Curse

Chthon · Jul 12, 2011, 05:27 PM // 17:27

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Originally Posted by Lishy

There's a few ranger skills that caught my eye, honestly. But as my ranger is not too far, I cannot test much of the skill potential. Can anyone confirm to me the usefulness of certain skills?

Expert's Dexterity is an IAS and increases your Marksmanship by 2! I am quite surprised I never see this stance used. Are bow damage that bad that having 17 marksmanship with an IAS is still considered bad? I'm thinking it would be good for maximum damage potential with a Hornbow and Sundering Shot/Penetrating Attack. What do you think? Is this purely a crap skill? And at 17 marksmanship, Zojun's Shot deals +44 damage! Is it that bad? It's stronger than power attack!

Assuming you already have 12+ Marks, another +2 Marks increases base damage by only ~7%. 107% of poor is still poor. It's also gives a not-so-whopping +2 or +3 on most attack skills. (Btw, Zojun's Shot is linked to Expertise, not Marks.) So it's pretty useless as a means of increasing damage.

On very rare occasions it can make sense as a an IAS. If a build isn't tied to a particular elite, replacing the IAS with ED might be the best incremental improvement you can get by swapping a non-elite up to an elite with a similar function. It's also a kind of wonky e-management if you think about it this way: Your IAS skill is often the biggest energy hog on a ranger bar. Changing to ED greatly reduces that cost.

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It's Warrior's Endurance for bows. Is this a bad skill still? Is there not anything worth spamming with it?

Very hard to justify over Prep Shot + Expert Focus/RtW, which gives more damage and enough energy. Spamming Concussion Shot might be the only exception, but why would you do that?

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Our old friend BHA! I remember people use to call this awesome! But why did it disappear from use?

Is not a DPS skill. It remains as good as it ever was at its niche: preemptive, pre-aggro shutdown of one really, really nasty monster. To some degree that niche has been taken away by the return of Shelter as a practical option that enables you tolerate the very, very nasty monster's first move and then shut it down with Panic/Technobabble/GDW/etc.

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Burning Arrow seems like a solid skill. Strikes for +30 damage at 15 marksmanship and has a long burn duration, with short recharge. Could be combined with other degen skills, and maintained on a single target to ensure in a burn based team with They're on Fire paragons that the target will for sure deal less damage, as opposed to an elementalist who runs out of energy easily and has short burn durations?

This is one of those skills that gets better as your team gets worse. You're only going to get full damage out of the skill if the monster survives a full 7 sec after you shoot it. That generally should not be happening. In a well-designed team, it's maybe ~+40 or ~+50 on a 5sec recharge, so it's maybe a little stronger than Power Shot.

Only situation where I could see it as doing considerable damage would be if it were paired with Fevered Dreams or Extend Conditions.

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In contrast to Burning Arrow, here we have IA, which deals nearby AoE damage with burn. Unfortunately, it suffers the drawback of having an unfairly high recharge (Pleeease de-nerf this skill, Anet!) and the burn cannot be maintained. Furthermore, it has a limit of only 3 arrows. Lotsa people I know combine it with Ignite Arrows, but I've always found that skill to be incredibly weak. Does it combine with EBSOH? Can anyone here try that combination? What about other preps?

Yes, Incendiary+Ignite+EBSoH results in EBSoH triggering for each arrow and each explosion. That means you can potentially get 4x your EBSoH modifier against 3 targets, plus 3x the modifier against anything else in adjacent range. The HUGE downside is that it immediately triggers AoE flee in HM. You get one good shot in, then spend the next 15 seconds chasing things around the map.

Recharge time is also a problem.

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One source says this skill is epic awesome with preparations, others say this skill has no purpose existing. Is this truly a bad skill?

Serves no purpose.

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It's glass arrows. +20 damage per hit, bleed if blocked. Is this still considered a bad skill?

It's actually considered a good skill. In fact, its reputation probably exceeds its actual usefulness. +20 armor-ignoring damage to every hit is quite a lot, but sucking up both the elite slot and the prep slot takes away its ability to work with every decent method of arrow spamming. GA+Barrage won't work because GA is a prep and they're both elite. GA+Volley won't work because GA is a prep. GA+Incendiary won't work because they're both elite. GA+Sundering+Penetrating won't work because the energy load for Sundering+Penetrating requires elite e-management, which you can't have because GA is elite. GA+Dual+Triple doesn't work because Dual and Triple have horrible recharges. Usually you see people running GA+Sundering+Penetrating builds selectively forgetting all that time they spend doing nothing more than auto-attacking because they have no energy or people running GA+Dual+Triple builds selectively forgetting all that time they spend doing nothing more than auto-attacking because Dual and Triple are on recharge.

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Winnowing and Favorable Winds with Summon spirits may also justify skill slots, but they can be considered a double edged sword. What do you think?

The damage bonus is way too small to justify 3 slots or 2 slots and 10 cast time seconds per fight.

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I'd really like to see if the community can discover some way to make bows useful again.

I would too, but I'm not holding my breath. It seems to me that the most likely reason it hasn't been discovered is that it does not exist under the current skill balance.

Cuilan · Jul 17, 2011, 05:39 AM // 05:39

I'd likely get 70 DPS (very low Norn rank) on Master of Damage with a zealous shortbow if I use the prep before attacking (obviously) while being sure not to over use Frenzy.
http://www.gwpvx.com/Special:PvXDeco...ame=&Go=Submit
I tried. :|

Chthon · Jul 17, 2011, 06:52 PM // 18:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cuilan

I'd likely get 70 DPS (very low Norn rank) on Master of Damage with a zealous shortbow if I use the prep before attacking (obviously) while being sure not to over use Frenzy.
http://www.gwpvx.com/Special:PvXDeco...ame=&Go=Submit
I tried. :|

Eh Cuilan, read the description on fear me more closely.

Xiaquin · Jul 17, 2011, 08:20 PM // 20:20

Half-range shots, Frenzy and no cancel stance. Cheeky.

Needling Shot is worth it any Glass Arrows build.

Cuilan · Jul 17, 2011, 11:47 PM // 23:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

Eh Cuilan, read the description on fear me more closely.

Oh yeah, doh. I'll just re-add SY or something. Edited link.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xiaquin

Half-range shots, Frenzy and no cancel stance. Cheeky.

I figured it'd be fun in a PUG, but those skills have a low cost at least.

Amy Awien · Jul 18, 2011, 06:52 AM // 06:52

They're nice, big boom packages, low cost, short recharge and in expertise. Short range is a disadvantage, though that brings you into a nice range to plant EBSoH.

Arutima · Jul 31, 2011, 04:33 PM // 16:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lishy

Please do. I am curious so as to what in the world would let a bow deal 220 damage o.O

i used to do 150+ shots with a preparation shot
+ sundering and penetrating shot build, on foes hexed with the unnerfed asuran scan , while under i am the strongest

fun times, fun times

Fia · Dec 02, 2011, 02:10 AM // 02:10

You might like this:
http://www.gwpvx.com/User:Fianchetto#Spiker_Tanker
I get about 180-220 dps on Master of Damage with it