Guild Wars 2

For the past two weeks, i have been playing nothing but builds of rifle warrior. I have been able to achieve rank 312 on the leaderboard and a lot of that is due to extraordinary luck facing somewhat bad players.

But thats the thing about rifle. It crushes bad players. In fact, among other incidents, i once had someone say “i fear the rifle” as i was critting him for 12k consistently.

This rampage of ownage comes to an end every time i reach the 52% winrate mark. Aside from 5 man pre-mades, the general cancer builds+the ability to dodge correctly put my rifle out of business fast.

With any number of the current meta builds the damage of the rifle becomes quite irrelevant. Even if i can land four killshots in a single fight, it often wont matter. In a 1v1 situation the common ele/engi/guardian is able to recuperate insanely fast while dishing out damage at the same time. damage which i simply cannot handle due to my investments in traits which make rifle worthwhile.

In other words, without traits like burst mastery and crack shot, rifle can often feel like a napkin cannon. Its autoattack with mediocre power attributes does about 200dps and only gains adrenaline if your opponent has vulnerability.

In an attempt to take advantage of vulnerability i switched from great-sword to axe/shield which allows me to stack about 13 vulnerability onto whoever i’m fighting. Truth is 13 vulnerability stacks are usually cleaned off in most cases before i can even shoot a single auto attack. As ignorant as it sounds, the rifle auto attack is a weaker auto attack than any other weapon in the game can provide+its range is very limited.

Kill shot, along with other rifle skills, suffer an unacceptable plethora of obstructed shots. Sometimes even a a slight, barely noticeable elevation in terrain can cause a shot to be obstructed. In other cases, i think it actually just bugs out- i sometimes even noticed that trying to shoot through a turret (with crack shot enabled) would cause the shot to be obstructed. Thats a really big deal when you just channeled 6-10k dmg and all your adrenaline into a single shot.

Rifle butt is a great skill but its likely the hardest skill to land that i’ve used thus far in guild wars 2. You’re enemy has to be practically standing still right in front of you or this skill usually misses, its rangebox or whatever you want to call it is likely even less than that of a dagger.

Some final points…

MY best success came from using gs/rifle as well as axe/s+rifle as the bursts offer significant dmg increase. The severe problem, however, is that you can mostly only deal raw dmg. Meaning that you have almost no ability to stun or interrupt anyone. Thats right, people can actually ignore you as long as they dodge your killshot. I experenced this when i lost a game where i simply couldn’t do anything to the 2 players attacking my lord other than cause dmg which simply was not enough.

In conclusion….

I found that most other ranged options can deal the same net dmg as rifle with far more reliability over say- a 10 second period. I originally was under the impression that a killshot had the strongest stopping power, until i ran into some burst ele’s and guardians which deal IMMENSE damage without sacrificing nearly as much sustain.

The rifle, in its current state, has no use in conquest and as much as it pains me to say it, your teammates do have a right to bash you if they see you using it. That is all.

Rifle’s like okay right now. But okay isn’t enough. I think Mace is borderline OP when you’re good with it just because it’s so well-designed. It’s balanced right now because it can be hard to play under certain circumstances.

http://www.twitch.tv/blacktruth009/c/6269321

http://www.twitch.tv/blacktruth009/c/6259903

For reference.

If Rifle could do something of equal caliber that would be great. They probably could make “crack shot” a built-in thing so you don’t have to trait for Rifle. That would be a big buff but that would make Rifle have a place without making it broken.

BlackTruth.6813:

Rifle’s like okay right now. But okay isn’t enough. I think Mace is borderline OP when you’re good with it just because it’s so well-designed. It’s balanced right now because it can be hard to play under certain circumstances.

http://www.twitch.tv/blacktruth009/c/6269321

http://www.twitch.tv/blacktruth009/c/6259903

For reference.

If Rifle could do something of equal caliber that would be great. They probably could make “crack shot” a built-in thing so you don’t have to trait for Rifle. That would be a big buff but that would make Rifle have a place without making it broken.

Sometimes i feel like we are playing a different game. But i digress, ill admit- rifle is more than okay if you go on a losing streak and need to carry your noob team out of the noob bracket. Against less intelligent foes i’d say i can rack up about 15 kills in a single match with rifle. In contrast, the moment i’m facing opponents with skill i’m lucky if i score 2 kills.

This is also taking into consideration that i became fluent in using my hotkey’s, using a proper rotation, finding a good position, and knowing when to fight and when to run.

I pitty the noob who uses the rifle in comparison, who’s likely going to get stomped harder than a level 1 worm in queensdale.

" i sometimes even noticed that trying to shoot through a turret (with crack shot enabled) would cause the shot to be obstructed. "

Every target that comes infront of your los will be hit instead.For E.g when you just press killshot aimed at a necro,a guardian walks infront of your los with aegis up.your killshot will be blocked by him,eventhough you aimed at the nec.
Other then that random terrain obstructs do happen far too much,and it’s pretty painfull to see it happen on a burst skill.

Caedmon.6798:

" i sometimes even noticed that trying to shoot through a turret (with crack shot enabled) would cause the shot to be obstructed. "

Every target that comes infront of your los will be hit instead.For E.g when you just press killshot aimed at a necro,a guardian walks infront of your los with aegis up.your killshot will be blocked by him,eventhough you aimed at the nec.
Other then that random terrain obstructs do happen far too much,and it’s pretty painfull to see it happen on a burst skill.

With Crack Shot, the shot should pierce the turret and hit its target and anything behind it. The block is a different matter, the shot got blocked, it hit the aegis and shattered. It’s when it just refuses to pass through the target that it becomes a bug and not a mechanic.

Also, have any of you noticed that Volley and Brutal shot LOVE to cancel themselves if the target moves even a little bit to the side. This will happen even if you remain stationary. Kill Shot will allow you to do a full 180 degree turn if the target teleports or moves behind you. I don’t know if this is intended, but it makes the weapon awful vs anyone that knows this fact. Just walk past the rifle user and the most damaging skill is useless.

Rifle on Warrior is something that seems fun…but is actually pretty boring imo. Rifle on Engi is much more interesting, you got a net, a cone AoE, a powerful CC that also has a big downside, and a fun skillshot that also hits hard. In contrast Warrior gets a shot that cripples, a bunch of shots, a shot with a bit of a charge that gives a easily cleansed condi, and one cool skill in rifle butt. Personally, I would enjoy it if more skills on War rifle were aimed abilities. For example, Maybe make Volley a long, thin aimed cone AoE. It would be different from Blunderbuss in that the end of the cone would be where the most hits land. If the cone was a range of 400 there would be some cool synergy with Rifle Butt. Brutal Shot could be a long, straight rectangle divided into 3 sections. The section in the middle would deal bonus damage.

Kill Shot is tricky, part of me thinks it’s OK as it is now, the other part would like it to be a tiny line skill shot with a smaller channel time. That sort of thing might either make the skill too hard or too easy.

Before you say anything, yes I know we’ll never get these kind of changes. I just think it would be nice to have the rifle be more skill based.

>.> even though its not viable its still fun to roll around pvp with a rifle. there a trait you can take that gives you might everytime your blocked which helps

but your right, they need to put bleed back on the rifle to help put the Fle back in riFle

but there seems to be alot of intrest in rifle build this days………-goes back to creeping on the forums-

I really love playing rifle… It just needs a little more oomph.

The rifle should have double projectile speed like Ranger’s read the wind by default at all times. This would balance the weapon.