agree with pretty much everything you mentioned. Rifle needs some work like Engi Rifle. IT’s meh at best. I think it was nerfed too much in too many ways when Gunflame was hitting double. IIRC there’s a recent-ish spreadsheet with the damage from each Profession’s weapon and War Rifle damage was at the bottom of the list or really close. I can’t remember the particulars of it, it could have just been AA damage though.

JDjitsu.7895:

I can agree with pretty much everything you mentioned. Rifle needs some work like Engi Rifle. IT’s meh at best. I think it was nerfed too much in too many ways when Gunflame was hitting double. IIRC there’s a recent-ish spreadsheet with the damage from each Profession’s weapon and War Rifle damage was at the bottom of the list or really close. I can’t remember the particulars of it, it could have just been AA damage though.

Engi rifle is in the same situation indeed.
That list is about AA attacks and yes Warrior rifle was almost at the bottom of the list.
(where you could find support weapons…… -_- )

I also only run some sort of rifle setup when I play war, and always have. War is not my main, and I never expect to go to the top when playing it. I’m also past caring for GW2 as my #1 competitive game, so these days I play for different reasons (like the fun of playing rifle, mixed with the testing/balancing and counter meta build producing aspects).

Two major thoughts on Rifle under the current S5 state.

Rifle needs a particular setup to “work” and the right rotation of skills to properly drop someone to the ground in a timely manner. Understanding warrior staples about adrenaline levels, burst use, and weapon swapping is necessary to get the most out of it. There’s rarely a good reason not to take the Berserk line now, so Defense and Discipline are the other must haves. Though arguably a rifle-centric build would really benefit from some other options. You’ll just not live long enough to make the most out of it. Whether your new or old to warrior, everybody figures this out off the bat.

Second: Rifle as a weapon is dependent on a min/max setup, and the skills need redesigning to accommodate this. Rifle 4 was a major step in the right direction but it hasn’t gone far enough. Rifle butt is great, and volley can be utilized for some much needed pressure. However the AA is weak, or possibly just to slow, not to mention clunky in close quarters. It could do with either a damage buff, a rate of fire buff, or some situational tweak like doing more damage at close range. Perhaps some combination of the two.

Simply increasing AA damage isn’t enough though. The weapon feels like it needs some sort of more skill based defense. I know stealth isnt a warrior thing and probably never will be, but it often comes to mind as a target drop and reposition skill. But stealth isnt necessary. Turning rifle 2 into a single channeled block like mesmer scepter 2 that can also be pressed a second time to fire it’s crippling shot would go a long way. Then reducing a cd slightly on 4, even at the cost/removing of the imob would give it what it needs to perform at it’s roll. If the devs wanted to improve the weapons overall function some more, they could split the imob shot from the #4 into a second skill that can be fire after the evade, allowing you to evade > imob (at your choosing within a window of a few seconds) > then burst/pressure.

I could happily have all the damage stripped away from the 1-4 skills if it was loaded up with defense/utility. Then I could skillfully outlast my opponents while building adrenaline to use in timely bursts.

Problem with rifle is that it’s clunky. Volley for example stops and goes on full cd if your target gets behind you (even if you are sitting still to try to have the channel track like other channel-tracking skills in the game). Turn the wrong way or your target walks into your hitbox and Brutal Shot wont even go off most of the time.

Rifle is ok, but it is only useful when you activate berserker stance. Standard burst is too much of a slow cast and 1,2,3 skills are useless, delivering close to no damage. 4 and 5 are great for kiting though. If there will be any changes made they should consider tweaking the rifle’s normal burst and make 1,2,3 useful.

Using gs+rifle you can stunlock many professions to death, but in longer encounters your berserker rage ends and rifle sucks again. To be honest I think that if you need ranged weapon longbow would be better than rifle even in builds not based on conditions.

Warrior isn’t my main either, but I do like to play it from time to time.

The thought of them with guns always sounded cool, and I especially love seeing the Charr NPCs with the heavy armor using them.

I think on top of everything else that’s been stated it also doesn’t help that there’s a ton of projectile hate from a lot of other classes.

Which suprises me that bow is used so much.

Starbreaker.6507:

I think on top of everything else that’s been stated it also doesn’t help that there’s a ton of projectile hate from a lot of other classes.

Which suprises me that bow is used so much.

Rifle has nothing. Only useful skill is gun flame as it dazes/interrupts, does good damage and can be cast while moving with relatively low cast time. Kill shot on the other hand is crap and I cannot think of any situation it could be used in. Long cast time, relatively low damage and you have to stay in place while casting, your enemy has to be a total idiot to get hit by a kill shot. Skills are also meh and outside of berserker mode they are only good for generating adrenaline at distance trough shooting at vulnerable targets with 1, but you got only 1 adrenaline per shot, so it also isn’t that great. This is mostly useful when you chase someone and cannot hit him with gs.

Now longbow on the other hand… Longbow compared to rifle is like day and night. You get aoe, you get good damage, you get conditions, you get crowd control…

Now let’s see another thing: what combo fields are available to a warrior? Oh, only fire field. And how do I cast it? Oh, with longbow (or torch on 25 s cd…). Then you have three different finishers: blast and projectile + whirl from gs if you use it or leap from mace/shield. Of course most useful will be might stacking.

I guess that’s the reason people choose longbow over rifle. Higher damage, cc, combo field…

Rifle has nothing on longbow and I believe after the season either rifle will get buffed with something like splash damage or longbow will get nerfed.

vove.2768:

Rifle has nothing on longbow and I believe after the season either rifle will get buffed with something like splash damage or longbow will get nerfed.

Knowing Anet it’ll be the latter

Starbreaker.6507:

vove.2768:

Rifle has nothing on longbow and I believe after the season either rifle will get buffed with something like splash damage or longbow will get nerfed.

Knowing Anet it’ll be the latter

Hard to say, longbow seems to be meta for quite some time already (greatbow, hambow, macebow…) and as someone on reddit noticed as soon as they allow us to equip same weapon twice without sharing cooldowns new meta will be bowbow.

Starbreaker.6507:

vove.2768:

Rifle has nothing on longbow and I believe after the season either rifle will get buffed with something like splash damage or longbow will get nerfed.

Knowing Anet it’ll be the latter

Just the fact they even did SOMETHING after 4 years on #2 and #4 is already stunning..
So i dont think they would even dare to makes some more changes because they are scared to make something viable what could hurt the meta

The AA is much, much weaker than it should be. They nerfed the crap out of it when they changed it from Bleeding Shot years ago. That’s most of the problem with the Rifle. The LB has a similar problem. As a result, both weapons are highly situational.

Honestly I don’t know what any of you are saying. Aside from the one big on the weapon rifle is an awesome weapon set. If you don’t understand how it’s skills work together in frilly sorry. I would suggest that you guys try thereupon on combat camera as it pretty much negates the skill interrupt bug. That’s the next update of warrior 101 I have decided.

emkelly.2371:

Honestly I don’t know what any of you are saying. Aside from the one big on the weapon rifle is an awesome weapon set. If you don’t understand how it’s skills work together in frilly sorry. I would suggest that you guys try thereupon on combat camera as it pretty much negates the skill interrupt bug. That’s the next update of warrior 101 I have decided.

i know perfectly well how rifle works, and rifle is indeed a awesome weapon.
that doesnt mean its perfect in PVP, we explained why in this topic, sorry if you dont know why. also combat camera is so much more horrible to use in pvp just to use it for less interrupting skills. in combat camera you cant see kitten whats going on around you.

You must have your settings set differently than me. My combat camera works great. I find it much more intuitive than standard mode. I’m aware it’s a preference thing, and not for everyone.