Guild Wars 2

From what I saw from the ReadyUp Warrior portion, there was not much love for the Rifle. In fact, I think the devs/designers forgot that Rifles are an actual weapon that Warriors use, funny considering they are only 1 of 2 classes that use the Rifle. They talked about the Hambow and Longbow buffs but Rifles were pretty much omitted. In fact, the only trait that really stood out for me is the old trait pretty much grandfathered into the new system.

As it currently stands, there isn’t any mode other than cheesy WvW builds that use the Rifle as the Longbow pretty much stays competitive with it. Arguably, the only niche Rifle has is superior single target damage, but Longbow isn’t that far off while also offering way more utility with a more versatile burst skill and a Blast finisher. With Longbow getting more consolidated traits like range + cooldowns + Burning on auto-attack, Rifle is pretty much untouched.

I’d like to see Rifle receiving a Grandmaster trait, something that would give it a clear defined role that not other warriors or even other classes could manage. A couple ideas I thought of is Kill Shot (burst skill) could down people under a certain threshold in the spirit of Executioner type moves like GS Burst, or insta-finish downed enemies (inspiration from Kudu, CoE Story Boss). A move with the name “Kill Shot” would be indicative of its purpose. Or maybe add the opposite effect of Destruction of the Empowered where you do more damage per condition the enemy has, in the spirit of Rifle being a weapon to finish off weakened enemies.

Or, change some of the functionality of Aimed Shot, Volley, and Brutal Shot (Rifle 2, 3, 4) to work with more traits. Aimed Shot currently works with Leg Specialist but not much else, Volley is a worse Ranger Machine Gun 2 and a more telegraphed Kill Shot (which already has a big tell), and Brutal Shot is just not a very interesting skill other than applying it before Kill Shot.

Only time rifle is used is ranged damage against a boss.
Pretty sure single target ranged is all it was meant to be.

Maybe make brutal shot do double damage against already vulnerable foes.
And then make kill shot do triple damage against downed foes.

• GM trait, Killshot gains a bounce. (still pierces before and after bounce). That way not only could you gain the chance of hitting two targets, you could also use it tactically by aiming for a pet, or swapping your focused target to throw off the timing off your actual targets dodge attempt (assuming you’re only faced with two targets and they’re close enough)

• Trait: Killshot and/or rifle skills deal more damage the closer the target is to you. Let’s face it, standing still for a killshot regularly lands someone all up in your grill.

• Forget leg specialist. Traited rifle turns the rifle 2’s cripple into an imob. You want more imobs on cripple, you take leg specialist.

• Interrupting with rifle 5 grants quickness. So a smart player would let someone get in close, interrupt an incoming attack, and immediately launch into a killshot which would guarantee a hit within the duration of the knockback (unless they stun broke etc). Currently the kshot flies at about the same rate it takes for the animation to end and the target to get back up. It’s a fine hairline of timing.

That’s straight off the top of my head. Probably plenty of other things you could do.

Rifle needs love. To compete with longbow, I have the feeling that it needs to change a bit. (Bring more utility to the table)

-Add 100% chance vulnerability on crit (2 stack 5 seconds) to crack shot (maybe not on auto)

-Change brutal shot into:
Quick maintenance Cast: 1/2 s Recharge: 30 s
Rapidly clean your rifle exhausting residual fumes and powders blinding nearby foes with a smoke cloud and making your next rifle skill deal 20% more damage.
Number of Targets: 5
Pulses: 2
Duration: 2s
Interval: 1s
Radius: 120
Combo Field: Smoke

With these changes, rifle could become an interesting ranged choice against longbow. I know a smoke field could be OP on warriors but the access is limited with the cooldown and Warriors could become a really interesting class with one more field (adding depth and combos) and for me, smoke feels like the only field fitting thematically.

I love to roll rifle,the thing is just unreliable as hell.Projectile/velocity increase is something i’d love to see added.

Rifle is just so bad compared to longbow. Once you factor in the burn and bleed the dps of rifle over lb is minimal at best. Add in blind, immobilization, massive fire field, blast finisher, and the auto attack is a double hit giving up twice the chance to proc bleed or vulnerability. LB is the far superior weapon.

I also don´t get this Rifle hate by ANet and the new system basically kills it, as it is paired with Warrior´s Sprint.

And let´s be honest, who will choose the rifle over the almost mandatory Warrior´s Sprint. Unless of course you have a frikken set of traveler runes.

I´m already a bit disappointed with the new system as I´m very happy with my Hammer/Rifle build. But I guess it will die and I will have to join the legion of LB Warriors too.

So much for build diversity.

Also I would suggest just adding a couple of bleeding stacks to rifle´s pierce trait.
You guys have nice ideas but I have a feeling the Devs are currently going out of their minds trying to rebalance the whole frikken game. Your stuff is just too much.

Get rid of the condition skills. All of them. Rifle should be pure DPS. Add some fury into one of the skills, make the 1-5 skills different in their execution (one shot fires so quickly it’s almost impossible to dodge, one fires rapidly, one bounces).

Lastly, give Kill Shot an ENORMOUS tell (like a cloud of smoke billowing up through the top of the rifle, or a huge laser sight being cast onto the target) and give it a ridiculous amount of damage. I’m talking instant KO on most targets. Rifle should be the weapon set version of Hundred Blades: high risk high reward.

When I fight a rifle warrior, I want to feel like he has a high powered sniper rifle aimed at my head, and if I don’t play the fight perfectly, I’m gonna get my brains blown out the back of my skull.

Donut.6914:

When I fight a rifle warrior, I want to feel like he has a high powered sniper rifle aimed at my head, and if I don’t play the fight perfectly, I’m gonna get my brains blown out the back of my skull.

I’d run reflect for the sole purpose of trolling rifle warrior.

Donut.6914:

Get rid of the condition skills. All of them. Rifle should be pure DPS. Add some fury into one of the skills, make the 1-5 skills different in their execution (one shot fires so quickly it’s almost impossible to dodge, one fires rapidly, one bounces).

Lastly, give Kill Shot an ENORMOUS tell (like a cloud of smoke billowing up through the top of the rifle, or a huge laser sight being cast onto the target) and give it a ridiculous amount of damage. I’m talking instant KO on most targets. Rifle should be the weapon set version of Hundred Blades: high risk high reward.

When I fight a rifle warrior, I want to feel like he has a high powered sniper rifle aimed at my head, and if I don’t play the fight perfectly, I’m gonna get my brains blown out the back of my skull.

This won’t help. It used to be like that, and in any larger fight people got instadowned by an attack they still couldn’t see coming.

Kill Shot
Fire a powerful shot. Critical Chance increases with adrenaline level. (10%, 15%, 20%)
15% more damage against foes under 50% health
30% more damage against foes under 25% health
Like other commented, fits with the name, and the high risk high reward concept, since it has a pretty obvious tell, long cast time and you are rooted.
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Fierce Shot
Fire a shot at your target, gaining bonus adrenaline per hit.
Chance to gain fury when hitting vulnerable foes (something along the lines of 33% chance for a 3s fury, could synergize with Kill Shot to have even better crit chance. Also remove the conditional ‘bonus adrenaline agasint vulnerable foes’, make it bonus at any hit)
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Aimed Shot
Fire a precise shot that cripples your foe.
Weakens vulnerable foes for 4s Not so much about the damage reduction, but more for the endurance regeneration; leave less room to dodge the Kill Shot
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Volley
Fire a volley of shots at your foe.
I… actually love this skill as it is, but, maybe add a baseline 5% more damage? Or make all 5 shots 100% projectile finishers? It does need a boost somewhere. Maybe add a stackable 10% critical chance per hit for the duration of the skill? Or a stackable 2% ferocity per hit for the duration of the skill?
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Brutal Shot
Shoot your foe and make them vulnerable.
Blind them for 3s when shot from the front.
Just another conditional effect. Often thought the skill icon was hinting at some blinding effect.
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Rifle Butt
Push your foe back with your rifle butt.
Gain 2s Quickness on Interrupt Optimizes the use of Kill Shot
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I understand aNet wants to push LB as the ranged condi weapon and Rifle as the ranged power weapon, but it really lacks in utility. Make the skills more conditional, so it keeps a healthy ‘high risk, high reward’ level.

new skills would be dope (I really like that smoke one), but rifles big problem is it’s lack of damage. I would slow the fire of the auto and dramatically increase the scalling. zerk warr should be able to hit at least 2k auto crits, LB ranger can and it’s the same style of weapon. sure, rifle can hit hard in WvW but that’s only because the stats are so inflated.

rifle is unpopular because it’s only good skill is killshot, none of the other abilities have enough damage or utility to be worth while. why have a long range single target power based weapon that does low damage?

As a full melee warrior (GS/Hammer) i was only carrying LB for the sole purpose of using
it against world (event) bosses who i’d rather not face up close while still doing decent damage.
But after putting some thought into it, i switched to rifle, and that only for 2 reasons :
- staying out of boss range
- looks pretty dam cool.

Seriously, if i really wanted to use a LB, then i’ll just play my ranger and spam the crap out of it. But seeing i’m mostly a melee warrior, and only use the backup weapon on (some) world bosses, i really don’t care about dps just as long as i’m not dying it’s all good.

Truth be told, the devs really neglected rifle and made it one of the worst weapons to use damage wise. A shame, considering there’s different great looking skins for those as well. Besides, it’s a great switch for when you’re tired of whacking things with your gs.

^^^^ Can say the same thing about Engi…If I wanted to use Rifle could just play engi. Except for Warrior LB is a lot stronger than Ranger LB if you know how to use it.

I’m currently running a longbow on my warrior because of the utility it provides. I rarely use it for what it’s meant for, which is supposed to be a ranged weapon. I do like the ideas posted here so far. If rifle had a bit more utility, I could see myself using it more. :\