Knight’s armor is just a good base to start working from. It mixes well with berserker’s gear. Also, precision gives greater benefits the more you invest in it. If you assign the trait points in those two builds, I think you’ll find that the knight’s gear pulls ahead in effective power.
Last time I tested it I came up with 1.2 – 1.25 seconds per arrow, with about 0.25 seconds in the animation unaffected by quickness. The main reason I was looking into it was because I noticed that QZ with the longbow only gave me one more arrow over its duration.
I couldn’t get this build to work for me when I tried it. It didn’t feel like I was doing enough damage and as soon as people realized I didn’t have a stun breaker, they started going after me pretty aggressively.
The trait setup wasn’t really a suggestion, just a thought. I happen to like the longbow, even if it does terrible damage.
A sigil of force might boost your damage over a sigil of accuracy, but I’m not sure.
Also, ascended accesories kind of ruin some of that item slot efficiency.
(edited by Killsmith.8169)
I like this build. I recommend that you give your armor and accessories another look though. You can squeeze out a little more power and defense by putting berserker stats in the most efficient slots. That would be boots, gloves, and shoulders for armor and knight’s accessories with exquisite rubies in the slots.
You can probably tweak it better than I did if you play around with it some more.
I think the same gear setup with a 20/25/25 trait setup could work for a LB/GS build, but I doubt it would work better than what you’ve got, since you’d give up bark skin for either piercing arrows or eagle eye.
It’s the leap animations that lock you in. I would like it better if they got rid of the leaps, upped the cripple duration it applies to the target, and had the chain give you permanent swiftness as well. That would allow you to stick to your target and still dodge.
The other thing I would ask for is to change the number 2 skill so that the first part only makes you leap back if you are in melee range of your target. That way you could use it as a gap closer if you’re far away from your target. You just hit it twice while you’re far away. The first part doesn’t move you back since you’re outside of melee range of your target and the second part functions like it always has. Once you’re in range it has the same effect that it does now.
What weapons are you using? The shortbow auto attack has a delay that doesn’t get shortened by quickness. Some of the testing I’ve done indicates there’s a ~0.24 second delay in the longbow auto attack that isn’t shortened by quickness either. If that really is the case, then the quickness change would result in a smaller drop in dps with longbow and shortbow. I’m not sure about the other weapons.
New QZ gives you +50% attack speed over 5 seconds. This is equal to 5(0.5)=2.5 seconds worth of attacks.
Old QZ gave you +100% attack speed over 4 seconds. This is equal to 4(1)=4 seconds worth of attacks.
New QZ provides 2.5/4=5/8=62.5% of the attack benefit that old QZ provided.
Nope.
As you tried to state, those numbers are + 50% and + 100%. Meaning it’s 5*1.5 and 4*2. Hence new QZ = 7.5 seconds and old QZ = 8.
There’s no need to include the base attacks. Those would be the same whether you used new QZ, old QZ, or no QZ. QZ is only responsible for the additional attacks you would make due to quickness. You don’t factor in the attacks you would get from your normal attack speed. In fact, because of the change in duration, you’re distorting your results.
Look at it this way. Suppose QZ was bugged and did abolutely nothing. Then, they decide to change the duration, but they didn’t fix the bug and it still does nothing. Using your math, which takes into acount the base attack speed, you get the following:
New QZ = 1.0*5 = 5
Old QZ = 1.0*4 = 4
And now, according to the way you’ve tried to calculate it, New QZ appears to be better than Old QZ, even though they’re bugged in this scenario and they’re both useless.
My math, on the other hand, shows this:
New QZ = 0*5 = 0
Old QZ = 0*4 = 0
Which is what it should be.
(edited by Killsmith.8169)
TLDR: The Quickness change means a 25% reduction in damage per second during Quickness, but only a 6.25% reduction in damage over the duration, given the increase in duration. No where near the many comments that I’ve seen that state ‘this change cuts my damage/DPS in half’
I thought that there was an implied bonus before the word damage. “This change cuts my bonus damage from quickness in half”. You could also say that this change cuts quickness’ damage in half. I don’t think anyone is saying that their overall DPS is cut in half, but maybe I’m giving people too much credit.
Also, the time frame doesn’t matter if you adopt the appropriate frame of reference. New QZ gives you +50% attack speed over 5 seconds. This is equal to 5(0.5)=2.5 seconds worth of attacks.
Old QZ gave you +100% attack speed over 4 seconds. This is equal to 4(1)=4 seconds worth of attacks.
New QZ provides 2.5/4=5/8=62.5% of the attack benefit that old QZ provided. It gained the added offensive utility of a stun break, but it also came at the cost of an additional second of being unable to heal.
My advice is that you don’t look at the stun break as a defensive maneuver. Think of it as a counter to an enemy’s attempt to disengage.
(edited by Killsmith.8169)
The first character I leveled to 80 was a ranger, followed by an ele, warrior, and guardian.
So far, my offensive spec’d ranger is tied with my full defensive spec’d S/D ele in damage. What’s more, my ele gives everyone in range 25 stacks of might and can generate something like 15 2k+ heals a minute.
My ranger and ele are probably tied in survivability. The difference however, is that my ele can get to the top of the aggro table. My ranger can’t unless he’s trying to pick up a downed party member.
I can’t really comment first hand on the other two classes because I haven’t spent enough time playing either class in dungeons, but they look promising. Both do more damage than my ranger without really trying and both have utility skills that work well in a group setting.
In order for me to start using spirits, they would need to be closer to what they were in Guild Wars. I’d like to see spirits that increase projectile speed and damage, increase condition damage by a percent, convert combo fields in the area to a different type, etc. Edge of extinction in a boss fight with lots of adds could be incredible. Effects simlar to Fertile Season and Predatory Season would have been pretty cool too. What we have now just doesn’t do much.
I loved spirits in GW1 because you could make a team built around them? For example, Equinox + Arcane Languor + Famine
Or Winter + Mantra of frost….
They definitely created some interesting synergy in GW1. Of course, since we’ve only got 5 spirits to choose from this time around, the really situational stuff is no good. That doesn’t mean that they couldn’t have had some really interesting effects.
In order for me to start using spirits, they would need to be closer to what they were in Guild Wars. I’d like to see spirits that increase projectile speed and damage, increase condition damage by a percent, convert combo fields in the area to a different type, etc. Edge of extinction in a boss fight with lots of adds could be incredible. Effects simlar to Fertile Season and Predatory Season would have been pretty cool too. What we have now just doesn’t do much.
I think pets are just too much of our damage. They should be at about 20% without any investment in BM. If more of the damage was shifted to the ranger, adding some more toughness, a cap on health lost to a single hit, or a dodge mechanic wouldn’t be as much of a balance concern.
Also, since we can’t revive our pet in combat and the pet swap timer is so long, could we get some sort of downed skill for our pet? Maybe change F1-F4 so that we can go send it to a corner and have it use lick wounds on itself? That or have healing skills and regen work towards reviving it.
This is good news. Does anyone know if pets currently start an attack as soon as they’re in range or if they get closer to their target before starting? Decreasing the distance to the target before starting an attack would probably be the easiest way to improve hitting if that’s not already implemented.
As for survivability in dungeons, I wouldn’t mind a passive evade mechanic or even some sort of hard limit on what percentage of health a pet can lose from a single hit. Either of those would be an improvement in dungeons.
I think they’ve put too much emphasis on the pet. The damage should be around 80/20 if you don’t invest in the pet. Maybe 50/50 if you build for pet damage. That should also be balanced for the expected uptime of the pet.
I’d like for the damage split to be shifted to something like 80% ranger and 20% pet. It’s really sad when my polar bear hits harder than my axe even though I’ve got 3k+ attack and nothing invested in the bear.
Next, I’d like an option to set my pet to automatically attack what I’m attacking and return if I break target. That would get rid of a lot of the micromanagement for me.
Finally, I’d like something similar to the engineer’s kits. Basically, they’d be utility skills on your bar that would change out your F1-F4 skills when used. You could roll the traps into one kit, and add weapon preparations from GW1 to make another. Pets would be the default of course (no utility slot used). Then we’d have something to fall back on in areas where pets don’t perform well.
I think the first two are fairly easy to do and would help things a lot. The last one is a longshot but it would be really cool in my opinion. It’d also be nice if your heal skill would raise your pet like comfort animal did in the first game.