Guild Wars 2

Hey, I’m coming from a guardian and I had rolled a warrior hoping for a character with viable ranged damage while still being able to apply ample support. I’m wondering whether a rifle damage/shouts warrior is viable in explorable dungeons or will I still be more useful running up and smashing things with my melee weapons?

Some encounters will force you to do ranged combat, the rifle is very viable depending on the encounter. However once you reach the high end settings you will do much better with a none glass cannon melee build. I usually melee most of the dungeons unless forced to range and then simply retire to range when I’m low on health waiting for my healing shouts/main heal to be available.

What I think he’s asking is if it’s possible to range and use shouts to support his team. I would say that playstyle is definitely possible but depends on the team makeup. IF people you run with are mostly range then you can support them by staying at range and near them to support them with shouts. There is a stigma with a squishy (though you might just be asking whether you can stay at range and support but you’re gonna build a tanky and support by using shouts – I’m just addressing the second post) range warrior (and though I personally don’t run this kind of thing – I can see that it would have situational uses and can do well and support a team under the right circumstances and team makeup)

Rifle is much better for PvE while Longbow is better for WvW. Warrior has great mobility with rifles; the only skill that roots you is your burst. I recommend carrying a rifle in every dungeon because many times there are just too many aoes to dodge or pbaoes that prevent you from meleeing.

Totally viable,

I run the following and have no problems in dungeons:

http://tinyurl.com/brswqts

Big numbers, survivability, mobility, Aoe, single-target; this build does it all.

You can get 15s bleeds off your rifle. That’s as long as a necromancer can make them. So, yes. Warrior can do ranged perfectly fine. So long as there isn’t more than one other condition-oriented player (read: bleeds) in your party for dungeons, you’ll be fine (this is to avoid the 25 bleed cap).

I consider the rifle to be my warrior’s main weapon and I do just fine in most situations. If I have to switch to melee I just keep a sword and shield on my weapon switch. No complaints yet!

The reason rifle is better in pve is that it apply dots. But that will only trully do it, if you go condition build.

Ive run full ranged setup with rifle / longbow and condition/zerkers and it works great, albeit the damage is much lower than melee.

Personally im now using the longbow as a sidekick, since the direct damage is much higher than rifle (without condition armor boost) and you also buff group and yourself with the aoe fire + arrow explosion which is not shabby at all (+3 might).

So for rifle, even if not on a condition build, is it better to make a berserker rifle (pow/prec/crit) or rampager rifle (pow/prec/cond)?

Rampager’s is better for rifle in PvE because the DPS of bleeding shot is not good, but it has a good duration bleed.

Berserker’s is only good for burst damage with volley and kill shot, but burst damage won’t help you much in dungeons.

Best sustained damage for rifle is from condition damage.

You do get the 10% extra damage though once it’s bleeding if you get the 25pt trait bonus in marksman, plus the vulnerability on #4 helping with direct damage. I forget now but is there also a % to cause vuln on crits in there somewhere? I used to stack vulnerability silly kinds of high with the rifle & On My Mark.

Never tested just how much damage you can get like that, but there’s always the PvP lobby if you wanted to be sure before investing in gear/runes.

@LameFox I’m pretty sure that 10% damage trait actually affects bleeding damage too because the 12% at full adren trait in strength does. You can see your bleeding ticks decrease in damage if you spend your adrenaline. So I think all the % damage increases work on bleeding.

That’s worth noting because it makes bleeding always the same amount more damage over time than the physical damage of the rifle over the same amount of time.

btw, I use the chance to cause vuln on crits because it really helps the party and there’s still significant physical DPS coming out of the rifle. Just not an amazing amount that would justify going for berserker’s gear or something like that.

Hm… I suppose I’d never notice ‘cause once it’s bleeding it would inherently be applied in that case. I’ll have to try it out sometime.

Well, I just tested this on a golem in the PvP lounge. At 23 in that trait line with whatever gear (it was consistent, so meh) the heavy golem took 54 bleed damage per tick. At 24 it still did 54 per tick (just to get an idea of this). At 25, with the unlock, it did 55 per tick.

So from the number at least it doesn’t look like it applies to itself. I guess it could have gone ever so slightly faster like when you stack it, but since bleeding isn’t in my combat log and 10% faster ticks is hard to judge visually, idk.

Been playing around and the build i settled with is:
http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.2.8.12.0.0.0.0.0.0.27.39.38.43.52.0.0.0.80.0.0.93.97.0.0.0.0.125.128.132.0.0.0.15.25.0.30.0

I’m running rampager’s gear with knight’s trinkets.
Rampager’s rifle with blood sigil
Berserker’s GS with strength sigil

The build relies heavily on crits and bleeds to do damage. Positioning is super important in order to try and line up as many mobs as you can in a line. Shouts/banners are for support and can be switched in and out depending on situation. I bring GS into groups to clear aoe mobs and for things like burrows/turrets that don’t take condition dmg. I might switch that out to Axe/warhorn or shield for a bit more control.

Somebody let me know what they thing of my build

I swear if you’re in my dungeon team and you backline with a rifle, I will personally have you kicked out and blocked so I don’t ever pug with you again, use melee for Dungeons it does more damage and hits all around.

You have the highest raw armour and raw HP, if thieves can go behind enemy lines, I dont see why you can’t go front line.

The rifle is your secondary OH kitten weapon like the bow is to many thieves.

^I don’t think said person would be missing much then.

LameFox.6349:

^I don’t think said person would be missing much then.

they can play badly on another pug for all i care, aint missing much here.

Well the way I see it, the damage may be a bit less than my GS, but it hasn’t caused me any problems running exp dungeons, mind you I haven’t checked arah but an arah exp video guide with a rifle war pov was what motivated me to do this in the first place so I’m sure its not a problem there either. However, just looking at raw numbers, the bleed stacks compensate a bit for lack of damage from the autoattack (but yes I agree, its still really low) but if you look at the 3 attack and the burst attack, both have higher damage than any other weapon we have other than hundred blades (although this is probably only due to the channeled time difference and the GS last hit which a lot of times you won’t be able to pull of cus you’re rooted and the mob has lost interest in you, or the boss is about to roflstomp your behind at which point I will be laughing because I just hit him with my full 5k dmg). Coupled with vulnerability, fury and might these two attacks hit like a truck.

As for your comment about melee hitting all round, the only melee weapons that hits for more mobs than me is the GS or hammer, which I will pull out for large aoe battles. The bullet piercing trait is invaluable to my build and with good positioning and melee classes that know how to bunch up mobs, I can hit anywhere between 2-5 mobs at once in a line, the same as any other melee weapon(other than GS and hammer as mentioned before).

Also, high health and armor does not mean you have to be be in front lines, it just means you’ve got a little bit more leeway before the boss rolfstomps you to death. Thieves can play on the front line because they have a plethora of evades/blinds/stealths so they’re perfectly fine in the front line. And its not that I can’t go into the front line, I choose to be in the back because I like the aesthetic of the rifle warrior and I’m bored of the stereotypical Conan the barbarian playstyle offered by melee warriors.

I don’t think you have given enough thought into saying that rifle warriors are bad. Please don’t use stereotypical class archetypes as an arguement because the game can successfully go against them (ie. d/d eles being just as amazing if not more so than staff eles) I am always open to criticism and will adjust accordingly, if you can give me a more thought out argument as to why rifle warriors are bad, then I will gladly make the switch back to melee.

im berserker axe/shield in almost every area except ofcoarse spvp. I use rifle on swap because i think swap should be a ranged weapon for when you cant melee. im thinking thats obvious i guess. But anyhow im not sad because my gear is beserkers while using a rifle. If you are a warrior and have a rifle or even the bow its because you were forced to range by a hard hitting sob foe. Sad fact of the warrior and pretty much this line holds across all classes and weapons is that melee generally does double the dmg ranged weapons do. From my observations and testing as i would prefer to do it all at range aswell !
Now thats not to say you cant do some serious dmg at a range but that generally comes from multiple sources/packets. With mainhand axe i can just auto attack the medium golem on spvp isle in 3-4 seconds. WIth mesmer gs to get under 5 sec golem kill i need to trait for 4 bounces on mirror blade so the golem is getting my auto attack and 3 hits from mirror blade in a short window. this works as sustained because mirror blade can be traited down to a 4.8 sec recharge.
Warriors dont have multiple sources of dmg external from themselves. Its the attack they are doing and bleed. Even if you could stack bleed kittendedly fast, which you can with rifle, you are not going to kill that golem much faster, if at all, because you are sacking one of the three: power/precision/crit dmg to pickup condition dmg. Someone do the numbers but since power and condition dmg follow same trait line you are going to have a minimal like say ~50 tic bleeds. If you stack for condition major you probably still wont touch much over 100tic bleeds since part of stacking bleeds with a rifle would be using an earth sigil which bleeds on crit. You are most likely better off going beserker and being satisfied with 50tic bleeds (still toss on an earth sigil to your rifle) and getting into melee you chicken kitten!

Yes, warriors at range are beastly, and can stack plenty of utility to go with the damage too, especially if built for it. Its a false expectation from playing other RPG’s that the warrior at ranged is less than.