Guild Wars 2

I’m level 80 and I’m running a Greatsword/Dual axe warrior with high power/crit%/crit damage.

I need a ranged weapon to swap to for PvE. given my stats, which would be a better choice? I’m thinking longbow because rifle damage is based somewhat off of bleeds right? I have no condition damage bonuses so using a rifle might be suboptimal (I THINK)

Depends on the situation.
If you need large AoE then LB all the way, else Rifle for single target by all means.

Try this with the longbow: initiate with F1 to create a flame field, then use #3 for an exploding arrow inside the flame field. It’ll give you a combo for 3 stacks of might to your whole team. Switch to your axes and use #5 to shoot fireballs everywhere.

I dunno if longbows are better than rifle for your build, but I know it’s fun using the combos.

Longbow’s primary attack is all physical, but it’s burst and 2 are condition.

Rifle’s autoattack is bleed, but the burst and 3 are heavy physical.

It’s so annoying.

For single target, if you are staying ranged, Rifle >

For events, untraited Longbow is way to go if you want to tag a lot. Although, the Piercing Trait for Rifle is highly underrated, and actually pretty kitten awesome for both tagging and massive damage.

I’m a rifle warrior, and at least for PvP it’s great. It’s also good for dungeons.

It isn’t very good for farming cursed shore and for regular PvE such as story missions, but it works pretty kitten well in WvW. I run a build where my armor is power/toughness/vitality with all runes of the infiltrator, my jewelery is all slated for power/precision/crit damage, and my slots are Endure Pain/Frenzy/Stomp/Signet of Rage.

It works pretty well. I can run around the map quickly with signet of rage, I rarely switch to melee in WvW because my rig just lags too much to be reliable with melee except in small skirmishes, and I have all sorts of control. For traits I can’t recall off the top of my head(I know for sure Crack Shot, the 1s Immobilize on cripple, and 12 percent damage/9 percent crit chance on full adrenaline, because I don’t use my burst skill, self-root = bad)

That way I have an immobilize with aimed shot, as well as throwing my axe in melee, then I have rifle butt and smash to keep people away from me. Runes of the infiltrator also make is so that if I’m about to die I stealth, which can buy you vital time to roll away or call for help from guildies.

Let me know what you guys think, it’s worked really well for me so far. Lots and lots of direct damage as well as survivability. All the control lets you do 1v1 out in the world pretty efficiently, and in a team at the skirmishing level it’s an excellent build for taking down enemies one by one and staying alive to dance on the bodies.

Polaritie.4851:

Longbow’s primary attack is all physical, but it’s burst and 2 are condition.

Rifle’s autoattack is bleed, but the burst and 3 are heavy physical.

It’s so annoying.

It’s very annoying. I think going physical will result to more DPS with Rifle and going condition will result with more DPS for long bow. But that leaves me with an auto-attack that’s a lot weaker than what I feel it should be.

Crinkles.3786:

It’ll give you a combo for 3 stacks of might to your whole team.

That’s a stretch. The area of effect is rather small. The combo is still great but you’ll probably only be helping out people who are meleeing.

I went Longbow/Rifle for quite a while, because I couldn’t decide. Lately I have been running Longbow/Greatsword, but I keep a rifle in my backpack and will probably switch several times.

Been traiting Arms so far but I’m at relatively low level, so I’m not going to dispense any actual advice…

or a full ranged spec with rifle/longbow for wvw

I run a GS/Rifle build with traits specced into “crack shot” and fast hands works really well for single target dmg but if several mobs are lined up then the pierce effect from crack shot will hit all mobs that are lined up with each other. If you pull off a volley shot when mobs are piled into a bunch it can yield some good numbers. If you Cycle GS/Rifle properly you can put out a ton of dmg. Rifles are awesome imo.

Get both, they’re situational and both are good. LB for dungeon trash/wvwvw defending/if in melee with boss, rifle for ranged single target bursts (bleeds are just an addition, main damage comes from direct)/wvwvw offense&single target focus. I’d suggest getting mystic rifle from forge (cheap mats and berserker stats + it looks really good), LB stats from mystic forge are awful for warriors imo, so you’re better off crafting that one.

I use LB in dungeons for quick AoE burst for burning down little trash&might/AoE heal buffing between my GS cd’s. If you’re looking to deal hard hitting ranged damage, I’d suggest traiting for your rifle and getting shouts grant adrenaline+burst skills cost less from discipline tree.