Guild Wars 2

Bleed/Crit builds are nothing new, but today I was testing something using the new Rapid Fire, and it wasn’t too bad. The RF channel ended with 22 stacks of Vulnerability and 18 stacks of Bleed on the target…a stationary target mind you, but still, not too shabby. You can see the build details and the actual test here.

I’m curious to see what other things people are doing to take advantage of the modified nature of Rapid Fire. I know many people feel the old method of a one-shot delivery of 10 stacks was preferable, but I’d like to see how people are taking advantage of it as it is…

Well, at least we now know it can hit and damage stationary targets. Now our quest is to find afk people in wvw and we may deal damage with LB. Rapid Fire channeling time is waaaaaay too long and longbow arrows should be increased in velocity.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Well, at least we now know it can hit and damage stationary targets. Now our quest is to find afk people in wvw and we may deal damage with LB. Rapid Fire channeling time is waaaaaay too long and longbow arrows should be increased in velocity.

it gets more hits off than you would expect there is not really any way to negate every single hit from rapid fire and even if you only get off half it is still a decent amount of dmg

Criminal.5627:

Nuka Cola.8520:

Well, at least we now know it can hit and damage stationary targets. Now our quest is to find afk people in wvw and we may deal damage with LB. Rapid Fire channeling time is waaaaaay too long and longbow arrows should be increased in velocity.

it gets more hits off than you would expect there is not really any way to negate every single hit from rapid fire and even if you only get off half it is still a decent amount of dmg

I have been using a LB a lot in wvw since patch lol i know how it hits. A person could move from side to side while being at 700 range and running away from you, you will miss almost every hit… But hey! we can spec for 1500 range and guess how many times it will hit anything?

I think it’s generally interesting to manipulate how the vulnerability stacks ebb and flow with Remorseless. But all I’ve really got at the moment are a small collection of stupid pet tricks I don’t quite have a practical handle on.

For example; You can open a fight with a window of 25 vulnerability stacks that lasts long enough to sandwich in a pet’s F2. But while I’m decent enough at doing that on test dummies for somebody trying to re-work her muscle memory, oh god, do I ever fumble it on actual bosses.

You start the fight off with Hunter’s Shot -> Rapid Fire.
You get 5 from the initial opening strike on hunter’s shot, 5 again from the remorseless renewed opening strike on the first hit of rapid fire, 10 from rapid fire, 5 from the pet. It’s about a two second window, but if you get the hang of the timing it’s not too hard to land.

At first flush you’d think it would be pretty hard to activate an F2 before the end of the rapid fire channel, but after a pet has had a chance to do a melee attack to apply their own opening strike, but before any lengthy family attacks get into queue. But oddly in practice it mostly just works out all on it’s own with a few adjustments per family. (For example; I F1 birds before firing my arrows to get Quickening Screech out of the way).

There’s all sorts of weird little things like that with Longbow now.

The real question is how practical the new longbow is without the new remorseless/30 into MM.

It’s a decent question, but it has it’s limits.

On the one hand things should feel worthwhile without traits, on the other hand nobody is walking around with a blank trait template or makes a habit of wielding weapons outside their build direction.

If you felt you needed Remorseless to make Longbow work that would be a problem. Feeling the need to do some level of investment into the power trait line while using a power weapon just seems like a standard of character building that should be taken for granted.

Vox Hollow.2736:

It’s a decent question, but it has it’s limits.

On the one hand things should feel worthwhile without traits, on the other hand nobody is walking around with a blank trait template or makes a habit of wielding weapons outside their build direction.

If you felt you needed Remorseless to make Longbow work that would be a problem. Feeling the need to do some level of investment into the power trait line while using a power weapon just seems like a standard of character building that should be taken for granted.

I find that investing that heavily into MM to make longbow something that it should already be, questionable. Stopping at 20 should be more than enough to get some nice pickups for the LB, and it kinda is, but this trait line more than any needs some consolidation work.

I’d really like to push for moment of clarity and remorseless to be integrated into minor traits as they seem what should be a very integral part of both the SB and LB respectively.

I think that’s a fair statement.

Miflett.3472:

Vox Hollow.2736:

It’s a decent question, but it has it’s limits.

On the one hand things should feel worthwhile without traits, on the other hand nobody is walking around with a blank trait template or makes a habit of wielding weapons outside their build direction.

If you felt you needed Remorseless to make Longbow work that would be a problem. Feeling the need to do some level of investment into the power trait line while using a power weapon just seems like a standard of character building that should be taken for granted.

I find that investing that heavily into MM to make longbow something that it should already be, questionable. Stopping at 20 should be more than enough to get some nice pickups for the LB, and it kinda is, but this trait line more than any needs some consolidation work.

I’d really like to push for moment of clarity and remorseless to be integrated into minor traits as they seem what should be a very integral part of both the SB and LB respectively.

That’s a really good idea, though personally I would just scrap the function of Moment of Clarity entirely. The +% increase to dazes and stuns is nice, but the weapons they are on (besides the greatsword) really lack any way to burst off of landing a stun/daze. It’s a nice utility, but the secondary function of Moment of Clarity really just doesn’t do enough to be a Grandmaster trait.

Scrap it and put something better while possibly retaining concepts from the original function.

jcbroe.4329:

Miflett.3472:

Vox Hollow.2736:

It’s a decent question, but it has it’s limits.

On the one hand things should feel worthwhile without traits, on the other hand nobody is walking around with a blank trait template or makes a habit of wielding weapons outside their build direction.

If you felt you needed Remorseless to make Longbow work that would be a problem. Feeling the need to do some level of investment into the power trait line while using a power weapon just seems like a standard of character building that should be taken for granted.

I find that investing that heavily into MM to make longbow something that it should already be, questionable. Stopping at 20 should be more than enough to get some nice pickups for the LB, and it kinda is, but this trait line more than any needs some consolidation work.

I’d really like to push for moment of clarity and remorseless to be integrated into minor traits as they seem what should be a very integral part of both the SB and LB respectively.

That’s a really good idea, though personally I would just scrap the function of Moment of Clarity entirely. The +% increase to dazes and stuns is nice, but the weapons they are on (besides the greatsword) really lack any way to burst off of landing a stun/daze. It’s a nice utility, but the secondary function of Moment of Clarity really just doesn’t do enough to be a Grandmaster trait.

Scrap it and put something better while possibly retaining concepts from the original function.

Torment on interrupt would be cool; it’d also lend nicely to tight circle kiting.

Both bows would get some love: LB with its stealth and hopeful future improvements, and SB with an actual mechanic.

Miflett.3472:

jcbroe.4329:

Miflett.3472:

Vox Hollow.2736:

It’s a decent question, but it has it’s limits.

On the one hand things should feel worthwhile without traits, on the other hand nobody is walking around with a blank trait template or makes a habit of wielding weapons outside their build direction.

If you felt you needed Remorseless to make Longbow work that would be a problem. Feeling the need to do some level of investment into the power trait line while using a power weapon just seems like a standard of character building that should be taken for granted.

I find that investing that heavily into MM to make longbow something that it should already be, questionable. Stopping at 20 should be more than enough to get some nice pickups for the LB, and it kinda is, but this trait line more than any needs some consolidation work.

I’d really like to push for moment of clarity and remorseless to be integrated into minor traits as they seem what should be a very integral part of both the SB and LB respectively.

That’s a really good idea, though personally I would just scrap the function of Moment of Clarity entirely. The +% increase to dazes and stuns is nice, but the weapons they are on (besides the greatsword) really lack any way to burst off of landing a stun/daze. It’s a nice utility, but the secondary function of Moment of Clarity really just doesn’t do enough to be a Grandmaster trait.

Scrap it and put something better while possibly retaining concepts from the original function.

Torment on interrupt would be cool; it’d also lend nicely to tight circle kiting.

Both bows would get some love: LB with its stealth and hopeful future improvements, and SB with an actual mechanic.

That sounds cool!

My suggestion has always been to make it quickness on interrupt for you and your pet. It would allow longbow users to punish people they hit with knockback shot harder and provide potential setup into barrage, for shortbow it could help stack bleeds up if they are interrupted when being flanked, and for greatsword, it would allow the pet to get a more reliable boosted damage hit off, as well as let rangers land a Maul more safely with less of a chance of whiffing it.

But really I could list ideas for days so I better stop before it gets out of hand and derails the thread lol.

I think rangers are one of the only classes that the reduce sig cd and grant might on sig use is 2 separate traits in the MM line, most classes that I atleast have played have both of those traits combined in one greater while we have them in 2 greaters

Miflett.3472:

Vox Hollow.2736:

It’s a decent question, but it has it’s limits.

On the one hand things should feel worthwhile without traits, on the other hand nobody is walking around with a blank trait template or makes a habit of wielding weapons outside their build direction.

If you felt you needed Remorseless to make Longbow work that would be a problem. Feeling the need to do some level of investment into the power trait line while using a power weapon just seems like a standard of character building that should be taken for granted.

I find that investing that heavily into MM to make longbow something that it should already be, questionable. Stopping at 20 should be more than enough to get some nice pickups for the LB, and it kinda is, but this trait line more than any needs some consolidation work.

I’d really like to push for moment of clarity and remorseless to be integrated into minor traits as they seem what should be a very integral part of both the SB and LB respectively.

Well said. The trade-offs that need to be made in order to take advantage of the changes are a break even prospect, at best, while the vulnerability shift is a net loss. If, however, the trait investment to take full advantage was less severe these changes would be an overall improvement.

Vox Hollow.2736:

I think it’s generally interesting to manipulate how the vulnerability stacks ebb and flow with Remorseless. But all I’ve really got at the moment are a small collection of stupid pet tricks I don’t quite have a practical handle on.

I find Remorseless to be a bit too much of an investment for the return, which is why I went this route on the build here, using a pet that can apply Vulnerability itself and going with Bleeds to make up the rest of the damage. It seems to work pretty well, in that you have a bit more control over when that ‘burst’ occurs,

Speaking of ‘stupid pet tricks’ (Dave!), I’m finding that using Canines with their Leap and Knockdown actually helps ensuring you get the full channeling of Rapid Fire off, especially if you use Quickness. While pet abilities are famously unreliable in their usage, and it would be much better to control them all manually, I’ve learned that you can kind of control what the pet does when for some of them based on you/the pets range to target when you activate them and order to attack.

The Wolf for example has 2 leaps, one that does the cripple and the other that does the knockdown. They have different ranges though, so if you swap out to it and hit F1 outside the range of one but within the range of the other, it will usually execute that – in this case, that’s your knockdown. Works well, when you get the timing right…again with the muscle memory!

Conversely, I’m finding the Lynx Leap with it’s greater range and being on F2 to be really…odd. Maybe 50% of the time the thing will leap off in some random direction, even if I have an enemy targeted…often it seems to do this when I swap to it with the enemy right near me, as if it has a minimum range requirement…putting the ‘stupid’ in ‘trick’ for sure.

Anyway, the interesting thing about Ranger is that while out class mechanic can be a pain in the kitten at times, there are quite a large number of permutations of traits, pet ability, ranger utility and weapon power and effect, where you can do all kinds of unexpected things. This bleed/vulnerability thing I was messing with is just one example, there are tons more. A large portion of which I have no idea of.

Speaking of which, I came across a friend today who didn’t know you could do a particular thing I do on one of my loadouts. It is possible to set just about all your slot skills, right bar and left bar, to auto-attack. This can be used to do things like making sure you don’t lose cast uptime by having to manually trigger something as soon as it’s off cooldown, good for stuff like Warhorn on a perma-swiftness or fury build, or even Sharpening Stone.

A cool thing you can do with this, is take advantage of the weapon-switching. Through a quirk in the mechanics, even though when you weapon-switch only the left bar, the weapon skills actually changes, the auto-attack settings for both bars change. Because of this, you can set one of your utilities to auto-cast only for one of the two weapon sets…so you effectively get a free non-manual cast ‘on switch’ effect much like you can get from Sigils, say Hydromancy and the AoE chill.

Taking this a step further, you can even get 2 such casts – using a Spirit. Set the auto-cast on the spirit slot for one weapon set, your secondary. Engage in combat with your primary, and then switch. The spirit will cast and come out, enabling it’s passive effect – burning or whatever – AND, immediately execute it’s active effect – say, cast an AoE blind. Obviously the usefulness of this depends on managing it so you get the right usage out of it…but it’s an example of one of the neat things we can do as Rangers. Stupid Ranger Tricks. :P

Sorry for rambling! It’s 3am and I am over-tired! But yeah, more tricks people, I’m sure there are a ton of them out there that we haven’t collectively found yet, the tips thread surely does not hold them all!

Looks nice, but as you are using rabid gear you don’t get that much out of the vulnerability, maybe your pet does. Pet bleed ticks for around 48 ea if you don’t trait for it. However if you would take companions might, and/or RaO your kitty goes boom. I ran my rabid gear in wvw with a/t sb Lynx, and similar trait setup. It does stack a lot of bleed for sure. The question is whether LB gets better survivability with Hunter’s shot now, compared to the shortbow evade.

As for Remorseless, it will best work with valkyrie gear for the guaranteed crit from stealth.

not bad damage but its a glass cannon with condi. 0 def skills, just the stealth.

Anthrage.2519:

Bleed/Crit builds are nothing new, but today I was testing something using the new Rapid Fire, and it wasn’t too bad. The RF channel ended with 22 stacks of Vulnerability and 18 stacks of Bleed on the target…a stationary target mind you, but still, not too shabby. You can see the build details and the actual test here.

I’m curious to see what other things people are doing to take advantage of the modified nature of Rapid Fire. I know many people feel the old method of a one-shot delivery of 10 stacks was preferable, but I’d like to see how people are taking advantage of it as it is…

I posted about this type of build before

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-F;4sEku-d2VEF-0;9k7Z;1TJJ;027919-05;5K-F4;2JH8_H9dZEwk-1-56;2Vc-h0m1rYxZ259DV276mW6TsW6T;9;9;9;9;9;4V6s5Y

My Twitch.Tv channel has a few videos of me running it.

Rabid Will work, but I still think Rampager works better for it.

Well, Stealth, the Knockback, the Stun Break and with a switch to Lyssa runes, you get a random 9 second boon on Heal (9 seconds of Retal is sick) and all conditions cleared and all boons granted for 3 seconds on the 120-sec cooldown elite. It doesn’t play that glassy honestly, I ran it for about 10 matches yesterday and had no trouble staying up. I usually run an evade-heavy trapper with the same weapon set at 21kHP, and didn’t notice a huge difference in survivability.

McWolfy.5924:

not bad damage but its a glass cannon with condi. 0 def skills, just the stealth.

It is in the same ballpark, but seems a good deal different – I never liked drakes or shortbow honestly. I did use Rampagers initially on this build, but made some changes to hit certain stat benchmarks. On thing it is definitely great for is taking down the NPCs rather quickly.

Xsorus.2507:

I posted about this type of build before

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-F;4sEku-d2VEF-0;9k7Z;1TJJ;027919-05;5K-F4;2JH8_H9dZEwk-1-56;2Vc-h0m1rYxZ259DV276mW6TsW6T;9;9;9;9;9;4V6s5Y

My Twitch.Tv channel has a few videos of me running it.

Rabid Will work, but I still think Rampager works better for it.

I am going to have to play a set with Warhorn instead of Torch. I generally Torch on a condition build but given the higher crit rate and the bleed potential, it may be a better option. Torch 4 and 5 on a downed is hard to pass on though.

Miflett.3472:

The real question is how practical the new longbow is without the new remorseless/30 into MM.

it works fine. Atm i run full clerics with a few knights/zerker trinkets for additional damage. and in all honesty, it works fine.
In solo fights, the stealth itself is more then enough to deal with enemies. Until “remorseless” resets “Precise Strike” i won’t bother using it at all.