Guild Wars 2

Gigantic.8042:

why dont you just use both long and short bow…swapping weapons in battle gives you swiftness and furry?

Because as somone mentioned. In small skirmishes or 1on1s they will be able to close up and I don’t want to be stuck with ranged weapons then that are naturally inferior in damage.

Barrage damage is nice but you cannot assume people will keep standing in it.

Longbow. Just saying…

It helps so much to hit them for 5k despite their stealth and when it ends you are ready to jump onto them.

Yes the numbers show that there is no way that LB beats SB on a targets trying to run away. But they also show us that the overall DPS difference can be reduced to a minimum when playing the weapon right. What is left are 2 different weapons that both will be better than the other one in specific situations.

Joey.3928:

Point blank shot on longbow. That skill alone is the key reason why I use it for sPvP and WvW. Proven way too useful in so many situations.

Unless the target has stability of course :P

Indeed. When I was pleased when I managed to interrupt a heal with SB 5 Poin Blank actually always feels like achieving something … on nearly half the cooldown.

jewishjoyride.4693:

It’d be really interesting actually if anyone has done the math. To see actual dmg coefficients between the 2 weapons to compare could be really valuable I think.

The numbers are all on the wiki.

SB autoattack has a 0.4 skill dmg modifier and attacks ~1.9 times a second. This means about 0.76 per second but none of the other skills will increase dps. I also has bleeds.

LB autoattack has a 0.9/0.65/0.5 modifier and attacks 0.8 times a second. This will mean 0.72/0.52/0.4 per second. However Rapid Fire deals 3.75 over 5 seconds on any range which means 0.75 per second or 0.825 per second if you use Hunter’s Shot first.

Longbow sucks if you keep autoattacking with it on medium/low range but since it has many other things it can do instead of autoattacking on those ranges this doesn’t really hurt. It just offers better utility (in a wvw meta full of thiefs and mesmers exspecially) without a real drop of dps.

Lanny.6987:

For me the LB is too stand-off for solo fighting (or small group where I’m principal aggressor). I’ve grown up in WvW on an Engi (Pistol and Pots). It’s all about timing the opponents attacks and keeping up the pressure. LB doesn’t do that for me. In small group fights you will be closed on. (Although I’ll always remember the staff guardian that tried to range me. Guess he’d never looked at the range on his auto-attack. He must have thought I had about 4000 armor.) Given that you’ll be closed on the auto-attack on LB is now less than ideal. Less damage up close and no condition to keep the pressure on. (Put a 30% on crit 2s cripple below 500 on it and you’d really be on to something. — Oh yay. Synergy with Frost trap! Oh boo. 30s cooldown.) So you try #2 and maybe quickness from util or pet swap. Except your target has just side-dodged or dodged rolled through you and half the damage is gonna be lost. #3 and #4 are solid but on too long a cooldown to be fight changers. (I’d love to see Hunter’s Shot also have a 3s cripple so your pet can chew on em a bit.) #5 against someone who’s also traited for fighting solo/small is gonna be laughed at and just locks you in place.

That said if you deliberately take a backseat to someone else a lot of those negatives turn positive. Opening shot + Hunters + pet opener is 20 vulnerability (If I’m doing the math correctly.) Dodging #2 is much less likely if you have even a touch of range to prevent a huge slew or them getting behind you on dodge. #4 + wolf + hound is going to let you take pressure of the other fighter(s) and/or set up time-on-target bursts. #1 and #5 are still meh but hey, auto-fire and/or extra damage without much risk.

My $0.02 anyway. Not saying it doesn’t work. Saying it doesn’t work for my playstyle.

tl;dr – LB is a support weapon that utilizes the idea that the best defense is a good offense rather than condition CC — but only if you aren’t in a melee-range furball.

What makes this different from shortbow? Yes, they will close up but imo LB is atleast equal in its ability to make this harder for the opponent with the knockback (15s vs 25s on concussion shot).

And for the damage, as I said, it will be worse when you play it just like you would play SB. However if you get used to frequent swap in/swap outs you will see that the DPS difference nearly vanishes. You don’t have to use the autoattack if played like that and what you get is the possibility to DPS stealthed targets, a very strong CC that generates range and an ally, pet and self dmg supporting Hunter’s Shot.

I really played SB for months in WvW and now after switching to LB I actually feel saver than with SB when facing gap closing melee classes.

KensaiZen.3740:

Lanny is very much correct. The LB is not suited for people who like to skirmish as it penalises you for doing so (reduction in damage within certain range). You can still use it in a skirmish, though it requires much more skill than using a SB.

SB is designed for the close in fighting/mid range. It has a faster auto attack which allows for a more fluid dodging play style. Also the conditions it provides also synergise with the play style.

The LB design is to be used at very long range. It is perfect for zerg warfare and sieges. It is also a control weapon. There is great synergy between LB and spirits which usually means a lot more static kind of warfare.

trying to use a LB like a SB and claiming it doesn’t work or vice versa doesn’t actually give proper representation of the weapons and its role.

I very much disagree and try to elaborate my point again. The only part of its design that limits it to long range is the autoattack. Playing the way I described above (maximizing the use of wepaon swap every 10 sec) this limitation vanishes. Just using 2, 3 and 4 (and those skills are nearly always beneficial) will take 7-8 seconds. This means you maybe have to do 1 single autoattack and only if you don’t heal or use utilities. I actually think about getting runes of the warrior for the 9 second weapon swap to focus even more on this playstyle.

Edit: Because I read you played Engineer Pistol. That is a very good comparison. Engineer was my first class too. Just like you would never really autoattack with Engi Pistol (rather use 2 and 3, then swap to kits) I don’t autoattack with LB and swap to my secondary weapon when I have the skills on cooldown.

So I read a lot of hate towards longbow and to be honest, I never really liked it and thus never really played it aswell. I always thought it is this crappy weapon for PvE or WvW zerg sheep that like to stand still and shoot.

I was wrong. I recently tried it out and it is a lot more fun and actually more interactive/challenging to use than SB. The damage is generated in bigger chunks making it more vulnerable and also worse vs aegis/other blocks. Making mistakes is much less forgiving like using Point Blank Shot vs a stability target or using Rapid Fire a moment too late before the thief stealths making it unable to track and hit him with it. For shortbow the only really challening skills seems to be 5 and some clutch 3 dodges and even those feel spammy the way they are usually used.

Question is: How does the actualy damage compare. A weapon might be more fun to use but it actually has to get work done. And after looking at the skill modifiers, animation times and cooldowns I actually think that the difference is pretty minimal. I wont provide fancy calaculations here but what I realised:

Shortbow:

• SB has definitely a stronger autoattack that hits for more even if LB would constantly hit his max range shots
• SB has no other skills to boost its damage over autoattacking though
• SB gets hit harder by quickness nerf because it is more directed towards continues autoattack pressure than swapping it, use the skill rotation and swap back again

Longbow:

• assuming you attack your targets with the 10 stacks of vulnerability of Hunter’s shot most of the time it will deal more damage than SB on max range
• assuming you use the weapon less for autoattacking but rather swap it in for skills 2-5 it will deal equal damage or more damage than SB on a 10 seconds interval (which allows you to swap again after that), also range doesn’t matter here

I recently run LB in WvW a lot and I really like it. More utility and while it helps in more zergy situations I feel like not performing worse in smaller skirmishes or 1on1s. You just have to use it right which means autoattacking as little as possible most of the time. Swapping it in for 3 -> 4 -> 2 and than continue with my alternate weapon again is amazing. On top of that it offers huge advantages versus thiefs and mesmers over SB due to the tracking of 2 and the AoE targeting of 5.

What do you think?

Lorelei.3918:

Clearly the answer to this dilemma is to let the fish ranger have a monkey pet.

Aren’t felines our monkey pet according to the image?

Actually there were times in history where both, bows of any form and guns, were used.

Medieval pistols and rifles had horrible accuracy and reload times so just because they developed guns this doen’t mean bows cannot be more efficient.

I agree that most of our traits need reworks and so do utility skills. GS as a weapon itself is at a decent spot though. Maybe very slight buffs to autoattack or reowrking the throw of 4 a bit but beside that it makes no sense to make this weapon stronger when it is other stuff that makes rnager weak. They would just ignore the true problems then or have to nerf GS again once they fixed those. This is why I made this pure untraited comparison. Given the fact that we have a pet by design (that one day might function properly) 30% less DPS is a good balance for the weapon compared to a class that is purely made for dealing damage and has neither a pet to back it up nore good utility.

Leo G.4501:

Durzlla.6295:

ONLY ARROWS can attack from outside the range (IE red bar) guns, and magic will not do it, idk if the thrown weapons will do it…

Did you check the first pic? Shows me swinging a greatsword outside of range (red bar) and hitting. I’m just saying it’s not consistent :P

PS: The last pic I posted shows I’m in range (no red bar) and I still get out of range message.

The reason for this might be that the icon is already swapping to Power Stab (3rd chain attack) that has less range (130) than Chain 1 and 2 (150 both).

Well Zenith what exacly does dodging Swoop do what a normal dodge at any time doesn’t do? It still moves the Ranger next to you and dodging the swoop damage doesn’t do a lot either. Also no Ranger that knows GS will actively used 4 sword throw because it cannot be done while walking and already that is worse than a 6s cripple on a target.

GS is not baaaaaad. You need to play it right though and unlike the guardian that will be reliant on his GS you can always switch to superior ranged options with your secondary weapon. To judge about GS you have to look at way more factors than just the GS of another class anyway. The purpose of this thread is to compare the numbers alone though because it is unbiased and helps to have a baseline where all the other factors start.

Don’t listen to the people that tell you there would be no options. Exspecially non GC builds offer a nice variety for ranger. The most limiting apsects are our utility skills, not the weapons.

Nice vids. Didn’t notice many mistakes on your side and your mechanics with evades, leaps, LR are solid. I think the “hard to learn” part is one of the biggest reasons why people think ranger is bad.

Ye I thought about the might thing a bit more and it shouldn’t be that much of a problem as I initially though.

For Moment of Clarity: What if it would give Opening Strike instead of the +50% dmg attack. I like this. Would actually pick um what Remorseless tried to do but with more sense and in a 30-30-… build you could actually try make both traits work together.

http://youtu.be/BcZeKgtU_w0

It sure is fun in WvW (not my vid).

Feral Bond
Pet effects of your weapon skills are applied to you aswell.

Interactions:
[Axe 3] Winter’s Bite – Throw an axe to chill your foe. Your pet’s next attack inflicts weakness.
[Sword 1] Pounce (3rd chain attack) – Leap at your foe, striking them. Your pet gains might.
[Longbow 3] Hunter’s Shot – Fire an arrow to make your foe vulnerable. Your pet gains swiftness.
[Shortbow 4] Crippling Shot – Fire an arrow that cripples your target. Your pet’s next three attacks inflict bleeding.
[Greatsword 5] Hilt Bash – Daze your foe with a hilt bash. Stun them if you hit from behind. Your pet’s next attack does 50% more damage.

As you can see this would be a crazy strong trait. Does Ranger deserve something strong? Yes! It obviously would have to be a Grandmaster Trait which are often defining for builds and kind of supposed to be strong. Still it would need some changes and here is where I ask for you help.

The best move would propably be to replace Remorseless with this which is a terrible Marksmanship Grandmaster trait that cannot be fixed by number tweaks anyway. Still there are some problems:

• the effect on GS would be a straight upgrade for Moment of Clarity (which I already like) and be too strong
• the effect on Sword might be too strong aswell allowing for insane stacking of might (5s per chain)

Overall I like the concept of this so much that I really would like to see it happen though. Might be the buff ranger deserves.

The biggest positive that I observe is the interactive playstyle. Yes warrior does damage but that is really his main focus. Ranger can interrupt, chose his fighting distance very efficiently and brings superior mobility for both, offensive and defensive use.

I almost feel like running runes of a soldier to switch between weapons even faster.

I dislike having to waste one utility slot for decent movementspeed and one slot for condition removal/stunbreak while both really don’t do anything else.

Robert would you (and the balancers) be interested in a thread where people suggest specific balance changes in patch format?

We could adress traits and try to give you some numbers on what would help which trait when you find time to fix them.

Why do you consider it wasted. Berserker gear is still fine and even if it wasn’t transmuting it on something else will take like 15g maximum. There are many viable playstyles.

His math is not wrong because he explained the way he calculated it. For a DPS comparison ahurtcorncobs comment makes sense. The DPS drop is 25% indeed like op said but still less than “we do half damage now” like people claim here.

Very good post but I think your effort will be wasted on the ranger community at this point. All they wanna hear right now is how ranger got destroyed and has become unplayable etc.

A thing to consider is that quickness not always gives a straight 50% (before patch 100%) animation speed buff. It depends on the weapons and their animations (for shortbow autoattack it was less for example). However this doesn’t change the fact that the before – after difference is much smaller than people make it.

Arekai.5698:

Chopps.5047:

This is a thread for remarking on the positive changes rangers have and the builds they enable.

But there are no positive changes and there haven’t been positive changes in the last 6 months and there will never be positive changes?
This thread is pointless.

QQ Mooooooom, I didn’t get the buufffss I waaaaaanted.

One day you might stop crying and actually open your eyes because there ARE positive changes. It is fun to see how maybe 10% of ranger players in this forum actually have the ability to get over it and try out the stuff that got buffed. 90% do nothing but cry like babies.

bandgeekdp.4651:

Forzani.2584:

bandgeekdp.4651:

Are there any viable non GS builds? Because I love kiting and don’t like being up in peoples’ faces. From what I am seeing the only option I have after the patch is a GS beast master build which isn’t my play style.

You don’t have to be in peoples faces with a SB/GS. You can still kite with SB and pets. It’s nice to know that when you do actually have to melee now, that you can hit back pretty darn hard now. Then get back to kiting when CDs are up…or not.

Seriously, everyone should try another class. I got my Warrior to 80 yesterday. Went out roaming in WvW and came across a solo Ranger two different times. I got completely smoked. One was a great kiter and I barely got a hit on him. The other also kited but I got in more damage. Still lost.

Then I realized that most Warriors are fodder for my Ranger. I would estimate I win 80% of the time vs them…..and I am average at best. The grass isn’t always greener.

( I don’t include Mesmers or thiefs in that statement)

Yeah I tried it all rdy. Gs is really good I was trying the cat build in Spvp but it just isn’t a fun weapon for me. I want to be all ways out of melee range if i can help it.

If you only want to play ranged you will have to accept that you will do worse damage. It wouldn’t make sense if it wasn’t like that so whenever there would be the possibility to go into melee but you have 2 ranged weapons equipped you have to accept that you aren’t playing at 100% efficiency. This won’t and shouldn’t change.

Oh and with my own SB/GS build I am using SB atleast 60% of the time. However I am always ready to switch and Swoop in when I expect to be able to melee them for a few seconds.

Would be more appropriate if we were atleast a frog or something.

Solandri.9640:

Do note that the bleed was changed from 4 stacks for 3 sec (12 ticks of bleed total) to 3 stacks for 6 sec (18 ticks of bleed total). While that is an improvement, it’s not as big as the patch notes suggest (bleed duration increased to 6 sec would’ve resulted in 24 ticks of bleed total). And it does actually lower the DPS while the bleed is active, it just increases the time the bleed is active. Not that I’m complaining since that opens up more overhead for others to apply a 25 bleed stack, and it evens out the DPS of GS over time.

Tibbel.3450:

I’m still curious as to why we’re getting different numbers. At least we’re getting consistent results, if offset a little bit.

What traits and armor are you using? That you’re getting lower coefficients suggests Dojo and I have something boosting our stats a little.

Edit: Doh, forgot about the WvW bonuses. That could easily account for a ~5% difference.

I test in the heart of the mists with the weapons that don’t have a range. Coldn’t it really just be a curving result? I get rather low numbers on the golem like 32 for autoattacks so since Tibbels runs multiple tests his numbers might just be better.

I find it ironic that people call GS suicide weapon while it is basically an offhand shield now. Sure if you run into 8 people alone you will die. That is not how it works though. You have a disengage and a block do backup your escape.

Btw if any of you still has autotargetting enabled in WvW you should change that and try the weapon again. This option basically cripples any defensive use of Swoop.

Shiren.9532:

Yeah but not considering traits leaves out the 25 stacks of auto-attack might warriors get.

Yes. This is why I give the information that this is a pure untraited weapon coefficient comparison.

Can confirm this. Updated my thread aswell.

My calculated coefficients are 1.16 (old) and 1.57 (new). Overall I would say ranger GS beats warrior GS in PvP now. It comes very close in damage and offers a block and interrupt. This is all without the pet of course.

People will continue to say it is bad though because they want to play berserker bows.

Included March 26 GS buffs. Overall Warrior still beats ranger by ~30% with the use of 100 blades. In a PvP scenario where hundred blades is way more unlikely to connect than Maul DPS advantage for warrior shrinks to propably less than 5% when untraited.

Maul Old: 1.16 ==> 0.83/s + bleed damage
Maul New: 2: 1.57 ==> 0.90/s + bleed damage * 1.5

Conclusion: Targets that utilize dodging or stunbreakes will take nearly the same damage from both weapons after the buff without considerin traits.

Grimvar.9185:

Wow, the quickness nerf really hurts berserker ranger builds a lot. So all in all this patch has nerfed ranger dps when it is already in a bad state. Great, this is just wonderful way to keep beating an already subpar class into the ground even more Anet. 1 second duration added? That is nothing compared to the nerf of 50% speed this really really cripples the berserker build a lot.

GS buff is a joke nobody worth their weight in dungeons playing a ranger uses GS and AR being shared with the pet doesn’t change that the pet is still useless and dies to non-agony boss skills.

This such a bad joke.

GS is viable in dungeons. Maybe try it before you complain.

Also berserker gear with quickness is NOT our only viable dps build. Sick of those kids…

Bailey.6892:

Dojo.1867:

Bailey.6892:

Dojo.1867:

You should try a GS beastmaster build for wvw then. It is great fun.

What would you recommend as a build, talents etc?

I actually run 0-30-5-0-30 because I want Moment of Clarity but you can put more points into wilderness survival. Beside that SB and GS with feline + wolf pet. For stats I run soldiers with some berserker pieces.

For utilities LR or Sigil of Renewal, QZ and Signet of the hunt (for roaming).

Thank you, I am up for trying something new. I appreciate you taking the time to answer and help out.

It really needs some getting used to because you are actually able to switch between melee/long range quite frequently and also disengage completly. Interrupting their heals is also great fun once you get a hang of it.

Bailey.6892:

Dojo.1867:

You should try a GS beastmaster build for wvw then. It is great fun.

What would you recommend as a build, talents etc?

I actually run 0-30-5-0-30 because I want Moment of Clarity but you can put more points into wilderness survival. Beside that SB and GS with feline + wolf pet. For stats I run soldiers with some berserker pieces.

For utilities LR or Sigil of Renewal, QZ and Signet of the hunt (for roaming).

You should try a GS beastmaster build for wvw then. It is great fun.

Not a lot of changes but the ones they did are quite decent.

Quickness got hit but this applies to the other classes aswell. GS + feline beasmaster build will be very happy. I have to test the changes yet but this doesn’t put us that far away from warrior damage anymore.

Geshque.1326:

I can disappoint you, but there will be no significant changes to ranger just as always. Though many will be glad about the AR res which I BELIEVE will be implemented at last, but it is so obvious, that such bug should have never even existed.

They already said GS will be buffed. I consider this a significant change.

The game is full of stuff like that. There are more traits/skills with missleading or wrong tooltips than correct ones. It would take a few developers going through all classes and fix this stuff but it seems they can’t find the time for that.

Yes, Maul is the GS skill with the best direct dmg scaling (and adds bleed on top of that) and it will actually get buffed with the next patch. They didn’t say anything about Swoop though.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Ranger-GS-vs-Warrior-GS-direct-comparison/first#post1665609

The comparison between warrior and ranger GS I did in case you are interested.

Luriyu.6873:

every time the bramble begins it’s next attack (visually it lowers) if they can teleport out, invuln, or evade out at the right time they become free of the vines. this is possible by all classes.

Wow that makes it even worse. I still use the skill because every CC we can get is nice but it is so unpredictable, unreliable and random. I would actually prefer a single target simple 2 sec stun adding some bleeds over that.

To me it feels like pretty much any movement skill, stealth skill or invulnerability skill does the job.

10% of the time people escape by actually destroying them.

Robert with the patch coming online tomorrow and a lot of articles being released already. Can you spoil us the changes happening to ranger? Can’t wait no more. :>

You might consider though that Sword will still move you around no matter if you disable autoattacking on it. It is just the weapon’s nature. So while you can constatnly adjust your position and facing angle to hit 3 enemies with the 180 degrees AoE in front of you with GS it might be a bit harder with sword because it keeps forcing you to face a specific target every X hits.

Also GS has Maul to increase DPS while I doubt sword 2 and 3 skills will do this.

kiwituatara.6053:

GS Autoattack: 3 parts.
1st and 2nd part: Damage only for 1 second
3rd part: Damage and evade for 0.75 second

So basically nobody can directly hit you for almost half the time while you spam your number 1 skill. That with QZ/pet swap – more damage and more invincibility lolol (EDIT: QZ does not make you evade more LOL).

The tooltips lie. One attack chain 1-3 does not actually take 0.5s + 0.5s + 0.75s = 1.75s. The tooltips lie. The true time it takes to do one full chain is 2.53s and I’dont know how much of that will make you impossible to hit with the 3rd chain.

AreUMadBro.6907:

Durzlla.6295:

Well, we can do REALLY good dps, you just wont see as big of numbers as you will from other profs because not only do we have a pet, but ranger also deals their damage through a storm of smaller attacks instead of a handful of really big attacks.

That being said, I prefer being more bunker, but then again i prefer being more support/being eternal (never dying) than i do killing things.

We can do both, and if you want to reap the rewards of berserker you’ll probably wanna use something more like sword/axe (or war horn) for your damage instead of a ranged weapon because ranged weapons will NEVER deal as much damage as a melee weapon. That being said, longbow GC are also extremely powerful, but atm lack defense, so once that gap is closed you’re pretty much screwed.

Well, “ranged weapons will NEVER deal as much damage as a melee”…but as far as I know, shortbow is the best weapon to dps for a ranger. And greatsword just sucks at it. This is what annoys me. GS is a dps weapon to every class that can use it, with one exception, rangers.

Your information is wrong. Melee weapons deal more DPS. The difference really only is that you cannot equip as glasscannon as you can when ranged.

Yes, this trait does not only give the damage boost (which your pet will get untraited already for GS). The increased stunning/dazzing is the strong part because it allows you to control your enemies. If we would get ANY stunning/dazing utility I think this trait would become bonkers. It is already good right now because in players do a lot of stuff you can interrupt. In PvE it is a bit trickier because people aren used to the cast animation of every single mob in the game. Then again many of those are very long and easy to see. Generally you can Swoop in and interrupt the first thing the enemy does very often, then follow with a buffed Maul and maybe block his first move (the one after the one you interrupted) with 4. You just used the whole GS chain very efficiently while your target wasn’t able to do anything and are now free to go on autoattacking or switch to kiting mode with SB (here the focuss obviously is the improved damage of your pet with 5).

Also consider following changes next patch:

• more damage on Maul
• decreased cooldown on GS 5

Go figure how this effects this trait.

With alle the downsides youd described this should be a consumable/environmental weapon if anything. Utility skills that cannot be used while in combat? Srsly?

They said they will buff Maul and some of the Cooldowns. Cooldowns of Maul and Swoop are actually already very low so I believe this will hit 4 or 5 mainly meaning we get even more utility.

The one thing that helps our pets dealing damage is if we CC or immobilize the target for them and 4 and 5 do that. Also I can see myself use Moment of Clarity grandmaster trait even more often. Hitting that buffed Maul for an additional 50% damage will be sweet.

Updated my data. Thx again to Tibbels and Solandri for pointing out my mistakes. It is always easier to get stuff like that together when people help you. My current numbers should be way closer to reality.

Overall the difference between Ranger and Warrior remains at ~30-40% less DPS. However the updated values show that 100 blades and also Maul are the skills that boost DPS by quite a bit when constantly using them. (Chopps you asked that and I am sorry my original values created a wrong impression.) The other skills rather work in a way that they offer utility without losing DPS compared to autoattacking.

For the armor class discussion:
According to the max armor values stated by the wiki(http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Armor) heavy only has 147 more base defense than medium. That should only mean about 14% less damage taken if I am doing this right and this becomes less the more defensive stats both classes get.

Solandri.9640:

Dojo.1867:

Also for my modifiers scaled per second with cooldowns and animation times. Here is the formula I used:

(Chain1 modifier + Chain2 modifier + Chain 3 modifier)/(Chain1 animation time + Chain2 animation time + Chain3 animation time)

I never believe the tooltips so I just counted and timed a long string of GS autoattack hits (you can use either the steady weapons on the golems, or the test dummies). I got 455 hits (i.e. 151 chains and 2 extra attacks) in 383.3 sec, for an average of 2.53 sec per chain.

The sum of the skill coefficients in a chain are (0.58+0.58+0.69) = 1.85. So the DPS in terms of coefficients works out to an anemic 0.73 DPS, not the 1.06 you calculated.

This is why everyone criticizes ranger GS as having been over-nerfed in beta and hitting like a wet noodle. Right now the only way to really make ranger GS viable is to spam Maul, which does decent DPS if you factor in the bleed.

For comparison, ranger sword autoattack’s chain is 1.80 sec for the 3 attacks. With skill coefficients of .61, .61 and .73, that works out to 1.08 DPS in terms of coefficients. And pretty much everyone agrees it’s the ranger’s best autoattack DPS weapon.

My timings for warrior kill times showed it be pretty close to ranger’s (ranger actually won if you included the pet). So I suspect the tooltip times you’re using to calculate warrior DPS are similarly off. This was without all the goodies warriors get like might stacking, adrenaline damage bonus, etc. I’ve been meaning to test with those when I get some time.

So this would be the skill modifier per second for just autoattacking and we call it X. For the other skills we can now calculate the skill modifier per second for using them whenever cooldown allows it and autoattack otherwise:

((Cooldown – Animation time)*X + Skill modifier)/Cooldown

If you accept that you can’t just use the times on the tooltips, the skills with cooldowns are trickier to calculate. The only way I’ve been able to think of doing it is to get a kill time with just autoattack, then measure a kill time spamming the skill as often as possible while you’re autoattacking. The difference then will tell you the skill’s DPS relative to the autoattack’s.

The only weapon I started doing this for is longbow. Unfortunately, LB’s autoattack can be interrupted, which messes this all up. I was planning on doing GS and sword next, but got too busy to play.

Ok I already worried that the tooltips are inaccurate. I indeed based my assumptions on those animation times: i.e. Ranger chain being 0.5s + 0.5s + 0.75s = 1.75s. This is far away from they 2.53s you actually measured so this will boost the use of non autoattack skills quite a bit.

I put a disclaimer into my first post stating that I relied on ingame tooltip (something you really should never do it seems) and will see if I can update the values anytime soon. I think just updating my X with your values would bring things closer to reality because the influence of wron animation time tooltips of the other skills shouldn’t be that big (depending on their cooldown). Maybe we can get some better values together. Having to meassure stuff manually makes this quite a bit more difficult though.

Krugan.7901:

If I remember, back in october the heavy golem had the armor of the medium one, and the medium the heavy’s one.

I remebered this aswell. This is why I decided to test on the light one. Didn’t prevent me from making an other mistake.

No. Might have been a stealth nerf but I assume it must have happened at some point comparing our data. It is nearly as if they just swapped Maul and Swoop damage around, haha.

Also for my modifiers scaled per second with cooldowns and animation times. Here is the formula I used:

(Chain1 modifier + Chain2 modifier + Chain 3 modifier)/(Chain1 animation time + Chain2 animation time + Chain3 animation time)

So this would be the skill modifier per second for just autoattacking and we call it X. For the other skills we can now calculate the skill modifier per second for using them whenever cooldown allows it and autoattack otherwise:

((Cooldown – Animation time)*X + Skill modifier)/Cooldown

Can you check if this makes sense or did I make a mistake?

One reason could be patches. One reason could be that I made a mistake (I doubt he did given his very clean spreadsheet). Now that I think about it I could have dealt additional flanking damage due to the grandmaster skirmishing trait. I will go validate my values instantly.

Edit: Yup, seems I had a +10% dmg modifier. Sorry about that one guys. Will update my stuff.
Edit2: New values are much closer to Tibbels testings except Maul (buffed) and Swoop (nerfed) due to patches.
Edit3: This really increased the gap between Warrior and Ranger quite a bit making Warrior deal about flat 50% more damage. Well guess the damage buff is even more justified then.

These would be the values for hitting a 1050 armor target because the full formula is:

damage = skill modifier * power * weapon damage/target armor

Maximum weapon damage for GS is 995 – 1100.

Minimum armor (full glass cannon gear) for light/medium/heavy is 920/1064/1211.