"True Shot: The damage of this skill has been increased by 10% in PvE only"

Can we get an explanation for this change? It's such a small buff in PvE that it really doesn't do anything to change the viability of LB in PvE. Additionally, why wasn't this change extended to sPvP? I think most people will agree DH could use it there. Feels like a slap in the face to be honest. Like Anet is aware LB is performing very poorly but they throw us small scraps.

Or they could be reworking the other LB skills, and see little reason to buff those skills.

Mostly probably, they are just trying to placate the community; there was a thread several weeks ago on GW2 reddit, with the community pleading for a DH LB buff. But yeah, 10% is not enough to compensate for the nerfs Anet had done to DH LB. Even if DH LB is brought back up to vanilla HoT lvl, it would most probably struggle to find a spot in the current PvE meta.

I think the LB is always gonna be slightly lower in damage than the 'meta' weapons. Because it has the range, you can stay safe. The only ranged weapons I can think of that are meta for dps in PvE are the engineer's rifle and our own sceptre. The sceptre is actually fairly weak as a 'ranged' weapon though, as the projectiles are so slow and the symbol being a big source of damage basically require the target to be standing still, or for you to be in melee range to make the most of that damage. The longbow is based a bit more around keeping your targets at range, thereby making you a bit more survivable if you use it.

Also understand that sometimes an innocuous buff can sometimes lead to massive power gains when some player puts together a combination of traits and gears that the devs never thought of. Game balance is very delicate, much as we all like to think we know how to change things, and it is much better to see some slow gradual changes than always breaking professions either with overpowering them or under powering them. Better to make some slow changes and see how things play out. Or as mentioned there could be other changes in the work that they weren't happy with yet, at least we get something this patch.

I think as well if we look at the patch history for the last 6 months we see very little change to the guardians overall dps potential. Which leads me to believe that ANet probably are quite happy with the state of the guardian, and have instead focused on nerfing classes that are considered better than the guardian and buffing those that have been below.

I hope they consider bringing this to PvP(maybe WvW as well? I dunno, talk to me, roamers) as well when they see it isn't broken.

On the positive side, the new Defender's Dogma is great. Trumps my Healing idea by a long haul.

If you do the math, trueshot would need something like a 70-80% flat damage buff for longbow to even hope to touch scepter's dps just by itself and that's not considering meta builds using zeal/radiance from which scepter/torch benefits from even more than longbow possibly can.

A 70-80% buff even in pve is just NOT going to happen... and like other people have said, not every weapon has to compete as best in slot for every game mode. Where LB used to shine is in pvp/wvw and it's underperforming there. That 10% damage buff would be great (and not OP) for pvp/wvw.

It also feels like they spit in our faces by giving reaper yet another enormous buff when reaper is probably one of the last HoT specs (along with chrono and druid) that need buffing.

I think the purpose of this change was trolling :/

Well played Anet. Well played.

In 2016, they reduced the damage of True Shot by 20%. I guess the Mordrem were complaining that it was damaging too much :s So 2+ years later, True Shot has gotten it's first increase back towards where it was upon release of Dragonhunter. You know, the guardian elite specialization that uses a bow which hardly anybody uses because the bow is, well, useless. IIRC, the nerf happened during the time when Anet stopped splitting skills between PVE and PVP/WVW. So, while the nerf may have been appropriate for PvP at the time, it gutted the bow for guards in PvE. Mine has been collecting dust in my guardian's bag ever since. With this increase I dusted off the bow, hopped into some world events and noticed a difference. Is it ground-breaking ... no. Is it worth it as a ranged weapon again ... in some situation, yes I think. Especially since scepter is nearly melee now. But, bow is not fixed yet, with the cast time of each skill, the damage is not there, overall. However, it is a step in the right direction. We can just hope that the staircase continues and doesnt end here for the bow.

@Yannir.4132 said:I hope they consider bringing this to PvP(maybe WvW as well? I dunno, talk to me, roamers) as well when they see it isn't broken.

It'd take more than 10% before I'd dust off my bow. It was weak before PoF launched and soulbeast became a thing. That one class, Soulbeast is the death of Dragonhunter. Long passive invulnerability wastes your burst, multiple sources of unblockable laughs in courage's face, longer range, stealth, higher HP, far more damage both at range and even in melee.... Yeah take that 10% buff and stick it somewhere smelly.

@LetoII.3782 said:

@Yannir.4132 said:I hope they consider bringing this to PvP(maybe WvW as well? I dunno, talk to me, roamers) as well when they see it isn't broken.

The 10% buff wouldn't be enough to make lb meta, but it would be great for people that still play it tbh.

@Arcaedus.7290 said:A 70-80% buff even in pve is just NOT going to happen...

August 28th Warrior rifle says hello

@Eruaph.4039 said:I think the LB is always gonna be slightly lower in damage than the 'meta' weapons. Because it has the range, you can stay safe. The only ranged weapons I can think of that are meta for dps in PvE are the engineer's rifle and our own sceptre.

You are forgetting ele staff and deadeye rifle. Heck even p/p DE is much more viable than longbow ever was.

@RabbitUp.8294 said:

@Eruaph.4039 said:I think the LB is always gonna be slightly lower in damage than the 'meta' weapons. Because it has the range, you can stay safe. The only ranged weapons I can think of that are meta for dps in PvE are the engineer's rifle and our own sceptre.

True I did, forget Ele staff, though I would say it has much the same issue as the scepter which is to get the best damage you need your enemy to be standing still, which usually involves melee. My impression was that deadeye rifle was not great still and that in many cases p/p is still preferred, but honestly I haven't been keeping track of thief so much.

I am at least optimistic. Normally when Anet buffs something it means it is on their radar. Just like spirit weapons over the last how many patches now? And like spirit weapons in 10 patches from now LB and hammer might be viable ?

It should be a 20% increase in PvP and a 50% increase or more in PvE amongst other LB buffs including baseline knockback on Deflecting Shot and a Heavy Light rework

As I indicated, the bow still needs work. The 10% increase is not enough but it's better for those instances where you really need that 1200 range. You can actually do a measurable amount of damage now. But it has a ways to go before it is a competitive ranged (1200) weapon. It took 28 months to get back 10% of the 20% that was taken from True Shot. So, it's a step ... the staircase continues upwards ....

@LadyHawk.5319 said:As I indicated, the bow still needs work. The 10% increase is not enough but it's better for those instances where you really need that 1200 range. You can actually do a measurable amount of damage now. But it has a ways to go before it is a competitive ranged (1200) weapon. It took 28 months to get back 10% of the 20% that was taken from True Shot. So, it's a step ... the staircase continues upwards ....

After using LB quite a bit for pvp and the latest LW episode, I can say that the 10% should definitely be rolled over to at least pvp. A 6s CD, reflectable attack that roots the caster, has a very obvious tell, 0.75s cast time and no other benefits/trait synergy should at least be critting 5k if running marauder's amulet and it doesn't even do that. If you don't have aegis on/not traited unscathed contender, trueshot hits around 4.3 to 4.5k at > 600 range, and around 3.9k in melee range assuming your target has the average amount of armor most players run, and no other damage reduction modifiers. This is pitiful for the primary burst attack on longbow. It would be fine on a 4s cd, or fine as it is now if it hit harder.

DH needs a variety of small buffs to be in a truly good spot and one of those small buffs is 10% to trueshot's damage.

@Arcaedus.7290 said:After using LB quite a bit for pvp and the latest LW episode, I can say that the 10% should definitely be rolled over to at least pvp. A 6s CD, reflectable attack that roots the caster, has a very obvious tell, 0.75s cast time and no other benefits/trait synergy should at least be critting 5k if running marauder's amulet and it doesn't even do that. If you don't have aegis on/not traited unscathed contender, trueshot hits around 4.3 to 4.5k at > 600 range, and around 3.9k in melee range assuming your target has the average amount of armor most players run, and no other damage reduction modifiers. This is pitiful for the primary burst attack on longbow. It would be fine on a 4s cd, or fine as it is now if it hit harder.

DH needs a variety of small buffs to be in a truly good spot and one of those small buffs is 10% to trueshot's damage.

Agree with everything you said but don't give Anet ideas that they should lower the cooldown to balance the bad damage. I really don't want to be rooted every 4s for .75s to do damage.

@Indure.5410 said:

@Arcaedus.7290 said:After using LB quite a bit for pvp and the latest LW episode, I can say that the 10% should definitely be rolled over to at least pvp. A 6s CD, reflectable attack that roots the caster, has a very obvious tell, 0.75s cast time and no other benefits/trait synergy should at least be critting 5k if running marauder's amulet and it doesn't even do that. If you don't have aegis on/not traited unscathed contender, trueshot hits around 4.3 to 4.5k at > 600 range, and around 3.9k in melee range assuming your target has the average amount of armor most players run, and no other damage reduction modifiers. This is pitiful for the primary burst attack on longbow. It would be fine on a 4s cd, or fine as it is now if it hit harder.

DH needs a variety of small buffs to be in a truly good spot and one of those small buffs is 10% to trueshot's damage.

Agreed. I also forgot to mention:

After some guild hall duels (which counts as pve, where it is doing 10% more damage), the crits I got with trueshot against a 0 toughness build were averaging 5 to 5.5k without aegis on. Lowest hits I saw were around 4k if target had protection, 4.8k if target had some decent toughness (dura runes/couple of knight's trinkets) and the highest hits I saw were 6.5ks if I had aegis on and was hitting from > 600 range.

This is where trueshot should be. If you translate this to pvp where stats are lower, that would be 4.8 to 5k average trueshots with a high/low averages of 6k/3.4k which is totally fair imo.

@LadyHawk.5319 said:As I indicated, the bow still needs work. The 10% increase is not enough but it's better for those instances where you really need that 1200 range. You can actually do a measurable amount of damage now. But it has a ways to go before it is a competitive ranged (1200) weapon. It took 28 months to get back 10% of the 20% that was taken from True Shot. So, it's a step ... the staircase continues upwards ....

Except it didn't get 10% back. It got 8%. A 20% nerf put its damage at 80% of release damage. A 10% of 80% is 8%. So in PvE it's 88% of what it used to be, not 90%.

One light field in bow and 3 combofinishers.

Depending on how big the heal is from zealous blade I can actually se a rather big improvement to DH/Bow.

It got a 2s decrease and 10% buff in WvW but not PvP? Seems like a strange decision. DH is definitely weaker in PvP than roaming so I don't quite understand why it isn't applied to PvP instead of WvW.

I predict now that they will buff longbow skills immediately prior to the gen 2 legendary longbow release.

@Brutaly.6257 said:One light field in bow and 3 combofinishers.

Depending on how big the heal is from zealous blade I can actually se a rather big improvement to DH/Bow.

It doesn't have an internal cooldown tied to it?

@Indure.5410 said:

@Brutaly.6257 said:One light field in bow and 3 combofinishers.

Depending on how big the heal is from zealous blade I can actually se a rather big improvement to DH/Bow.

Don’t know. Seems the heal is shiet so it really doesn’t matter. 141 hours per combo field triggered. If that is true it is some sort of sick joke.

Will play tomorrow and get some first hand info.Was hoping for a significant heal, making a symbol build viable in pvp/wvw

@Derm.4932 said:It got a 2s decrease and 10% buff in WvW but not PvP? Seems like a strange decision. DH is definitely weaker in PvP than roaming so I don't quite understand why it isn't applied to PvP instead of WvW.

I was laughing at this change too. Why is Anet so careful about buffing DH, but had no qualms doing the same to Reaper? On top of this, their sw/focus set got nerfed quite heavily. Time to dust off Greatsword if you're a DH player...?

Now, on the finer side of things: Symbol of Energy - lowered aftercast. Perfect. That's actually one of the changes I proposed. So obviously a thumbs up for that one. Soaring Devastation got quite interesting change. Might be worth testing out, replacing Lynx rune with rune of DH instead.

Big Game Hunter got beefed, but I still see no reason to take it over Heavy Light, which on hit guarantees a True Shot hit as well among others.