Guild Wars 2

Prior to the big patch, I went down the marksmenship line to get the 10% damage bonus. The bonus is still there, but it appears that wilderness survival yields more damage now. Please check my math:

Marksmanship
Steady Focus: +10% damage when endurance is full.
- With my stats at level 80 my shortbow skill 1 lists 266 damage per attack.
- I get about 2 attacks per second.
- Therefore, I do about 532 damage per second.
- 10% of this is 53.2 dps, or the bonus damage from the trait.

Wilderness Survival
Expertise Training – Pets get 300 condition damage and 20% improved condition duration.

Refined Toxins When above 90% hp, you and your pet inflict poison with a 10 second cooldown.
- I have 717 condition damage so my poisons do 46 dps (taking cooldown into consideration).
- My pet with Expertise training, would have 300 condition damage, and do 30.9 poison dps (taking cooldown into consideration).
- Therefore this trait yields 76.8 dps.

From the comparison 76.8>53.2 so wilderness survival easily deals more damage than marksmanship. Yes, I realize that there is an initial increased damage due to first strike but that is not sustained in combat unless you get fury lots and are traited like that (I am neither). I also realize can get improved crits from marksmanship but it would only even out the difference in dps. Lastly, I also realize poison is only applied to one target where the 10% damage from marks is applied to all if you have penetrating arrows. I also assume the damage bonus is for direct/crit damage only.

So if the damage from marks is equal to wilderness at best, wilderness should still be better given the high level of utility from the damage reduction traits (Companion’s Defense and Bark Skin).

What are your thoughts? Wilderness survival is the easy winner here for shortbows.

Marksmanship is for Direct Damage – Wilderness Survival supports conditions and Shortbow Specifically.
There’s no discussion. Wilderness wins the day for condition builds.

For the Maths, you forgot Predator’s Onslaught. But that doesn’t really matter. Shortbow’s DPS is hybrid – ergo crits and conditions for this build from Wilderness are far superior in terms of DPS.
But then again, Shortbow has no place in constructive PvE. World bosses won’t let you flank them, you don’t want this weapon in dungeons, and the only place where you can run this is open world content.

I wouldn’t say SB has no place pve. I flank and bleed world bosses all the time. I find this is a great general purpose utility weapon anywhere I go pve, dungeons included.