Guild Wars 2

I have a 80 Mesmer and Guardian and while both are good, they lack something for me. For my next class, I am trying to do a long range specialist and trying to decide between necro (power well build), warrior or ele. My goal is to do good long distance damage, have good support and survivability. Literally jack of all trades. master of none. Necro staff is meh and the ground target wells are only 900 distance. Ele which I think is odd, doesn’t seem to have good ranged options as well, but seems more survivable (with cantrips) than does the warrior.

As to why I am posting here is because I love the concept of the longbow for warriors. It is honestly one of my favorite weapons, but is hard to make a main due to low single target damage. I thought about doing rifle/longbow, but at my level (42), the rifle seems to do less than any other weapon at my disposal.

I leveled using axe/mace and longbow and that seemed to do well, but the traits were clunky and I couldn’t get either decent support or survivability. Please understand that I am using terms like “good” and “decent”. It seems like it can be done and after searching these forums and using the build calculators until my eyes bleed, I think it is time to see if anyone else is running something like this or has any constructive feedback.

Goal: Decent long range DPS in WvW and PVE. Able to survive initial burst from classes and not be perma locked down. Able to contribute to a group with banners, shouts or whatever will work. Speed a plus.

Or do staff ele or staff necro? Thanks for your time.

Longbow is a bit misleading when you first look at it and its damage. Unlike other warrior weapons, a good chunk of it is from condition damage generated by combos. Longbow 1, 4, and 5 are are all projectile finishers. Longbow 3 is a blast finisher. The burst skill is a huge fire field. The basic playstyle is to drop the combo field, then use #3 in it to get 3 stacks of might (up to 5 allies) then shoot your projectile attacks through the field in order to stack burning on your target.

I play that style on my warrior and with “For Great Justice!” I can get burning to tick for 450-500. Build is 10/30/0/0/30. You get the +% damage and +% crit chance based on adrenaline level and then reduction in burst skill cost and increased adrenaline on critical hits. That allows you to use the longbow burst at level 3 pretty much every cooldown. Since Might increases both power and condition damage, having more sources of it helps this build. Note that calling down a banner is a blast finisher as well.

For other slot kills, it depends on the setting. Group PvE, you’d probably want to go with banners or shouts. In PvP, I use “Shake it Off!” and “Fear Me!”. The first is good as a short cooldown stun break, as well as removing cripple or huge stacks of bleed. The latter is used to survive melee burst or to stop revives and stomps or to just give you range to your opponent.

I use sword/shield as a secondary weapon. Sword 2 has great mobility, 3 is a cripple to get range for yourself, shield 4 stun is immensely useful, and 5 to stop damage when you’re not CC’ed. The sword burst skill isn’t half bad either once you get used to when to use it, since it does root you. Combined with soldier and knight gear with a little berserker jewelry, I have decent survivability and damage.

Here’s my current build, though I’m still iterating it a bit:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/warrior/?8.3|3.1c.h2|c.1c.h16.e.1c.h1j|1n.7d.1c.7d.1c.7d.1c.7d.1c.7d.1c.7d|41j.0.2s.0.3s.0.21j.0.31j.0.2s.0|a5.u53b.0.0.u5ac|0.0|5y.6b.69.68.6k|e

The downside is that you don’t have the huge spike like frenzy+100b, but you also don’t have to be in melee. I haven’t played ele or necro, so I can’t compare it. Staff necro in WvW tends to be heavier damage though in order to stack AoEs and melt people in large battles or in choke points.