Curse

SnipiousMax · May 09, 2006, 03:39 PM // 15:39

The one I've been playing with lately is seeking arrows. For PvE it's nice to use against the ranger mobs that use escape. In PvP it's nice to get around things like Bonnetti's and Glads Defense. Not sure if I'll keep it there, but I think it's a handy skill.

Anyway, thought I'd open the floor for discussion on new skills that you've been using.

The Lich Ranger · May 09, 2006, 03:42 PM // 15:42

Ya, they have been creeping on my skill bar.... my monk has 2 factions skills.....omg there taking over.

Huntmaster · May 09, 2006, 04:16 PM // 16:16

Seeking Arrows + Focused Shot is fun.

Cyan The Archer · May 09, 2006, 05:59 PM // 17:59

I havent found an use for those new Faction skills. None of them can make my build better.

Cymboric Treewalker · May 09, 2006, 06:22 PM // 18:22

Here are some that I am toying with:

Assassin
Expose Defenses - Hex Spell (10 energy)
For 3...9 seconds, target foe cannot "block" or "evaded" your attacks.

Enduring Toxin - Hex Spell (5 energy)
For 3 seconds, target foe suffers -1...-3 health regeneration. If that foe was moving when Enduring Toxin would end, Enduring Toxin is renewed for another 3 seconds.

Viper's Defense - Stance (5 energy)
For 30 seconds, the next time you are struck, you teleport to a random location nearby. The foe who struck you is poisoned for 5...17 seconds

Ritualist
Nightmare Weapon - Weapon Spell (5 energy)
For 12 seconds, target ally has a Nightmare Weapon. Target ally's next successful attack steals up to 5-41 health. (very curious to see how this works with barrage)

Wailing Weapon - Weapon Spell
For 5-10 seconds, target ally has a Wailing Weapon. Whenever the Wailing Weapon strikes an attacking foe, that foe is interrupted.

Ranger
Heal As One - Skill
If you or your animal companion are below 75% health, you both gain 25-121 health. This is an elite skill.

Trappers Focus - Skill
For 3-13 seconds, your trap skills are not easily interruptible. This is an elite skill. No more need to take the mesmer line as a trapper

Marauders Shot - Skill
If Marauder's Shot hits, you strike for +10-30 damage and all your non-attack skills are diabled for 5 seconds

Seeking Arrows
For 3-12 seconds, your arrows cannot be blocked or evaded. Seeking Arrows ends if you fail to hit.

Splinter Shot
If Splinter Shot hits, you deal +3-13 damage. If Splinter Shot is blocked, all foes adjacent to your target take 5-53 damage.

I am sure there are others... but those are the ones I can think of. I am very happy with my ranger... though I think there should be a bow or staff with beastmastery as a requirement... or maybe to make it fair they should make all the elementalist/mesmer/monk/necro staves and wands require the same single stat. (energy/fast cast/soul reaping) Rangers and assassins are forced to basically have ONLY one weapon choice which restricts where you can put your points and have an effective weapon.

R A C · May 09, 2006, 07:21 PM // 19:21

If you do full beast master, you really won't need any other weapon. Your pet IS a weapon. And a dang powerful but stupid one. You don't see many warriors complaining that they can't use a sword and an axe at the same time. Yea rangers and sins are "forced" to use a weapon type that does everything they could need a weapon for.

Back on topic, I love marauder's shot. The power is awesome. With no preps I average about 80-90 dmg vs. casters with this shot. great for finishing off a monk or other caster. Needling shot is also fun. I haven't tried many others yet. Oh, zojun's haste is nice too. Nothing new, but a second Dodge is nice. Dodge, Zojun's haste, and storm chaser for constant speed boost. (only for running/exploreing)

SnipiousMax · May 09, 2006, 07:37 PM // 19:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by R A C

Back on topic, I love marauder's shot. The power is awesome. With no preps I average about 80-90 dmg vs. casters with this shot. great for finishing off a monk or other caster.

I really like Melandru's Shot, Despite being elite. It won't ever find it's way into my PvP skill set, cause it is elite. But like marauder's shot, it deals very decent damage by itself, lacks the negative of marauder's, and has a build in energy management to boot (+15 energy is great!). While it is conditional, it is not uncommon to find an enchanted foe. It's been on my skill bar off and on since I capped it. I'm tempted to slip Splinter shot into my Alliance battle build, to see if I can get any use out of it, but it seems too conditional to me.

Str0b0 · May 09, 2006, 08:27 PM // 20:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cymboric Treewalker

Here are some that I am toying with:

Ritualist
Nightmare Weapon - Weapon Spell (5 energy)
For 12 seconds, target ally has a Nightmare Weapon. Target ally's next successful attack steals up to 5-41 health. (very curious to see how this works with barrage)

Insanely well. I swapped my ranger secondary to ritualist and I've been using barrage and nightmare weapon and barrage and splinter weapon to great effect. I was disappointed in Wailing weapon. It would have been much sweeter if it interrupted spell casting. But yeah nightmare weapon you lose physical damage by the same amount of health you steal which is fine by me....life stealing ignores armor.

Splinter weapon though... OMG. With a vampiric bow and favorable winds up, you don't even need winnowing. It's like having splinter shot on all your arrows for barrage. You can usually take an enemy group to half health across the board in your first volley then like two more volleys and you can use splinter weapon again if they are still alive.

Epinephrine · May 09, 2006, 08:36 PM // 20:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Str0b0

Insanely well. I swapped my ranger secondary to ritualist and I've been using barrage and nightmare weapon and barrage and splinter weapon to great effect. I was disappointed in Wailing weapon. It would have been much sweeter if it interrupted spell casting. But yeah nightmare weapon you lose physical damage by the same amount of health you steal which is fine by me....life stealing ignores armor.

Splinter weapon though... OMG. With a vampiric bow and favorable winds up, you don't even need winnowing. It's like having splinter shot on all your arrows for barrage. You can usually take an enemy group to half health across the board in your first volley then like two more volleys and you can use splinter weapon again if they are still alive.

Umm, Splinter weapon used to only affect one arrow (the first arrow fromt he barrage to strike its target), and I imagine it still does. If not it's broken.

Str0b0 · May 09, 2006, 08:46 PM // 20:46

then it's broken because I get 32's popping up all over the place. Although I fail to see the rationale behind making it only effect one arrow...barrage is your first attack so....

SnipiousMax · May 09, 2006, 08:52 PM // 20:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Str0b0

then it's broken because I get 32's popping up all over the place. Although I fail to see the rationale behind making it only effect one arrow...barrage is your first attack so....

Cause if it affected every arrow... then....

32 * 6 Arrows * 6 enemies = 1152 damage possible from one volley, without adding in damage done by barrage. That's not going to happen.

Str0b0 · May 09, 2006, 09:09 PM // 21:09

Well still by the descriptions of the skills it should work with all the arrows that's all I'm saying.

I think your math, while accurate technically is flawed though. In all honesty no one enemy would take 6 of the splinter weapon hits. 4 tops per enemy and that's if they have one on either side and one in the front and one in the back who gets hit by the barrage. The original target doesn't take the 32 extra damage only the adjacent targets. So you would have a max of 128 damage per enemy if they had the optimal target spread around them. More likely it would be like 64 damage per enemy plus barrage plus the vampiric damage from a vampiric bow. Even at 128 that's only about 748 damage per enemy group in total but at the far more likely 64 damage per enemy that's only 384 damage total for the enemy group just from splinter weapon, barrage and vampiric modifiers aside.

Maria The Princess · May 09, 2006, 09:24 PM // 21:24

i use seeking arrows as well, and i use the new poison trap in PVP

its BM so it never lasts long, but the monk waits his precious energy on healing breese or (if he is smarter) purge condition/mend aligment

Iskrah · May 09, 2006, 10:12 PM // 22:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by SnipiousMax

Cause if it affected every arrow... then....

32 * 6 Arrows * 6 enemies = 1152 damage

Barrage doesn't send 6 arrows on each enemy.

SnipiousMax · May 09, 2006, 11:10 PM // 23:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iskrah

Barrage doesn't send 6 arrows on each enemy.

Splinter Weapon
For 15..51 seconds, target ally has a Splinter Weapon. Target ally's next successful attack deals 5..41 damage to all adjacent foes.

Barrage
All your preparations are removed. Shoot arrows at up to 6 foes near your target. These arrows strike for +1..13 damage if they hit.

You'd need to read about both skills before you understood my comment.

It's a long shot, but if you had six adjacent foes, and if Splinter Weapon affected each arrow, then every arrow from would trigger the damage from SW.

So each arrow would deal xx damage to each of the six foes.

So damage dealt by each arrow = 6 x XX
Total damage dealt by volley = 6 x Damage dealt by each arrow

Which would turn out ridiculous. So I don't think it should work that way. If it does, I'd expect it to be repaired soon.

But thanks for pointing that out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Str0b0

The original target doesn't take the 32 extra damage

Then yea, my original numbers were wrong.

But it would still be ridiculously overpowered.

Str0b0 · May 09, 2006, 11:24 PM // 23:24

It may be repaired soon but I think the collision detection code in the game prevents any group of enemies from ever clustering up so that they are all adjacent to one another, not if they are attacking an enemy. According ot the skill descriptions it should trigger on every arrow. It also double triggers on dual shot as of the last time I ran my SW/Barrage build. I don't think it would be anymore overpowered than Orders on top of barrage just because collision detection prevents it from ever achieving the amount of damage that you specified in your equation. It's far more likely to get a maximum of four triggers of splinter weapon on any one enemy and a more realistic 2 triggers of the splinter weapon damage on each enemy. That's an extra 64 damage per enemy which is only slightly higher than a fully leveled OotV. I can completely see where you got your numbers from I just don't think that they are being applied correctly. For example let's say we have a broad front of 6 enemies, shoulder to shoulder, a common configuration in tombs runs because of the minions. Ok since the splinter weapon damage is not added to the targets only the adjacents then the enemies on either end of the broad front would only take 32 extra damage. the other 4 in the middle would take the 64. In a clustered circle, which is the most common configuration when you have a single tank drawing aggro in a party then you still only have every enemy taking 64 damage. The only way that that would change is if you caught the group in a tight cluster before any aggro was drawn and then you launched. Then and only then would you see the numbers you are talking about. That instance is incredibly rare, at least with a bow that's worth barraging with anyway. Most of the long distance bows that would let you take advantage of the aforementioned instance of huge damage have too high an arc to be effectively used as barrage bows. Too high an arc too slow an attack speed. I can see how on the surface it appears incredibly powerful but in actuality it's more like a nice little damage boost. The fact that it only works on one barrage every ten seconds also makes a difference. Now if it was persistant throughout the 51 second max duration then it would be too powerful. Just my thoughts. I have no doubt they will correct this issue if they haven't already, I haven't played since Sunday evening because of work, but I don't think it needs to be corrected. Then again it wouldn't be the first time they fixed something that was, in my opinion, not broken anyway.

Huntmaster · May 10, 2006, 12:20 AM // 00:20

I'm still waiting to cap Glass Arrows. After i start using that, i'll probably experiment with the new skills more.

Linkusmax · May 10, 2006, 07:20 AM // 07:20

Bestial Mauling is now everpresent on my Thumper.

Hammer Bash is a great combo with it in PvP.

Lasher Dragon · May 10, 2006, 07:28 AM // 07:28

Death's Charge, Needling Shot, and Recall have all been taking turns on my skillbar recently.

Mosch · May 10, 2006, 10:37 AM // 10:37

Needling Shot. I love it. I played the.... Cantha Ascension Mission (can't remember the name) with a friend yesterday, both rangers with me as a secondary Mesmer and him as a secondary Monk. He put down Favourable Winds while I would hex the first enemy with Phantom Pain. Retreat a little, we both use Kindle arrows. Let fly. As soon as the deep wound kicks in the enemy will definitely be under 50%, then both spammed Needling Shot with Favourable up, using Kindle Arrows and a vampiric bow. The health melted down like a piece of butter someone put on the hot stove. And the stove also stands in the sun.