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Forums > Home› Class Forums› The Wilds

Less is More - At Wills & Encounters

shazza53shazza53 Member Posts: 147 Arc User
edited June 2015 in The Wilds
A question for all the Trappers out there. I was pleasantly surprised at how much damage I was dealing with my newly minted Hunter Ranger. I followed katozee's guide and initially I was careful about following my rotations and stance changes.

As I got more comfortable, I was happily jumping into the fray or trying to round up the strays. Comfortable with the encounter rotation, I started using my at-wills a lot more - maybe even holding down the trigger as I was cycling encounters.

I was finding myself in the Top 3 for damage, but in the 3-4 mil range instead of 6-7 mil - using Lair of the Pirate King for comparison. Today, I have purposely kept my finger off the At-Will triggers, and just cycling through encounters. Now back to 7 mil fairly consistently (I know it depends on team make up as well, so this isn't a strict benchmark).

So - does this make sense? I'm assuming the At-Wills were reducing damage multipliers and not taking advantage of buffs.
Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • robertdiazrobertdiaz Member Posts: 43
    edited June 2015
    at-wills do take advantage of buffs such as aspect of the serpent and have bonus damage based on things like the artifact weapon or full grand warden set. you usually don't use at-wills much (especially in pirate king) but when you run out of hindering shot charges that's around the time you will lose some DPS if you don't begin using them to fill the gap when your encounters and disruptive shot are still on CD.

    pirate king (and most dungeons in general) are a bad way to test damage (especially if you don't have the exact same teammates each run) because of things like running past all the mobs to the final boss where some groups will sit and fight at the camp fire until they die, or having a CW that's granting more of certain chaos magic the entire run, etc.
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  • shazza53shazza53 Member Posts: 147 Arc User
    edited June 2015
    Good points, robertdiaz. I understand things will change from run to run in a Dungeon, and it certainly could be coincidence. But definitely see an improvement in overall damage when I am not so heavy on the At Will triggers. While the At Wills do get buffs, I guess I am thinking the overall impact will probably not be as great since individual hits are generally for less damage.

    I will keep experimenting :)
  • katozeekatozee Member Posts: 42
    edited June 2015
    I am currently testing a few things with at-wills, in the heroic feats I shifted 2 points from the daily damage increase -2% and put them into the increase at will damage against targets that are not targetting you by 6%.

    I am trying the combination of holding down electric shot and just going through the usual rotations. Still having a hard time deciding if it was worth while or not. Using at wills really cuts your mobilty to a near stand still and the damage increase doesn't seem to interesting.

    Going on the basis that you can use at wills more often than dailies and the 2% drop from daily damage can quickly be suppassed by the +6% damage increase by at wills. Though I am away for four weeks soon so the results may be long overdue, initial thoughts would be a no since the trade off between mobility and damage is too severe. Plus holding down the trigger will slow down your rotations which also cuts your overall dps which makes trying to determine the numbers difficult.
  • pureacousicpureacousic Member Posts: 21 Arc User
    edited June 2015
    Just out of curiosity, are you guys using Pathfinder? All this talk of At-wills makes me think you are.

    If you're using Stormwarden, you can put Stormstep Action as one of your features, and then simply alternate between Hindering Shot, and Disruptive Shot with each rotation to avoid having to ever use At-wills. You can even use Seismic Shot, and you'll gain enough AP by the next 'Daily' rotation to use DS again.

    I personally don't know if you're sacrificing DPS by using DS so much, but I figure if you're going through your rotation so often, then it would off-set that lack of damage from the one attack
  • katozeekatozee Member Posts: 42
    edited June 2015
    pureacousic wrote: »
    Just out of curiosity, are you guys using Pathfinder? All this talk of At-wills makes me think you are.

    If you're using Stormwarden, you can put Stormstep Action as one of your features, and then simply alternate between Hindering Shot, and Disruptive Shot with each rotation to avoid having to ever use At-wills. You can even use Seismic Shot, and you'll gain enough AP by the next 'Daily' rotation to use DS again.

    I personally don't know if you're sacrificing DPS by using DS so much, but I figure if you're going through your rotation so often, then it would off-set that lack of damage from the one attack

    I am using stormwarden, and I am doing so to try and find if its possible to further increase damage output. From my initial findings I am gaining an extra million in damage at end of runs (averaged out) though I have had to use health potions, something I don't need to do when not using rotations.
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