The veteran keystone “Weapons Specialist” reads: “When you wield your ranged weapon you activate your Ranged Specialist effect, to gain +2% Attack Speed and +33% Ranged Critical Hit Chance per stack. Lasts 5s.”
The veteran ability “Executioner’s Stance” reads: “Enter ranged stance for 5s. When in ranged stance you instantly equip your ranged weapon…”
Here I demonstrate that activating Executioner’s stance does not activate Weapon’s specialist, only explicitly swapping weapons will trigger the effect.
It seems to lead to undefined behavior. (assuming you start with 10 stacks of ranged specialist and with a melee weapon still equipped) upon activating Executioner’s Stance, I see the same – when you then shoot, it reduces you to one stack of “ranged specialist”, clears the 10 stack, and does not start the countdown.
It’s a bit hard to test but it seems as though I retain the critical bonus as though stacks had been consumed.
Swapping back to melee clears the displayed one stack of the buff, but won’t (in display only) accumulate any new stacks. Swapping back to ranged then has the full, original count of 10 stacks, regardless of if anything was actually killed since activating Executioner’s stance the first time.