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Barraging is considered an alternative to Nuking but which accomplishes the same goal: AoE damage over a large or tightly-packed mob of enemies. The benefits of Barraging over using high-powered AoE spells are mostly related to the ability of delivering a more stable stream of damage due to the fact that AI mobs do not scatter as easily.

The name "Barraging" actually comes from the Ranger skill Barrage, but in time, the build in which it was used has grown to use skills from other professions as well, like the Elementalist, the Ritualist Channeling Magic skill-tree and even the Assassin. A small description of the skill before we go on. Barrage is a skill that adds damage to your attack and also damages your target and an additional six targets around it; thus the maximum you can hit are seven targets.

So from that every barrage build has the elite skills barrage. Although you must note one of barrage's downfalls is that barrage will cancel all effects you are under when you use barrage. So it must be noted to not use preperations in a barrager build.

Also it is worth noting that Barraging is almost strictly reserved for PvE. It has very little to absolutely no use whatsoever in any kind of PvP.


Equipment

The only real equipment you need to Barrage is a bow. The problem comes when someone asks, "Which bow?". Technically they all are good, but practically this is one of the most disputed arguments in GW to date. Without appearing too opinionated here are some very short reviews of which work good and why not:

  • Flatbows: They have a high-arc, and even with Favored Winds you have a good chance of missing moving enemies. The high-arc also means a longer flight time which in turn means a bit more refire time. Still, they have longbow-range and you can "snipe"-barrage out of harm's way.
  • Shortbows:The almost exact opposite of the Flatbows, but with a lower range and flight time. It makes up by having a high refire rate which may work against Barraging, read below why.
  • Longbows: Are kinda like the Flatbows, but with a lower arc and worse refire rate, but lower flight time. Some people put this on the same level as the flatbows, more or less justly, but it leaves that impression. Also useful for shooting out of harm's way behind a meatshield.
  • Recurve Bows: They have the lowest arc in the game and the smallest arc while also maintaining a bit of range, comparable to that of the Hornbow, but less then the Flatbow/Longbow. This one is a good interrupter bow and some use it to Barrage because of it's missile low flight-time.
  • Hornbows: Hornbows have the 10% sundering advantage but also the longest refire rate in the game. Some use this because of the refire when using 25% IAS skills like Tiger's Fury


Now I probably baffled you with all that tech-wiz but the simplified version of it is this:

  • If you use Favorable Winds and have a tank/meatshield, stick with the Flatbow or the Longbow
  • If you don't mind getting in the middle of them, you can use the Shortbow or the Recurve for a bit faster Barrages
  • Use Hornbows with IAS for a bit more damage

What I mean about perfect reloads and why I only said to use the IAS 33% for the Hornbow is kinda simple but very variable. The problem is that sometimes, either due to ping or user-lag, you will do this combo: Fire Barrage, (your character pulls another arrow and nocks it on the bow), you push to fire another Barrage and your character then ends up redoing the animation, losing vital time. This is one of those things you get a feel for. That's why people have these arguments, some prefer the Hornbow because they don't experience it, some the Recurve for the same reason, some the Flat just because. All in all, try and use all the bows in combat and stick with what you like most.

General Builds

Sticking to a ranger primary profession we can lead into different types of builds usually using different attributes. Before going into secondary professions here are some build types which can fill up your barrager bar.

Pet Barrager

First there is the Pet Barrager. In Barraging, a Pet may, or may not be used, depending on the constitution of the party or the tactics in use. The general perception that one is needed comes from the Barrager/Pet combo that was widely in use in farming the Tomb of the Primeval Kings, and remained in the collective consciousness of the players as such. A barrage pet build consists of barrage aswell as comfort animal.

Pets can add energy management through skills like savage strike and more area of effect damage through skills like Melandru's Assault. Having a pet also opens up to using the PvE-only skill Never Rampage Alone which is a handy IAS. Pets can also add single damage whether it be brutal strike to finish off enemies or poisonous bite for a little bit of degen or to fuel savage strike. Beast Mastery also opens into nature spirits, but there is more on that in the next section.

Spirit Barrager

The spirit barrager consists of skills which involve nature spirits. Although make sure you choose these spirits wisely as they effect enemies as well. Nature spirits can add positive buffs to your bow and damage or can help in survivability of your team. Thats what a spirit barrager comes down to; making sure that your team can benefit from what you bring.

The most recognized nature spirit for rangers would have to be favourable winds, this spirit will shorten your arrow flight time and increase their damage, this is a great skill to bring if there are a few rangers in your team. If you have alot of physicals in your team winnowing can be a great addition as it buffs all physical damage, but beware this also effects enemy physical damage. On the defensive side of bringing spirits would be winter, this changes all elemental damage to cold damage, which then your team can spec against. Symbiosis is another spirit which can strengthen your team, but beware that when enchantments end they lose the health that symbiosis was giving them.

Marksman Barrager

This type of barrager would easily be the most recognized. It uses skills from the marksmanship attribute to add more single damage, AoE damage, interrupts or conditions to the build.

Savage Shot and Distracting Shot are the most recognized interrupts in PvE and PvP. Although interrupts aren't as important in PvE and PvP competitive play the shut down interrupts allow can still be highly beneficial to a barrager. Skills like sloth hunter's shot and power shot add single type damage which can be very useful when taking down priority targets and cleaning up left overs who aren't close enough to each for a worth while barrage. Volley can add extra AoE damage but is generally not needed in a barrager build as barrage itself as a very short recharge. Conditions in a barrager build are also very welcome, whether it be a snare in the form of cripple from pin down or bleeding from screaming shot they add benefits to the build.

PvE Only Skills Barrager

Since the addition of many PvE only skills from Guild Wars: Eye of the North they have found themselves a home in the flexible barrager bar. These skills can add many effects whether it be AoE damage, single target damage or shouts to buff yourself. Although it must be noted that a bar can only have a maximum have three PvE only skills.

Ebon Vanguard Assassin Support is a great skill, as it brings another meat shield who can knock down a hexed or conditioned foe then proceed to deliver a quick 100+ damage chain. Technobabble is takes up the full potential of barrage, as this can lead you to shut down a mob of casters (without a boss) for six or so seconds. Skills like "Finish Him!", Ebon vanguard sniper support, "You Move Like a Dwarf!" and many others can add great single target damage. Then there are PvE only skills like "I Am the Strongest!", "By Urals Hammer!" or Ebon battle standard of honor which can add great damage boosts to yourself.

Summary so far

It should be noted that most barrager builds are a mixture of all of these types but try not to speck into more then two and try to keep to three different attributes. So your build may look like this:

Barrage Optional Optional Optional Optional Optional Optional Optional

The first three optional slots may be bow attacks from the marksman barrager or pet attacks. If your a pet barrage though make sure to take comfort animal. The next three optional slots should be taken by skills which have long recharges, skills you use in certain circumstances or that buff or protective yourself. PvE only skills, nature spirits, comfort animal are all great for these slots.

Next we dip into secondary professions which open up even more skills.

Secondary Professions

Ritualist

Ritualists are a common secondary profession for barraging due to the inclusion of weapon spells.

The core of Ritualist usage as a subclass for the Barrager consists almost entirely of the powerful Weapon Spell it boasts. The main reason is that Weapon spells are not preparations and as such, are not removed by Barrage, making them a good choice for upgrading our Barrager build.

The first pick will also be the most popular that is out there already: Splinter Weapon

Splinter Weapon does a certain amount of damage to enemies adjacent the one you hit; this is limited to your next 1-4 attacks. Now imagine you have four enemies together, you activate Splinter Weapon on yourself, attack with Barrage hitting all four enemies and then all of a sudden, your screen fills with numbers. The reason why Splinter Weapon is so powerful with Barrage should be clear by now. You hit one of the targets with one arrow from your Barrage, which fires the Splinter Weapon at the rest of the three enemies. In this exact moment, your other three arrows also hit their respective enemies and each fires up the Splinter Weapon. In the end you end up with a "cluster bomb" effect, doing a significant AoE-spike. Also, while your Splinter Weapon will only affect the first four arrows from your Barrage, that hit the enemy, the AoE damage from itself will affect ALL adjacent foes.

That is all great and amazing, but it does come at a high price. The Barrager has to recast Splinter Weapon after each Barrage, and at 5 energy, while it might not seem much, in a short period of time, you will end up with one-digit energy count. You will use about 3 energy per Barrage and 5 energy per Splinter Weapon, considering that you fire an additional Barrage between Splinter Weapon Recharges, in just around 12 seconds you would have used 19 energy. This can be countered somewhat by using a Zealous bowstring with your bow, but overall, it's up to you to figure out how do you want to do the energy management.

Also, since Heroes at this time are not all that good at using Splinter Weapon, the only real way you can use this build without too much micromanaging is to just use it yourself.

Ritualist secondary also opens up to the use of summon spirits which can be great for a nature spirit barrage, this helps you as you now don't have to cast the spirits at each mob, instead only when they run out or die from enemies.

Elementalist

Choosing an Elementalist secondary for our Barrager might seem amusing at first, and although uncommon in today's "PvE meta" it's variants are still usable. While people might be thinking of some newbie build with Barrage and Firestorm attached to the skillbar, again, we are going to use skills from this profession to improve upon our "mighty" Barrage.

Conjure spells are a popular choice. These buggers are nifty little skills, if used right, and inserted on the skillbar of a Barrager. Conjure Flame, Conjure Frost and Conjure Lightning can add plenty of damage to a barrager.

First thing to use them, you have to have the correct mod on your weapon. Fiery mod for Conjure Flame, Icy mod for Conjure Frost and Lightning mod for Conjure Lightning. While this might decrease a bit of damage, it's compensated by the damage granted by the Conjures. They all sport 5-17 bonus damage that is added on top of the damage done by your bow... that can be further improved by using a Glyph of Elemental Power before firing up the Conjure Spells. They last pretty long so recasting them will not be a drain on your energy supplies, and also the main part why we are using them with Barrage, is again, because they are NOT removed by it. Let's make a Conjure Flame

For the Conjure Flame you might add a Mark of Rodgort to do some burning aswell but that's about it. This is pretty much everything that you could do with just this setup for all Conjures. The important thing is that the damage is steady and reliable and just does what it's supposed to: kick up extra pain on their side. This setup is effective in it's own, and should not be considered a throw-away. In the end, Barragers should just compare this with the other variants available to them and choose whether they prefer reliability or spikeability.

Necromancer

The Necromancer contributes to the Barrager-build by offering damage boosts through a few limited hex-skills and orders. They in themselves don't really deserve a special section because they are mostly skills you should bring on other party members or heroes, but since they can be used with Barrage on a single skillbar setup, they will be listed here for reference. These are generally inferior to proper variant builds and should only be used as support for those builds. Note that Orders builds cannot be used with Conjure Barragers in a team setting.

Mark of Pain is like a little persistent Splinter Weapon stuck to an enemy. While Barrage might benefit from using it, it has a better use with Triple Shot/Dual Shot builds, allowing you to hit the target repeatedly. Order of Pain although possible to use before firing two Barrages, the damage bonus for just one Barrager is not that significant. Only bring it if you have 2-4 Barragers in your party, and you will cycle them to have a constant OoP.

Monk

Monk as a secondary for Barragers mainly help on the defensive part, as they contain little to no skills worth using to increase damage dealt. Again, these will be listed just for reference and in no way might they outperform the stand-alone variants in terms of offensive power.

Live Vicariously Selfcast and enjoy the health per each hit. The energy might be a problem thou, so you might consider the next skill. Vigorous Spirit Unlike the above, it has a fixed duration, more health per hit, and a 5 energy requirement. Mending touch is a great skill which makes sure you can take care of your own conditions, this generally is not needed if your have confidence in your monks.

You can combine both of the above if you know you will need the extra healing power.

Judge's Insight is one of the few damage monk based increasers for our Barrager. It is particularly useful for bows that don't have a sundering modifier on them, as this skills will add 20% armour penetration, and of course, to add yet more sundering damage to those that do. Not only does it do that, but it also converts ours, or the target ally we choose's (hence can be used by a hero or party member), attacks to holy damage. Very few creatures are resistant to holy damage, many more are actually more vulnerable, especially demons and the undead (the undead take a striking double damage from holy attacks), which adds up in certain situations. This skill however, can be costly on energy, and has a rather long recharge time for its' duration.

Warrior

Warrior as a secondary can open up more IAS such as flurry and Frenzy (which are stances so they will not be canceled by barrage). But really most imporantly for having warrior secondary would to take the skills "Save Yourselves!". This skill takes full advantage of barrage's AoE damage as it should quickly be fueld by the hitting of multiple foes. There is also another advantage of having this on a ranger over a warrior and that would be positioning. Rangers (depending on their bows) would be standing in the midline or backline of the party and so from here "Save Yourselves!" effects the most needy people, the squishy casters.


Different First Professions

Assassin

This variant does not require you to have Ranger as a primary. It uses the Critical Strikes primary attribute of the Assassin to disperse a higher DPS through criticals. It's often referred to as a "crit-barrager" and while it might not be as popular, it's still a Barrager build and it gives Assassins a different way to play their class depending on the needs of their party.

A basic crit-barrager build is this:

Barrage Critical Eye Way of the Master Critical Agility Optional Optional Optional Optional


With 16 points in Critical Strikes and the buffs up you should have a very high crit-chance, and with Barrage, you will get a major energy boost aswell due to Critical Eye and Critical Strikes. This will allow you to fire Barrage at zero or even gaining energy per Barrage.

In the Optionals you have a wide variety of choices... from Way of Perfection for health gain, to the PvE Norn skill, "Dodge This!", to Keen Arrow and going through Savage Shot/Disrupting Shot, those spaces will fill up to match whatever you might need. Before Sharpen Daggers was nerfed, you could disperse bleeding through each Barrage you fired; now, it was nerfed to the a max of 11 attacks at 16 Critical Strikes, but still, it can be used quite successfully and can be recommended in the skillbar. Also another highly recommended skill-combo to have on would be Critical Defenses and Critical Agility. These refresh when you do a successful critical hit, and with this build.. that's quite often. They will grant you a 75% block chance, some 10-22 armor and a constant 33% IAS which will prove to be useful in a more CQB enviroment.

Ritualist

Ritualist primary only opens up one thing and that is higher channeling magic through the use of runes. This is sometimes used if splinter damage is more relied on for damage then the actual barrage.

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