Guild Wars 2

Kind of a warrior noob here, so forgive me if I’m asking a dumb question. But it seems like Longbow deals about as much direct damage as the rifle, with tons of conditions and utility on top of it. Is there something I’m missing?

In PVE, rifle can be more useful than LB due to higher dps in general, especially against bosses that are hard to fight melee.

In WvW, there’s a niche zerk build featuring GS/Rifle, that is quite good in roaming, giving nice range pressure and surprised f1 to kill unaware foes.

Toxsa.2701:

In PVE, rifle can be more useful than LB due to higher dps in general, especially against bosses that are hard to fight melee.

This is not true, rifle has lower DPS than longbow even with the crack shot trait. The autoattack of rifle when compared to longbow is lower DPS and volley doesn’t catch up because longbow also has arcing arrow and applies burning + bleeds.

Additionally longbow has a fire field and a blast finisher, but rifle does not.

While in PvE warrior has really bad ranged options, if you have to pick between the two then longbow is always better… both utility and damage-wise.

Will rifle have better DPS after the change to berserker’s power?

Kagamiku.9731:

Will rifle have better DPS after the change to berserker’s power?

Combustive Shot does about as much damage as 3/4ths an Eviscerate in Berserker gear. Eviscerate does about 8% less than a killshot, and killshot has the very long cast time, and isn’t AoE. It’s still not likely that Longbow will be beaten, especially in AoE.

In large zergs, where conditions are irrelevant and you’re only fighting one opponent, rifle could pull ahead since Longbow loses that advantage. A significant part of the Combustive Shot damage is from burning, and a not insignificant amount of longbow damage is from #2 and #5.

That scenario is pretty specific, and the difference between the DPS of each weapon is actually irrelevant though. You could argue rifle > longbow since you can do more dps while afk eating a hotpocket, since that’s the kind of player who would bring a ranged weapon to a world boss as a warrior anyway.

Baiting dodges. How? F1, Volley, fire/air, and it’s safe because 1200 range though you have no mobility but that’s kinda fine.

Oh, and it has advantage in open world.

I Rifle Sw/WH in PvP as roaming DPS role. Very effective if you know what you’re doing and a lot of fun :D

Would like to add, when I meant baiting dodges, I meant look at the cool down of Kill Shot compared to Pin Down and then counting stow weapon mind games. I would say Rifle procs fire/air better too because the projectile speed just feels reliable on a zerker build. This is ALL based on my views on a zerker build btw.

I don’t believe Long Bow is better than Rifle as Zerker.

Lets put it this way :

I carry GS/hammer/LB and Rifle on my toon at all times. There are times when i need a ranged weapon, some bosses like Golem MK2 i don’t like to melee, so i can either use the LB or the rifle. If i just want to take out simple mobs ranged 1v1 i use the rifle, if i need more “pow” to it, i can use LB.
In terms of pure dmg calculations, then yes, the LB is better esp because of the burn & bleeds, but if you want to have some fun or just run around killing easier mobs (lower lvl zones) , then the rifle is an option you have.
And as was said above, rifle is an option to put some ranged pressure in WvW roaming.

I really don’t care much about all those dmg calculations, although i am aware of em, but i do like to keep my options open according to the situation. Besides, some rifles look kinda bad..s

Yeah rifle, like axe are better at sub 3 bar adrenaline usage. People rag on burst precision because they use burst skills at level 3.

A level 1 kill-shot and a level 3 do very similar damage, take burst precision for auto crits and spam it on cooldown.

Combustive shot isn’t worthwhile to use under 3 bars generally.

BlackTruth.6813:

I don’t believe Long Bow is better than Rifle as Zerker.

Of course you don’t. You generally have a completely reversed view of reality as it is.

Sthenith.5196:

Lets put it this way :

I carry GS/hammer/LB and Rifle on my toon at all times. There are times when i need a ranged weapon, some bosses like Golem MK2 i don’t like to melee, so i can either use the LB or the rifle. If i just want to take out simple mobs ranged 1v1 i use the rifle, if i need more “pow” to it, i can use LB.
In terms of pure dmg calculations, then yes, the LB is better esp because of the burn & bleeds, but if you want to have some fun or just run around killing easier mobs (lower lvl zones) , then the rifle is an option you have.
And as was said above, rifle is an option to put some ranged pressure in WvW roaming.

I really don’t care much about all those dmg calculations, although i am aware of em, but i do like to keep my options open according to the situation. Besides, some rifles look kinda bad..s

In summary, you don’t care about objective reality and just choose what is fun because lol.

In summary, you don’t care about objective reality and just choose what is fun because lol.

Isn’t that the whole idea behind a game ?

The basic assumption is that you make your character as strong as possible, meaning you will try to get the ‘best’ gear and weapon(s) possible. This depends oc on what kind of character you want to play and what playstyle you have.

You might want to be a tank, or a dmg dealer or even somekind of healer (depending on class), but the fact remains that you want the best combination you can get.

After that, you will take care of a certain ‘look’, hence the popularity of skins, and you will try out other things because that is what makes a game “fun”.

Every weapon out there has some kind of ‘niche’ depending on the class you play, some like focus, some like staves, some bows and some just melee weapons. But when the dust settles, you will have built yourself a character that is fun to play with whatever setup/traitsystem and gearset you choose.

I play a pure zerk ranger that is a dmg dealer, LB/GS style, but she carries other weapons or combinations like sword/axe/WH as well because diff zones or instances require diff approaches, just like her pets. The same goes for my thief and the same for my warrior, who ultimately, i all play for FUN.

And believe me, putting on a rifle in the ‘countryside’ taking out mobs left & right, where not having maximum dmg isn’t an issue, is quite fun to do and a nice change of pace.

The basic fact remains : you have the option to play how you like it, otherwise we’d all be running around in zerk gear looking the same way and using the same weapon.
Oooh…that is so awesome…. and bland.

“Is Rifle better than Longbow at anything?”

Anything? Yes. It’s subjective, but I think several Rifle skins look much better than Longbow skins. Many of the longbow skins look boring, strange or just unappealing to me.

But as for gameplay and such, I run Longbow since I find it a better weapon than rifle for my preferred style of play.

yes. I am talking from a pve perspective here.

People always bring up utility. If your using ranged, then your probably fighting a boss, ie your actually worried about stripping defiance, as a coordinated strip followed by your groups longest lasting cc is gonna be more useful than your , your goal is to do as many cc’s as possible but not to be the one who’s cc actually gets through. Compare the cd of rifle 5 to lb 5. rifle gets you a lot more cc. Additionally, since warrior sprint isn’t going to help you, and neither is fast hands, you can always put 2 points into tactics and get leg specialist, turning rifle 2 into a cc, if your a dps warrior. If your a ps/ea warrior you can just give up inspiring banners/empower, not that bad a trade for a cc on 10 sec cd cc.

Additionally, rifle gives you nearly permanent 8 stacks of vulnerability when you bring crack shot. So, if your group is gonna be vulnerability deficient you should consider that.

Lets talk dps. Your dps on a boss is 0 if his ads are gona soak up all your attacks. So, for example, if your trying to do damage to copper boss in silverwastes, your arrows aren’t going to reach the boss a lot of the time. But piercing bullets will. Additionally, if your fighting many enemies who you wish to hit, piercing bullets will be a big deal in terms of total dps. And don’t forget, your vulnerability will go on all the targets you pierce. Of course, the bow also has aoes, at the expense of berserker’s power possibly.

So yeah, there are advantages to the rifle, there are also advantages to the bow. But, in reality, if your using ranged, just bring both + fast hands. Melee + ranged hybrids are not that great in pve. Gs + axe/mace has 6 attacks you could easily use from outside melee range when trying heal: axe 3, mace 5, gs 3, gs 4, gs5+dodge to get out, axe f1. If your looking to get some breathing room to heal a ranged weapon isn’t all that necessary.

However, if you insist on being one of those people who bring 1 melee weapon and 1 ranged weapon into a group fight I think rifle is better. You can at least use rifle 4 at the very beginning then switch to camping gs.