Curse

Xenomortis · May 30, 2012, 11:09 PM // 23:09

Preaching to the choir.

Kunder · May 30, 2012, 11:21 PM // 23:21

To preach the other way, Dagger builds only need 3 attack skills and an IAS, and have an elite slot open. If not for pets it's hard to come up with useful skills to fill the other half of your slots. They also only need 2 attributes, so a 3rd isn't hard to work in. It's the Bow builds that just can't afford a pet without sacrificing far too much.

Voodoo Rage · May 30, 2012, 11:28 PM // 23:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xenomortis

You know, I'm sure you'll perform better if you cut the pet entirely, took Expert's Dexterity, or something, along with Golden Fang Strike if you really want the DW. In my brief experimentation with pets on melee builds I concluded the following: "A pet makes your build worse".

To me it just depends on where you are playing. Definitely if you are in a difficult enough area where the pet is going to die repeatedly, you don't want him around. But if you are running daggers, you are going to have a lot of Beast Mastery points available to you (since you don't need Expertise past 13), so with a rune you have 10 points in BM. That gives you a super predictable Scavenger Strike (since your target will always be bleeding) giving you 9 extra energy every 10 seconds and you will have that nice IAS skill opened up to you. This will give you a pretty damn solid pool of energy to squeeze in a key PvE skill that you might have not been able to afford previously.

Premium Unleaded · May 31, 2012, 12:00 AM // 00:00

The problem with pet dps numbers is that because of the crap target switching AI, the values you're getting are far higher than what is going to be the case in actual play.

Skyy High · May 31, 2012, 05:06 AM // 05:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xenomortis

When the damage done is of the same order as an enemy's total health and it can be compressed to occur within a few seconds and it can be done frequently, then you have something worthwhile.
Examples are AP builds, which do around 450 with just the PvE skills if EVAS works out, or Assassins under SoH that hit for around 240 in a single chain that takes only a second or so and is immediately ready to go again.
You can view this as spiking; in which case I require it to do a *lot* of damage before I consider it meaningful.

Now let's look at a Ranger 'spike':
We'll assume Glass Arrows, Favourable Winds, Winnowing, EBSOH and Order of Pain all at max spec (16 or rank 10(=5 now) for EBSoH).
So our bonus damage is 21+6+4+15+17 = 63

Our skills: Triple Shot, Dual Shot, Sundering Attack and Penetrating Attack. We're also under Frenzy (or some other 33% IAS that can be maintained) and have a Shortbow (or Flatbow).
So in terms of pure bonus damage, our attack does 441. That looks pretty good; factor in the base damage and the bonus from Sundering and Penetrating (+52) and we're doing well over 500, closer to 550. It also only takes ~3.5 seconds.
That seems really good! Doesn't it?

Except you have to wait 10 seconds to do it again. Perhaps you'll cycle Sundering and Penetrating on recharge, burning energy as you do so, causing your next spike to be incomplete or slow.
In effect; you can kill one target every 10 seconds. In that time, an AP spiker or a melee physical will have killed at least two and will be half way through their third.

So when I said Ranger's don't have the burst damage to make spiking worthwhile, I was misleading. It can get a lot of burst damage if it's willing to invest everything it can into it; but it's a still a weak spiker, even if its spike is good.

It is possible to 'condense' the information given above into a DPS calculation. Certainly the 70DPS figure is consistent with the '1 foe killed every 10 seconds' idea. However DPS is 1 dimensional; a number. I'll believe for a moment that a pet can reliably get 70 DPS with Enraged Lunge (I doubt it did when I used it, but I suspect circumstances were different) but I sure as hell don't believe that a pet can perform like a Glass Arrows build can. I am not convinced that a pet will contribute to kills as much as that spike. I do not think it can result in a near certain kill every 10 seconds.

More easy to see and understand examples are Invoke Lightning and Searing Flames; SF does more damage per second than Invoke. Yet before the nerf to Invoke, SF was not anywhere near as useful as Invoke, even in vacuum. If you say this is an obvious example, you'd be right! One spikes, the other doesn't. You already recognize the discrepancy.

TLDR
If you look at a Ranger as a spiker; you have something substantially weaker than the competition due to the downtime. You can kill quickly once and that's it.
If you look at the Ranger from a DPS point of view, it's essentially equivalent to Echoed Necrosis spam (under more likely conditions) and I hope I don't have to explain why that sucks.

Or you spam Barrage. Then you're closer to Searing Flames I guess.

I disagree that melee are spiking 2.5 enemies in 10 seconds, consistently. Between blocks, blinds, slows, and run time, I just don't think that's a consistent value.

Also: my build spikes every 6 seconds for (last I checked on MoD) ~440 damage (the spike takes less than 3 seconds). No, I'm not using Triple Shot, it recharges too slowly for me. It also does this consistently, with a 2-3 second break every 24 seconds to reapply preps; over time it averages over 80 dps. Is killing something every 6 seconds "good enough" yet? No, it's nowhere close to the speed of an AP spiker, but I call BS on the notion that it's not at least viable.

Kunder · May 31, 2012, 08:24 PM // 20:24

Thinking about bows and pets for shits and giggles, found something half decent:

Incendiary Arrows
Triple Shot
Scavenger Strike
Ignite Arrows
EBSoH
Serpent's Quickness
Never Rampage Alone
Comfort Animal

SQ is pretty baller, the main problem is that you can't use common IAS with it. NRA sucks balls, but at least it isn't a stance so you can combine SQ + NRA to hit an effective attack rate of ~.7s per attack (1.5s per attack +3 hits every 3s from IA +3 hits every 7 seconds from triple shot), which is by far the best I've been able to squeeze out of a worthwhile ranger build. Ignite Arrows + EBSoH are the usual damage boosters, and Scavenger Strike is pretty much mad energy when SQ boosts it.

Main downside, of course, is that SQ only has a max 30/45 cycle time.

Voodoo Rage · May 31, 2012, 09:09 PM // 21:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kunder

Thinking about bows and pets for shits and giggles, found something half decent:

Incendiary Arrows
Triple Shot
Scavenger Strike
Ignite Arrows
EBSoH
Serpent's Quickness
Never Rampage Alone
Comfort Animal

SQ is pretty baller, the main problem is that you can't use common IAS with it. NRA sucks balls, but at least it isn't a stance so you can combine SQ + NRA to hit an effective attack rate of ~.7s per attack (1.5s per attack +3 hits every 3s from IA +3 hits every 7 seconds from triple shot), which is by far the best I've been able to squeeze out of a worthwhile ranger build. Ignite Arrows + EBSoH are the usual damage boosters, and Scavenger Strike is pretty much mad energy when SQ boosts it.

Main downside, of course, is that SQ only has a max 30/45 cycle time.

Mmmm.... I'll try that out. It's the same as my build but with the Serpent's Quickness replacing Dual Shot. I can see how the increased recharge from SQ may make the need for a 3rd attack skill unnecessary.

You really hate NRA that much? Is the 25% IAS that much of a difference?

Kunder · Jun 01, 2012, 12:07 AM // 00:07

Takes at least 2 slots (one for pet). Horrific energy cost, and at the same time you use EBSoH, so you usually start a battle with under 10 energy. 33% IAS gives a ~15% attack rate increase over 25% IAS, and if the timings match up better with your skill recharge times that can shift all the way to a 25% attack rate increase.

To start seriously liking this skill I would want at least 2 out of 3 of these problems fixed. 33% IAS, auto-brings pet, or 5e cost. Yes it would be the best ranger IAS by far, but PvE rangers need their own version of Critical Agility that gets stapled to every build.

Also the health regen is just an insult, I figure that someone at Anet thought "Well, it's an IAS and a healing skill, so to balance out it should cost more/have less IAS", which really annoys me. After all, it's a double mending and mending costs 5e/15s (

). I'd actually feel better if that was removed entirely, just so that the focus could be on an IAS. At the moment it's designed for Bunny Thumpers who rely on adrenaline and actually take advantage of some regen, but it's just silly for 99% of bow builds.

Triple Shot vs. Dual Shot wise, 50% more usages of Triple Shot make up for having no Dual Shot at all (and saves energy), which means that the 3s recharge instead of 5s recharge on IA is pure profit. More Scavenger's Strike is also cool of course.

Voodoo Rage · Jun 01, 2012, 01:32 AM // 01:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kunder

Triple Shot vs. Dual Shot wise, 50% more usages of Triple Shot make up for having no Dual Shot at all (and saves energy), which means that the 3s recharge instead of 5s recharge on IA is pure profit. More Scavenger's Strike is also cool of course.

Yes, that skill is clearly a winner. Did a few runs with the Master of Damage. Overall damage output is about the same but the energy is much better.

Kunder · Jun 01, 2012, 01:58 AM // 01:58

Yeah, forgot that Triple Shot is actually only activated ~43% more often since recharge times round to the nearest second. Increased degen from IA about offsets that loss, which means your net damage increase is the extra AoE from IA and slightly more use of Scavenger's.