EpheSOSIayer.6370 Posted December 8, 2017 Share Posted December 8, 2017 Hi,after the november balance patch I switched from my dagger/torch + shortbow build to a double shortbow build completely. What are the reasons for that? I want to talk a little bit about this decision and about the pros/cons.If you take a look at build-websites you will see only the dagger/torch + shortbow build which is meta at the moment. I look at these pages frequently and they are very good, but the problem is that a lot of players just copy the build and play it, not comparing their own situation with the assumptions the authors make. I usually play in pickup groups or non-hardcore raid groups, where buffs can have a downtime and mistakes appear more often. Please have this in mind while reading my post, it is very important.Here is the build I use:http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNUQJAVVnE8Cdrgl8C2sAs8iFDBLv62dDvNdgUXVjJAM6Kdl8oUA-jBSAQBd4SA4llHCpyvbqEMiq/AgnAQA1FsudACAcAM+4J+4BGf8xHf8xr4jP+4jP+4jP+4lCYRlVA-eBecause there are only a few changes I want to go through them one by one:Shortbow for Dagger/Torch: After Bonfire got nerfed (again), the dps increase of this build comes mainly over the dagger mainhand, which is currently really strong. So talking only about the weapon choice is difficult without the next point.Light on your feet for Quickdraw: With the Bonfire nerf condi soulbeast lost the last high cd damage weapon skill. This making quickdraw more and more ineffective for obvious reasons. A lot of people combine the "condi duration after dodging" with this trait. This is still a "nice-to-have" part of the trait, but the main reason is the buff of shortbow skills 1,2,4 ,5 and the cooldown reduction of 20%. Another nice-to-have is the pierce of all skills. So basically this trait consists of four parts (yeah, its really overloaded).Refined Toxins for Ambidexterity: It is meaningless to take the old trait wihtout torch or dagger so this decision is obvious. These changes result in a overall dps loss of ~1k compared to the meta build. On the other side it has a bunch of positive aspects which I realized during the last month:Your meele skills are only F2+3, viper's nest, weapon swap and partially sb2, which means you don't lose dps that much when forced to stay ranged.Your only dps loss on a moving target is viper's nest (no bonfire anymore)Sb5 if allways available for Breakbars (assuming you save them when breakbars will appear which I strongly recommend!) and sb3 is allways available which is useful for a lot of mechanicsYour rotation is simple (basically you don't have a rotation you just press skills off cd)Since you don't have a real rotation you can't struggle if alacrity uptime is bad, sigill of geomancy will proc every 9sIn general, you don't lose as much dps as the meta build when the group is struggelingYou benefit from the +10% condi duration, because there are mechanics which you have to dodge in a real boss scenario (similar to the changes suggested for condi druid).Having priecing shots allow you to safely hit your target and incerase your cleave dps The negative aspects are:You have 1k less dps on paperYou need to stay next to or behind the boss, which is basically the main challange of playing this buildAt the end I want to give you two videos. The first one about a dps test:https://youtu.be/9FzCRfh4LjkThe second one about the build in action on matthias (and yeah the dps other damage dealers is bad): Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marcaum.1302 Posted December 9, 2017 Share Posted December 9, 2017 I will try this out today, thx for the study, looks interesting! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EpheSOSIayer.6370 Posted December 10, 2017 Author Share Posted December 10, 2017 I forgot to do some comments about each encounter, so here is it:VG: If you do green circle this build is great because of the rangeGorseval: You can help your weavers to clear orbs without losing dps, you can hit 2 ghosts in the splitphase at the same timeSabetha: At Sab it is hard to stay behing/next to the boss, so its probably the worst boss for this build. I play it anyways for simplicity. Sb3 is allways ready for cannons.Solth+Trio: More cleaveMatthias: As you see it in the video its nice to have Sb3+5 allways available if needed. If you spread around for bombs or if you have poision the range is usefulEscort: More cleave and if you do the backwargs you need no entangle or something else, your cd of sb4 is 9.5s and has 8s immobilize if traited.KC: I know this build is cool, but don't play condi on KC anyways ;)Xera: More cleave, you can help weavers to clear shardsCairn: See Sabetha. In addition you can attack while in greenMursaat: You can kill the adds without loosing dpsSamarog: Nothing special here but I try to hit both enemies in the split phase. Don't know if this leads to double dmg on the humanDeimos: If you do mid strat this build is just great, as a "normal" sb you would stay at sb most of the time here anywaysWing5 1st boss: 25k dps are normal here. You should allways be able to stay behind him. He is moving quite often and sometimes you are forced to stay ranged. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tankvieh.5796 Posted December 12, 2017 Share Posted December 12, 2017 as a raid beginner i found this very helpfull. I was able to match my sb/dt damage easily even though my second sb is not ascended and my D/T is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hakata.6742 Posted December 30, 2017 Share Posted December 30, 2017 Have you tried using Thorns (poison) or Krait (bleed) runes since a SB/SB SB (lol!) only has 2 conditions to worry about?Or would using Trapper/Nightmare still be better for the overall combined condition duration?Edit: Full Krait runes with sigil of venom or full Thorns runes with sigil of agony would be pretty good I feel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EpheSOSIayer.6370 Posted December 30, 2017 Author Share Posted December 30, 2017 For condi duration you allways end up better with trapper/nightmare as long as you have at least 2 conditions. But you have lower condition damage, so there maybe is a chance that krait is better slightly. The reason I take trapper/nightmare here is that I can easily switch to non-stance share, since two SB with stance share is complicated, since they override their stances each other.Another point are other conditions, so for example you apply 10 stacks of vulnaribility on sb5 which is very nice at the moment, since getting 25 stacks is a problem in some situations after the last balance patch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clear Black.9206 Posted December 30, 2017 Share Posted December 30, 2017 Im really confused here, call me a newbie if you will. I just am not understanding using two of the same weapon types. Even by swapping to the 2nd SB, the same skills I just used on the 1st SB are still on cooldown. How is this benefiting over using a second weapon set? Does it lie in the trait lines somewhere about swapping weapons? Other than simply swapping weapons and getting a buff, like when you dodge roll and get a buff, I really dont see what the point is. Please enlighten me as it looks like you know what you are talking about lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrury.4627 Posted December 30, 2017 Share Posted December 30, 2017 @"Clear Black.9206" said:Im really confused here, call me a newbie if you will. I just am not understanding using two of the same weapon types. Even by swapping to the 2nd SB, the same skills I just used on the 1st SB are still on cooldown. How is this benefiting over using a second weapon set? Does it lie in the trait lines somewhere about swapping weapons? Other than simply swapping weapons and getting a buff, like when you dodge roll and get a buff, I really dont see what the point is. Please enlighten me as it looks like you know what you are talking about lolThe Skirmishing traitline does give Fury and Swiftness on weapon swap but the main thing is Geomancy Sigil. LINK With 100% bleed duration, that's an extra 3 stacks of bleeding for 20 seconds on a 10 second cooldown (weapon swap). On condi focused builds, that's a decent chunk of damage. True, you lose that damage when you need to range a bit but then you can just wait until you can close in and it'll be ready. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dawdler.8521 Posted January 1, 2018 Share Posted January 1, 2018 @Chrury.4627 said:@"Clear Black.9206" said:Im really confused here, call me a newbie if you will. I just am not understanding using two of the same weapon types. Even by swapping to the 2nd SB, the same skills I just used on the 1st SB are still on cooldown. How is this benefiting over using a second weapon set? Does it lie in the trait lines somewhere about swapping weapons? Other than simply swapping weapons and getting a buff, like when you dodge roll and get a buff, I really dont see what the point is. Please enlighten me as it looks like you know what you are talking about lolThe Skirmishing traitline does give Fury and Swiftness on weapon swap but the main thing is Geomancy Sigil. LINK With 100% bleed duration, that's an extra 3 stacks of bleeding for 20 seconds on a 10 second cooldown (weapon swap). On condi focused builds, that's a decent chunk of damage. True, you lose that damage when you need to range a bit but then you can just wait until you can close in and it'll be ready.That wasnt really the question he asked. I believe the answer is that 4 of the skills on the sb has less than or equal the cooldown of weapon swap (concussive shot being the exception) so if sb is your primary source of dps, a weapon swap to something else really doesnt serve a purpose except for possible utility (which is rarely the case in PvE where its deeps deeps and more deeps or you suck).I cant play ranger for crap but thats pretty much universal for all classes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrury.4627 Posted January 1, 2018 Share Posted January 1, 2018 @Dawdler.8521 said:@Chrury.4627 said:@"Clear Black.9206" said:Im really confused here, call me a newbie if you will. I just am not understanding using two of the same weapon types. Even by swapping to the 2nd SB, the same skills I just used on the 1st SB are still on cooldown. How is this benefiting over using a second weapon set? Does it lie in the trait lines somewhere about swapping weapons? Other than simply swapping weapons and getting a buff, like when you dodge roll and get a buff, I really dont see what the point is. Please enlighten me as it looks like you know what you are talking about lolThe Skirmishing traitline does give Fury and Swiftness on weapon swap but the main thing is Geomancy Sigil. LINK With 100% bleed duration, that's an extra 3 stacks of bleeding for 20 seconds on a 10 second cooldown (weapon swap). On condi focused builds, that's a decent chunk of damage. True, you lose that damage when you need to range a bit but then you can just wait until you can close in and it'll be ready.That wasnt really the question he asked. I believe the answer is that 4 of the skills on the sb has less than or equal the cooldown of weapon swap (concussive shot being the exception) so if sb is your primary source of dps, a weapon swap to something else really doesnt serve a purpose except for possible utility (which is rarely the case in PvE where its deeps deeps and more deeps or you suck).I cant play ranger for crap but thats pretty much universal for all classes.Mmm, This is true. As far as skills are concerned; there isn't a benefit to going double SB. But that's ok on this build, it's built for consistent DPS. While you could get more dps with D/T or A/T on swap, the difference is ~1k (as OP mentioned) but with the benefit of being able to range whenever.You COULD play this build with one shortbow and just camp it. You'd just want to swap the Geomancy Sigil for Earth Sigil . Dps on boss will be a little bit lower (sigil will upkeep ~5 bleed stacks instead of 6). You will lose the AoE aspect of geomancy for the adds but that shouldn't be a problem with team cleave and piercing arrows. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Minna.7895 Posted January 4, 2018 Share Posted January 4, 2018 I did a similar thing and switched to double sb stanceshare soulbeast. i just took the setting that was meta right before soulbeast was introduced (remember we lacked the 10% duration to hit the 100% even with trapper and nightmare). That was enough to ignore the burning and the poison and take kraitrunes in combination with geomancy and earth sigills. So that is exactly what i did and i can't tell you how happy i am with this. even without evade (10%) and furious crystals that give extra duration (~7% or so) i am at 99,x% bleeding duration with pizza or cake and around 50% poison. i found that the earthsigill did better for me than any duration in poison on golem, but that can just be me -i got better numbers with 2 sb anyways because you really cant mess up your rotation compared to sb and d/t- so the noobier you are (like me) the better this will suit you even if you dont have to range in a raid. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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