Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone!

I’m quite new to the warrior and I can’t decide if I should take a rifle or a bow. I allways hear “rifle is better” but lately I’ve seen many warriors using a bow.

So … is it situational or are some ppl just … different

greez! ^^ & discuss!

When I first rolled my warrior I liked rifle. It hit pretty hard. But playing more I realize that LB just offers more. It’s got our only combo field for one. And a blast finisher. Also, Pin Down is amazing. You can take LB with literally any other weapon set and it will be a great supporting weapon.

Although rifle has the best single target dps. Longbow is better because of the large aoe fire field & blast skills but the auto-attack on bows suck badly.

where are you playing?

if we’re talking PvE dungeons then there’s very few situations where you need a ranged weapon and in such cases the rifle is strictly better than the bow (only a handful of bosses and items need to be ranged down and rifle>bow for single target ranged dps, especially if you are on zerker gear, which you should pve-wise). the fire field doesn’t make up for the all-round crap dps the bow has and the fact that to use it you’re probably giving up berserker’s power 15% damage bonus to use it (possibly also 15% critical chanche).

if we’re talking PvP instaed the bow offers you a lot more, especially the way it interacts with cleansing ire. rifle here has it’s uses but it’s a lot more of a gimmick choiche.

Tl:Dr: PvE->Rifle, PvP->Bow

You should always use bow instead of rifle for PvE. Better support, fire field for might stacks and pin down>than single target dps from rifle. You rarely need ranged and even of you do need it, its just for temporary and go back melee asap. With a warrior it’s very easy to melee and more forgiving so try to avoid ranged.

nice, the bow has a fire field. too bad it costs you all your adrenaline which at the very least should give you 15% extra damage. i’m sure all those might stack you are going to get from it will make up for the loss. few classes carry blasts at the ready, it’s mostly elementalists or engineers really… and they have no need for your fire field (and when do you ever see engi in dungeons?)

also, sure, fire field is neat… and so is 8 vulnerability stack from rifle i hear. besides, pin down only really hurts lots if you have lots of condition damage and you are not going to in zerker gear.

30/25/0/0/15 could benefit from it somewhat due to some condition from traitlines and +50% bleed duration trait that could be swapped in but you could also use the same trait to slot in -20%cdr for rifle skills. If you run 30/x/x/x/30 bow has just no redeeming qualities.

finally, when do you ever NEED a ranged weapon? not many places really, i can only think of dredge p3, some bosses in HotW that are nasty to melee, possibly ascalonian fractal boss and dredge fractal boss.

out of this 5 or so instances where a ranged weapon is nice to have 1 is an object and takes no bleed and the other needs to be kited continously (so fire field is useless and pin down possibly harmful) and that take a LOT of extra damage… but no extra condition damage as far as i recall.

PvE bow is just bad, seriously. (not that rifle is “good”, but it’s better)

i’d say bow though i mostly pvp (where it is a thousand times better)
when i was levelling i just loved the aoe of the bow

adozu.6398:

nice, the bow has a fire field. too bad it costs you all your adrenaline which at the very least should give you 15% extra damage. i’m sure all those might stack you are going to get from it will make up for the loss. few classes carry blasts at the ready, it’s mostly elementalists or engineers really… and they have no need for your fire field (and when do you ever see engi in dungeons?)

also, sure, fire field is neat… and so is 8 vulnerability stack from rifle i hear. besides, pin down only really hurts lots if you have lots of condition damage and you are not going to in zerker gear.

30/25/0/0/15 could benefit from it somewhat due to some condition from traitlines and +50% bleed duration trait that could be swapped in but you could also use the same trait to slot in -20%cdr for rifle skills. If you run 30/x/x/x/30 bow has just no redeeming qualities.

finally, when do you ever NEED a ranged weapon? not many places really, i can only think of dredge p3, some bosses in HotW that are nasty to melee, possibly ascalonian fractal boss and dredge fractal boss.

out of this 5 or so instances where a ranged weapon is nice to have 1 is an object and takes no bleed and the other needs to be kited continously (so fire field is useless and pin down possibly harmful) and that take a LOT of extra damage… but no extra condition damage as far as i recall.

PvE bow is just bad, seriously. (not that rifle is “good”, but it’s better)

Not true, you don’t use ranged all the time. Dredge fractal boss also, you pin down the boss and then melee most of the time, range is for luring or for a break and buffing, not damaging, you deal damage with melee not ranged. And fractal Archdiviner also if you are playing with pugs and you cannot keep melee range all the time, you pin him down (he cannot jump smash) and kite him melee, you don’t even need to dodge as for ascalonian boss you don’t need any ranged, just for the oils at dulfy thats all.

Oh and every class has blast finishers, banners are always around, you can pick it up and use #5, might stacks 10+ is guaranteed which is better then rifles couple of vuls., 2 warriors can easily upkeep 20+ vuls. so it’s not needed.

In the end you need ranged just for a couple of secs so it’s better used for utility than a low dps.

For berserker warriors longbow does more damage than rifle, and skill 3 hits for a lot of damage. Plus the fire field is great if your group is a bit more organized in order to blast it.

I’m talking about the flame and frost guys, or fire shaman and all that stuff you somethimes don’t want to touch. So rifle it seems eh?

For flame and frost guys bow + melee, for fire shaman also, fire field works wonders on the elemental grubs, also range + melee combo (I mostly melee this boss).

well, it comes down to playstile. for example i prefer staying on rifle on dredge fractal boss because it’s easier to keep moving it from a spot to the next while instaed i equip no ranged weapons on flame and frost bosses. appearently other posters just do it differently.

try both, see what suits you, there’s good arguments pro and con both weapons i guess. just never use any ranged if melee is an option.

While I agree that longbow has far more utility than rifle, those of you claiming that longbow does more damage couldn’t be more wrong. Rifle AA hits for ~1500 per attack while LB hits for ~600 per projectile on a full exotic berserker (for explanation purposes). The rifle autoattack is also quicker than longbow and the projectiles fly much faster, which means that they can’t be sidestepped. Rifle 3 does ~9k on average while the longbow Arcing shot does roughly the same. The real difference lies in the burst skills. Longbow’s Smoldering Arrow is a slow moving projectile with a 1200 range which creates a 900-radius fire field on impact, and does moderate damage (~1k per tick post-nerf, plus burning damage), while the rifle burst can do up to 25k on the glossiest of targets, while averaging on 15k.

I feel that when I’m building with rifle in mind, it’s going to be the focus of my build and my primary weapon to use, while longbow is more a secondary weapon to swap to for kiting and escape punishing, but seldom finishes a foe off. I do have Kudzu, so I’m in no way biased against the longbow. Overall it’s a better weapon IMO, but rifle definitely has it’s niche. One thing to note is that after having played a rifle burst warrior for fun, I’ve discovered that the channeled bursts (Rapid Fire and Killshot) are extremely effective in taking down thieves due to channeled skills continuing to follow them in stealth. As long as you’ve got a Condi clear to remove blind/weakness, you should have no issues taking down thieves as a rifle burst warrior in group play. I call this roll the Thief Stopper. Every organized group should have one to save time and, after a while, all but the stupidest of thieves will avoid engaging your group.

Choose what you want, really. It’s all in preference and I personally am constantly swapping builds to fit the bill for how I’m playing. Just remember that you aren’t stuck to a single build for the duration of GW2, and it’s highly possible that you’ll have a lot of builds to swap between! In no way are rifle and longbow mutually exclusive to your experience as a warrior.

~600 per projectile x 2 projectiles = 1200 damage and I often see ~700 × 2 = 1400 damage from longbow AA.

For PvE and tagging mobs in Lion’s Arch event for example, Longbow is the best way to do that for a warrior. However, Guardian is hands-down the best for tagging mobs just by using their AA on their lootstick staff.

For WvW I run both a Rifle/GS and Longbow/GS builds and in most cases the Longbow build is better. The F1/#3 combo can often insta-down your enemy.