Guild Wars Guru

Poison vs. Bleeding

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N
Nigel Strange
Ascalonian Squire
• #1
What's better? Apply Poison or Melandru's Arrows?

I have a poisoner's string that gives longer poison duration (not sure how much longer).

Melandru's arrows costs less to cast.
Melandru's arrows (supposedly) do extra damage to enchanted creatures.
Apply Poison seems to stick around longer

I don't know what the health degen is for poison vs. bleeding. Anyone know?\

Also, I have barrage. It kills the preparations, though. Anyone ever use this skill? I can do AoE damage with Ignite Arrows, and it seems to have more effect than Barrage. I have heard you can use barrage with an elemental bowstring. Then, you can take conjure (flame/lightening/whatever) and make that work. I've tried this with lightening, but I haven't been really pleased with it. Maybe the more monsters, the more effective it is.
Yolanda Kai
Yolanda Kai
Academy Page
• #2
Barrage requires a lot of enemies packed really close (almost touching) to work. It's nice for crowd control, but I don't use it much really.

Poison and Bleeding should be 2 pips of degen each, and the duration depends purely on what skill you use.

Anyway I prefer Poison Arrow and Kindle for the main attack/prep combo. Tons of damage, and longer poison duration than Apply Poison gives you. Combine with a couple direct damage or interrupts, a few stances, and the universally acclaimed Troll Unguent, and you're golden. Sprinkle in whatever the situation requires/your secondary allows for.

Anyway I have no idea if that sort of elemental boost works with Barrage... never tried and am not going to change my secondary to confirm
VGJustice
VGJustice
Desert Nomad
• #3
Quote: Originally Posted by Nigel Strange
What's better? Apply Poison or Melandru's Arrows? Depends. If you need your elite slot for something else, then Apply would be better. Otherwise, Melandru's. IIRC, Poison is 3 bars and Bleeding is 2 bars. But, Apply doesn't last as long as Melandru's, so that would even out, give or take. It would also depend on what your team is using. Melandru's would be helpful with Gash, and it could be more useful agains a protectionist, but I think that would be about it.

As for Barrage, it's a fun skill, even if you only have one target. Don't forget that it adds damage and can be spammed endlessly at 13 Expertise.
Sol_Vie
Sol_Vie
Desert Nomad
• #4
Quote: Originally Posted by VGJustice
Depends. If you need your elite slot for something else, then Apply would be better. Otherwise, Melandru's. IIRC, Poison is 3 bars and Bleeding is 2 bars. But, Apply doesn't last as long as Melandru's, so that would even out, give or take. It would also depend on what your team is using. Melandru's would be helpful with Gash, and it could be more useful agains a protectionist, but I think that would be about it.

As for Barrage, it's a fun skill, even if you only have one target. Don't forget that it adds damage and can be spammed endlessly at 13 Expertise. Poison is 4, and bleeding is three.

You could go Poison Arrow and Hunter's Shot. Pull them with Poison Arrow, as they're closing in Hunter's Shot. (Extra damage, and they bleed if running.)
Yolanda Kai
Yolanda Kai
Academy Page
• #5
Wow, either I read something entirely out of date or I've suffered some form of brain damage lately. I guess poison does do more dmg... which is something I always had a feeling about.

Anyway for max damage I don't mind going:

Penetrating Attack / Hunter's Shot / Dual Shot / Poison Arrow (E) / Kindle

You've still got 3 slots left for Troll Unguent and a couple stances usually. Each attack has its uses, Hunter's Shot mainly just for bleeding, the others outdo its damage output. If you're worried about interrupts (which isn't a bad thing to worry about) then you can bring in the usual suspects (Distracting, Savage, or maybe Concussion, but I'm not a huge fan of the latter, at least in PvE).
G
Grammar
Wilds Pathfinder
• #6
I use Poison Arrow with Read the Wind (for my interupt build) or Kindle Arrows (for my damage build).
I find this combo, along with Penetrating Attack and Dual Shot, to be the most effective and consistant way of dealing damage. Judges Insight & Barrage is also powerful, but not nearly as consistant IMO.

Poison Arrow gets a bad rap a lot of the time, because people often don't look at the big picture.

You need to look at the damage done by Poison Arrow in terms of how much damage it adds per arrow fired after it has poisoned the target.
The average speed of a bow is about 2 seconds (let's just use 2 for the sake of simplicity, it may actually be longer or shorter). In a 2 second period, poison adds 16 armor ignoring damage. If you fire four arrows (8 seconds) at a target before he dies, the poison does 64 damage in that time (8*8, or 16*4 for our purpose here).
So look at it this way: Poison Arrow adds 16 armor ignoring damage to every arrow you fire.
And the energy cost is near nothing (2 or 3 energy per target to get them poisoned).

Not too shabby if you ask me. Much more effective than Conjures (16 armor ignoring damage > ~9 damage that takes armor into consideration), and it's much cheaper and easier than Judge's Insight (which requires a 2 second, 10 energy recast every ~15 seconds or so).

Sample Build (interupt/damage hybrid):
Read the Wind
Poison Arrow {E}
Penetrating Attack
Dual Shot
Savage Shot
Distracting Shot
Troll
Rez

BTW: I'm not a fan of Hunter's Shot because it's hard to get the bleeding bonus in PvE. Too inconsistant IMO.
Yolanda Kai
Yolanda Kai
Academy Page
• #7
I agree with everything he just said!

My favorite part about Poison Arrow again is the duration, way higher than Apply Poison. Against Monsters it's just tab Poison Arrow tab Poison Arrow tab Poison Arrow... often they're 1/4 to 1/2 dead by the time you come back to #1 in the rotation even when doing solo. Keep up your Kindle, stances, etc. and you're doing great damage to packs of monsters.