Volley nuke?

Lately I've been wanting to find a use for my channeling 14 splinter weapon, so I figured maybe I can do something with heroes?
So I grabbed out Zenmai for a Critical Volley build, but I noticed she wouldn't spam Volley enough when I cast splinter weapon on her.
This leads me to this thread.
Without much micromanagement, how can I make my heroes properly volley nuke? And can I see an example of a successful build?

barrage is better since its elite,and gets priority over other skills,so they spam it more constantly than volley.

Yer rather use Barrage
Heroe's use the elites more than the normal skills.
What elte are you using in ur build at the mo?

Use barrage, and only have 2 other attack skills, like savage and dshot.

Indeed, barrage is a lot more stable.

Just run a (pretty standard) R/X hero(es).

-Barrage
-Dshot
-Savage
-Lightning reflexes
Rest on utility stuff like res, troll unguent, traps (disable them and precast them manually before a fight), pets, 2nd prof stuff like conjure and elemental bow.

Im not so sure you can get heroes to "properly"(the perfect way you want) use their skills. Think about the AI involved in order to fit everyones builds.

The way I see it, the AI for your ranger(for example) is contstantly looking at all of its foes. (unless you lock on, but yet maybe even so) So as it scales through everything, there are so many factors being used in a milli-second that your ranger has so many options per what you skill set it out with. Thats why a hero (mesmer) can interrupt with less than 1/4 sec of a say 1 sec cast.

I would think that even if you just turn off usage of every other skill and leave volley on......that the ranger still isnt going to spam volley. Thats why you have a skill bar as apposed to just having one skill to spam. I understand what you are trying to do. But Im not sure that hero AI will truly allow you do that.

TO give you something to think about with respect to locking a hero on a foe. ONE TIME IN BAND CAMP, I left my mesmer hero(only interrupts in my group) locked on a monk. As soon as the monk was dead i C-spaced to the nearest foe which was an ele only to see that my mesmer already interrupted its next skill in that split moment from monk death to c-space. So essentially, they way i understand that heros are contstantly surveying the foes to use what available skills they have. I cant imagine a hero AI set up where it will just spam the crap out of one skill.

The AI is going to be very hesitant to use either skill against a single target.

As I recall they also have a tendency to get stuck in auto-attack after a barrage, making barrage + volley together on the bar actually make sense.

My problem with barrage on hero bars is that they OVERUSE it and blow themselves out of energy in the process. I'm not big on ranger heroes in the first place (because I think other professions can do a lot more), but this is the volleyer that I use:

R/Rt, 12+1+1 expertise, 8+1 marksmanship, 10 channeling
expert's dexterity (e)
lightning reflexes
splinter weapon
nightmare weapon
volley
distracting shot
savage shot
death pact signet

Works about as well as any ranger spam build can.

try this as your splinter carrier:

Marks: 12
Critical: 11+1+1
Wilderness: 4 (2s burning, nothing more needed)

[Incendiary Arrows]
[Dual Shot]
[Disrupting Accuracy]
[Critical Eye]
[Way of The Master]
+ random skills.

AI will try to spam Incendiary (being elite) and dualshot (it spams dual shot under preparation as much as it can)

Yes, Incendiary is a better option than Barrage, due to the fact that the hero is so stupid that he figures that "hey, there aren't enough targets" when he has Barrage, but apparently setting things on fire is pure l33ts4uce.

Why do you want to do it in the first place? oO

Quote: Originally Posted by Super Igor

Why do you want to do it in the first place? oO Follow-up to the "My ritualist needs a new buddy" thread.