Guild Wars 2

Hello!

I’ve had the game for a while, and just yesterday finally got my main to lvl 80 and beat the game. I’ve decided that next I will make a warrior. Since my last Ranger mainly uses the long-bow, I wanted to avoid using that again, and instead wanted to go with the rifle. Unfortunately, in my experience the rifle just sucks.

Is there any good way to use the rifle, or would I be better off using the standard greatsword-other greatsword that a lot of warriors use these days?

You’ll find that the warrior longbow is very different than the ranger one, and is very useful in pvp.

Rifle isn’t very useful outside of a few gimmick sniper builds in wvw.

http://intothemists.com/guides/4208-competitive_killshot

That’s what I run in PvP, but you’ll find that, in general, rifle is just inferior to longbow. Rifle is useless in WvW (single-target) and PvE (you stack at melee, so GS or axe is better anyway). Longbow is strong because you can swap to it, quickly pop out three incredibly useful skills, then swap back to your primary DPS weapon.

Hello,

The rifle is a single target weapon, with high damage, moderate soft/hard control, and no mobility, AoE nor support. In my experience, it’s one of the best dueling weapon of the warrior, and one of the worst for the other things

In regards of game contents:

• In WvW roaming, it’s not very interesting, because roamers need high mobility, and multi-targets skills (to take camps), not provided by the rifle,
• In WvW zerging, it can give you fun moments as a caster, especially when traited to pierce through blobs, but since it does not support your group/guild it’s not as efficient as other builds,
• In PvP, in the current (and only) conquest mode, it does not help much in contesting/keeping a point (only one bump and no AoE), nor roaming between nodes (no mobility, and does not benefit from the Warrior Sprint), so again is less interesting than other settings.

This is what I use for dueling in hotjoins – losing in 1v1 is quite rare once you know the rotations, but winning 1v2+ is pretty impossible.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAneUjMdUGaVIGewJagfgCZQ0CmDgCo6VuG5OA-TZBFwAOOCAk2fYxJAoaZAAPCAA

Have fun.

Well you can wipe everything from your memory you’ve read here so far, up to my post of course.

I run GS/Rifle both in PvP and WvW often (2,000 hours+ just on my warrior alone) and have a ton of fun with the build + blow up many targets very quickly (crack shot (impacts rifle 1-4), rifle 5, & sigil of fire are all multi-target abilities that can be put out by the rifle).

In formalized PvP, any good player should be able to kill a rifle warrior as long as they are simply paying attention (long animation for killshot, fairly long CD on rifle 5 (rifle butt), glass build, etc). That being said, I still run this build often in soloQ/teamQ and sit anywhere in the top few hundred or so using just this build.

In WvW, I drop people all the time with this build becuase it’s fairly easy to roll up on someone and get the 1500 range animation off without them noticing and I still have great roaming/positioning capabilities because of GS mobility.

Below are numerous highlights of this build and you can find the finer details of the build under my section on http://www.teamriot.org/builds.

Full broadcast from the other day (lots of kills):
http://www.twitch.tv/teamriottv/b/549141947

Some highlights:
http://www.twitch.tv/teamriottv/c/4597767
http://www.twitch.tv/teamriottv/c/4509887
http://www.twitch.tv/teamriottv/c/4097157
http://www.twitch.tv/teamriottv/c/3850640

Your killshot is more of a one-trick pony. I think mine is the closest you’re going to get to a tournament-viable build with rifle. I can win most 1v1s because of my stances (elementalists still give me trouble because of the sustain). If you want to see some gameplay of my build in action, watch the Obeesports vs Team Teamwork matches from the first Tournament of Legends.

I roll docMeds build in wvw (KS’d him with it more than once xD) you gotta be very comfortable running a glass cannon. But if you have to chops to handle it, its a blast!

Oh and he has KS’d me at least as many times as I have him.

"Rifle is useless in WvW". K, lol.

Lurock Turoth.9085:

I roll docMeds build in wvw (KS’d him with it more than once xD) you gotta be very comfortable running a glass cannon. But if you have to chops to handle it, its a blast!

Oh and he has KS’d me at least as many times as I have him.

Power is just so much more fun than any type of meta-sustain warrior/stance build amirite?

The rifle pierce is blocked by a single block. With how prevalent guardians are in WvW, that’s a lot.

Signet of might…that is all.

OlrunTheBlade.1486:

The rifle pierce is blocked by a single block. With how prevalent guardians are in WvW, that’s a lot.

It’s funny you mention that, ‘cause literally one of the highlight videos I provided is me killshot’ing a guardian both through his aegis & wall of reflection:

http://www.twitch.tv/teamriottv/c/3850640

Dear doc; This is EXACTLY what Ive been looking for in a build. Thank you so much!

Hey Shotzo I’m glad you found it useful.

problem with rifle in zergs is that it’s very selfish and doesn’t play (imho) to the full strenght of what a warrior can do in a melee train rather than being on the edge of the fight (a position MUCH better filled by necro and elementalists).

that said, don’t believe those that say it’s bad because it is truly effective while roaming. In your general GS/rifle setup the rifle makes for an amazing switch, it’s a great weapon to chase or finish off targets that try to kite or range you and it’s a lot easier to land your “shots” compared to bow (which has slower porjectiles and shorter range, also rifle has an easy-to-land cripple to prevent people from running while bow skill 5 is so easily dodged it’s a joke)

also never underestimate the power of CHANNELED skills (rifle 3 and f1), in a stealth heavy environment such as wvw roaming warrior’s rifle is the best way to finish off mesmers or thieves, just open with GS burst, as they reach 50% (which could be as easy as bull rush + 100b even if they manage to avoid half) they will try to disengage: swap weapon and fire rifle 3, bang, dead thief. That alone would make rifle a good roaming weapon as it’s basically anti-meta.

Personally run a similar….ish build to the one by docMed.

http://bit.ly/1rFLHib

6/2/0/0/6 – Burst Precision ( 100% crit with bursts ) and Burst Mastery ( more damage, less cost )

Absolutely love this build, often swap out the stance for berserker, endure or balanced depending on how kittenty a day I’ve been having, and the signet alternates between Might when in a party for the picking people off, or Fury for when I need to quickly chain F1s.

Hammer is a great on-swap weapon as a punisher for enemies dodging your killshot.

Miss kill shot → Earthshaker, knock ’em around a bit with hammer, back into rifle – it basically acts as a safety net for missed killshots, while being able to keep near permanent uptime of adrenaline ( enough to f1 pretty much whenever you want in combat with either weapon ).

As for the elite, signet when roaming alone, banner when with a party.

Build works very nicely, the control you have through your hammer stun/knockback/knockdown, rifle knockback and kick is ridiculous, and can seriously mess people up that aren’t using stab to res their allies etc.

Works just as well in spvp, but I take either zerker or balanced stance depending on team.

Give it a try, high crit damage and guaranteed crits when they land mean you can build a little more defensively if you really wanted to ( gear wise ).