Barbed Arrows [cDPS]

The purpose of writing this guide is to provide a no-weapon swap method to play a ranged PVE soulbeast while easily hitting the 70% benchmark with minimal effort. This build is low cognition, has few repetitions but has a relatively high APM. The skills do not require specific timing and having extra hard CC (total of 3) in the build allows flexible upkeep of Twice as Vicious, which has a rather tight timing on other builds. The auto-attack of the build provides sufficient hits to proc bleeding and the skills that empower the shortbow hits do not interrupt the attack rotation. The way the bows are empowered with bleeding stacks is inspired by the Guild Wars 1 skill Barbed Arrows.

Gearing and Consumables

Equipment

• Full Vipers
• Shortbow

Weapon Swap

Weapon swap is optional

1. Dagger/Dagger
2. Dagger/Torch
3. Axe/Dagger
4. Dagger/Axe

Dagger/Axe (Axe 4 can proc Twice as Vicious) runs on a similar concept and will do similar damage on a hybrid build. However, a ranged build is simpler to play.

Optimised Viper's Loadout GW2Skills Link

Runes

•  Superior Rune of the Afflicted

Sigils

•  Superior Sigil of Malice
•  Superior Sigil of Earth

Relic

•  Relic of the Fractal Relic of the  Relic of the Blightbringer has been considered but remains a much weaker version as there is a hidden ICD, preventing Poison Volley from proccing multiple times.

Food

•  Salsa-Topped Veggie Flatbread
•  Koi Cake(budget alternative)

Utility

•  Toxic Focusing Crystal

Build

Condi DPS\

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Trait Alternatives

The equipment stats are fairly similar to the that of SnowCrows with selection of different traits.

Rotation and Utilities

DPS Rotation

Stay merged at all times.

1. Early Precast - Spike Trap
2. Pre-battle - One Wolf Pack + Sharpening Stone + Vulture Stance + Sharpen Spines
3. General Rotation - Use all non-healing skills on cooldown except F1

Crowd Control rotation

1. You have decent CC by just using Concussion Shot (Shortbow 4)
2. You have many other CC skills littered in your weapon and utility kit including the ones used to upkeep Twice as Vicious (see below).
3. You can precast Sharpening Stone for additional CC just before the CC phase of an encounter.
4. Bringing Warthog can add significant amount of CC for a small damage loss.

Sustainability

1. You may opt to take Healing Spring for better condi cleanse
2. Quick Shot (Shortbow 3) is an evade that does a step back. This is useful for bosses with pull mechanics.
3. If you need an extra heal, you may swap your pet to Jungle Stalker for Spiritual Reprieve

Optimisation

Twice as Vicious

Spread out Sharpening Stone, Primal Cry and Concussion Shot to maximise Twice as Vicious uptime. You may wish to delay using Concussion Shot as it is a potent CC skill.

Dodging

1. Where dodging is necessary, you may delay Quick Shot by 4s after the dodge to have better uptime of Light on your Feet.
2. It is better to use Quick Shot to dodge once if you don't need to dodge twice for better DPS uptime.

Rain of spikes

On a boss with multiple adds, if you can position yourself within the boss hitbox, rain of spikes can hit the boss more than the usual number of times, making this skill worthwhile to include in your rotation.

Raid Ready

1. W1 Gorseval - Immobilise with Entangle during the split phase.
2. W2 Slothasor - Jaguar is useful for Prelude Lash to pull slublings. Make sure to point your bow away from ally slubs!
3. W2 Bandit Trio - The range, self sustainability and high amounts of CC allows this build to do mortars.
4. W3 Escort - For backwarg, bring Entangle and use Crippling Shot to immobilise. For frontwarg, black widow/jungle spider is useful for Prelude Lash to pull white mantle and Entangling Web provides meaningul immobilise uptime on the frontwarg.
5. W4 Cairn - This build does superb on Cairn, no adjustment is necessary, though you may wish to use "We Heal As One!" if you are baiting red circles for the group. Also see dodge section above as you will very often be dodging to move if celestial dash is unavailable.
6. W4 Samarog - Spike Trap can be used to launch Rigom, although the pushback from longbow and using a power build is preferred.
7. W5 Dhuum - Use Quick Shot during the suck phase.
8. W6 This build is excellent on Twin Largos as it is.
9. This build can be used to pylon kite. Camp shortbow with Juvenile Hawk. Switch to sword. You movement skills are Swoop (catch) and Swoop(return). Take note that unlike other kiting classes, your return skill cannot survive dashing through fires.

Videos

I have benched the build with mostly the above mentioned gear with no infusions. Budget food and budget utilities were used.

DPS benchmark (27.7k solo, 30k with allies)

Pylon Kiting

Courtesy of Gwen The Pretzel