My way of building the Guild Wars 2 ‘Ranged Warrior’ using a rifle and bow. I will constantly update this article as it gets more popular and when I find new idea’s and options for the ‘Ranged Warrior’.
Weapon Choice
The Rifle
I went for the Rifle/Hammer choice. The Rifle will be your main weapon at all times but once you get in a close fight/situation and you simply can’t get away from your enemy. Just make sure you use Kick, Rifle Butt and use the hammer. It gives you a Weaken/Stun/Cripple and Knockback! Think about using your abilities in that order. First you will weaken his defenses, then stunning him applying cripple after and then knocking him back again. At that point you can simply switch back to your Rifle and blow him up!
I don’t like the Bow as a Warrior, I think there are simply two routes of building the ‘Ranged Warrior’, one is bow and one is Rifle. I think the Rifle is the most powerfull one and bow is only used for killing alot of very weak trash mobs. I know it’s single target and not AOE but how many times will you be fighting alot of mobs to make AOE usefull?
The Bow
Though when you want to go for the more supportive role I suggest going for the Bow. It provides that good conditional damage and very good AOE, it also feels more as a support weapon compared to the rifle. My build above is based on supporting your allies with banners and such while still providing the good damage with your longbow, the longbow together with the trait that will increase your range with it (Stronger Bowstrings) will give you a tremendous range and that will give you imo that supporting power. Banners are completely situational if you ask me. When you are all the way in the back you are better off with banners who help the casters/ranged people since the melee people might not be in range (BUT The Range of Banners is High and even longer then your bow range so don’t worry, think they are still affected MOST OF THE TIME.) Also, if your team lacks some professions, not all Banners are good.
Both Rifle and Bow?
How about a combination of both? I do think this is viable but really this is still experimental. I suggest going for Bow or Rifle and not both yet. I think the Rifle can be way more effect by bursting one guy down then by applying damage to all enemies in the Area. As I have seen so far, there aren’t alot of mobs in the areas. (I have seen footage of Ascalonian Catacombs)
Traits
Rifle
The Arms Traitline is simply the must have traitline for someone who will do the same as me. It gives you that improvements that are Rifle specific and that will help you out ALOT, also the +50% bleeding duration is because your shots bleed and this will keep going once I switch to Hammer = Double Win. I will focus on getting those crits off and using my Burst Skill just to finish people off. Especially since I use a trait that will give me more crit chance the higher the level of Adrenaline I have.
Hammer
I also made some traits go towards my Hammer (2nd weapon slot), I specced myself into defense by 10 and it will give me Cooldown on my hammer abilities, making it more spammy spammy and also more ultility. Now by Going into Discipline I got the weapon swap decreasing trait (by 5 seconds), the one that decreases the CD on the weapon swap timer and the one that will give me Might when I swap my weapons. It will be a deadly combo in PvE atleast but I think I won’t be weak in PvP either with this.
GW2Guru Commenter:
The main source of damage from rifles is from bleeds. You can quickly stack bleeds with a crit build, combined with the Precise Strikes trait (all crit attacks have a 33% chance of applying bleed). Add in the correct runes and sigils, and it can be a nightmare in pvp.
And PVE in my Opinion but good insights.
Bow
Using the Long range of the bow makes it the ultimate Support/Off-Damage dealer. I don’t think you can out damage a Rifle Warrior but you will do more AOE damage making it more viable for Dungeons then the Rifle warrior, unless there is of course one enemy. You are for more tanky then the Rifle Warrior so It does not matter if you take some hits, you can have it. Using the Mace and Warhorn will give you lower cooldowns on your skills with a mace. The Bow Ranger feels like a true support, I don’t think you can ever get at that point that you out damage a Rifle Warrior.
Gameplay Style
Rifle
Alright, I think as a Rifle Warrior it doesn’t really matter at what range you are (Can someone confirm if this is true, does the damage lower on shorter range or not?!) so facing an opponent at melee range isn’t such a big deal. You are a Warrior, you have tons of Armor and HP compared to a Ranger. It’s the only one you can make a good comparison with in my opinion, Engineer has just an entire different set.
It is smart of course to knock the enemy back as much as possible, but don’t think you are dead in seconds when the enemy is at melee range. With this I mean a PvE situation, in PvP knocking people back is REQUIRED) Remember, knocking people back in PvP is smart, really smart. You don’t want that annoying Thief/Warrior to smash you in pieces while you are just shooting him a bit, get that range. Think you are a Ranger! (Just with a way higher defense)
Bow
Kiting, Kiting and Kiting, The Bow Warrior is all about kiting and running through your own AOE to apply damage to your enemies. You can take more hits then the Rifle Warrior but that doesn’t make you invincible. I suggest kiting alot with this weapon because you simply lack that pushbacks/kd’s/cripples.
Video’s
Once the Beta is up I will record my progress in this game. But if I can, I’m happy to add ‘Ranged Warrior’ footage here from myself and/or from YOU!
Guild Wars 2 Beta – Hammer / Rifle PVP:
Information: This is some PvP Action in the Press Beta with a spinoff of my Build, this guy is playing more with his hammer then I would do, He has also build more in the defensive tree giving him that additional boost to his hammer. Still.. He pretty much owns them hehe (Reminder: This is not me!). I suggest clicking the YouTube Icon in the bottomright corner if you want to view the video in Full Screen/Larger Screen.
I think this will be a pretty good build and I think alot of players who really didn’t do their work in this game will be surprised how much damage it will do, we like that… don’t we? So what do you think about my builds, do you think it actually makes sense or did I completely misunderstood this playstyle. Please tell me If I did or If I didn’t and WHY?
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I tried a similar rifle build as you (I used Frenzy instead of Throw bolas though), worked out pretty well. If space permitted it wasn’t that hard to kite either. If nothing major changes about it, it’ll no doubt be my main PvE set up for my Warrior come release.
I noticed that you can use the Rifle as a Ranged Weapon with the Mace / Shield Build you offered. It is a great Secondary Weapon to that build, does practically the same thing as a Hammer would. Good for PvP and PvE.