Showing Posts For mptyspace.8135:
I use my shortbow for all fractals as it’s by far the best range damage weapon, especially when there’s so kitten many mobs around
It also suits my venom sharing build, as I’ll still be able to hit mobs, but also run to other players to share the buffs.
I run a venom sharing build using this set of traits and rune/sigil combo. This is mainly for PVE though, but feel free to have a go at it in grouped pvp, though I wouldn’t recommend it except for WvW.
(copy/paste it)
It might seem weird at first, but let me explain
Condition removal in stealth: Using in combination with dagger skill 5 is your escape, and your only real way to remove conditions, keep this in mind while playing. It’s not a whole lot of condition removal, but I don’t usually have a lot of conditions when I shoot stuff from range (shortbow).
Sigils of battle give 3 might on weapon swap, this forces you somewhat to swap every now and then between melee and range, it’s not that bad really.
Rune sets:
3 x a set that gives 25 power and 20% might duration. Why the F*? Well, first of all, every time you trigger one of your venoms, you gain might. With this particular spec, you will gain might for 33 seconds. Cooldown is 36 seconds on venoms, giving you 8 might for free, continuesly (pretty much).
You also gain might from dodging, giving another 24ish seconds of might per dodge you do. This quickly ramps up to decent amounts.
Every time you throw your cluster bomb (shortbow #2) into a fire field, you give everyone around there an extra 3 stacks of might, lasting about 30 seconds.
All in all, it’s meant for building might, might gives you your damage, both condition damage for double dagger #3, and just raw damage for shortbow shots.
Keep in mind that by speccing venom sharing and giving might on venoms, you are also giving might to allies, improving all round dps of the team.
The poison venom is just sweet, giving a very nice constant tick of damage.
The vulnerability venom is wicked because for a little while your group can go raving mad on whatever your fighting, the more people you share it to, the more damage dealt – especially with the might stacking you can really notice the effect.
The chill venom is because chills are so ‘rare’, and being able to dish out 4 seconds of chill per person with the venoms is just aweeesooome.
The basilisk venom is a bit of a weird one, because it doesn’t stack in duration. If everyone attacks at the same time, and you share it to 4 people, it’ll only last for a bout 2.something seconds, on the other hand, if you’re fighting a large group of mobs, you’ll see everything turn to stone for that amount of time, which is just plain awesome. aoe instant damage fields with this venom is just wicked crowd control.
For boss fights it’s a bit trickier, most bosses can be turned to stone, but annoyingly enough, 2.x seconds just isn’t long enough most of the time to be notable. What you can do is turn off auto attack, share the venom to other people, then as it runs out, shoot once, watch him be stoned again, and then again as that wears off.
Alternative try to share this with pets or minions, they don’t attack as often, and you’ll notice a nice spread of the venom over time.
Works like a charm, would recommend trying it for every thief.
I use 4 pieces of precision/condition damage/power gear (chest,helm,shoulders,pants) and 2 pieces of condition damage/power/vitality gear (boots, gloves), and all jewellery condition damage/vitality/power.
This gives you a healthy 17k health, along with decent toughness. As you’re gonna be mostly ranged and occasionally melee, you’ll live through almost everything.
ps:
root venom is awesome too, but situational (underwater bossfights for instance)
venom life steal is amazing, with no healing improvements except from traits, it heals about 380 per tick, along with signet of malice that’s a rough 500 health / attack, venoms restore your health VERY, VERY quickly
(edited by mptyspace.8135)
I’ve been playing recently as a venom/might sharing thief with lifesteal for venom hits and might from dodging, and I’ve been having a blast. The only thing I really miss is a little bit more range for the sharing.
The range currently isn’t very wide, and you can only effectively spread it to 1 person, 2 if there happen to be 2 players close together, which usually doesn’t happen in dungeons/fractals/whatever, especially not during fights, because 1) it’s generally dangerous (aoe effects), and 2) it’s not something people generally just want to do, even though they’re missing out on area buffs.
Also it’d be nice if a small indicator could be added that venoms have been shared to that person, something popping over their head or something, just to give it more of a visual effect, in any case, that’s something I’d appreciate.
This trait is only sensible in one situation:
Healing skill must be signet
Ulti skill must be Venom
Other 3 skills must be Trick, Deception and Trap
It’s probably most useful in pvp, where when you are able to reset either one of these skills, you gain a huge enough advantage to be worth it.
The weakness is that it relies on a roll to decide which of the skills will actually be reset, and therefore you must have used (nearly) every skill when you steal for it’s effect to be notable. This however leaves you very vulnerable in an ‘oh crap’ situation.
So yeah.. it’s not an ideal skill, even for the optimal situation.
So that leaves us with less sensible situations, where you pick it to ‘get lucky’.
For instance where you reset all your stealth skills with a random roll at an optimal of every ~32 seconds.
Imo it fits the thieves versatility to have this trait, as in, I like that it’s there, but I’m probably never going to use it, not for any serious build anyway.
y’know, I was planning a support build for my thief, but this goes a little far imo
Actually you can attack people that are somewhat near the walls just fine with your shortbow. Longer range would probably be OP for shortbow as the range defines your survivability.
I’d love the rifle option for longer range!
It’s vit and boon duration.
That particular traitline should be gotten to at least 20, and maybe even higher, because if you’re using your shortbow, you’re probably dodging a lot to get away from attacks, so 10% extra damage when endurance not full is great.
Two builds possible I guess, one mainly focussed on the damage of abilities 1 & 2, speccing for the highest possible base damage.
The second focusses on the bleeding of abilities #2 and #4. Keep in mind poison doesn’t stack, so venoms are a bit useless if you use #4.
For the first I would go with the above mentioned power,crit, vit build. For the last I would go with crit, vit, condition damage, and put a bleeding on crit gem in your bow.
fyi, in picture #15 you have 6 initiative left out of 10, it costs 3 to launch, you were using auto attacks before that, you shot twice
Perhaps we’re talking about a bug then that doesn’t always occur, or doesn’t happen for everyone, I’m sure as hell confident that my eyes are not deceiving me
Checked combat log, 5 hits at a time.
/rage.
Let me demonstrate with a pictureset:
http://i1079.photobucket.com/albums/w519/mptyspace/gw005.jpg
vs
http://i1079.photobucket.com/albums/w519/mptyspace/gw014.jpg
The 2nd shortbow skill, cluster bomb (and detonate cluster that’s linked to it) seems to have been somewhat nerfed.
It would seem the maximum targets has been set to 5. Now this is all reasonable, only the problem being that detonating the bomb mid air is now completely useless.
Imagine the following situation: 2 mobs standing in melee fighting you. Now, normally, I’d shoot the bomb, explode it almost instantly, and both mobs would get hit 3 times, doing just as much damage as not exploding the bomb would, but hitting 6 times instead of 3 (malice ftw).
Now, when I do the same trick, only 5 hits will go through.
To compare damage, if I shoot 1 bomb right at the ground, it will do 100% damage to each mob, for a total of 200%.
Exploding the cluster mid air will now do only 5 hits max, so 100% on one mob, and 66% on the 2nd mob, for a total of 166%.
This gets worse as the amount of mobs increases, capping at 5 mobs (max targets), where a normal bomb would do 500% damage (5 hits), the cluster bomb will now do 5 × 33% = 166% damage.
This is a massive damage nerf for detonating the cluster, making it’s primary use, to do a lot of smaller hits, completely pointless.
It’s reasonably assumable that the fact that max targets has been set to 5, this now counts for all parts of the skill, including the part where the main bomb gets split into 3 little bombs, this would mean it’s a bug and needs fixing. If it’s intended that the detonated cluster also hits a max of 5 targets, then I might as well stop using the shortbow.
probably on the same line as the thief traitline which increases ‘Steal’ recharge rate, doesn’t work either.