Wall of text follows, beware (it's good though).
Alright, here is the build:
Bottom line, this build allows you to put out a lot of ranged damage focused on bleeds and burning. Due to design limitations on condition damage, this build is ineffective for large group boss fights, but excels mightily in 5 man dungeon, wvw, and spvp play. I've experimented a lot with this build tweaking around the right mix of skills and I believe it's very efficiently put together.
If you're working with random bits of gear, I think the sweet spot for this build is about 45-55% base crit chance (about 1800-1950 precision) and something over +1000 condition power. There's no need for +crit damage (already 30% traited) or +power, but any vitality or toughness you can squeeze in is always good. Remember though, you're now ranged dps. You're fairly tough RDPS though... your heavy armor and moderate natural health pool allows you to ignore toughness completely and still take hits like a medium or light armored foe that invested moderately in toughness. However, be mindful of your tanking weakness and focus on tactically positioning yourself, dodging intelligently, and avoiding close encounters.
Skills:
Rifle - Your bleeds do 96 per tick with no buffs, and up to 116 with might from FGJ and Signet of rage (you should be able to have 3-11 stacks of might up at all times even solo). Your autoattack bleeds last 9.5 seconds, and your crit proc bleeds last 8 seconds and you should crit about 60-80% of the time meaning every other autoattack shot is good for 2 bleeds instead of 1. On a dungeon boss solo, this rifle setup can stack up to about 20 sustained bleeds just with autoattack (about 2200 dps just from bleeds). The autoattack itself hits for about 300 regular, 500-600 crit, and the burst hits for 5k to 6k crit (I always seem to crit, but I'd imagine 3k normal). Burst skills costing less trait gives you at least one adrenaline bar filled at all times while fighting, and berserker's stance is the key to either keeping it full for +9% crit chance and +12% damage, or bursting much more often. With a 5.5 sec snare on an 8 second C/D and rifle butt 12 sec C/D to knock away meleers, this is your ideal weapon choice for 1 on 1 fights or focused single target dps. This is also amazing for choke points since your rifle shots "pierce" meaning they go through to targets beyond the first one they hit. You can effectively hit many piled up or coming through a choke point.
Longbow - Longbow is all about the burst skill that makes the fire field. With this setup, your burning will will inflict about 600-700 per tick. Your fire field will last 8 seconds and pulse about 5 times (usually critting and adding bleed from your sigil) each time applying a 2.25 second burning. If someone or something stands in the field for the whole 8 seconds, he would suffer about 12400 damage JUST from the field itself (2000 from pulse direct damage, 3-4 bleeds for 2600, and 12 seconds of bleeding for 7800). A big game changer here is berserker stance... it quickly fills your adrenaline bar so if you're not firing much, you can still launch burst skills regularly, and if firing arrows regularly, you can effectively keep your power fire field up and running about 3/4 of the time! That's huge in WvW for siege and countersiege. Arrows fire 2 at a time, so that's 2 chances for bleeds off crits each autoattack allowing you to sustain about 7-8 bleeds with autoattack alone. The #3 burst skill isn't as huge without high power, but still does 2000-3000 damage and blast combo finisher (AOE 3 stacks of might in your fire field). The AoE blind is nice for groups. #2 Fan of fire is great for someone in your face as you will hit them with all 3 arrows for about 1000 damage plus 7 seconds of burning for 4500. This shot also pierces through lines of defenders.
*Note - I've tried swapping out to various other sigils, but the crit proc bleeds (earth) perform the best with this build by far.
Slot skills - Like I've said, berserker stance is awesome, especially with longbow, click it at the start of a cold fight with no adrenaline, and within a few seconds, you're not only firing your burst, but you've got a big chunk of your next one refilled as well. FGJ is a great perosnal buff and good for group utility. Signet of Fury is essential not only for crit chance and dps, but also for the swiftness to get places (or get out in a hurry) without having to slot a warhorn. With the signet C/D reduction, you can keep signet of Fury up 3/4 of the time. Fear me is great in pvp, but I swap it out for On My Mark for PvE.
Tactics:
Stay off the front lines. You have 1200 range with all skills, and little healing ability, so use that range to your advantage to avoid taking much damage while still doing high DPS. In close quarters with several enemies, go longbow and burst away. I generally like to start off fights with longbow burst, #3, root (if necessary) then blind. I'll then switch to rifle autoattack for sustained dps, and back
With a combination of kiting, condition removal on your heal, rifle butt and Fear me, you have moderate utility to keep meleers back and continue to pelt them with dps. For better defense, you can swap stomp, endure pain, or signet of stamina in for FGJ, but this will lower your overall dps by about 5-8%.
In WvW siege, swich to longbow and keep bursting. You should be able to keep the walls on fire with about 70-80% uptime. Spam longbow #3 on any siege equipment as it does high damage to objects (not to mention players on walls). When all enemies on the wall are obstructed, I just shoot the door for adrenaline, and spam berserker stance with longbow #3. If you stand right next to the gate, your Fear Me and longbow #2 typically go through the door.
In keep/tower defense, start with longbow for burst, #3, #4, then root someone in the field and mow them down with rifle. Alternatively, mow someone down with rifle first, then use their body as a magnet to keep players coming into your flame field. Under heavy assault, just do your best to poke out and burst and longbow #3 the gate attackers while ducking back and healing. If you clear enemies of the gate, stay on the wall while others push out as fire support. I recommend NOT manning any siege equipment (leave it to others) as you already have elite ranged dps, and don't tank well enough to stay in one place forever. If you get pulled off the walls, use Fear Me, and dodge roll twice towards the gate to get back in and heal after the dodge rolls and signet of Fury if not active.
Gear:
For SPVP, I'd build as shown, but I recommend Superior Runes of the Nightmare instead of Undead. Since those aren't available for PVE/WvW, I did the build with Superior Runes of the Undead (pretty cheap for these on the TP btw).
For regular gearing, Rampager's and Coral gear is the norm (Precision, Power, Condition), but you can make yourself much more effective by diverting about 200 precision (assuming you're in exotic) and as much power as possible into vitality, toughness, and more condition damage. The most efficient way to do this is to swap 1-2 pieces of jewelry to Chrysocola (Condition, Vitality, Power), and/or buy weapons or armor with Condition/Precision/Toughness (several sets out there on the TP for fair prices). For example, wearing all Galrath armor instead of Rampager's, and swapping in a chrysocola amulet for a coral amulet, you effectively sacrifice 206 extra precision and 224 power to gain 224 toughness, 127 more condition damage, and 79 vitality. I wish there was more options to gain vitality via gear, but there aren't, so I recommend stocking on food with +100 vitality, and +70 toughness.
Melee option:
If you have a need to melee or find yourself PVE farming with this build, I recommend going longbow with sword/axe with one bleed crit rune on the sword, and a crit proc rune of your choosing on the axe (blood, fire, rage, etc.) or a sigil of corruption. Sword autoattack and burst have innate bleeds, axe #4 furies, and axe #5 hits very fast with lots of crits for more bleeds. Also, since your rifle is secured, you can switch your Arms line Master trait to something more useful (I recommend Rending strikes for vulnerability on crit). Keep in mind though, you're pretty squishy and not made to tank melee.
Well, that's all I got. I spent pretty much the whole night putting this together and fact checking bits and pieces of it as further questions came up. Let me know if you guys have any questions or feedback!
» Edited on: 2012-09-26 20:09:47
