Perma Quickness Soulbeast build, slapped together after 10 minutes of musing.

I was getting bored running purely zerkers with scholars with absolutely snooze-inducing button input... So I decided to spice things up a little in PvE, and decided to try going for a power perma-quickness soulbeast build. The result? Is dumb as hell, but I had fun with this so I thought I'd share it.

I found a quite appropriate name for the build: The Tickler!http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAoXTnUqAlsgtsAe8Cs8ilCBrJeNseBP7uoVAI/62dHvjIN-jRSBAB4pP4hHBgHnAAAOCA8v/wVK/+eCyNq/EhSQA-e

So yeah! I am running a power-build with a main-hand dagger for starters. That's bound to get a couple of you frowning I'm sure, but hear me out! The dagger itself doesn't do very much damage, but it's really just there to build quickness and close gaps. The real meat is the AXE in the off-hand, and whatever you have as a secondary weapon. I left a secondary empty (woops, no I didn't but whatever) in the build, because you can frankly run whatever as long as it's not Shortbow. I harp on the dagger, but honestly for open-world it does just fine as a power-weapon as long as you have Quickness. I made a condi-weapon take the role of a power-weapon, and obviously there are consequences for that... FUN! Depending on your sense of humor.

Basically, you start by proccing Moa Stance, because then you get 99% boon duration, and while it's active you have a whole 15 seconds to proc your quickness abilities. How long will your Quickness under Moa Stance, last, you ask!? Well, let me tell you...

Wordly Impact (or your pet equivalent) - 6sInstinctive Engage x2 - 6s"We Heal as One" - 4sQuickening Zephyr - 12sSuperior Rage Sigil. - 6s

For a total of: 40 seconds of quickness! actually it'll last much longer because Instinctive Engage has a ridiculously short cooldown.I honestly haven't come up with a rotation for this at all. Just spam Quickness. Now... You may want to avoid We Heal as One, because if I remember correctly you can only have 5 stacks of quickness active, there's kind of a long cast-time on it (feels like 0.75 under Quickness). Save it for last or use it for like... Healing or something, I don't know.

This, is fun as hell. Playing with quickness just makes everything more responsive and enjoyable, and the added stress of keeping tabs on timers and cool-downs make things a lot harder on yourself compared to a regular longbow-drone, keeps things from getting dull...On the other hand, you are not at all squishy because of the passive traits and stuff. Your health-regen is pretty decent, so if you remember to dodge, and don't royally fuck-up, you shouldn't die at all. Almost soloed the Bloodstone Wyvern with this while I used a Shortbow though, and had the damage been there, I would've won before the timer ran out, but shortbow is terrible for power. So yeah. Don't do that.

You could probably get a lot more damage out of this by grabbing Skirmishing instead of WS traitline... But you do give up on the shorter cooldown for Quickening Zephyr and Instinctive Engage, which kind of is the crutches for this build, it's main sources of Quickness.

This build is a result of me musing for 10 minutes, so feel free to IMPROVE IT! Without sacrificing Quickness because that defeats the point.

Disclaimer: I will not be held responsible if you decide to take this into any sort of competitive environment like public Raid groups, Fractals, PvP or WvW.

Well if you are swapping runes and sigils around and making a casual power sb PvE build... Rune of cavalier is 5 seconds quickness and 20% bonus power damage on ENGAGE. Cup of light-roasted coffee is 5 seconds quickness on DISMOUNT. That's 10 seconds of quickness whenever you engage with a 20 second CD. ENGAGE means before you actually leave your mount and traits don't work. Any class can benefit from those two. However...

DISMOUNT means after you have got off your mount. Dismount means nature magic can kick in to give quickness to your pet. Then auto merge procs from dismounting kicks in which procs fresh reinforcements which is 12.5 seconds. Sigil of agility is another 1 second on weapon swap. Engaging into combat also procs weapon swap traits. So that's 13.5 seconds quickness. All of this is of course enhanced by boon duration. All of that procs with 1 button press. It wound up being close to 20 seconds of quickness on a 20 second CD but ultimately bored me since all it required was pressing 1 then dagger 3. Also not a fan of nature magic in PvE but figured it might be useful info for someone trying to max out on quickness.

Side note. If longbow camping is boring you, why not use the meta power DPS build? Just went through all of today's patch with the meta X/A+GS rotation but replaced two utilities with moa stance +QZ. Used my WvW GS with sigil of agility and severance instead of force/accuracy. Time your interrupts for severance procs. Keeps you on your toes. If both weapon swaps have sigil of agility instead of rage, essence of speed procs more evenly. If you want more skillful play, evade an attack every 5 seconds with sword trait in skirmishing.

Yeah I know about the Cavalier Runes and Coffee, but they feel like cheating. I know that doesn't make sense, but it's not about common sense, just my own biased viewpoints. That said...

DISMOUNT means after you have got off your mount. Dismount means nature magic can kick in to give quickness to your pet. Then auto merge procs from dismounting kicks in which procs fresh reinforcements which is 12.5 seconds. Sigil of agility is another 1 second on weapon swap. Engaging into combat also procs weapon swap traits. So that's 13.5 seconds quickness. All of this is of course enhanced by boon duration. All of that procs with 1 button press. It wound up being close to 20 seconds of quickness on a 20 second CD but ultimately bored me since all it required was pressing 1 then dagger 3. Also not a fan of nature magic in PvE but figured it might be useful info for someone trying to max out on quickness.

THIS I had no idea was possible. Holy /¤#&! That's a lot of Quickness for minimal effort! ... But honestly I am kind of of the same mind as you are on this one. Not a big fan of Nature Magic. Regardless though, that's good information.

Side note.

Heh, that was a bit of hyperbole on my part, apologies. I'm not just camping longbow.Honestly? Well, I kind of already was though. I was running Sword/Axe - Longbow, full zerker and scholars. I've tried swapping out LB for GS but honestly the third strike on the Rangers GS auto is just something I cannot get used to. It feels off, and it's bothering me more than it should, so I just opted out of GS because of it. Besides, I don't particularly like the reliance on Maul for damage, but not because I don't like the mechanics, more because I don't like the visuals of Maul. The bear.. thing. Sword/Axe is cool though.

The reason I made the build is more because I like to experiment, even if the experiment can go so horribly wrong, it re-animates and chokes me to death.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQRAsX4XnE8ClsgVsAe8Cs8ilCB7JBEtCA5X3u74l5dV1Sdn4NpPA-jhRBQBT8JAcl9Hlf4R/AlU/xMKBBwJBIAwBwv9tv9N43f/93f/t++7v/+7v/+7v/WKA9UGB-eBetter gear for pve; raid ready gear actually, and perma quickness without wasting an entire trait line. You will also have high might stacks, perma vigor and 90% critical chance (100% if flanking).Side note you do not need 2 different axe's just the one and swapping only main hand weapons will proc all the things.

@"foste.3098" said:http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQRAsX4XnE8ClsgVsAe8Cs8ilCB7JBEtCA5X3u74l5dV1Sdn4NpPA-jhRBQBT8JAcl9Hlf4R/AlU/xMKBBwJBIAwBwv9tv9N43f/93f/t++7v/+7v/+7v/WKA9UGB-eBetter gear for pve; raid ready gear actually, and perma quickness without wasting an entire trait line. You will also have high might stacks, perma vigor and 90% critical chance (100% if flanking).Side note you do not need 2 different axe's just the one and swapping only main hand weapons will proc all the things.

I forgot Sigil of Concentration existed. Thanks for the tips!Yeah, Skirmishing is bound to get your a better damage output. I really just grabbed WS because I wanted some leeway with the durations given by shorter cooldowns on daggers and survival skills. That and Condition cleanses are sorely lacking in my build, so that was an added bonus. The SB heal should be more than enough for PvE cleansing though... But it didn't give quickness, so that's where my mind was, but even then I realized We Heal as One ain't that great for that purpose. Better to keep all the other boons running.

I wonder if a quickness plaguedoctor doctor Soulbeast would be fun?I mean the regen and boon update sure would be nice. The missibg power would suck though.