Guild Wars 2

I hate that they removed piercing from the trait and later on from gunflame also, while nerfing 20% dmg without any compensation.

(the weapon is all about the burst and volley, these are even Anet words)

Well nice job nerfing the Trait, and then nerfing the burst. + making rifle #4 a MUST be dodge back while like 99% of the time you want to lock them and not run back.

And on top of that you buff Longbow AA for 33% dmg!! WUT??? rifle AA is one of the LOWEST of ALL weapons, and to stomp rifle warriors even more you buff longbow AA.

Bring rifle back Anet, add some more piercing on rifle skills or add it back to Trait, + increase its AA dmg for the compensation! on power warrior i do more dmg on longbow (condi AND Aoe weapon) compared to rifle wich is power weapon and single target.

I dont play GW2 much anymore because its getting old and kinda boring these days, but stuff like this makes me even more wanna leave this game (same for Elite VS core)

“It’s all about Burst and Volley.”

Of course it is, everything else on the Rifle skillset sucks. (Even the Burst can be debated.)
In fact, some were made even worse. AKA #4.
A skill I actually used to use and now don’t touch 90% of the time. Good game design right there.

I too was also quite peeved about the piercing change as well. There was no reason to make it inconsistent across skills and essentially nerf rifle damage against mobs indirectly due to such.

I’m a pretty dedicated rifle user and I’ve been very unhappy with how Anet has treated it overall.

I’d be happy with the roll removed and pierce fully returned at the very least. But a little more rifle love never hurts.

Sorry, but gunflame was broken as hell, rewarding bad players almost as much as good players in most cases. It needed a serious damage pinch, and the piercing combined with the spammability and explosion per hit were ridiculous.

The added dodge and immob to 4 were undeniable buffs. The dodge was a much needed defensive buff when facing anything but bots, and those concerned about lost time as the dodge executes were compensated with the immob, which is longer than the dodge and still gives enough time to get a gunflame off.

The warrior rifle is better now than it’s been for most of the existence of the game. And lb needed a direct damage buff to compensate to what was lost to power builds when burning was changed. The auto attack on the two weapons is almost the same now, once you factor in attack speed.

Choppy.4183
Sorry, but gunflame was broken as hell, rewarding bad players almost as much as good players in most cases. It needed a serious damage pinch, and the piercing combined with the spammability and explosion per hit were ridiculous.
The added dodge and immob to 4 were undeniable buffs. The dodge was a much needed defensive buff when facing anything but bots, and those concerned about lost time as the dodge executes were compensated with the immob, which is longer than the dodge and still gives enough time to get a gunflame off.
The warrior rifle is better now than it’s been for most of the existence of the game. And lb needed a direct damage buff to compensate to what was lost to power builds when burning was changed. The auto attack on the two weapons is almost the same now, once you factor in attack speed.

As usual I’m with choppy on this one, especially the part obout the dodge. Look, I suck at Rifle, just like i suck at greatsword, but one thing i know how to do is use an evade effectively. And with killshot (let alone gunflame because it’s even better] i can almost always land a hit by chaining it off of the evade. they get close, i evade and press killshot at the same time and by the time they know what i did it’s too late, i put distance between us and my killshot hits them a second later. I’m all for the nerf to rifle.

emkelly.2371:

Choppy.4183
Sorry, but gunflame was broken as hell, rewarding bad players almost as much as good players in most cases. It needed a serious damage pinch, and the piercing combined with the spammability and explosion per hit were ridiculous.
The added dodge and immob to 4 were undeniable buffs. The dodge was a much needed defensive buff when facing anything but bots, and those concerned about lost time as the dodge executes were compensated with the immob, which is longer than the dodge and still gives enough time to get a gunflame off.
The warrior rifle is better now than it’s been for most of the existence of the game. And lb needed a direct damage buff to compensate to what was lost to power builds when burning was changed. The auto attack on the two weapons is almost the same now, once you factor in attack speed.

As usual I’m with choppy on this one, especially the part obout the dodge. Look, I suck at Rifle, just like i suck at greatsword, but one thing i know how to do is use an evade effectively. And with killshot (let alone gunflame because it’s even better] i can almost always land a hit by chaining it off of the evade. they get close, i evade and press killshot at the same time and by the time they know what i did it’s too late, i put distance between us and my killshot hits them a second later. I’m all for the nerf to rifle.

If you are looking at it solely for a pvp perspective, sure.
But the evade is practically useless and in some cases a detriment to even use in cases like pve or even in some wvw cases.
Stationed atop of a wall/cliff? Sucks you can’t use your 8 vuln stacks and immob without falling off. Also torment loves when you use it.
I’d have taken a much longer immobilize than a rollback.

I never really used gunflame all that much, but it had its issues. Still, the double whammy made it alot less desirable. But gunflame itself isn’t something that I would feel an overall rifle nerf deserves.

Talonblaze.3175:

If you are looking at it solely for a pvp perspective, sure.
But the evade is practically useless and in some cases a detriment to even use in cases like pve or even in some wvw cases.
Stationed atop of a wall/cliff? Sucks you can’t use your 8 vuln stacks and immob without falling off. Also torment loves when you use it.
I’d have taken a much longer immobilize than a rollback.

I never really used gunflame all that much, but it had its issues. Still, the double whammy made it alot less desirable. But gunflame itself isn’t something that I would feel an overall rifle nerf deserves.

Maybe it’s because I don’t play much pve, but what’s the situation with being stationed on a wall or cliff? I’ve heard it mentioned before and the image it conjures in my mind is being somewhere pinging away from relative safety, and probably in a group on some sort of larger scale event. Is that about right or have I got that wrong? And the concern is the evade would make you fall?

But I do have quite a lot of experience in wvw and you absolutely could use the skill from on top of a wall with little risk of falling. If the complaint is you can’t sit on top of the wall and then benefit from the full duration of the immob and vuln while shooting people down below, then I have zero sympathy, tbh. You’ve still got ks and gf, they still do a lot of damage, and you’ve already got a massive advantage due to the wall.

Step off that wall though and the rollback is suddenly a significant buff, unless you’re shooting from the back of a blob, in which case, I have the same lack of sympathy as when shooting from the wall. There should always be some sort of risk:reward calculation going on here, and the rifle’s risk has traditionally been too high for the reward when in an up close and personal fight, and way too low for the reward once HoT came out, particularly when shooting from a wall or the back of a big group.

That aside, the immob was added to the skill at the same time the rollback was. There’s never been a time when you could get the immob without the dodge, except when there was still the unintended jump bug.

I get that having rifle pierce would be awesome, but I also agree that as it stands now w/ only two skills piercing (volley and kill-shot) is fine.

My reasoning for keeping it the same is due to what it currently provides that hasn’t been discussed directly yet… when traited the Rifle gives a lot of adrenaline at range. The AA alone gives 3 per shot (trait + vuln), and when berserking I fill my adrenaline bar much faster than my traited gunflame can recharge. It’s certainly WAY faster than the bow.

Since the rifle is about “burst and volley,” if I miss my gunflame burst, I’ve got it ready to go again within the ~3 sec recharge. If I don’t want to use a second (or third, or fourth) gunflame, I can use two AAs then swap to my off-hand, and unload another burst… again, in under 3 sec.

So, the option being asked for is to revert Cracked Shot back to piercing instead of extra adrenaline (‘cause both is obviously OP)….
…my preference is to keep the adrenaline. I get piercing w/ Volley (and if I’m not berzerking Kill Shot), and a quickly filled adrenaline bar in and out of berserk. Yeah, I’m honestly really good with that.

(this is from a PvEer’s standpoint, of course)

~EW

I didn’t play warrior during BWE, but what happened to Gunflame? I’ve seen all manner of absurd crit reel videos of people absolutely deleting people out of existence with it, but now that I get to use it I’m finding that it is significantly less effective than KS, even with all the buffs for going berserk. Am I missing something here?

Loopgru.1026:

I didn’t play warrior during BWE, but what happened to Gunflame? I’ve seen all manner of absurd crit reel videos of people absolutely deleting people out of existence with it, but now that I get to use it I’m finding that it is significantly less effective than KS, even with all the buffs for going berserk. Am I missing something here?

They reduced the damage by 20% and removed pierce last month. So, basically, Gun Flame is your spammy high damage aoe shot, and Kill Shot is your less spammy even more high damage piercing shot.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-April-19-2016/first#post6122828

Tbh, I’d like to see something similar happen to Arc Divider and maybe Decapitate. I thought the original concept was to do just that (I even remember people complaining about the lower damage), but I got hit with a 16k Arc Divider in wvw the other day, so…..

emkelly.2371:

Choppy.4183
Sorry, but gunflame was broken as hell, rewarding bad players almost as much as good players in most cases. It needed a serious damage pinch, and the piercing combined with the spammability and explosion per hit were ridiculous.
The added dodge and immob to 4 were undeniable buffs. The dodge was a much needed defensive buff when facing anything but bots, and those concerned about lost time as the dodge executes were compensated with the immob, which is longer than the dodge and still gives enough time to get a gunflame off.
The warrior rifle is better now than it’s been for most of the existence of the game. And lb needed a direct damage buff to compensate to what was lost to power builds when burning was changed. The auto attack on the two weapons is almost the same now, once you factor in attack speed.

As usual I’m with choppy on this one, especially the part obout the dodge. Look, I suck at Rifle, just like i suck at greatsword, but one thing i know how to do is use an evade effectively. And with killshot (let alone gunflame because it’s even better] i can almost always land a hit by chaining it off of the evade. they get close, i evade and press killshot at the same time and by the time they know what i did it’s too late, i put distance between us and my killshot hits them a second later. I’m all for the nerf to rifle.

I’m with Choppy and Em,

I love rifle 4. The evade is great, the gap opener is amazing, and the imob makes it really feel worth it all since it truly allows you to kite and preposition for more rifle use (and forcing things out of the target). They never see it coming.

Rifle 2 makes for an easy way to apply vuln (nice opener), and the cripple is great for when chasing (so multiple use skill right there).

The whole thing just needs piercing so that you can always hit your target with whatever you need to.

Realistically, should any weapon pierce if rifle doesn’t?

Should a weapon’s abilities be adjusted by our skills and traits or enhanced by our skills and traits?

If you dont fix a weapons skills permanently, is actual balance ever reasonably attainable?

In a healthy, living game, there will always be things more powerful than another. Likewise, there will always be balance shifts, where something weak becomes strong and vice versa. A balance team is not actually looking for complete balance.

What confuses me is that I’m using a Rifle, i suppose it will pierce not do a splash damage. I think the balance team should look know the difference between a Shotgun, Grenade Launcher, Pistol and Rifle. A rifle that do splash doesnt fit.

XerMeLL.6042:

What confuses me is that I’m using a Rifle, i suppose it will pierce not do a splash damage. I think the balance team should look know the difference between a Shotgun, Grenade Launcher, Pistol and Rifle. A rifle that do splash doesnt fit.

Man, they have swords shooting fireballs in this game. I think the connection with realism is deliberately tenuous.

XerMeLL.6042:

What confuses me is that I’m using a Rifle, i suppose it will pierce not do a splash damage. I think the balance team should look know the difference between a Shotgun, Grenade Launcher, Pistol and Rifle. A rifle that do splash doesnt fit.

You can fire all 4 styles of those rounds through a rifled barrel. But, we don’t care about how things work in our world, we care about how things work in Tyria.