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How to fix dragonhunter's longbow, skill change suggestions


RisenHowl.2419

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Longbow isn't the best choice for dragonhunter in any gamemode with any build, it's a pity because the skills are interesting but lack any synergy with the rest of the kit.

Autoattack is fine. Good damage, cast time feels right, decent effect.

True shot is iffy, it's got a big punch on a low CD but it's pretty unreliable. Since you're rooted in place you can be easily blinded, blocked, obstructed, los'd, reflected etc.

-Increase the CD to 6s for all gamemodes and decrease the cast time to 1/2s.

Deflecting shot should be changed, as it stands its very clunky and requires heavy light to be traited to be really useful.

-Increase CD to 15s, make knockback baseline, increase radius to 180, decrease range to 900. Now you have a defensive skill on LB, something badly needed on a slow, long range weapon attached to a very slow class.

Symbol of energy should be changed significantly. Any build that relies on symbols, one of guardian's main profession mechanics, can't use this effectively. Even with the increased projectile speed it's very hard to land this skill on anything further than 600 range from you, good luck landing it on another player at all. Even when you do, the payoff is very low and doesn't feel worth the effort. The long burn stack is unappealing as is the vigor on a symbol that you probably won't be standing in.

-Increase CD to 20s, each tick of the symbol applies burning for 3s, remove the vigor, remove the projectile effect so it acts like symbol of swiftness. Maybe your character fires an arrow straight up that strikes the targeted location with holy energy? The projectile effect on this makes it awful in every game mode, that's the important thing to address.

Hunter's Ward is an okay skill. It really only needs sped up a little since right now you can just walk out of it.

-Reduce cast time to 2s, reduce cooldown to 40s. Easy changes.

Heavy light would need reworked as well with the change to Deflecting shot. The stability on knockback isn't really needed on dragonhunter. What is needed is a LB specific trait that has synergy with the kit.

-Heavy light reduces longbow cooldowns by 20%. Gain 120 precision, and an additional 120 precision with a longbow equipped. This would bring LB cooldowns from 6/15/20/40 to 4.8/12/16/32 when traited and grant 5.7% or 11.4% crit chance.

I think these changes would breathe life into the longbow weapon and playstyle while maintaining its identity and improving quality of life. None of these changes would increase power creep significantly, they would just make the weapon actually usable.

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In my humble opinion DH longbow has lost its effectiveness shortly after primary nerfs years ago. Pve players dislike it and in pvp/wvw it is used for quick burst and swapped. At least in most situations where its used.

Auto attack is not good enough to use now as a primary weapon.

True shot either needs more damage or rooting removed.

Deflecting shot is a real meh for me as knockbacl requires a gm trait. If it was baseline it might be ok. If it wont be an auto targeting skill it is a really, really bad idea to decrease the range. As other effective range weapons have 1200 range.

About LB 4, I understand that every guardian weapon needs a symbol. Yet this skill is still slow and not profitable enough for its radius.

Hunters ward needs a rework, that is true. It should cripple on the first it and the chains should be faster as stab spamming is too easy nowadays. Damage might be improved too but it is a delicate balance.

Traps also need a solid rework in PoF meta but that is another topic.

These are my hastily written opinions on my favourite spec so please consider that I might be biased about this :)

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True Shot's damage is more than fine for its cooldown and it needs the tell to have counterplay; however, what could happen is adding vulnerability to all targets hit.

Deflecting Shot should definitely have the knockback be baseline. That itself would make the GM trait choice more interesting; of course, Heavy Light would need to be totally reworked into something longbow related, such as having a successful longbow crit hit removing movement-impeding conditions and/or adding swiftness.

Symbol of Energy does need rework. No one is going to place it on themselves for vigor, and the cast time is a bit too long for the tiny radius. I'd rather it be like a circular melee-ranged swipe action that does a 1/4 sec daze on those it hits and creates a blinding symbol at your feet.

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  • True shot having a .75s cast is healthy for PvP. Big attacks should be telegraphed. It can be unrooted and be given a large PvE only damage increase, but nothing more.

  • D shot is not clunky. You can use it behind you, and it has a .25 cast time. It's high skill high reward. A lot of DHs in PvP having practiced can reliably land this skill at 6 - 900 range and it should not be dumbed down to make it easier to land. Honestly I'd like to see other skills of this type function in the same way(ranger lb 4, etc).

  • The symbol of energy changes are literally a nerf in the game modes where LB is relevant. It's a zoning skill for when you're caught in melee range with longbow. The vigor is important when used in this manner. If you're using it as a long range attack you are doing it wrong. Even if you make it like staff 3 nobody is going to stand in it for more than a tick. A rework would be nice but is unnecessary. The damage can be massively increased in PvE.

  • Stability on knockback is very relevant for DH. Its one of the reasons why DH wins the SpB matchup and makes fighting Holos bearable. Heavy Light should be repositioned as a master tier trait, replacing bulwark. Bulwark then moves to GM, and is changed to no longer cover allies but instead grants 360 degree blocking for the player only, in addition to it's previous effect. You still lose access to Hunters Determination if you want the knockback, but you gain more in the GM tier. You can use the improved Bulwark, straight up gain 20% damage while tethering someone with BGH, or be the biggest condi counter ever with Hunter's Fortification. That's a significant buff and would easily catapult DH into at least quasi meta in PvP.

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@Derm.4932 said:

  • True shot having a .75s cast is healthy for PvP. Big attacks should be telegraphed. It can be unrooted and be given a large PvE only damage increase, but nothing more.

  • D shot is not clunky. You can use it behind you, and it has a .25 cast time. It's high skill high reward. A lot of DHs in PvP having practiced can reliably land this skill at 6 - 900 range and it should not be dumbed down to make it easier to land. Honestly I'd like to see other skills of this type function in the same way(ranger lb 4, etc).

  • The symbol of energy changes are literally a nerf in the game modes where LB is relevant. It's a zoning skill for when you're caught in melee range with longbow. The vigor is important when used in this manner. If you're using it as a long range attack you are doing it wrong. Even if you make it like staff 3 nobody is going to stand in it for more than a tick. A rework would be nice but is unnecessary. The damage can be massively increased in PvE.

  • Stability on knockback is very relevant for DH. Its one of the reasons why DH wins the SpB matchup and makes fighting Holos bearable. Heavy Light should be repositioned as a master tier trait, replacing bulwark. Bulwark then moves to GM, and is changed to no longer cover allies but instead grants 360 degree blocking for the player only, in addition to it's previous effect. You still lose access to Hunters Determination if you want the knockback, but you gain more in the GM tier. You can use the improved Bulwark, straight up gain 20% damage while tethering someone with BGH, or be the biggest condi counter ever with Hunter's Fortification. That's a significant buff and would easily catapult DH into at least quasi meta in PvP.

Unrooting lb2 makes it what, a big AA? that gives the skill no identity and removes the telegraph completely. Increasing the cd to 6s or even 8s in PvP justifies the slightly faster cast time while the root continues to be the telegraph for the skill.

I can reliably land lb3 at 900 range, it doesn't mean it's not a clunky skill. It's incredibly difficult to land at 1200 range for really no reason. It frequently bugs out from pathing issues and sometimes it fails to hit people who are too close- the one time you really want it to work. LB is a slow weapon on a slow class, it needs to have a more reliable defensive tool to be competitive.

If you're jumped by melee and burn your dodges that vigor isn't giving you an extra until you're already down, and if you're stuck in lb they'll ignore the symbol ticks because they can freely go for the kill. It has no defense or escape so it's crazy easy to tunnel a lb DH in melee. If the enemy has reflection up in any capacity it reflects from the entire symbol location, compared to just where the projectile is for any other skill. You can't even land it on the ground near someone with magnetic aura or mirror. You can almost forget using it in wvw too. The projectile portion of lb4 makes it clunky, so it needs to go.

LB has bad cds and needs the same cd reduction trait available on every other class for every other 2h weapon. Giving it precision puts it on par with the other traits too.

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@RisenHowl.2419 said:

Unrooting lb2 makes it what, a big AA? that gives the skill no identity and removes the telegraph completely. Increasing the cd to 6s or even 8s in PvP justifies the slightly faster cast time while the root continues to be the telegraph for the skill.

The telegraph is the animation. If you unroot LB2 you need to make new animations. Big hitting skills should NOT have low cast times. The only thing that does is make this game easier for people who cannot time their skills. I don't want to see anymore bad players in high tiers because they're using a build that plays itself.

I can reliably land lb3 at 900 range, it doesn't mean it's not a clunky skill. It's incredibly difficult to land at 1200 range for really no reason.

Because it's not meant to be used at 1200 range, so it is purposely designed to be harder to hit the further you are, just like ranger LB4 has a smaller knockback the further you are. You admit that it can be reliably be used at 900 range, and your issue is that it's difficult to land at 1200, so your solution it to limit the skill to 900 range and make it easier to land within that 900 range? That doesn't make any sense. If you can land it at 900 range as it is now, there is no reason to make it easier to land. We should promote skill and learning curves, not the opposite.

It frequently bugs out from pathing issues and sometimes it fails to hit people who are too close- the one time you really want it to work.Which should be addressed by a bug fix, not a buff...

If you're jumped by melee and burn your dodges that vigor isn't giving you an extra until you're already down, and if you're stuck in lb they'll ignore the symbol ticks because they can freely go for the kill. It has no defense or escape so it's crazy easy to tunnel a lb DH in melee.You have more tools than dodges to defeat melee classes. DH is strong against most melee only specs, idk what you are talking about.

If the enemy has reflection up in any capacity it reflects from the entire symbol location, compared to just where the projectile is for any other skill. You can't even land it on the ground near someone with magnetic aura or mirror. You can almost forget using it in wvw too. The projectile portion of lb4 makes it clunky, so it needs to go.It can go but not at the cost of raising CD and removing vigor. I'd rather have the current version. Projectile reflect is not a large issue in small scale, and nerfing the skill in small scale for a very niche use case in zerging is regressive balancing.

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I think the biggest problem with LB is lost of definition.From what I can tell it is supposed to be a ranged CC and burst damage weapon. Let's just say that's what they wanna keep it as, making deflecting shot knockdown baseline would be a smart change. But then you would probably want to opposite from symbol of energy, instead of making it faster, make it slower with very high initial damage. This would make it easier to weave it in with another skill for actual burst damage.

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Saying that LB2 is fair, just a reminder it is 6 sec, 0.75 sec cast, that roots you for ~4,500 damage on critic. I can sit here and do comparisons all do long, but short version, it is mediocre.

@Derm.4932 said:

  • Stability on knockback is very relevant for DH. Its one of the reasons why DH wins the SpB matchup and makes fighting Holos bearable. Heavy Light should be repositioned as a master tier trait, replacing bulwark. Bulwark then moves to GM, and is changed to no longer cover allies but instead grants 360 degree blocking for the player only, in addition to it's previous effect. You still lose access to Hunters Determination if you want the knockback, but you gain more in the GM tier. You can use the improved Bulwark, straight up gain 20% damage while tethering someone with BGH, or be the biggest condi counter ever with Hunter's Fortification. That's a significant buff and would easily catapult DH into at least quasi meta in PvP.

DH tends to fight more from distance, kite, and uses contemplation of purity and stability on shield. Stability is not bad, but we would be better off with 5 stacks of might (and that's nothing).

This trait shuffle is not required. They just need to drop the stability for something more useful (quickness ideally). Hunters Fortification does not work, not cuz it is bad, but cuz DH cannot play tanky. You must play dps. There has to be major fundamental changes made to DH to make this trait viable. Hunters Determination should not be used in PvP (or PvE). The CD does not justify slotting it. The damage on cripple is far better now.

You want buffs that make sense (and I am getting dejvu here cuz this thread has been repeated at least 10 times in last 2-3 month):

  1. TS, increase damage by 10% to match up with WvW.
  2. Heavy light, instead of 6 sec stability to provide 4 sec quickness.
  3. WoR reduce cast time to 0.75 secs.
  4. LB 5, distribute the damage over the skill cast time, instead of most of the damage being on the last cast.
  5. Remove Hunter's Determination for another active trait that provides sustain.
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@Derm.4932 said:

Unrooting lb2 makes it what, a big AA? that gives the skill no identity and removes the telegraph completely. Increasing the cd to 6s or even 8s in PvP justifies the slightly faster cast time while the root continues to be the telegraph for the skill.

The telegraph is the animation. If you unroot LB2 you need to make new animations. Big hitting skills should NOT have low cast times. The only thing that does is make this game easier for people who cannot time their skills. I don't want to see anymore bad players in high tiers because they're using a build that plays itself.

Because there's so many dh mains in the top 100? how about top 250? At a certain point it doesn't matter how good you are, the class limits your ability. The biggest limitation for dh is that its main weapon is garbage for anything other than pushing someone back through test of faith to follow up with trueshot.

I can reliably land lb3 at 900 range, it doesn't mean it's not a clunky skill. It's incredibly difficult to land at 1200 range for really no reason.

Because it's not meant to be used at 1200 range, so it is purposely designed to be harder to hit the further you are, just like ranger LB4 has a smaller knockback the further you are. You admit that it can be reliably be used at 900 range, and your issue is that it's difficult to land at 1200, so your solution it to limit the skill to 900 range and make it easier to land within that 900 range? That doesn't make any sense. If you can land it at 900 range as it is now, there is no reason to make it easier to land. We should promote skill and learning curves, not the opposite.

I'm glad we agree, there's no reason for it to be 1200 range. Now if only someone made a suggestion about how to make the skill more useful, perhaps trading the extra range where it's never used to be more reliable in the range it is used...

ranger knockback isn't a free targetting skill, deflecting shot is. For that increased skill contribution, it should be 100% reliable. It currently isn't. increasing the radius to 180 doesn't make the skill incredibly OP, able to sweep an entire point clean. It makes it reliable in the range which it is used.

It frequently bugs out from pathing issues and sometimes it fails to hit people who are too close- the one time you really want it to work.Which should be addressed by a bug fix, not a buff...

Huge buff i'm suggesting, bringing the radius from 'might hit, might glitch out' to 'still smaller than most usable aoes'

If you're jumped by melee and burn your dodges that vigor isn't giving you an extra until you're already down, and if you're stuck in lb they'll ignore the symbol ticks because they can freely go for the kill. It has no defense or escape so it's crazy easy to tunnel a lb DH in melee.You have more tools than dodges to defeat melee classes. DH is strong against most melee only specs, idk what you are talking about.

Holo, rev, fb, defense spb, scrapper, reaper, weaver, and s/d thief all have positive matchups in melee while slb and condi thief absolutely destroy it at range. If you're beating the meta specs on a dh, it's because you greatly outskill them. DH is strong against people who don't dodge through test of faith or run stability, but terrible in melee against anyone competent. It's a one trick pony.

If the enemy has reflection up in any capacity it reflects from the entire symbol location, compared to just where the projectile is for any other skill. You can't even land it on the ground near someone with magnetic aura or mirror. You can almost forget using it in wvw too. The projectile portion of lb4 makes it clunky, so it needs to go.It can go but not at the cost of raising CD and removing vigor. I'd rather have the current version. Projectile reflect is not a large issue in small scale, and nerfing the skill in small scale for a very niche use case in zerging is regressive balancing.

Raising the cd to 20s puts it on par with greatsword and justifies the better effect, pulsing burning instead of one long stack at the start. I couldn't care less if it keeps the vigor because it's a very niche use for the skill. The burning per tick would even make it better as a melee range zoning tool because honestly, right now it's what? 2k? 2.5k per tick? that isn't going to stop anyone from chomping on your face.

@Zlater.6789 said:I think the biggest problem with LB is lost of definition.From what I can tell it is supposed to be a ranged CC and burst damage weapon. Let's just say that's what they wanna keep it as, making deflecting shot knockdown baseline would be a smart change. But then you would probably want to opposite from symbol of energy, instead of making it faster, make it slower with very high initial damage. This would make it easier to weave it in with another skill for actual burst damage.

the symbol right now isn't viable. long cast and travel time makes it useless at range. It could do 10k at the landing location and it still would be ignored by anything past 600 range. In fact, that's what warrior lb3 already does and it's been completely unused in every game mode for years. lb has no use in pve, so the only places it sees use is in pvp/wvw where it's laughably easy to avoid. I don't think making it slower and more powerful is going to do anything for the kit =/

@otto.5684 said:Saying that LB2 is fair, just a reminder it is 6 sec, 0.75 sec cast, that roots you for ~4,500 damage on critic. I can sit here and do comparisons all do long, but short version, it is mediocre.

  • Stability on knockback is very relevant for DH. Its one of the reasons why DH wins the SpB matchup and makes fighting Holos bearable. Heavy Light should be repositioned as a master tier trait, replacing bulwark. Bulwark then moves to GM, and is changed to no longer cover allies but instead grants 360 degree blocking for the player only, in addition to it's previous effect. You still lose access to Hunters Determination if you want the knockback, but you gain more in the GM tier. You can use the improved Bulwark, straight up gain 20% damage while tethering someone with BGH, or be the biggest condi counter ever with Hunter's Fortification. That's a significant buff and would easily catapult DH into at least quasi meta in PvP.

DH tends to fight more from distance, kite, and uses contemplation of purity and stability on shield. Stability is not bad, but we would be better off with 5 stacks of might (and that's nothing).

This trait shuffle is not required. They just need to drop the stability for something more useful (quickness ideally). Hunters Fortification does not work, not cuz it is bad, but cuz DH cannot play tanky. You must play dps. There has to be major fundamental changes made to DH to make this trait viable. Hunters Determination should not be used in PvP (or PvE). The CD does not justify slotting it. The damage on cripple is far better now.

You want buffs that make sense (and I am getting dejvu here cuz this thread has been repeated at least 10 times in last 2-3 month):
  1. TS, increase damage by 10% to match up with WvW.
  2. Heavy light, instead of 6 sec stability to provide 4 sec quickness.
  3. WoR reduce cast time to 0.75 secs.
  4. LB 5, distribute the damage over the skill cast time, instead of most of the damage being on the last cast.
  5. Remove Hunter's Determination for another active trait that provides sustain.

You can get the damage much, much higher on true shot. i think the best i've done so far is 15k in berserkers gear with scholar runes and might. If they were going to add anything to the skill to make it less mediocre, they would also need to bring down the power coefficient from 2.0 to 1.2-1.5.

I kinda like hunter's determination, it's a passive stun break + aegis + stab. If you get jumped and need a couple seconds to recover or nullify the burst it works pretty well, you just have to run around picking up aegis off the ground. other than that i like your suggestions. I'd love to see an evade frame attached to WoR too, but that's probably asking too much

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@RisenHowl.2419 I think you already know this, but obviously I mentioned TS damage in sPvP. In ascended berseker and scholar runes, I can do 30K damage using GS2. Clearly, this has no relevance when talking about PvP. For Hunter's Determination, this is my personal opinion, but I consider any skill/trait/proc with more than 40 sec CD not to be PvP viable. A typical PvP game only lasts 7-8 minutes. I would not use a proc (especially one that I cannot control), that will only occur 6-7 times in a game. Not reliable or consistent to consider over the two other traits. IMO, Zealot's Aggression now is much better with bonus damage and more cripple uptime.

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@otto.5684 said:@RisenHowl.2419 I think you already know this, but obviously I mentioned TS damage in sPvP. In ascended berseker and scholar runes, I can do 30K damage using GS2. Clearly, this has no relevance when talking about PvP. For Hunter's Determination, this is my personal opinion, but I consider any skill/trait/proc with more than 40 sec CD not to be PvP viable. A typical PvP game only lasts 7-8 minutes. I would not use a proc (especially one that I cannot control), that will only occur 6-7 times in a game. Not reliable or consistent to consider over the two other traits. IMO, Zealot's Aggression now is much better with bonus damage and more cripple uptime.

agreed man, i like to run permeating wrath with 2/2/1 for the burn+cripple+vuln spam. I think that a 40s cd on HD would be too low though, as is it's almost as good as the auto proc endure pain on warrior

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100% PvE opinion:When HoT first dropped, Longbow had a great burst build.Firing a single regular longbow shot, then Spear of Justice set up a base damage multiplier above 230%, 100% crit chance, and a crit multipler above 250% for Trueshot.It was a guaranteed 25k+ burst in PvE back then. And against trash in solo PvE, the longest "cooldown" you used to get there was 4s.So you just went around quickly picking off mobs 1 by 1 and never waiting on cooldowns. You had several AoE/tagging skills for map events, and could easily fit in use your skills at least a few. It was a lot of fun.

But then in early 2016, they nerfed Trueshot base damage by 20% across the board. (eventually they gave back ~8% of that)They dumped the 250 Ferocity from Retribution (gave back only 150 to Radiant Power)They removed 25% crit chance from Righteous Instincts (replaced with just a couple might stacks)One change after another that all had negative effects.

If you try that same build now, the combo hits for ~15k. That's a GIGANTIC nerf.I hear some people thinking, "Oh, they nerfed the burst because of PvP, but surely they increased the sustained dps to compensate, right?"
NOPE. Sustain is actually worse than it was back then too.So what would I change to fix longbow? The development team responsible for the above changes. Because it's obvious they don't care about the weapon.

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@"RisenHowl.2419" said:Longbow isn't the best choice for dragonhunter in any gamemode with any build, it's a pity because the skills are interesting but lack any synergy with the rest of the kit.

Autoattack is fine. Good damage, cast time feels right, decent effect.

True shot is iffy, it's got a big punch on a low CD but it's pretty unreliable. Since you're rooted in place you can be easily blinded, blocked, obstructed, los'd, reflected etc.

-Increase the CD to 6s for all gamemodes and decrease the cast time to 1/2s.

Deflecting shot should be changed, as it stands its very clunky and requires heavy light to be traited to be really useful.

-Increase CD to 15s, make knockback baseline, increase radius to 180, decrease range to 900. Now you have a defensive skill on LB, something badly needed on a slow, long range weapon attached to a very slow class.

Symbol of energy should be changed significantly. Any build that relies on symbols, one of guardian's main profession mechanics, can't use this effectively. Even with the increased projectile speed it's very hard to land this skill on anything further than 600 range from you, good luck landing it on another player at all. Even when you do, the payoff is very low and doesn't feel worth the effort. The long burn stack is unappealing as is the vigor on a symbol that you probably won't be standing in.

-Increase CD to 20s, each tick of the symbol applies burning for 3s, remove the vigor, remove the projectile effect so it acts like symbol of swiftness. Maybe your character fires an arrow straight up that strikes the targeted location with holy energy? The projectile effect on this makes it awful in every game mode, that's the important thing to address.

Hunter's Ward is an okay skill. It really only needs sped up a little since right now you can just walk out of it.

-Reduce cast time to 2s, reduce cooldown to 40s. Easy changes.

Heavy light would need reworked as well with the change to Deflecting shot. The stability on knockback isn't really needed on dragonhunter. What is needed is a LB specific trait that has synergy with the kit.

-Heavy light reduces longbow cooldowns by 20%. Gain 120 precision, and an additional 120 precision with a longbow equipped. This would bring LB cooldowns from 6/15/20/40 to 4.8/12/16/32 when traited and grant 5.7% or 11.4% crit chance.

I think these changes would breathe life into the longbow weapon and playstyle while maintaining its identity and improving quality of life. None of these changes would increase power creep significantly, they would just make the weapon actually usable.

Here is what I think

Before anything Increase all the longbow skills range to 1500 to be like Ranger's , the bow is slow so it should get some extra range to make up for it.It feels off since they increased True's shot range to 1500, but left the rest of the skills at 1200, come on A-Net, seriously thats a half asked job, either increase them all or don't bother.

True shot - Get rid of it's rooting in place, i don't know why the skill has it, its silly and it feels off, you can't chase with this skill.I agree with your idea, increase the CD and reduce the cast time, however they need to get rid that awful rooting in place. there have many times i've screwed up because i've moved during the charge up and it cancelled the skill.

Deflecting shot - I feel this should be changed to a new one, one that hits multiple times but still keeps the knockback and destory missiles.here is what I feel would work better instead." Deflecting Barrage - Fires a barrage of arrows and then Fire a powered up arrow that blocks missiles and knocks back foes."(5x or 6x normal arrows, 1x powered up arrow) It's basically Deflecting shot but you shoot a few arrows first for more damage, allowing DH to rack up some more damage similar to rangers but with less arrows and knock back instead.

Symbol of energy - This needs an instant cast like scepter's symbol, or to be near instant. The arrow moves too slow and is predictable.The boon needs to be changed from vigor, it's worst boon for it. DH has no use for that. Change the boon to Fury, Quickness or retaliation, preferably retaliation so if the guard gets into the symbol it provides some protection or makes it more offensive and gives something decent to allies.However I think Symbol of energy in general should function a little differently then a normal symbol.Due to the longbow symbol being a ranged weapon, you rarely get to use the symbol yourself. So I think Symbol of energy should give you a boon for when the foes in symbol instead yourself. That way you could hit something from 900-1200 range and still get the boon without having to get close.

Hunter's Ward - Again another slow skill, It needs 2 sec or 1.5 sec cast time, and they need to fix the ward, people just walk out of it half the time.They could change it to immoblize and give it a decent duration, allowing the DH to increase thru expertise, but that would be a bit of downgrade and rather gimmickery.As for the cooldown, it needs to be 30 or 35, 45 seconds is WAY too long and is the longest weapon CD in the game.

As for Heavy light..."Heavy light reduces longbow cooldowns by 20%. Gain 120 Ferocity, and 120 precision with a longbow equipped.

Longbow skills have addtional effects to them"Puncture Shot - adds a stack of Burning when it applies cripple to foes.True shot - Applies Weakness and Does 25% more damage upon hitting the foe in the back or it's flankDeflecting shot/Deflecting Barrage - Gain Quickness (4 or 5 secs), Upon hitting a foe.Symbol of energy - Now strips boons and does more damage to foes without boons. (removes 1 boon per pulse)Hunter's Ward - The final impact of Hunter's Ward now stuns foes and removes 2 boons.

This still would reduce the LB cooldowns when traited and grant some crit chance and but also crit damage..I feel that giving the skills some extra effects like what the Ranger's shortbow trait does is much needed, this would make the trait a must have when using a longbow.Futhermore it would allow DH's to be somewhat useful in WvW groups.

What do you think?

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@crazyhusky.2985 said:

@"RisenHowl.2419" said:Longbow isn't the best choice for dragonhunter in any gamemode with any build, it's a pity because the skills are interesting but lack any synergy with the rest of the kit.

Autoattack
is fine. Good damage, cast time feels right, decent effect.

True shot
is iffy, it's got a big punch on a low CD but it's pretty unreliable. Since you're rooted in place you can be easily blinded, blocked, obstructed, los'd, reflected etc.

-Increase the CD to 6s for all gamemodes and decrease the cast time to 1/2s.

Deflecting shot
should be changed, as it stands its very clunky and requires heavy light to be traited to be really useful.

-Increase CD to 15s, make knockback baseline, increase radius to 180, decrease range to 900. Now you have a defensive skill on LB, something badly needed on a slow, long range weapon attached to a very slow class.

Symbol of energy
should be changed significantly. Any build that relies on symbols, one of guardian's main profession mechanics, can't use this effectively. Even with the increased projectile speed it's very hard to land this skill on anything further than 600 range from you, good luck landing it on another player at all. Even when you do, the payoff is very low and doesn't feel worth the effort. The long burn stack is unappealing as is the vigor on a symbol that you probably won't be standing in.

-Increase CD to 20s, each tick of the symbol applies burning for 3s, remove the vigor, remove the projectile effect so it acts like symbol of swiftness. Maybe your character fires an arrow straight up that strikes the targeted location with holy energy? The projectile effect on this makes it awful in every game mode, that's the important thing to address.

Hunter's Ward
is an okay skill. It really only needs sped up a little since right now you can just walk out of it.

-Reduce cast time to 2s, reduce cooldown to 40s. Easy changes.

Heavy light
would need reworked as well with the change to Deflecting shot. The stability on knockback isn't really needed on dragonhunter. What is needed is a LB specific trait that has synergy with the kit.

-Heavy light reduces longbow cooldowns by 20%. Gain 120 precision, and an additional 120 precision with a longbow equipped. This would bring LB cooldowns from 6/15/20/40 to 4.8/12/16/32 when traited and grant 5.7% or 11.4% crit chance.

I think these changes would breathe life into the longbow weapon and playstyle while maintaining its identity and improving quality of life. None of these changes would increase power creep significantly, they would just make the weapon actually usable.

Here is what I think

Before anything Increase all the longbow skills range to 1500 to be like Ranger's , the bow is slow so it should get some extra range to make up for it.It feels off since they increased True's shot range to 1500, but left the rest of the skills at 1200, come on A-Net, seriously thats a half asked job, either increase them all or don't bother.

True shot
- Get rid of it's rooting in place, i don't know why the skill has it, its silly and it feels off, you can't chase with this skill.I agree with your idea, increase the CD and reduce the cast time, however they need to get rid that awful rooting in place. there have many times i've screwed up because i've moved during the charge up and it cancelled the skill.

Deflecting shot
- I feel this should be changed to a new one, one that hits multiple times but still keeps the knockback and destory missiles.here is what I feel would work better instead.
" Deflecting Barrage - Fires a barrage of arrows and then Fire a powered up arrow that blocks missiles and knocks back foes."
(5x or 6x normal arrows, 1x powered up arrow) It's basically Deflecting shot but you shoot a few arrows first for more damage, allowing DH to rack up some more damage similar to rangers but with less arrows and knock back instead.

Symbol of energy
- This needs an instant cast like scepter's symbol, or to be near instant. The arrow moves too slow and is predictable.The boon needs to be changed from vigor, it's worst boon for it. DH has no use for that. Change the boon to Fury, Quickness or retaliation, preferably retaliation so if the guard gets into the symbol it provides some protection or makes it more offensive and gives something decent to allies.However I think Symbol of energy in general should function a little differently then a normal symbol.Due to the longbow symbol being a ranged weapon, you rarely get to use the symbol yourself. So I think Symbol of energy should give you a boon for when the foes in symbol instead yourself. That way you could hit something from 900-1200 range and still get the boon without having to get close.

Hunter's Ward
- Again another slow skill, It needs 2 sec or 1.5 sec cast time, and they need to fix the ward, people just walk out of it half the time.They could change it to immoblize and give it a decent duration, allowing the DH to increase thru expertise, but that would be a bit of downgrade and rather gimmickery.As for the cooldown, it needs to be 30 or 35, 45 seconds is WAY too long and is the longest weapon CD in the game.

As for
Heavy light...
"Heavy light reduces longbow cooldowns by 20%. Gain 120 Ferocity, and 120 precision with a longbow equipped.

Longbow skills have addtional effects to them"Puncture Shot - adds a stack of Burning when it applies cripple to foes.True shot - Applies Weakness and Does 25% more damage upon hitting the foe in the back or it's flankDeflecting shot/Deflecting Barrage - Gain Quickness (4 or 5 secs), Upon hitting a foe.Symbol of energy - Now strips boons and does more damage to foes without boons. (removes 1 boon per pulse)Hunter's Ward - The final impact of Hunter's Ward now stuns foes and removes 2 boons.

This still would reduce the LB cooldowns when traited and grant some crit chance and but also crit damage..I feel that giving the skills some extra effects like what the Ranger's shortbow trait does is much needed, this would make the trait a must have when using a longbow.Futhermore it would allow DH's to be somewhat useful in WvW groups.

What do you think?

Digging the extra effects on heavy light, though the trueshot one shouldn't have extra damage with maybe 2s base weakness duration. it already hits really hard, +25% would break it completely. SoE+ HW shouldn't strip boons either, that's not a guard mechanic and adding power creep isn't a good idea. I do like the (2s) immobilize on HW instead of the current cage though, traited it stuns instead of immobilize would be solid

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Ideas seem interesting. It's true Longbow has long since lost its identity. It's a burst weapon with its burst nerfed. There's not much thought to using the weapon, you CC and fire off everything and switch out. Deflecting Shot is a skillshot and very rewarding to land, but other than that LB4 and LB5 are lackluster.

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I actually like how the LB feel with Guardian. I only hate the damage and skill 5 (Hunter's ward). I dont mind it's clunky usage, locking in 1 place requirement. However, in term of effort vs reward, the LB is lame. Imagine being locked in 1 place with long casting skills, risking being attacked and canceled, to just see a tiny little dmg in the end. It's ridiculously pitiful.I think the mind set of focusing LB on range is wrong too. I see a Guardian who stays away from the group, i kindly ask him to leave because:1 - He/She does not boon shared (take and give) with party...or 2 - He/She does not understand the class at all.LB or scepter whatever, i stays together with everyone, at melee range... The class is the OG of party support in gw2? no? and even if i run selfish build, i want boons from friends...Auto attack is also so slow that you do not feel like Legolas at all, more like drunk fool who has trouble finding the string to pull. The speed/dmg is just so bleh...It will take years till all the "sorting out" with pvp are in control. I only hope they change for Pve for now.

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