DH longbow/deflecting shot is even worse than pre patch

According to the notes, LB3 received a cast time increase to make it feel reasonable for it's newly added effect, but ATM it doesn't feel reasonable at all. Design wise the .75s delay on Deflecting Shot makes the skill borderline unusable against moving, unpredictable targets(like a player).

Don't get me wrong, I see the need for the delay, but .75seconds is longer Ranger LB4/Engi Rifle4, both of which don't have a slow projectiles and whose targets aren't set in stone before the cast. Others have suggested half a second cast time which seems not only like a good compromise, but consistent with the treatment other skills have received. But at the moment, even if DH as a whole is doing better in some game modes, Longbow just feels really bad to use due to this one change.

Anyone else agree?

Revert longbow back

I agree. I kept getting interrupted or spiked while trying to pull off one. It's not a skill, it's a suicide button. Obviously they never tested it. Went in implementation after drawing some numbers from the meeting.

It was bad before and just got worse.DH obviously is meant to be a melee play style.

@Doomdesire.9365 said:According to the notes, LB3 received a cast time increase to make it feel reasonable for it's newly added effect, but ATM it doesn't feel reasonable at all. Design wise the .75s delay on Deflecting Shot makes the skill borderline unusable against moving, unpredictable targets(like a player).

Don't get me wrong, I see the need for the delay, but .75seconds is longer Ranger LB4/Engi Rifle4, both of which don't have a slow projectiles and whose targets aren't set in stone before the cast. Others have suggested half a second cast time which seems not only like a good compromise, but consistent with the treatment other skills have received. But at the moment, even if DH as a whole is doing better in some game modes, Longbow just feels really bad to use due to this one change.

Anyone else agree?

Of course everyone agrees. LB is not PvP viable. Not even remotely. DS was its bread and butter for both damage and control. It is dead and so is this weapon. Not that it was great pre-patch...

On an unrelated note, I played a bit using LB virtues/DH/radiance in open world PvE. The additional damage to TS and the new virtue trait can drop 15-16K hits on poor PvE mobs. Not that it would be usable in a fractal/raid/champions, but great for clearing trash mobs.

Deflecting shot in comparison with any trap (test of faith) is now useless and making no sence to play if u look at other classes they are dealing much better dmg. Even before patch it was hard to play. Power- Dh RIP for WvW.

The DH longbow needs an overhaul in general, its too slow. Stuff on it feels outdated. it needs new moves or drastically improve the ones it has.Its only elite spec weapon in the game that can't be use for raiding.

LB2 - They should get rid of the having to stand still to charge the attack. It's just asking to be countered and intrupted, reflected, blocked or dodged.

LB3 (Deflecting shot) its too slow, and should be changed to multi-hitting move with a knockback at the end. something like...Penerating Barrage - Shoot a volley of 4 arrows followed by a stronger 5th arrow that pireces and knocks back foes.When traited with Heavy light, It should change the skill so that knockback occurs at the start of the skill allowing DH to get benefits of the +15% disable bonus.Its half the amount of arrows of Ranger's LB2 in but exchange you get knockback. So it keeps Deflecting shot's arrow but its more hits.Of course it needs to be sped up to be like ranger's.

LB4 (symbol) needs to be near instant like other symbols, there is no reason this skill is so slow.Give it useful boon like Retal, Quickness or fury, the vigor is useless from this symbol, you can't really use it to boon allies or yourself that well.Even Hammer's symbol has its uses, At least you can use Hammer's symbol to get protection from it for raids on a support FB.

LB5 personally I feel they need to either

• Make the cast time a lot shorter and or reduce the cooldown from 40 secs.
• Make a completely new AoE move for it. One that doesn't takes to ages perform and give it a decent cooldown

It has the longest weapon cooldown in the game. Chrono's Shield 5 has the same BUT but it can be reduced by 10 secs and gives alcairty, so its actually about 26-27 without extra boon duration.

@otto.5684 said:On an unrelated note, I played a bit using LB virtues/DH/radiance in open world PvE. The additional damage to TS and the new virtue trait can drop 15-16K hits on poor PvE mobs. Not that it would be usable in a fractal/raid/champions, but great for clearing trash mobs.

Can you help me out with a PvE roaming build? I love using the longbow, for story/dailies/roaming etc but can’t seem to craft a good build.

@Kienda.4187 said:

@"otto.5684" said:On an unrelated note, I played a bit using LB virtues/DH/radiance in open world PvE. The additional damage to TS and the new virtue trait can drop 15-16K hits on poor PvE mobs. Not that it would be usable in a fractal/raid/champions, but great for clearing trash mobs.

gw2skills.net/editor/?PWwAw2NlVwyYTMEGJW+XVtcA-e

Note, I did not select gear stats, runes and sigils. These are up to you. Obliviously, for PvE power build, so you are going for damage maximization.

@"otto.5684" said:

gw2skills.net/editor/?PWwAw2NlVwyYTMEGJW+XVtcA-e

Note, I did not select gear stats, runes and sigils. These are up to you. Obliviously, for PvE power build, so you are going for damage maximization.

Thanks, I greatly appreciate that. Will be testing it tonight. :)

@Doomdesire.9365 said:According to the notes, LB3 received a cast time increase to make it feel reasonable for it's newly added effect, but ATM it doesn't feel reasonable at all. Design wise the .75s delay on Deflecting Shot makes the skill borderline unusable against moving, unpredictable targets(like a player).

Don't get me wrong, I see the need for the delay, but .75seconds is longer Ranger LB4/Engi Rifle4, both of which don't have a slow projectiles and whose targets aren't set in stone before the cast. Others have suggested half a second cast time which seems not only like a good compromise, but consistent with the treatment other skills have received. But at the moment, even if DH as a whole is doing better in some game modes, Longbow just feels really bad to use due to this one change.

Anyone else agree?

You can't really compare Deflecting Shot with Point-Blank Shot or Overcharged Shot, since these 2 skills just knock back 1 enemy. Deflecting Shot knocks back every enemy in it's path, if I am not mistaken.

@Kodama.6453 said:

@Doomdesire.9365 said:According to the notes, LB3 received a cast time increase to make it feel reasonable for it's newly added effect, but ATM it doesn't feel reasonable at all. Design wise the .75s delay on Deflecting Shot makes the skill borderline unusable against moving, unpredictable targets(like a player).

Don't get me wrong, I see the need for the delay, but .75seconds is longer Ranger LB4/Engi Rifle4, both of which don't have a slow projectiles and whose targets aren't set in stone before the cast. Others have suggested half a second cast time which seems not only like a good compromise, but consistent with the treatment other skills have received. But at the moment, even if DH as a whole is doing better in some game modes, Longbow just feels really bad to use due to this one change.

Anyone else agree?

They it currently works, it's pushing back nobody.And you can't even make it useful in PvE on terrain that's not flat, because it drops into every chasm.An arrow of light obviously is heavier than a wooden one and can't stay in air. /s

@Kodama.6453 said:

@Doomdesire.9365 said:According to the notes, LB3 received a cast time increase to make it feel reasonable for it's newly added effect, but ATM it doesn't feel reasonable at all. Design wise the .75s delay on Deflecting Shot makes the skill borderline unusable against moving, unpredictable targets(like a player).

Don't get me wrong, I see the need for the delay, but .75seconds is longer Ranger LB4/Engi Rifle4, both of which don't have a slow projectiles and whose targets aren't set in stone before the cast. Others have suggested half a second cast time which seems not only like a good compromise, but consistent with the treatment other skills have received. But at the moment, even if DH as a whole is doing better in some game modes, Longbow just feels really bad to use due to this one change.

Anyone else agree?

Hitting more than 1 enemy with DS was lottery odds before the patch. It is now lottery odds even against 1enemy.

Deflecting shot shouldn't be any longer called deflecting shot. You can't really deflect anything in time with that casting time. By the time you even finish casting, you already ate the entire cast of pewpewpew long bow 2 from ranger, as an example. I thought "deflecting" implies quick-reflex , and what kind of quick reflect is 0.75ish second cast time?

While I have my doubts that they would do this, one way they could address this without a huge change would be to change the boon on Symbol of Energy(LB4) from Vigor to Quickness and granted this would require the DH to drop the symbol on themselves to gain the boon but the Quickness would lower the cast time on all of their skills (Deflecting Shot and True Shot would be about 1/2 second versus the 3/4 while you had Quickness and Hunter's Ward be about 2 seconds versus the 2 3/4 seconds) and actually this would require more timing and situational awareness to maintain (along with some Concentration and the Writ of Persistence trait if you want to try to maintain close to 100% uptime) but overall I think it would the easiest fix. One of the problems that I see with the option is it could run into to same complaint that was brought up against Feel My Wrath in that it could cause Guardian to dominate in Raid settings for the party Quickness access and while I can see that side of the argument I still have a mixed opinion on it being as raids had been dominated by other classes for quite a long time without any changes being made and honestly the access to the Quickness with this option would require the players to stay within the 180 to 240 radius of the Symbol. So overall while I am not saying this is a prefect fix it is at least a possible one.

Thought maybe it would take some time to get used to, but nope, its still terrible. The skill has almost zero value now outside of chaining it with f1 through some trap. DH as a whole is still a bit better than before, but it completely lost it's soul with that d shot change. And I think I can confidently say that DH longbow is now by far the clunkiest weapon in the game. This is a huge regression in design, I sincerely hope it is changed :/

Also in agreement. DH pre-patch was a decent pick. Not the best, not the worst. Whereas before DH has TS and DS as a reliable bread and butter combo to do some heavy damage to enemies from a distance. It still wasn't reliable enough to be broken or even a major threat to skilled players. Now that DS has a massive .75s delay on its incredibly slow travel time of a skill, it also deals ZERO damage. I understand that they wanted to disable damage on every CC skill for WvW and PvP. But honestly its a bit much.

Dont mind the soulbeasts still bursting unsuspecting foes with LB2 combined with Mighstacking & SB One Wolf Pack.

As a guardian main I find these longbow changes incredibly frustrating. What this tells me is that the new balance team members had a blanket idea that they wanted to try out without actually testing any of the changes themselves before implementing them. As the way things currently stand DH is significantly worse for Roaming now. They've easily dropped to the near bottom of the Roaming Tier. If not thee bottom.

I hope this gets adjusted real soon :/

Before the patch DS could just be side stepped at anything less than point blank range, no need to dodge, now, even point blank with it's cast time, you have enough time to side step and emote to the DH using it. Big animation long cast time rooted TS, #5 being also a rooted long cast time, big tell, poor dmg with only the final hit worth dodging, however it's cast time is so long, you can walk out of the AOE before the final hit. Casting #5 in a fight is a good way to get killed, it's also how I kill most DH when picking off people in a zerg or group, I look for the big kneeling animation of a DH and burst them. #4 might as well just be deleted from LB, it's usless, long cast, slow projectile, poor dmg, bad boon choice for something meant to be used at range, and it's buggy. I can't tell you how many times this skill has landed on the slightest hill in the game only 200 units from me, when it should have been 1,200. Standing on a ledge or wall and trying to cast down? Even though the indicator shows it's landing on the ground out from the wall, it will cast at my feet. I don't even bother with it. Now DS is luck, not skill, unless the person is standing still, or you are casting into a zerg chance of landing it are very low, even under best conditions, and one of the main uses was to push through trap for dmg.

Because of all of this, LB was a bit clunky before, but usable because it had utility, that being range and a CC for trap dmg. Now those skills have been made even more clunky. I have started to move away and testing other builds without LB, and I have been doing much better in many cases with them, TS, DS etc have to big of cast times with big animations that allow someone you are fighting to keep bursting you, with only a single bust to dodge. When fighting a LB DH right now, it's so easy, if it's DS, DPS then dodge, walk to the side or walk through them, then back to DPS while TS animation is channeling, and go into sword #3 or #2 for blind, LB fully countered.

@Kodama.6453 said:

@Doomdesire.9365 said:According to the notes, LB3 received a cast time increase to make it feel reasonable for it's newly added effect, but ATM it doesn't feel reasonable at all. Design wise the .75s delay on Deflecting Shot makes the skill borderline unusable against moving, unpredictable targets(like a player).

Don't get me wrong, I see the need for the delay, but .75seconds is longer Ranger LB4/Engi Rifle4, both of which don't have a slow projectiles and whose targets aren't set in stone before the cast. Others have suggested half a second cast time which seems not only like a good compromise, but consistent with the treatment other skills have received. But at the moment, even if DH as a whole is doing better in some game modes, Longbow just feels really bad to use due to this one change.

Anyone else agree?

As I have said in other posts, if DH LB is so good in relation to Ranger LB etc, lets have anet swap them, I will GLADLY take ranger LB over DH LB. Ranger can have TS and DS, totally fine with it. If your only complaint is that DS hits more than one person, reduce it's ability to the single targeted player and make it a locked skill, not manually aimed. I would also be totally fine with that, actually I would prefer that, because then DS might actually be useful then.

all i can say is try instant targetting, you can at least re-aim the LB3 while it is casting. otherwise yea DH is still trash anyway.