Showing Posts For Candlemaster.3986:
Since ranger’s greatsword is inherently a defensive weapon, how would a ranger’s greatsword survivability compare to a guardian’s greatsword survivability?
I looked into my tests against the heavy golem and found the reason why guardian’s dps was so poor – I hadn’t considered amulets. So, while my ranger had a nice default amulet that gave something like 700 power, my guardian’s default was nothing but toughness, vitality, and healing. Once I gave them both berserker, the dps was much closer to even. With this, it feels as if the practical sustained dps of all 3 melee greatsword classes are about even (I didn’t have a stopwatch to test anything out unfortunately). With ranger, the bulk of the dps comes from Maul and it’s bleed, so having the 20% cooldown reduction is very important, but with guardian it’s more from auto-attack, leaving more leeway in traits if you don’t use 2-5 as often. Most of warrior’s gs dps is from hundred blades, which pins you to the ground, never works in pvp, and makes you a sitting duck in pve, so you can’t really rely on it in my experience.
So, if we assume that guardian and ranger are capable of about even dps using greatsword (which is what it feels like, but I don’t have concrete numbers to back up), then the question of which is better falls on the other features inherent to the classes. A good portion of that gs dps from ranger comes from our pet. Pets are handy when used right, but let’s be honest, they’re dead way too often to really be reliable. When I’m fighting ettins, or anything else with a noticable aoe, it only takes 2 or 3 hits until my bird is down (I use bird for aesthetic reasons, not because it’s the best choice). Once one pet goes down I hit f4 to bring out my other one, but it’s not long before they’re down too, and then i have to wait on a fairly significant cooldown before I can use any pet again. This is really detrimental to a class/build that relies on the pet so much. Is it worth taking traits and choosing pets carefully to ensure they’re more competant and survivable, at the cost of my own performance? Is a non-pet ranger build practical in the first place? My intuition tells me that a lot of really poor ranger builds are running around because they’re trying to ignore their pet.
Another issue is simply the attack pattern of ranger gs vs guardian gs. Like I said earlier, the bulk of guardian gs’s dps comes from the auto-attack, which has a decent aoe, and most importantly is very easy to use. The bulk of ranger’s gs dps comes from maul, which you have to remember to use (not difficult by any means, but not as easy as auto-attack), and has a much smaller aoe (it does have aoe, I hit 2 or 3 mobs at once with it all the time by lining them up cleverly). Guardian’s 2 is a good aoe skill but the dps isn’t honestly much higher than auto-attack. Overall, when just considering 1 and 2 for sustained dps, I feel like I enjoy using the guardian’s setup more, not considering ranger’s evasion on their 1 chain.
I find that ranger’s 1’s dodge works very frequently, saving quite a bit of damage, while between aegis and the extra heals, guardian is much more capable of soaking up hits. Guardian’s 3 has blind, while ranger’s 3 has the delicious ridiculous distance (I definitely like ranger’s 3 better than guardian’s 3). Ranger’s 4 is invaluable for avoiding projectiles and countering melee attacks, but guardian’s 4 offers retaliation (again, I prefer ranger’s here). I never use guardian’s 5, though that may be because I don’t really pvp where I’m guessing it really shines, but I do use ranger’s 5 quite frequently, and I enjoy the interrupts.
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Sorry for the rant, but to contribute to the discussion – Is relying on the pet worth it in order to get dps that can compete with a guardian’s?
Dps is important but it’s far from being the only worthwhile factor in the game. I run solo a lot, so survivability is very important to me, and the greatsword has saved my life more than a few times. When pet damage is factored in, the dps, from what I’ve seen, honestly isn’t even that bad. I can out-dps my guardian against the training dummy in the mists every time. If they could just either buff gs damage so we’re not so reliant on the pet, or else improve the pet’s ai and survivability, then we’d be set.
I’m not quite at the level where it matters yet, but I have been looking into which armor set to use that would compliment the greatsword. I was thinking Knight’s. Berserker’s is always popular, but I don’t want to run glass cannon. A dead dps is no dps. Any thoughts?
I’m glad to hear that others are finding greatsword viable as well. dps is important to me, but since I solo pve a lot, dps isn’t as important as survivability. I find greatsword to be deliciously flexible, great at blocking if I need it, and swoop is just plain wonderful.
I notice you said that longbow has the most dps, but most of what I’ve read said that shortbow has the most dps because it’s so much faster. Could you elaborate on differences between them that you’ve seen?
I’ve always been a big fan of greatswords, and honestly the ranger’s ability to use them is part of what attracted me to the profession in the first place (I found mesmer to be unsatisfying to my play style, and I have a guardian alt). Sadly, from everything that I’ve read (that wasn’t from the beta weekends), ranger’s greatsword is garbage because of terrible dps, but is this really the case?
I went into the mists to test it out against a golem dummy, using greatsword, a raven, and a quick trait build that seemed to both compliment greatswords but was also practical for how I might like playing. Compared to my guardian, also using a quick trait build, I was very surprised to find that ranger’s greatsword dps was consistantly higher than guardian’s greatsword (with pet damage included, obviously). Not only this, but compared to my warrior alt, ranger’s greatsword + pet damage really wasn’t that much lower.
Now, I should qualify this, as I’m still fairly new to the game. I’ve only had it for a week or so, my guardian is only level 39, and my ranger is only level 17. Because of this, I don’t know the optimal trait builds or skill rotations. I do know, however, that I have no interest in running glass cannon, because a dead dps is no dps, and that I’m not particularily a fan of pvp.
What is the meaning of my ranger getting such good dps from greatsword? Am I simply playing warrior and guardian all wrong? Is the mist a totally different experience from endgame pve? Are pets dead so frequently that they can’t be relied on for sustained dps? Was there a patch that buffed ranger’s greatsword that nobody’s talking about? I know there was one back in November that buffed maul and counterattack, but people were still saying that the dps was lackluster.
Ideally, if I can get away with it, I would run with a greatsword as my main, with shortbow as backup for when I need the distance. I just find melee so much more satisfying.