noble duelist isnt exactly compareable to deadly because noble buffs the heavy attack by a fixed amount, where deadly is a % increase

there are other options for heavy attack buffing that can allow staying ranged

might help to know what the rest of the build is to make a better decision lol

both trap and netch have buffs that an oakensoul doesnt need (barb gives minor force, which is provided by oaken/netch gives major brutality/sorcery which is also covered by oaken)

the netch would probably be easier to use as you just hit it, it also would give you a small heal and a cleanse, and you could use it to restore stats for your "off resource"

for example, since your a lightning staff build, you dont need the netch restoring magicka, you could have it restore stamina to help support other actions such as sprinting/dodging/cc breaks

the hemorrhage chance on barbed got dropped way down, so its not likely to re-proc before the status effect expires, and hemorrhaging is not worth it if you cant maintain 3 stacks (i think it only guarantees 1 stack of hemorrhage on the initial hit of trap but the rest of it has normal chance to proc the status effect)

so likely you could find a better dot to replace trap if that was your main goal

personally ive never liked the trap skill, it always felt weak to me lol

Thank you. Yes...I haven't been able to find anything besides maybe Elemental Susceptibility for a long DOT...and even that was replacing arctic blast since arctic blast makes no impact at range. Maybe something in the Mages Guild kit...I'll keep digging and post my results.

Thank you much. No unstable wall surprisingly Just the racer, fissure, fetcher, arctic blast and beast trap. Blissfully I have this build in the armory so I'll try and mess around tonight...just trying to get a solid ranged build down for dicey vet content.

the bleed on the cutting dive is pretty potent, about twice as effective as barbed trap and can be used from range lol

i would probably still recommend changing trap to either winters revenge, or unstable wall (winters revenge would be better i think if your not using an ice staff due to the high chill chance)

winters revenge was usually the first skill i would lay down, the only issue i had with it was you have to target location to drop it, so unless you have the option to auto cast on target, you have to hit the skill and then click to place it

i personally prefer unstable wall and winters revenge because its better aoe

and yeah, this is basically what theorycrafting is lol, i find it quite enjoyable too and have different experimental builds on several toons lol

Well I landed on this using Deadly:

This was as "ranged" as I could get with the fissure range. DPS was lower with noble at close range. So...thank you...this will be my ranged build, but so far, noble + barbed + cutting racer win the day for closer ranged at 77K as shown above. I did notice that most skills queue properly and fire after the heavy attack, but winter I have to wait longer after starting a new heavy attack, otherwise it just simply doesn't fire. Thanks again...this has been very helpful.

I actually had both going...unstable no problem, winter was the only funky one. Nice to finally land on a melee and range set

Ah..ok I was looking at the longer duration instead...I figured longer the better, but I'll give unstable a whirl tonight..I think I can afford the 800 gold morph fee

Thanks...as it's an oaken build, just sergeants and noble/deadly, so not a lot of wiggle room. Will post comparisons later

Thank you...I'll give that a shot.