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A class for a bow character


Delinquee.4513

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I know that most classes are needed to be closer than a bow allows or at least for the buffs but I love bows, I want to know what's the best class to use a bow on? I know that ranger is the main go to for it but is it the best? same as I know that the thief's is just mainly for utility. Any advice would be welcome

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Yes ranger is your man, and the top dog. Second place Dragon Hunter. Rest don't matter.

If you wanna hunt with a bow, then just being able to use ain't gonna cut it. You need a set of tools to keep your game at range, and not let it get near, while you turn it into a hedgehog. Ranger's the nr 1 profession for that. You get a pet, traps, obscene amounts of immobilizes and cripples, solid cc, and good disengage with evades/stealth/longbow knockback.

Dragonhunter is a guardian gone ranger, so he gets a longbow and set of his own traps. For that reason he qualifies as well, though he's not as deep or versatile in terms of ranged combat like the original, and can only use the longbow.

Rest of bow users aren't gonna be to your liking. They lack the kiting/movement controlling utilities of ranger forcing them to quickly swap to melee weapons, or run a mile backwards at top speed trying to "kite" their prey by moving their feet faster in opposite direction...

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@"ZeftheWicked.3076" said:Yes ranger is your man, and the top dog. Second place Dragon Hunter. Rest don't matter.

If you wanna hunt with a bow, then just being able to use ain't gonna cut it. You need a set of tools to keep your game at range, and not let it get near, while you turn it into a hedgehog. Ranger's the nr 1 profession for that. You get a pet, traps, obscene amounts of immobilizes and cripples, solid cc, and good disengage with evades/stealth/longbow knockback.

Dragonhunter is a guardian gone ranger, so he gets a longbow and set of his own traps. For that reason he qualifies as well, though he's not as deep or versatile in terms of ranged combat like the original, and can only use the longbow.

Rest of bow users aren't gonna be to your liking. They lack the kiting/movement controlling utilities of ranger forcing them to quickly swap to melee weapons, or run a mile backwards at top speed trying to "kite" their prey by moving their feet faster in opposite direction...

Well this is just wrong. Both Condition renegade and condition warrior use bow in their meta raid build and both of them deal way more dps than ranger for example.Guy mentioned stacking so i assume that he is talking about pve.

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@sokeenoppa.5384 said:

@"ZeftheWicked.3076" said:Yes ranger is your man, and the top dog. Second place Dragon Hunter. Rest don't matter.

If you wanna hunt with a bow, then just being able to use ain't gonna cut it. You need a set of tools to keep your game at range, and not let it get near, while you turn it into a hedgehog. Ranger's the nr 1 profession for that. You get a pet, traps, obscene amounts of immobilizes and cripples, solid cc, and good disengage with evades/stealth/longbow knockback.

Dragonhunter is a guardian gone ranger, so he gets a longbow and set of his own traps. For that reason he qualifies as well, though he's not as deep or versatile in terms of ranged combat like the original, and can only use the longbow.

Rest of bow users aren't gonna be to your liking. They lack the kiting/movement controlling utilities of ranger forcing them to quickly swap to melee weapons, or run a mile backwards at top speed trying to "kite" their prey by moving their feet faster in opposite direction...

Well this is just wrong. Both Condition renegade and condition warrior use bow in their meta raid build and both of them deal way more dps than ranger for example.Guy mentioned stacking so i assume that he is talking about pve.

Yeah, raid build, where they got tank and healer to cover their rears and can keep shooting. Alone when you gotta kite something big and nasty, that's a whole different story.

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Warrior longbow is fairly decent. Pin Down will put immobilize on the target to keep them at range. Throw Bolas is a utility to immobilize to keep them at range, and Kick (another utility) will knock them away if they get into melee. Warrior Longbow also has a (small) aoe blind on an ammo system, lots of burning from a traited auto attack and Fan of Fire, a strong power based AoE, and if you run Core a large aoe Burst attack with burning that is easy to tag mobs with. If you go zerker then the burst is a long line aoe that relies on ground geometry, so is a bit more limited, but is actually several separate fields so if you get something's hitbox on two of the fields it will deal a large amount of damage from damage ticks and burning stacks.

Fan of Fire btw requires you to be closer to the target for maximum damage unless the target has a large hitbox, so you'd be closer to the target generally for buffs if that is your concern.

I have a Ranger, a DH, and a Warrior. Ranger Longbow and Shortbow are fun, and you should certainly try them out. I find Warrior Longbow better than DH Longbow personally, though A DH with a Greatsword is very fun.

My advice is to look at the whole package of the classes and what they offer, and to see what parts of them appeal to you the most.

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@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:I have a Ranger, a DH, and a Warrior. Ranger Longbow and Shortbow are fun, and you should certainly try them out. I find Warrior Longbow better than DH Longbow personally, though A DH with a Greatsword is very fun.

Warrior longbow is mostly condi or hybrid while DH is power.Because you will definitely want a melee set, you will have plenty of choices for DH. For warrior, it will most likely be sword/torch.

Last, I prefer warrior GS to guardian. The former has more style and utility while the later has more damage and aoe. I personally don't like guardian GS2 visual, despite its efficiency.

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@Aigleborgne.2981 said:

@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:I have a Ranger, a DH, and a Warrior. Ranger Longbow and Shortbow are fun, and you should certainly try them out. I find Warrior Longbow better than DH Longbow personally, though A DH with a Greatsword is very fun.

Warrior longbow is mostly condi or hybrid while DH is power.

Warrior sword is also hybrid and LB+sword works with power, condi, or hybrid stats.

Because you will definitely want a melee set, you will have plenty of choices for DH. For warrior, it will most likely be sword/torch.

Again, depends if you go full condi, hybrid, or power. Sword/Axe is interesting. And x/Shield is always good.

Last, I prefer warrior GS to guardian. The former has more style and utility while the later has more damage and aoe. I personally don't like guardian GS2 visual, despite its efficiency.

Complete agreement on this one.

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Ranger tends to perform the best with a bow, even though in many areas, a ranger with a different weapon may perform better. Power specs make good use of longbow and shortbow is good in a lot of condi builds too.

Guardian has the Dragohunter specialization, which can use a bow, but that woefully underpowered, unfortunately, so until the devs get around to balancing that weapon back into life, I wouldn't recommend it.

Warriors have a condi spec that uses the longbow, but it's not that great for open world and really just shines in instanced content.

Thieves will often have a shortbow equipped since it's such a versatile and handy weapon, particularly in PvP, but it's rarely used as the main weapon for attacking.

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@ZeftheWicked.3076 said:

@ZeftheWicked.3076 said:Yes ranger is your man, and the top dog. Second place Dragon Hunter. Rest don't matter.

If you wanna hunt with a bow, then just being able to use ain't gonna cut it. You need a set of tools to keep your game at range, and not let it get near, while you turn it into a hedgehog. Ranger's the nr 1 profession for that. You get a pet, traps, obscene amounts of immobilizes and cripples, solid cc, and good disengage with evades/stealth/longbow knockback.

Dragonhunter is a guardian gone ranger, so he gets a longbow and set of his own traps. For that reason he qualifies as well, though he's not as deep or versatile in terms of ranged combat like the original, and can only use the longbow.

Rest of bow users aren't gonna be to your liking. They lack the kiting/movement controlling utilities of ranger forcing them to quickly swap to melee weapons, or run a mile backwards at top speed trying to "kite" their prey by moving their feet faster in opposite direction...

Well this is just wrong. Both Condition renegade and condition warrior use bow in their meta raid build and both of them deal way more dps than ranger for example.Guy mentioned stacking so i assume that he is talking about pve.

Yeah,
raid build
, where they got tank and healer to cover their rears and can keep shooting. Alone when you gotta kite something big and nasty, that's a whole different story.

Your opinions are, in my experience, inaccurate.Shortbow rev is an absolute beast openworld. Played either for Condi or Power it's easily the strongest all around bow class right now.One of the absolute best bow builds floating around right now for general PvE is WP's Power Shortbow rev. It outperforms longbow ranger by a wide margin simply by autoattacking.Longbow Ranger is mediocre at best and tends to be favored by those with little/no regard of just how much they are under-performing in PvE.Ranger is much more effective playing with axe offhand and greatsword.If you need to play a bow on your ranger, shortbow condition damage ranger is far more powerful.
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Ranger has a extremely powerful power-based longbow and an oftenly forgotten condition shortbow, which works very well against players... If the power longbow weren't as dominant.

Thief's shortbow is also a very powerful condition build, which is barely used due most of Thief builds are based on power, and despite the shortbow is meta in PvP that's mostly due as the one from the Ranger it provides both defensive tools and mobility.

Renegade's shortbow is crap: no defensive tools or mobility, so remains largely unused in PvP; half of the skills are bugged and the reason due is used in PvE is because the Renegade spec buffs the numbers: does almost nothing relevant in terms of gameplay, but pushes the autoattack numbers so high that for most of players there's no reason to use another PvE weapon, since ranged is safer than mele and the sb stacks migth as fine as the sword while also adding bleeds, burn and torment on top of that.

Warrior's long bow is not very competitive and DH's lonbow albeit effective is a gameplay more based on the traps than in the use of the bow (in terms of damage).

So I would say Ranger and Thief have the best bows all around. I say this as an archer, not only as a GW2 player.

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