Guild Wars 2

Hello everybody.

I played this game ages ago and quit for quite some time but last month I picked it back up. I was overwhelmed with my old character from launch so I decided to start over with an engineer.

I quickly fell in love with the rifle skills and built around it but suddenly I logged on and all the traits got completely rehauled? I tried to make my old rifle build work but I just could not. I have no desire to play any of the kits as they’re all so clunky and frustrating.

I am considering rerolling a rifle warrior in light of all these changes and I’m wondering if you guys could offer some guidance on this. How well do they fare in comparison to post-update rifle engineer?

its the worst weapon warrior has available to them. damage is poor and utility is almost non existent

Well kitten. So I straight up can’t make a viable rifle build at all in this game? Thats incredibly disappointing.

you can make a killshot build for wvw but that’s really it. it’s still a gimmick build regardless.

Well that all depends on what you mean by viable. If your looking to do open world pve, anything is viable. When I was just starting out I ran gs+rifle. while doing map completion. It works well enough.

What game modes do you want a rifle warrior to work in? Also something to keep in mind, its possible some classes will gain rifle through an elite specialization in the coming months (I really hope thief).

CaptainBBQ.9045:

Well kitten. So I straight up can’t make a viable rifle build at all in this game? Thats incredibly disappointing.

Most classes have a weapon that’s useless in a gamemode/multiple gamemodes/many situations.

In the case of warrior, rifle is basically garbage in all gamemodes and hammer is awful in PvE yet really good in PvP and WvW.

thrag.9740:

Well that all depends on what you mean by viable. If your looking to do open world pve, anything is viable. When I was just starting out I ran gs+rifle. while doing map completion. It works well enough.

What game modes do you want a rifle warrior to work in? Also something to keep in mind, its possible some classes will gain rifle through an elite specialization in the coming months (I really hope thief).

Well I don’t really enjoy PvP however I haven’t tried level 80 PvE yet. I’m still working on my map completion, almost finished with that.

Purple Miku.7032:

Most classes have a weapon that’s useless in a gamemode/multiple gamemodes/many situations.

In the case of warrior, rifle is basically garbage in all gamemodes and hammer is awful in PvE yet really good in PvP and WvW.

With some weapons they may not be viable on some classes but they’re better on other classes. In the case of the rifle, only 2 classes can use them and after this new patch they’re garbage on both. Its more than just garbage on one class its trash in the whole game which upsets me.

Well if your looking to do dungeons then a rifle is not your go to weapon.

However, for open world stuff. Doing heart quests, etc. Rifle is fine, it is not going to be the fastest way to do things, but it has more going for it in pve than most people on these forums give it credit for. If your looking to enjoy open world bosses rifle is fine too.

Basically, if your just playing solo pve, rifle warrior is fine. It’s not like you won’t be able to kill things on the map. Just use your dodges, cripple enemies and straif, and use your knock back skill.

thrag.9740:

Well if your looking to do dungeons then a rifle is not your go to weapon.

I wouldn’t mind doing some dungeons. I don’t really need to be top tier dps so if its not too much worse would I be able to get by?

So basically, if you want to do dungeons on a warrior with a rifle, your going to need to make your own advertisement in the “looking for group” menu. This is easy, and you shouldn’t let it discourage you.

If you make an LFG such as “path 1, play how you want” under, lets say, the ascalonian catacombs folder, it will fill up quickly, and no one will be angry with you. Don’t join lfg’s that say “80s exp”, “80s fast”, “80s meta”, or “80s zerker”. Those groups will probably kick you. But if you make your own LFG for other players who just want to play in a fun style, you will be fine. It will not be the fastest dungeon clear.

This website has a lot of information about dungeons:
http://gw2dungeons.net/

Something I should clarify. By “it will not be the fastest dungeon clear”. You should know, a lot of dungeons are completed in under 20 minutes. A lower level dungeon, using the non optimized LFG I described above, will probably be done in under an hour.

Hmmm I might take a look at other alternatives. I know this is probably the wrong forum to be on for this question but what about melee elementalist? Like with conjured lava axes and lightning hammers?

well I don’t know much after yesterday’s patch. There were many eles who ran scepter/focus and lightning hammer in dungeons. Lava axe (to the best of my knowledge) is almost never used.

So I would assume lightning hammer is still viable, I haven’t heard about any nerfs to it.

Something to keep in mind, with the expansion pack heart of thorns, other classes may get rifle. In particular, a lot of thieves are hopping to get a rifle as an assassin style fighter.

thrag.9740:

Something to keep in mind, with the expansion pack heart of thorns, other classes may get rifle. In particular, a lot of thieves are hopping to get a rifle as an assassin style fighter.

Yeah I heard about that somewhere in map chat. It sounds pretty cool and the revenant seems like the “shaman-y” class that I was hoping GW2 would have but with my unemployed student life I can’t justify the pricetag of it so I’ll just be sticking with the base game.

im a casual and on the rare occasion im running dungeons if i see a rifle warrior i will ask them to swap or kick them from party. it just slows the group down and benefits no one.

i really wish rifle did damage, but its just crap. engineer rifle is awesome however, and our mortar, Egun and flamethrower are all rifles of sorts too. ive been jamming HGH and swapping between mortar and rifle, feel like i always got a gun for the job.

thief looks to be getting melee staff.

I would like rifle to be good so that I would have an excuse to make predator as it’s one of the coolest legendaries in my opinion.

Sadly if I made one I would never get to see it.

Purple Miku.7032:

I would like rifle to be good so that I would have an excuse to make predator as it’s one of the coolest legendaries in my opinion.

Sadly if I made one I would never get to see it.

Not arguing about PvE, but in regards of PvP and WvW, I think it’s a bit of a premature conclusion, biased by the sad history of the warrior rifle. I’ve yet to start experimenting, but I’ve been playing berserker warrior a lot since the patch, and found myself under quickness fairly often, thanks to Heightened Focus – I somehow wonder how the rifle could benefit from that (and possibly from other traits, like Signet Mastery).

I wouldn’t mind a reengineering of some of the rifle mechanics, though. And if we receive an offhand torch with a fire field, then I’d love some upgrade of the projectile finisher of Volley from 20% to 100%

choovanski.5462:

engineer rifle is awesome however, and our mortar, Egun and flamethrower are all rifles of sorts too. ive been jamming HGH and swapping between mortar and rifle, feel like i always got a gun for the job.

I do really like the engineer rifle skill set but the most recent trait overhaul absolute wrecked my rifle build. My damage output got blasted and a sizable chunk of the new traits do not benefit rifles at all. Part of what I liked about rifles was the fact that I wasn’t using a kit. All the kits feel frustrating and clunky (especially mortar, grenade, and bomb with their manual targeting). I experimented but I just couldn’t make my rifle work anymore, this whole update was a huge middle finger to us engies that don’t like kits.

i use a rifle for silverwaste personally.
with the new system, i use the discipline tree to capitalize on the weapon swapping to get might, adrenalin and clear condis on me,
Add to that the trait in the other trees that reduce burst cooldown, guarantee critical hit, makes burst skill refund adrenalin and give a 10 second 20% damage build and you get a build that can spam kill shot hardcore for great damage.

Im probably missing a few part of the build here but those are the key ones

Purple Miku.7032:

I would like rifle to be good so that I would have an excuse to make predator as it’s one of the coolest legendaries in my opinion.

Sadly if I made one I would never get to see it.

Hey, I’d really appreciate your input on this, because I never get why rifle is seen kitten bad, but I know your pretty knowledgeable in all things warrior haha.

1.) Bullets can pierce. So, for example, at copper champion rifle seems like the winner.

2.) If you bring crack shot and Leg specialist you have a hard cc on an 8 sec CD. Rifle seems a lot faster at stripping defiance than anything a bow can do.

3.) you can keep things nearly perma crippled, even bosses with a defiance bar. So it seems like rifle makes it easier to avoid damage.

4.) With crack shot you have perma 8 stacks of vulnerability. So it seems like in a group setting rifle could be the better weapon if your party isn’t capping vuln?

Sure here’s my response to each of your four things

1.) https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defeat_Mordremoth%27s_champion_
It is a misconception that ranging this boss is the efficient way to kill it, just as it is anywhere.

2.) If you bring leg specialist you lose empowered and minimally 2% damage loss as long as you’re readily using your elite, but probably higher around 4% or more if you’re near a lot of others. Stripping defiance is not the job of a warrior and if it is, using mace 5 is what you should be doing not rifle 5.

3.) You can also keep bosses crippled with bladetrail and throwing axe, but why does it matter? If you want to avoid damage then just dodge and if anything else is needed take sword offhand for block then. You don’t have to range bosses to avoid damage.

4.) If you want vuln then use mace 4 for a cleaved 10 vuln on 15 second cooldown. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Crushing_Blow

Taking a rifle in a party is pointless because you deal abysmal damage and provide nothing unique that other weapons can’t do better. I’m assuming you are talking about dungeons/fractals here because if you are talking about world boss zergs none of the people there are paying attention to anything that others are using either way but rather whether or not people are dead and not waypointing.

oh yeah, i think asked my question poorly. I am not saying rifle is good compared to melee weapons, and I pretty much always run the gs + axe/mace as a fast hands ps war.

I just mean that if you have to range, why does rifle get such a bad reputation compared to longbow? I know the bow is necessary for cleansing ire in pvp (i never pvp so thats the extent of my knowledge). But it seems like rifle is a solid choice for pve, if you insist on ranging something.

So here is an example. I am working my way up through fractals right now. I am only at level 16 though. When we fight the boss in the reactor fractal, it seems like people always range it. If I am going to range it, should I bring longbow or rifle? Should I bring fast hands and constantly be swapping?