Aimed Shot vs Rapid Shot (Archery) which are you using?

bryun1 · December 2013

Just wanted to say my HR is only 27 atm, but just wondering what people are using. I have 3/3 Aimed Shot and I love it (assuming you're not getting hit) but I've also maxed out 3/3 for the feat that gives your at wills 9% dmg boost if you're not being targeted.

I am wondering what people are rolling. Did you stick with rapid, or are you using Aimed assuming you can get solid distance and not be getting hit?

I also kind of built myself around Aimed I think. My encounters are 3/3 Thorn Ward, 2/3 Hindering and 2/3 Constricting to buy myself time to get Aimed off.

voltomey · December 2013

I actually use Aimed Shot In PvP and it works surprisingly. when ther hit with binding arrow ther easy picking but when i go back to archery i am using rapid its just to good DPS not to use specialy when you can crit like a champ.

bryun1 · December 2013

I would have thought in pve, if you have any sort of tank, you could spam Aimed Shot which would have higher dps than rapid... maybe I'm wrong?

werealchemist · December 2013

bryun1 wrote: »

I would have thought in pve, if you have any sort of tank, you could spam Aimed Shot which would have higher dps than rapid... maybe I'm wrong?

against one mob yeah.

I just split shot the weak ones away and Aimed Shot the remaining big baddie.
If there's more than one big baddie I use Constricting shot to give me time to melt him down with aimed shot

kelshando · December 2013

PvE right now I use multi and aimed shot, with constricting shot and thorns

PvP I use rapid and aimed with the same encounter ability's

I'm level 29 with the HR...

Main reason for the multi to rapid shot change for pvp is to keep pressure on range class that are firing at me. Can only use aimed when no one attacking you but when you can use it.. it gets big numbers.

netblaze2 · December 2013

mochacoffee wrote: »

ok can i ask somehthing im a new player here, just recently got to level 17 and i had a problem..the skill bar is it just Q,E,R,right click,left click and tab only ?? because i added a few skill and i wanted to extend the skill bar hotkey but cant find it anywhere ?? can anyone teach me how to extend the skill bar hotkey ?

lol... Everything that you see at the bottom is what you get.....

2 at-wills
2 passives
3 encounters
2 Daily
1 Artifact (I Think)
3 pots
1 mount

Something like that

netblaze2 · December 2013

lvl 23 atm...

PVE:
At-Wills - Aimed Shot and Split Shot
Encounter - Thorn Ward, Rain of Arrows and Hindering Shot
Daily - Seismic Shot and Forest Ghost
Passive - Falcon and Aspect of the Pack

PVP:
At-Wills - Aimed Shot and Rapid Shot
Encounter - Thorn Ward, Rain of Arrows and Hindering Shot
Daily - Seismic Shot and Forest Ghost
Passive - Falcon and Aspect of the Pack

I plan on putting a point into Contricting Shot and trying it out... Might use it in place of Rain of arrows

obsidiancran3 · December 2013

I rotate Aimed in and out, replacing either Split or Rapid shot depending on need.

As Electric is just bad for shooting focused play I skip it entirely.

rollingonit · December 2013

Only done 1 PVP match pre 20, so not entirely sure what my loadout will be for it. But Im pretty sure Ill go rapid and aimed. Rapid to keep pressure on players, and aimed for big hits from distance.

PVE, Aimed Shot and Split Shot been using so far and enjoying

vegasone · December 2013

mochacoffee wrote: »

ok can i ask somehthing im a new player here, just recently got to level 17 and i had a problem..the skill bar is it just Q,E,R,right click,left click and tab only ?? because i added a few skill and i wanted to extend the skill bar hotkey but cant find it anywhere ?? can anyone teach me how to extend the skill bar hotkey ?

netblaze2 already answered your question mochacoffee. you can't. The game designers have intentionally limited the number of skills you can have on your hotkey bars at any given time.

sokarrostau · December 2013

vegasone wrote: »

netblaze2 already answered your question mochacoffee. you can't. The game designers have intentionally limited the number of skills you can have on your hotkey bars at any given time.

Don't bother. He's spamming the same thing in every thread (twice in this one... ).

ruinwraith · December 2013

Aimed shot seems to be a little counter-intuitive to the mobility-centric HR. Aimed shot puts up the big numbers, but the long firing time bothers me a bit. Is the damage high enough to justify having all your mobility, which seems to be the HR's stock in trade, completely removed for a few seconds?

I'm low level so I'm not really qualified to answer this question yet. It's just a preliminary observation.

netblaze2 · December 2013

ruinwraith wrote: »

Aimed shot seems to be a little counter-intuitive to the mobility-centric HR. Aimed shot puts up the big numbers, but the long firing time bothers me a bit. Is the damage high enough to justify having all your mobility, which seems to be the HR's stock in trade, completely removed for a few seconds?

I'm low level so I'm not really qualified to answer this question yet. It's just a preliminary observation.

What do you mean halving all our movement? You no you can cancel the Aimed shot? Use your movement power and it cancels it... No biggy.. It doesn't do anything to our movement abilitys... I love using the ability in pvp and pve.. In pve it does alot of dmg.. Taks chunks of health away...

jintortle · December 2013

Aimed shot was useless at lv 29 PVP - no way could I concentrate that long without getting interrupted.

In a Dungeon or a Skirmish I like to have Ranged and Split Shot. Solo - depends on my feelings towards what is ahead.

zargorius666 · February 2014

netblaze2 wrote: »

What do you mean halving all our movement? You no you can cancel the Aimed shot? Use your movement power and it cancels it... No biggy.. It doesn't do anything to our movement abilitys... I love using the ability in pvp and pve.. In pve it does alot of dmg.. Taks chunks of health away...

He means what with Rapid or to less extent Split you can fire/move/fire/shift/fire/move without significantly lowering your DPS. Aimed requires you to stay in the same place and if it's cancelled before fired it means you just wasted several seconds of your time doing basically nothing.

I'm having the same problem as I like to keep on the move continuously and aimed just keeps you in one lplace for very long and if you get interrupted or have to move you just wasted time in which you could have unloaded several Rapids.

Depends on the playstyle I guess.

masterjewstar · February 2014

if i have to choose between rapid and aimed shots id pick rapid every time even then i like es more.

greymarchten10 · February 2014

I've given aimed shot several honest tries, and I come back to rapid shot every time. I get attacked too often when soloing or doing epic dungeons to use Aimed shot. My DPS suffers when I have aimed shot on my hotkey-bar. Rapid shot for me.

elminster · February 2014

For an archery build taking advantage of Prime Critical then Rapid Shot is the way to go. Damage is significantly lower, but the crit procs more than make up for it. For a hybrid or combat build Aimed is the better choice. Damage is higher, the DoT from melee is very powerful, and you don't have Prime Critical to make Rapid worth taking the hit to dps.

That said don't be afraid to swap on the fly. Some situations call for the raw damage of Aimed, some won't give you the time to fire it. You need to judge what's more appropriate and skill accordingly.

rabbinicus · February 2014

Playing PvP as a team sport, I find that aimed is the way to go. If you're not playing as a team but in a huge free for all then aimed is a little trickier.

For PvE, it comes down to playstyle. Aimed is a greater opener and then fantastic for the melee skill, but can also be used in conjunction with a rooted opponent and ME to get in another shot.

baronvonboom · February 2014

Errrmmm It posted the wrong quote..lol

Long Story short, Aimed & Rapid + Split Shot is all you will ever need in your at wills, just mix an match depending on scenario

query523 · February 2014

Go to trade of blades and pick a dummy. Spend 3 minutes shooting it with aimed and keep track of the damage. Then do the same with rapid. I came up with slightly higher DPS on rapid. Add that I can dodge between shots or switch to an encounter that proced, an that aimed can be interrupted while casting. In some team compositions I use aimed. Outside of that always rapid. But test for your build. my crit is about one in three so lots of shots plays to my advantage...

elminster · February 2014

This can change dramatically with party structure. Plague Fire and Terror enhancements, CW buff, GWF buff, even your own Pack buff all influence the damage. This can boost the damage of Aimed well beyond the range of Rapid, which is what makes it so powerful in party play. My own personal best is just over 53k on a buffed Aimed Shot; in the four seconds it took to charge that up there's no way Rapid could ever come close. This is why you need to guage the situation instead of just running with what everybody tells you

ximae · February 2014

^+1

but probably the most important aspect of the decision is weather ur going to be constantly interrupted or not, if u arent and there is some form of debuff going on aimed will be higher dps.

query523 · February 2014

How do you figure? If my base DPS on aimed is x and my base DPS on rapid is 1.2x (which more or less it is then add buffs and debuffs: say the party is aggregate doubling the damage potential. Well then my effective DPS is 2x on aimed and 2.4x on rapid. I'm not running with what anyone told me just what I tested myself. If I am somehow wrong in my math please explain why. And again my aggregate DPS is higher on my build, may be the other way around on a different build.

elminster · February 2014

NOTE everything that follows is extremely rough, but the math is consistent. Take it with a grain of salt

Okay, so let's say for arguments sake your Aimed Shot caps out at roughly 12k and your Rapid is around 3k. In the approximately 4 seconds it takes to fire Aimed you can launch 3-4 Rapid. Best case your Rapid is going to equal the damage of Aimed in the same amount of time. Now let's say you crit. With any dps ranger you'll have Black Arrow so that's 85% severity ...

Aimed Shot: 22,200
Rapid Shot: 5,550
Rapid over 4 seconds: 22,200

Okay not bad, we're still even. Now start adding percent modifiers. I'm sure we can all agree that buffs like Pack and Throw Caution are going to have the same effect to both, so let's cut to something a little more specific: Hawk Eye. I'll come right out and say I'm not sure how much this adds, so let's just say for simplicity it's 10% (cuz I like round numbers). Since hawk only applies to the next attack, we can only count the first shot of Rapid ...

Aimed Shot: 24,420
Rapid Shot: 5,550 + 550 (first shot only)
Rapid over 4 seconds: 22,750

You start to see what I mean. Now let's take Rapid out of this perfect scenario where it hits critical every shot and say you rely on Correcting Aim instead of stacking ridiculous critical rate. So you launch StS, hit your Throw Caution, you've got the annoying push-wizard standing next to you, and thanks to the meat shield (cough) I mean tank you now have a near 100% crit chance, courtesy of all the arrows he just caught for you. But because of your cr4ppy 30% crit rate you only hit the first shot of Rapid critical ...

Aimed Shot: 27,380
Rapid Shot: 6,826 (first shot only)
Rapid over 4 seconds: 17,896

So there you have it. Worst case scenario you lose over 3k damage for every Rapid Shot that doesn't hit critical for my one Aimed Shot that does. Now I said it above but I'll say it again this is a very rough scenario. I threw it together in about 3 minutes as an example only, not to represent actual damage done. I did however make sure each step of the damage was consistent. No variables changed except what I specifically mentioned.

query523 · February 2014

Well your math is off for my build. It would be closer to 4k to 12k, starting with DPS higher aggregate for aimed would skew the math toward aimed. Even then under your specific set of circumstances aimed gets a little more damage over that 4 second period. But lets be real a 4 second fight is trash clearing. How many times in a 3-4 minute fight do you expect all the stars to align for your one perfect aimed shot? And how many times will you be 2 seconds in and have to dodge red on any real fight giving it a damage of zero. I'd also point out that you are spending 2 encounter slots or four encounter powers to achieve this optimal outcome, whilst my encounters are doing consistent damage (moreso every 20 seconds thanks to mastery). I think the allure of aimed is that sometimes you will see that massive number. And it is really kind of cool when you do! But real damage or the course of a delve I don't think it keeps up (for me). My math is pretty rough as well. But I think the general principal is sound.

elminster · February 2014

Actually you're only losing one slot. StS is a very powerful skill when used appropriately and Throw Caution should never be discounted (because who doesn't like 15% damage boost?). For a Hybrid or Combat build I'd agree the loss of the slots would hurt a little because your in-and-out style requires you to use multiple encounter slots, but for an Archery build that utilizes Correcting Aim StS is a staple. Hawk Eye on the other hand I completely agree a total waste of a slot, but I was just throwing that in there for example's sake.

Like I said it was a 3 minute project while I waited for a my dungeon group to get their HAMSTER together. If you really wanna pick it apart be my guest, but that's all the further I'm going to defend that particular post. If you want to extend it out x amount of time over x amount of fights with x amount of dodges and x amount of interrupts that's fine by me, but I really don't have the time or inclination to do that. This is why I tell people to make their own decisions, because it's situational and can make or break a build depending on what you're doing. I like Aimed, I'll continue to use Aimed over Rapid, but if I'm in a fight where it won't work then I won't use it.

query523 · February 2014

I did not mean to make you feel like you were defending that post. My intent is not really to argue. More that his is still a fairly new class and it's kind of our job to figure out how it works. AS I said originally rapid works better on my build. Napkin math makes me think that the higher your crit chance the more your build will favor rapid. If you don't mind why do you favor StS? That one I cannot test on dummies but it seemed like regular old split shot was generating more AOE DPS to me. For that matter has anyone done extensive testing on Stag? It does not say how much de-buff it produces. Arguably if it was 5% that would be better than TC on boss fights +5% to everyone's damage is better than +15% to one player's damage unless you are the bulk of single target DPS for the group. Again that is a hard thing to test. LOL. LFG that wants to que a dungeon and try weird stuff while doing math...

elminster · February 2014

I favor StS for two reasons ...

1: It's free damage. In my case for every target struck that's an extra 3.8k damage that I didn't have to activate. Say the tank has 15 adds on him all striking once per second. That's 57,000 damage per second. Now there is of course a 5-target cap on this like all ranger AoE, but most pulls the monsters' attacks are staggered and don't hit simultaneously, meaning that cap rarely comes into play. Long as the tank stays in the AoE, then that's a HAMSTER load of damage for me.

2: It doesn't crit. Now wait a minute Elm what the heck are you thinking? No crit? Yes, no crit. Now think for a second. You have 15 monsters all being struck once per second, not taking a single crit the whole time. What would happen if you add Correcting Aim to the mix hmm? 5% crit chance multiplied by 15 monsters equals 75% crit chance.

Okay so it's never that ideal but you get the point. It's a nice damage boost that you can pretty much fire and forget, and the synergy not just with Correcting Aim but also a gwf's Trample the Fallen since it also adds a movement penalty to any target struck.

As for TC you've already got StS, why wouldn't you use it? It's an extra 15% (20% feated) for 15 seconds. Put that on top of Commanding Shot and the crit bonus you just got from StS and you'd got a recipe for easy 50k+ hits. And that's before a vorpal.

query523 · February 2014

Where are you getting 3.8k? text reads about 1k average. not that 15k is forgettable, just that a split shot does more than that and casts faster and has a tendency to crit and also stacks with correcting sure a successful crit breaks the stack but I am assuming after you split you are doing something else. Don't get me wrong I can see it circumstantially and will probably run some tests on it. A big melee you could get 15 stacks pretty fast. TBH I try to avoid AOEs with snare as it impairs the party's ability to group mobs due to the yoyo effect. This is not altruistic as I am using those piles to drop rain when mastery procs...

ximae · February 2014

if i dont remember badly my sts hits would be around 2.5-3k.... but will depend on buffs, debuffs etc... anyways sts is not so much for firing mid engagement, not that u cant, but as the first thing u shoot to prepare the engagement spot as it doesnt agro so u buy some time for the melees to reach the spot and take up the first agro so the mobs dont run directly past them to u. from then on ur probably better just splitshotting as u say, and let sts do its work till its done... and everything should be dead by then.

Aimed Shot vs Rapid Shot (Archery) which are you using?

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