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macstat

On viability of shortbow in PvE endgame

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Just a heads-up. This is still work in progress, so try i welcome constructive criticism and suggestions on what to add to model.

Little backstory. I recently started raiding on my condi ranger with my small polish guild. Long story short we still havent beat a Vale Guardians ;). One of problems i had was being assigned to green circles and that kept me from being in range of boss for bonfire or splitblade (for 5 hits) from time to time. I started googling around and i found fairly recent (from February) post about using short bow in addition to axe/torch.There's even a video in this post showing pretty nice output on short bow.

Link to that post http://qtfy.enjin.com/mobile/forum/viewthread/m/27740239/id/26116904-qt-condition-rangerdruid-raid-build

Yesterday i crafted myself a pretty pink bow and went to pvp lobby so i could test it myself using GW2Spec. It was light, no food, and scaled since i was in the lobby. I used pets, spirits and glyphs (for damage on most of swaps). On two 4 minutes runs numbers were pretty even. Pure axe/torch had 3650 dps and axe/torch + shortbow around 3550.

 

Today i tried something different. I made a fairly simple model of damage i can do in two weapon swap window. But since I'm interested on short fragment of something that is part of long rotation that lasts at least 5 minutes i assumed that I'm starting from swap (so first cast has reduction) and i also calculated applied conditions even after 20 second window is up (since its probably middle of a fight and they are going to damage boss anyway). So you could say I'm interested in damage i can guarantee in 20 second window.

So far its pretty simple, i included just weapon skills. For damage i used formulas that are on wiki, so we can adjust it by changing values like power of condition damage.

What i used for rotation is:

  • axe/torch start with swapped bonfire -> splitblade, -> torch -> couple of ricochet -> managed to squeeze in second splitblade before swap -> swap -> bonfire -> torch -> rocichets -> third splitblade -> richochets till swap. I addded bleed from glyph of geomancy 
  • for shortbow i start with swapped volley -> crippling shot -> crossfires -> volley -> crossfires till swap -> swapped bonfire -> splitblade -> torch -> ricochet few times -> managed to squeeze second splitblade before swap. I added potential bleeds from sigil of earth in shortbow, since you should have pretty high, and we have 2 second cooldown of its effect i assumed 4 bleeds from rune.

I opted for placing two versions of short bow, without and with hidden barbs trait (33% to bleeds) since raids often have druid healer who runs spotter.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1M-TfSkpGmy_4ZFJwqpwAMKR59T5D_oBW6v35VBeQqmQ/edit?usp=sharing

What doesn't work so far.

  1. I haven't implemented precision or expertise. Its on top of my list to do next.
  2. Skills in rotation, tough spirits shouldn't matter since they add same amount to both. One thing that could be important are glyphs since they give percentage bonus to damage.
  3. Pets. Not sure if its important. I dont think addition of short bow changes anything in how pet works.
  4. Rotation itself. Im open to suggestions here, if any of you think i shoud tweak it a little bit let me know.

My first observations ? Well when it comes to what i assumed is perfect rotation, assuming 1500 power and condi damage pure axe/torch is fairly close (pure has a little over 1000 damage per 20 second window) to hiddden barbs short bow. Of course lacking of precision and expertise is something i need to change, but so far simple model seems to confirm what video in post was showing.

Couple of but's (no, not butts :P get your mind out of the gutter ;) ). Pure axe/torch is dependand on lower range and it can go down quite a bit if raid mechanic requires you to disengage from boss from time to time (like green circles in Vale Guardians) . On the other hand huge but in short bow is that you're required to flank or backstab boss, otherwise you wont get little less than 7000 damage per 20 second window. 

 

 

Edited by macstat
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I updated spreadsheet with changes relevant to our "discussion" ;P

Quote
  • Poison Volley: Increased the poison damage duration applied by this skill from 4 seconds to 5 seconds. The physical damage per strike has been increased by 150%.
  • Crippling Shot: The cripple duration has been increased from 3 seconds to 4 seconds. Base damage has been increased by 100%. The pet bleeding duration has been increased from 6 seconds to 12 seconds.
  • Winter’s Bite: The chill duration of this skill has been increased from 3 seconds to 4 seconds and now also applies 3 stacks of bleeding for 5 seconds. The aftercast delay has been reduced by 0.32 seconds.

What got changed in spreadsheet:

  • I added Winter's bite to the rotation since it now applies bleed. Two casts in pure AT, and one cast in shortbow+AT variant. Because of 1/2 cast time, i took away two (1/4 ct) ricochets for every cast of WB.
  • I raised physical damage of physical strikes of Poison Volley and Quick shot
  • Raised condi duration of poison volley
  • Added pet bleed that occurs after shooting cripling shot (assuming 1300 condi damage on pet)

 

Edited by macstat

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