Needling Shot is going to be the haXXors.

With Read the Wind and a Vampiric String, that's 36 armour-ignoring damage, and it recharges instantly when target is <50% health! Around pre-nerf Quickshot build speed I think (assumption). There's so many ways to add damage to this thing.

So many evil combo's are going to be created... Wow.

On another note: R/N touch builds are rigged

No its not. Its only 21 dmg. so i cant see the big "trick" with this skill

I've actually USED it. With RtW and Vampiric, it's 36 damage at an extremely high rate.

21 Damage from Needling Shot
10 Damage from Read the Wind
5 Extra "Damage" from 5/1 Vamp.

total 36, DPS exactply. IMO very weak, so not exactly "haXXors"

The speed at which you can spam it is -- I haven't tested it but -- maybe once a second or so. Think of it as the old quickshot with 0 recharge speed.

Think about it, there's so many ways to buff damage through orders, kindle, conjure x, etc. A good combo + a target at <50% health pretty much means death.

I agree that this skill could be used well in the right situation, but if it becomes prevalent I can't imagine it not getting nerfed.

buff with kindle yes, but then you loose 10 unconditional damage from RtW
conjures, maybe, but then you loose 5 unconditional damage from vamp
only thing that would be "possible" would be orders...

Maybe this would work?
R/N
Equipment: Druid's Set, Archer's Mask
Runes: Sup. Vigor, Sup. Marksmanship, Minor: Rest
Weapons:
Sundering Longbow of Fortitude
Vampiric Hornbowbow of Fortitude

Attributes:
Marksmanship: 12+4
Experitse: 8+1
Blood Magic: 10

Skills:
Dualshot
Punishing Shot [E]
Savage Shot
Needling Shot
Order of Pain
Whirling Defense
Res. Sig
Read the Wind

Basically, the strategy is:
1) Whip out Hornbow then RtW, and Order of Pain
2) Spike with Dualshot + Punishing Shot ASAP.
3) Order of Pain -> Needling Shot Spam ftw.

gg?

I did some testing with Needle Shot and Distracting Shot which both have "only deals x damage" in common.
The list below are the skills which add damage to the two arrows.

Needle Shot
Vampiric Bow String
Read the Wind
Order of Pain
Order of the Vampire
Favourable Winds
Winnowing

Distracting Shot
Vampiric Bow String
Order of Pain
Order of the Vampire
Winnowing

Both are effected by Orders and Vampiric Bows and Winnowing. However, Distracting is not effected by Favourable Winds or Read the Wind.

Now at 16 Markmanship you have:

Needle Shot 21
Bow String 5
Read the Wind 10
Order 17
Favourable Winds 6
Winnowing 4
Total 63

You may not always have spirits up so the volley can range from 53-63 assuming the rangers have Read the Wind, Vamp Bows and an 16 Blood Magic Order is casted.

For 5 energy, 63 damage is quite a volley and I don't think any of it is factored out by armor. Below 50% health, this skill is spammable, however you may only be able to have another 1 or 2 shots before damage from the Order is gone. Four rangers will do 252 damage from one volley of Needle Shot, I doubt it is needed though.

Just for fun I made a R/e with needling and used dual shot, punishing, followed by needling. I had kindle arrows, FW, Conjure flame, and vamp bow. The damage was stupid retarded but i used all my energy almost instantly. Anyway i killed a monk in about 3 seconds.

I imagine this skill will get nerfed, but not for the reasons that have already been listed. Last night I used this in the Factions mission where you are fighting constellations (I can't remember the name). Anyway, I brought in a combo that I myself must admit seemed pretty broken. I don't do much PVP, but I think this would just be ridiculous, especially if you had a coordinated team of rangers using it.

OK, I go in with:
16 Marksmanship
14 Expertise
The rest in WS

My skillbar:
Distracting Shot
Penetrating Shot
(the Factions clone of Penetrating Shot, can't remember name)
Needling Shot
Choking Gas
Practiced Stance {elite}
Whirling Defense
Troll Unguent

That mission is a whole lot of casters. I kept Choking Gas/Practiced Stance up 90% of the time (other times I was using Whirling to fend off melee-types). Anyway, when you see a caster, hit Practiced, hit Gas, then use your 2 armor-penetrating shots on them, calling the shots so hench charge that caster. As soon as you get them below 50% health, open up with Needling. Casters go down so quick, and with a near-constant stream of interrupts as well. I kinda felt bad for them.

Maybe im wrong, but i cant see any advantage on this skill.

You just use 5 Energy to do less dmg

Needle shot: 21 dmg ~2 sec fire rate (maybe faster)
Normal shot: 15-28 dmg ~2sec + 33% faster

I prefer barrage, its also spamable also 5 energy and do ~ +17 dmg 2sec fire rate

Only because it recharge immediately, it doesnt do more dmg. You need more dmg or a higher fire rate. %/

The thing is though, needling is not elite, barrage is.

If you focus on single targets it can be very powerful indeed.

Also, barrage + preparation is a no-go.

Here's the build I've been using lately, Cause I'm in factions, gotta use faction skills dangit!

I've found that since I'm using primarily Henchmen, that killing mobs a target at a time is more effective than trying to barrage them to death, as it lowers the mob's damage output quicker, and takes pressure off my monks as they run out of energy.

Anyway I've been using....

1. Melandru's Shot
2. Maurader's Shot
3. Needling Shot
4. Read the Wind
5. Whirling Defense
6. Throw Dirt
7. Cap Sig
8. Res Sig.

I've been happy with the damage output so far. I've considered switching to the two Penetrating shots to compare....

I like using Needling Shot as a finisher. It delievers very quick successive shots, that deal an exact amount of damage very cheaply, when the enemy is below 50%. How effecient it is is yet to be determined.

Needling shot is approx a shot a second, if not faster. Has anyone tried it with TF?

On the OP's posting. I need to SOLIDLY disagree with his appraisal.

Buffdamage: RtW, favourable, OoP, OoV... take your pick... enchants, preps, and rituals (pretty much completely armor ignoring in current play)
SkillDamage: any skill attacks you choose to execute while under the IAS... EG: maruaders shot, penetrating shot (generally armor ignoring or armor penetrating though)
Attack Damage: basic bow damage, normally ~40points per shot before armor. And then it's normally only reduced 10% or so unless you're picking on a warrior

Put simply baseline: In 8s time you will...
Normally: 4 attacks @ 100% damage + buffdamage + skilldamage, no energy burden
Frenzy/Tigers(midspec): 6 attacks @ 100% damage + buffdamage + skilldamage, 2 to 5 energy for the IAS
Flurry: 6 attacks @ 75% damage + buffdamage + skilldamage, 2-3 energy
Needling: 8 attacks @ 40-70% damage + buffdamage (can never get skill damage), 16 energy (if you do this without 13 expertise you're NUTS, and this is conditional on the target not getting healed above 50%).
Just to be Ornery:
Quickshot, needling shot, dual shot: 8 attacks, 4 at 100% damage, 2 at 75% damage, 2 at 40-70% damage. 8 * buffdamage, no skilldamage... again massive 16 energy expenditure. (but your damage has gone up by using quickshot instead of needling)

As you can see above... if you're running the above zealous is pretty much mandatory for any kind of reasonably sustained output. So cut 5 potential DPS from vampiric off the top right away.

But if you do the math, you'll see the less than HALF damage armor ignoring from the needling shot is pretty pathetic. 6*.75==4, 8*.5==4. (or ~160 basic arrow damage) With the better IAS, that's 6*1==6 (or ~240 basic arrow damage). EG: those 2 extra shots you're outputting with needing at a massive cost in energy expenditure, you need to make up 80 points in bonus +damage... it's not happening. Really against the typical 70armor target in PvP (most people take +physical armor for a reason)... it's not enough to even be competitive... and against 100AL warriors... it's not worth the loss of your skill attacks (pin down, interupts, hunters shot... etc).

That's all BEFORE adding in +damage attacks... if you're needling constantly you're NOT using any other skills at the same time for even more buff damage. To summarize the above... I STRONGLY feel that you're better off simply spending the 11-14 energy being spent on other skills which can conveniently ditch needling from the bar in the process.

The only utility I can see for the above is if you have choking gas or similar. As you can use this as a fast recycling (1s or 5s cycle... dependant) 1s attack to carry a choking dust interupt or some other secondary effect. EG: a 2s lightning orb or fireball is not hard to catch with a 1s attack time skill especially if you're not spamming other skills and you won't get the +dam from savage shot anyhow (choking interupts... then savage does and gets no bonus...)

You could potentially use it as part of a ranger spike... dual/needling/needle target to death (x2-4 rangers). The followup attacks would be a lot faster than than the normal 'eternity' after savage/punishing shot aftercast + new attack animation. But even here... if you haven't killed the target in the initial spike... you're probably screwed because the first heal to hit will probably raise the target over 50% (infuse, or heal other being the normal 'panic' heals), which disables your followup chain. So against COMPETENT opposition you're most likely only looking at 4 arrows hitting home in 2s as opposed to 3 arrows in half a second that is the normal ranger spike.

Also: FYI: Distracting shot can carry preperation damage... just not from the +dam single damage packet ones currently in favour... last time I checked kindle and ignite would merrily do their seperate damage packet. Same way as apply poison will still poison an interupted target.

Well first of all, I don't understand why you want sustainable damage when the target is <50%. The whole point would be to finish him off quickly right?

With my current setup, Needling(19)+Kindle(18)+Conjure(7)+FW(6)+Vampiric( 5). This is not even including orders. 55 damage per second while target is <50%. ARMOUR-IGNORING. In 8 seconds that's 440 damage by one Ranger. It's not sustainable for more than about 2 targets, but that's not the point. You can always switch to Zealous String when you need energy.

P.S. Distracting shot has something I'd like to call a recharge time. That's not exactly in the spirit of spike damage.

The power of this skill comes from rspike using it has a finisher if the target doesn't fall. Its a 1 second cast attack so IAS will not affect it. If the target doesn't die from your spike you can instantly output another 120-160 dmg to finish them off.

Best to use conjure, kindle, favorable, and a vamp. Those do stack with each other. Kindle will add the fire elemental to your weapon so you can still use the vamp string. I have also used it with a zealous bow to keep my energy up for just about endless spam.

infuse health should bring your target back past 50% with no problem :/

You mean it won't ALWAYS work? The counter to this damaging skill is *gasp* healing?!?!?

*chuckle* I'm just playing but let's be serious. Before you start bashing the new skills, why not try a few incarnations of it? I see far too many people doing this within the first week of realease...there's no way people have really tried them all. You never know what will end up working better than you think

Ele/R:

Zealous Bow string

Needling shot

Quickening Zephyr

Serpents Quickness

I just spent an hour typing up my response and my browser ate it. Somebody PLEASE increase the damn timeout on this board to something reasonable.

Ok, so in a nutshell:

Golden Lotus Strike
Wild Strike (or Temple Strike Elite)
Death Blossom
Shadow Step (make your Shadow Arts low enough to *only* give you enough time to quickly pull off your three dagger attacks)
Needling Shot
Troll Unguent
Read The Wind
Resurrection Signet

Have 2 Necros with you to lay down Order of Pain or Order of the Vampire + Well of Power or Well of Blood as you kill foes, in addition to providing as much massive heatlh degen as possible.
Have a Ritualist with you to lay down Weapon enchantments on you to boost your Dagger and Needling shot damage, as well as laying defensive spirits at the teleport location and ressing.
Have a Monk/Mesmer with you to provide the bulk of the healing, resurrection, interrupts, and maybe Judge's Insight.
Have 3 other R/A's with you with the exact same build to flesh out your Spike team.

Set up Rit spirits at the teleport location, preferably at the same time you teleport to the foe. Spike the target with all three dagger attacks, and as you 'port back, switch to a Vampiric Shortbow of Shelter.
Needle shot for teh win, assuming the target survived the 4-way Assassin combos.

I'd like to see maxed out damage output for this build.