Double Shortbow Soulbeast in Raids

[EpheSOSIayer.6370]

Hi,

 

after the november balance patch I switched from my dagger/torch + shortbow build to a double shortbow build completely. What are the reasons for that? I want to talk a little bit about this decision and about the pros/cons.

 

If you take a look at build-websites you will see only the dagger/torch + shortbow build which is meta at the moment. I look at these pages frequently and they are very good, but the problem is that a lot of players just copy the build and play it, not comparing their own situation with the assumptions the authors make. I usually play in pickup groups or non-hardcore raid groups, where buffs can have a downtime and mistakes appear more often. Please have this in mind while reading my post, it is very important.

 

Here is the build I use:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNUQJAVVnE8Cdrgl8C2sAs8iFDBLv62dDvNdgUXVjJAM6Kdl8oUA-jBSAQBd4SA4llHCpyvbqEMiq/AgnAQA1FsudACAcAM+4J+4BGf8xHf8xr4jP+4jP+4jP+4lCYRlVA-e

 

Because there are only a few changes I want to go through them one by one:

* Shortbow for Dagger/Torch: After Bonfire got nerfed (again), the dps increase of this build comes mainly over the dagger mainhand, which is currently really strong. So talking only about the weapon choice is difficult without the next point.

* Light on your feet for Quickdraw: With the Bonfire nerf condi soulbeast lost the last high cd damage weapon skill. This making quickdraw more and more ineffective for obvious reasons. A lot of people combine the "condi duration after dodging" with this trait. This is still a "nice-to-have" part of the trait, but the main reason is the buff of shortbow skills 1,2,4 ,5 and the cooldown reduction of 20%. Another nice-to-have is the pierce of all skills. So basically this trait consists of four parts (yeah, its really overloaded).

* Refined Toxins for Ambidexterity: It is meaningless to take the old trait wihtout torch or dagger so this decision is obvious.

 

These changes result in a overall dps loss of ~1k compared to the meta build. On the other side it has a bunch of positive aspects which I realized during the last month:

* Your meele skills are only F2+3, viper's nest, weapon swap and partially sb2, which means you don't lose dps that much when forced to stay ranged.

* Your only dps loss on a moving target is viper's nest (no bonfire anymore)

* Sb5 if allways available for Breakbars (assuming you save them when breakbars will appear which I strongly recommend!) and sb3 is allways available which is useful for a lot of mechanics

* Your rotation is simple (basically you don't have a rotation you just press skills off cd)

* Since you don't have a real rotation you can't struggle if alacrity uptime is bad, sigill of geomancy will proc every 9s

* In general, you don't lose as much dps as the meta build when the group is struggeling

* You benefit from the +10% condi duration, because there are mechanics which you have to dodge in a real boss scenario (similar to the changes suggested for condi druid).

* Having priecing shots allow you to safely hit your target and incerase your cleave dps

 

The negative aspects are:

* You have 1k less dps on paper

* You need to stay next to or behind the boss, which is basically the main challange of playing this build

 

At the end I want to give you two videos. The first one about a dps test:

https://youtu.be/9FzCRfh4Ljk

 

The second one about the build in action on matthias (and yeah the dps other damage dealers is bad):

 

[Marcaum.1302]

I will try this out today, thx for the study, looks interesting!

[EpheSOSIayer.6370]

I forgot to do some comments about each encounter, so here is it:

* VG: If you do green circle this build is great because of the range

* Gorseval: You can help your weavers to clear orbs without losing dps, you can hit 2 ghosts in the splitphase at the same time

* Sabetha: At Sab it is hard to stay behing/next to the boss, so its probably the worst boss for this build. I play it anyways for simplicity. Sb3 is allways ready for cannons.

* Solth+Trio: More cleave

* Matthias: As you see it in the video its nice to have Sb3+5 allways available if needed. If you spread around for bombs or if you have poision the range is useful

* Escort: More cleave and if you do the backwargs you need no entangle or something else, your cd of sb4 is 9.5s and has 8s immobilize if traited.

* KC: I know this build is cool, but don't play condi on KC anyways ;)

* Xera: More cleave, you can help weavers to clear shards

* Cairn: See Sabetha. In addition you can attack while in green

* Mursaat: You can kill the adds without loosing dps

* Samarog: Nothing special here but I try to hit both enemies in the split phase. Don't know if this leads to double dmg on the human

* Deimos: If you do mid strat this build is just great, as a "normal" sb you would stay at sb most of the time here anyways

* Wing5 1st boss: 25k dps are normal here. You should allways be able to stay behind him. He is moving quite often and sometimes you are forced to stay ranged.

[Tankvieh.5796]

as a raid beginner i found this very helpfull. I was able to match my sb/dt damage easily even though my second sb is not ascended and my D/T is.

[Hakata.6742]

Have you tried using Thorns (poison) or Krait (bleed) runes since a SB/SB SB (lol!) only has 2 conditions to worry about?

 

Or would using Trapper/Nightmare still be better for the overall combined condition duration?

 

Edit: Full Krait runes with sigil of venom or full Thorns runes with sigil of agony would be pretty good I feel.

[EpheSOSIayer.6370]

For condi duration you allways end up better with trapper/nightmare as long as you have at least 2 conditions. But you have lower condition damage, so there maybe is a chance that krait is better slightly. The reason I take trapper/nightmare here is that I can easily switch to non-stance share, since two SB with stance share is complicated, since they override their stances each other.

 

Another point are other conditions, so for example you apply 10 stacks of vulnaribility on sb5 which is very nice at the moment, since getting 25 stacks is a problem in some situations after the last balance patch.

[Clear Black.9206]

Im really confused here, call me a newbie if you will. I just am not understanding using two of the same weapon types. Even by swapping to the 2nd SB, the same skills I just used on the 1st SB are still on cooldown. How is this benefiting over using a second weapon set? Does it lie in the trait lines somewhere about swapping weapons? Other than simply swapping weapons and getting a buff, like when you dodge roll and get a buff, I really dont see what the point is. Please enlighten me as it looks like you know what you are talking about lol

[Chrury.4627]

> @"Clear Black.9206" said:

> Im really confused here, call me a newbie if you will. I just am not understanding using two of the same weapon types. Even by swapping to the 2nd SB, the same skills I just used on the 1st SB are still on cooldown. How is this benefiting over using a second weapon set? Does it lie in the trait lines somewhere about swapping weapons? Other than simply swapping weapons and getting a buff, like when you dodge roll and get a buff, I really dont see what the point is. Please enlighten me as it looks like you know what you are talking about lol

 

The Skirmishing traitline does give Fury and Swiftness on weapon swap but the main thing is Geomancy Sigil. [LINK](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Sigil_of_Geomancy "LINK") With 100% bleed duration, that's an extra 3 stacks of bleeding for 20 seconds on a 10 second cooldown (weapon swap). On condi focused builds, that's a decent chunk of damage. True, you lose that damage when you need to range a bit but then you can just wait until you can close in and it'll be ready.

[Dawdler.8521]

> @"Chrury.4627" said:

> > @"Clear Black.9206" said:

> > Im really confused here, call me a newbie if you will. I just am not understanding using two of the same weapon types. Even by swapping to the 2nd SB, the same skills I just used on the 1st SB are still on cooldown. How is this benefiting over using a second weapon set? Does it lie in the trait lines somewhere about swapping weapons? Other than simply swapping weapons and getting a buff, like when you dodge roll and get a buff, I really dont see what the point is. Please enlighten me as it looks like you know what you are talking about lol

>

> The Skirmishing traitline does give Fury and Swiftness on weapon swap but the main thing is Geomancy Sigil. [LINK](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Sigil_of_Geomancy "LINK") With 100% bleed duration, that's an extra 3 stacks of bleeding for 20 seconds on a 10 second cooldown (weapon swap). On condi focused builds, that's a decent chunk of damage. True, you lose that damage when you need to range a bit but then you can just wait until you can close in and it'll be ready.

That wasnt really the question he asked. I believe the answer is that 4 of the skills on the sb has less than or equal the cooldown of weapon swap (concussive shot being the exception) so if sb is your primary source of dps, a weapon swap to something else really doesnt serve a purpose except for possible utility (which is rarely the case in PvE where its deeps deeps and more deeps or you suck).

 

I cant play ranger for crap but thats pretty much universal for all classes.

[Chrury.4627]

> @"Dawdler.8521" said:

> > @"Chrury.4627" said:

> > > @"Clear Black.9206" said:

> > > Im really confused here, call me a newbie if you will. I just am not understanding using two of the same weapon types. Even by swapping to the 2nd SB, the same skills I just used on the 1st SB are still on cooldown. How is this benefiting over using a second weapon set? Does it lie in the trait lines somewhere about swapping weapons? Other than simply swapping weapons and getting a buff, like when you dodge roll and get a buff, I really dont see what the point is. Please enlighten me as it looks like you know what you are talking about lol

> >

> > The Skirmishing traitline does give Fury and Swiftness on weapon swap but the main thing is Geomancy Sigil. [LINK](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Sigil_of_Geomancy "LINK") With 100% bleed duration, that's an extra 3 stacks of bleeding for 20 seconds on a 10 second cooldown (weapon swap). On condi focused builds, that's a decent chunk of damage. True, you lose that damage when you need to range a bit but then you can just wait until you can close in and it'll be ready.

> That wasnt really the question he asked. I believe the answer is that 4 of the skills on the sb has less than or equal the cooldown of weapon swap (concussive shot being the exception) so if sb is your primary source of dps, a weapon swap to something else really doesnt serve a purpose except for possible utility (which is rarely the case in PvE where its deeps deeps and more deeps or you suck).

>

> I cant play ranger for crap but thats pretty much universal for all classes.

 

Mmm, This is true. As far as skills are concerned; there isn't a benefit to going double SB. But that's ok on this build, it's built for consistent DPS. While you could get more dps with D/T or A/T on swap, the difference is ~1k (as OP mentioned) but with the benefit of being able to range whenever.

 

You COULD play this build with one shortbow and just camp it. You'd just want to swap the Geomancy Sigil for[ Earth Sigil](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Sigil_of_Earth " Earth Sigil") . Dps on boss will be a little bit lower (sigil will upkeep ~5 bleed stacks instead of 6). You _will_ lose the AoE aspect of geomancy for the adds but that shouldn't be a problem with team cleave and piercing arrows.

[Minna.7895]

I did a similar thing and switched to double sb stanceshare soulbeast. i just took the setting that was meta right before soulbeast was introduced (remember we lacked the 10% duration to hit the 100% even with trapper and nightmare). That was enough to ignore the burning and the poison and take kraitrunes in combination with geomancy and earth sigills. So that is exactly what i did and i can't tell you how happy i am with this. even without evade (10%) and furious crystals that give extra duration (~7% or so) i am at 99,x% bleeding duration with pizza or cake and around 50% poison. i found that the earthsigill did better for me than any duration in poison on golem, but that can just be me -i got better numbers with 2 sb anyways because you really cant mess up your rotation compared to sb and d/t- so the noobier you are (like me) the better this will suit you even if you dont have to range in a raid.