Guild Wars 2

With the latest change to Light on Your Feet and Refined Toxins, fellow Rangers that own both The Dreamer and Chuka & Champawat – REJOICE! There’s finally a build for shortbow (in PVE). Is it meta? Who knows! But after seeing the numbers, I’m sure someone out there will crunch it all.

Legendary Double (Short) Bow Build

Flank the boss. Spam 1, 2, 4 and weapon swap to your other (Legendary) shortbow off cooldown for more bleeds. With the new Light on Your Feet, Crossfire applies 9.75s of bleeding, 17.75s of poison from Poison Volley, and Refined Toxins tosses in 8 additional stacks of poison from you and your Pet while you spam traps and sharpening stone.

Why not Beastmastery? Because we only took it for Companion’s Might and Honed Axes so our Pet could get some boons since the target cap and priority of players over NPCs. Without the need of Honed Axes and Companion’s Might being weaker than Fortifying Bond, NM takes the cake while offering additional team support and a harder hitting Pet.

If you are low-manning it where your Pet can receive boons, then take Beastmastery with the usual traits, minus Honed Axes. Take Beastly Warden instead. Best of all, this build is more friendly on moving targets. All you need is 3s for the traps instead of 9s for Bonfire. Whatta change!

Edit: Man, that spike in Sigil of Geomancy’s price.

Wondrouswall.7169:

With the latest change to Light on Your Feet and Refined Toxins, fellow Rangers that own both The Dreamer and Chuka & Champawat – REJOICE! There’s finally a build for shortbow (in PVE). Is it meta? Who knows! But after seeing the numbers, I’m sure someone out there will crunch it all.

Legendary Double (Short) Bow Build

Flank the boss. Spam 1, 2, 4 and weapon swap to your other (Legendary) shortbow off cooldown for more bleeds. With the new Light on Your Feet, Crossfire applies 9.75s of bleeding, 17.75s of poison from Poison Volley, and Refined Toxins tosses in 8 additional stacks of poison from you and your Pet while you spam traps and sharpening stone.

Why not Beastmastery? Because we only took it for Companion’s Might and Honed Axes so our Pet could get some boons since the target cap and priority of players over NPCs. Without the need of Honed Axes and Companion’s Might being weaker than Fortifying Bond, NM takes the cake while offering additional team support and a harder hitting Pet.

If you are low-manning it where your Pet can receive boons, then take Beastmastery with the usual traits, minus Honed Axes. Take Beastly Warden instead. Best of all, this build is more friendly on moving targets. All you need is 3s for the traps instead of 9s for Bonfire. Whatta change!

Edit: Man, that spike in Sigil of Geomancy’s price.

And whats the dps like?

I was trying out nothing but autoattack SB + light of your feet and it ended up with 15.5k dps (no weapon swap, no utlity)

Like I said: Who knows! I don’t have all the infusions to pull the official numbers and 3 pieces of my armor are still exotic (gasp). I made ascended gear for my Chrono and Elementalist before, so, yeah.

It’s all a theory. One mad, mad, theory. Who knows, though. It might be a new meta(ish).

EDIT: Did a bit of testing on my sub-par gear. This build was pulling about 3k less DPS than the axe/torch & shortbow setup. Timings were not perfect, but it would still be less.

Aww, man. I was hoping this odd patch might have brought something more odd with it. That’s what I get theory-crafting at 4am.

The main problem with this build is that the dps drops even faster then Axe/Torch if you can’t sty behind your target.

I did some testing with a similar setup however I opted to use rune of the afflicted to boost bleed/poison duration while ignoring burning altogether. I also opted for Marksmanship as a third traitline, just due to the +25% power damage modifiers. I was also using Sylvan hound as the elite skill. All together, with full infusions I was reaching about 32k DPS on the golem, which is about 2k DPS behind the axe/torch setup.

So unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be very viable, especially since you need 100% flanking uptime to reach the best numbers.

32k DPS sounds extremely viable to me?

Just a thought, if the only other reason for weapon swapping is tailwind and furious grip (which we can expect to be irrelevant and unnecessary for DPS), then wouldn’t it be a decent consideration to ditch geomancy sigils altogether and use a second weaponset for utility or burst damage? (Similar to how we used to camp sword/axe in dungeons, but use longbow for burst damage) You could have axe/torch on swap to open with splitblade, bonfire, etc. but then camp shortbow until you can no longer flank the boss. There’s definitely some value to the AoE of Torch as well, just it’s rare to come up in raids.

I could definitely see this working out to the benefit of condi druid at least, since they would be able to carry a staff for whenever they need to heal. But then you would lose Quickdraw for Celestial Avatar if you go with light on your feet… and this is going into theory craft about a hybrid build and not a dedicated damage build.
(Edit: Aaand faffing with that once again I continue to run into the problem of Seraph’s being the most appropriate stat set outside of trying a mix set, even with its mediocre healing power, overload of precision and waste of stat points in concentration and just for completeness here’s the joke of a build I’ve come up with)

I am very intrigued by this and am looking forward to seeing people’s experiments. Will test this out myself. Even if it comes up short on a dummy it might be something that would have very good niche uses such as in a 100cm where laying bonfire and traps just isn’t possible all the time… or at least in any semblance of a good rotation. Having more flexibility on motion and positioning isn’t a bad thing to help with dps at times. Especially if it keeps you from getting killed. And since there’s barely any gear switching and minimal spec changing you can do it on the go for specific bosses or encounters. I like the possibilities this might bring.

AnariiUK.7409:

So unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be very viable, especially since you need 100% flanking uptime to reach the best numbers.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Light_on_your_Feet
Light on your Feet
Damage and condition duration is increased for a while after dodging. Short bow skills always behave as though you were behind your target, recharge faster, and pierce.

Unless that’s broken too.

Castleguard.2498:

AnariiUK.7409:

So unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be very viable, especially since you need 100% flanking uptime to reach the best numbers.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Light_on_your_Feet
Light on your Feet
Damage and condition duration is increased for a while after dodging. Short bow skills always behave as though you were behind your target, recharge faster, and pierce.

Tooltip does not match in-game functionality. It should read:

Damage and condition duration is increased for a while after dodging. Short bow skills recharge faster, pierce and their flanking bonuses are stronger.

It adds extra duration to crossfire’s bleed, poison volley’s poison and crippling shot’s immobilize as well as 10 stacks of vuln for 10s on Concussion shot if those skills hit while flanking.

Additionally, if it was just you always count as flanking, we’d just be using quickdraw instead and 100% flanking uptime would still be a relevant concern.

Fluffball.8307:

32k DPS sounds extremely viable to me?

They probably mean that people will expect you to take the higher dps build with axe/torch.

Honestly though Ranger dps in raids vs golem is very different due to needing to flank the target and needing the target to stand still. Other dps classes are already pulling higher numbers now on golems and can more closly match their golem numbers in actual raids.

33.3k unr/32.3k real are my best tries with this build so far, full infusions/afflicted/entangle. Bm is still a dps increase over nm and mm.

I wish Anet unsplitted Spike Trap cd reduction for pve. That would be a nice option for this build.
Entangle is also very weak for a Elite.

Fluffball.8307:

32k DPS sounds extremely viable to me?

I think he meant that DPS isn’t viable because you need to be flanking. Which makes it very situational for SB to reach 32k DPS.

kiwituatara.6053:

Fluffball.8307:

32k DPS sounds extremely viable to me?

I think he meant that DPS isn’t viable because you need to be flanking. Which makes it very situational for SB to reach 32k DPS.

This exactly, it’s not unviable in the sense that it does bad damage. More due to the fact that it’s extremely unpractical and almost completely overshadowed by the quick-draw Axe/Torch + Shortbow setup, even if you assume 100% flanking uptime.

That said, I feel there might be some merit to the new trait, but it isn’t likely going to be used for full DPS PvE builds. It’s a shame but I think condi-ranger may drop out of favour in high-end groups now, condi-thief was buffed (Madness I know) and is pulling almost 40k now and Engi still beats us outright.

32k is trash.
condi Ele 45k to 56k

Yep, no reason to bring a condi ranger anymore.

https://dd.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6bvlaa/arcane_condition_tempest_42k_realistic_dps_56k/

Sheesh. Power builds are dropping out like crazy. Kind of makes me regret tossing my Thief’s condition set. Well, boys, it was fun not being healer for awhile.

It’s the typical imbalanced-balance of Anet. Double nerf one thing, in this case, torch on Ranger, and double buff another – Thief and Elementalist.

I hope you’re reading this Devs. You could unnerf the torch durations and Ranger still wouldn’t be able to hit what Thief and Ele now hit.

AnariiUK.7409:

I did some testing with a similar setup however I opted to use rune of the afflicted to boost bleed/poison duration while ignoring burning altogether. I also opted for Marksmanship as a third traitline, just due to the +25% power damage modifiers. I was also using Sylvan hound as the elite skill. All together, with full infusions I was reaching about 32k DPS on the golem, which is about 2k DPS behind the axe/torch setup.

So unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be very viable, especially since you need 100% flanking uptime to reach the best numbers.

2k dps less isn’t viable…..

Is that game breaking? Would you a be a complete liability now with that spec?

I have to say, and please, take this the wrong way because it’s how I mean it, “People like you are the reason ANET was so against DPS meters.”

anduriell.6280:

32k is trash.
condi Ele 45k to 56k

Yep, no reason to bring a condi ranger anymore.

https://dd.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6bvlaa/arcane_condition_tempest_42k_realistic_dps_56k/

Oh Anduriell, you love to exaggerate.

Truth or Fiction? Just a few months ago, Ele Top Dps was 35k.

But now, 32k is trash? ok. Sure thing.

32k isn’t really trash but when theres multiple classes that can do aywhere from 3 to 10k more damage then Ranger, not to mention that Ranger damage in an actual fight drops down due to not being able to flank or keep them in bonfire, and current trends are multiple nerfs to condi Ranger while the higher dps classes keep getting their dps buffed, its not hard to see why people are upset.

EnderzShadow.2506:

anduriell.6280:

32k is trash.
condi Ele 45k to 56k

Yep, no reason to bring a condi ranger anymore.

https://dd.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6bvlaa/arcane_condition_tempest_42k_realistic_dps_56k/

Oh Anduriell, you love to exaggerate.

Truth or Fiction? Just a few months ago, Ele Top Dps was 35k.

But now, 32k is trash? ok. Sure thing.

well i gave you the link with numbers there…

Do you do only 36k with the ele? and you don’t get kicked on sight? Now, that explains a lot…

EnderzShadow.2506:

2k dps less isn’t viable…..

Perhaps I worded this quite poorly in my original post; I’m not saying it’s unviable because it can pull 32k DPS. I’m saying it’s unviable because there exists a far more practical and realistic build that already achieves much better results in almost every situation.

This build could in theory work extremely well for PUG Deimos strategy where the DPS group ranges him from the center. However I’m unable to test that out.

EnderzShadow.2506:

Is that game breaking? Would you a be a complete liability now with that spec?

It’s not gamebreaking, and personally I wouldn’t mind someone running this build. But at all current encounters (Perhaps with the exception of PUG Deimos) you would be a liability compared to someone running the alternative axe/torch build. That’s not my opinion, that’s just a fact based on the performance of the build.

EnderzShadow.2506:

I have to say, and please, take this the wrong way because it’s how I mean it, “People like you are the reason ANET was so against DPS meters.”

This has nothing to do with DPS meters. I’m simply comparing the performance of one build in a vacuum against another build in a vacuum. There’s nothing elitist or offensive about objective comparison. By all means, go and test this out against some real raid encounters, I would genuinely be super interested to hear about your results.

Any videos of this benchmark yet?

Kain Francois.4328:

Any videos of this benchmark yet?

Here you go!

It can possibly be improved but I’m all out of ideas.