Worldsoul.6219

I am going to stop you right here. This weapon was *not* designed for zerg play. It's a weapon designed around single target focus. That was the goal of the weapon. We do not need more zerg weapons. Hammer is great. We need more mobility in WVW not less of it.

WVW roamer here, so bear in mind this is coming from this perspective: The weapon's concept feels really nice, and it's something Engineer I feel needed (though I would have been happier with a better ranged weapon). The theory of it being designed to focus down a single target feels like it's on the right track but it definitely needs some major tweaks. TL;DR changes that need to happen: Roiling Skies/Devastator/Eclectric Artillery need shorter cast times. Electric Artillery needs to be omnidirectional. Devastator needs either needs 700 range like Conduit Surge or a larger radius. More utility/defensive boons or barrier. This is a melee weapon. On to the long drawn out explaination. The auto attack rotation feels nice, however I feel like it doesn't quite feel right. I wish engineer had gotten even a 600 ranged version of the attack like so many other of the new spear classes. Conduit Surge feels really good, though rather than making the focus duration spread to others, I would much rather it be longer duration. 10 seconds duration of the ability an 8 sec cooldown means that you HAVE to use Conduit surge as a way to keep up the buff or risk losing your damage, and cannot use it as a mobility tool. I'll be mentioning mobility in the end but that's something to consider. Lightning Rod feels really good, but Electric Artillery NEEDS work. Requiring to face your opponent to throw EA is not conducive to fluid combat. All it would take to fix this was make it universally targetable like grenade or mortar. I am going to echo others when I say Roiling Skies NEEDS a faster cast time/180 aoe at your feet. It's a really sharp cone that makes it very difficult to land. I think the faster cast time would be necessary and the aoe at your feet would just be QoL. Devastator... needs work. The damage is great, don't touch the damage, but again it NEEDS a cast time buff. 3/4 seconds is more than fine. The leap needs to either be longer range (MINIMUM 700 to match conduit surge) or needs a bigger Radius as well. While I understand that the original concept of this weapon is that you are supposed to use Electric Artillery to lock someone down then leap into Devastator, the magical Christmas land scenario that would require to play out in wvw (while also making sure to keep up Conduit Surge buff) is difficult to pull off. The weapon needs tweaking. I agree there needs to be some kind of defensive to it in order to work. At *very* least putting vigor in there or maybe barrier would be really nice. It's a melee weapon that's designed like a ranged glass cannon weapon, it needs a little something for it to be viable. With that I want to talk about two things: Damage and Mobility. The damage is great... but only when the stars align to land your combo perfectly. This is great in PVE but in any wvw mode, the weapon (which feels like it was designed for dueling) will suffer hard for it. I spent a good solid amount of time on power, condi, and hybrid builds and while I didn't so much complain about the damage as much as the ability for the weapon to land them with the tools given. The mobility is bad. I'm not saying the skill as written is bad, I'm saying that having both your mobility skills tied directly to your damage burst is a bad idea. Perhaps Conduit surge could be a good utility skill that while putting focus on something has lower damage but more utility? Also, again, a longer duration on the Focus mark, 10 seconds is too short. My personal feelings on this, I like the weapon, but it feels like a weapon designed for the ability to weapon swap. Use one weapon then swap to spear when you need to burst, because it has no utility/defense on it. Overall, I like spear a whole lot more than shortbow at Beta, and if you gave it the polish that shortbow got I feel like spear will be in a solid place. Damage is fine, the theme and feeling are great, but it needs to feel fluid and not as clunky as it is. Also props to your design team, the effects are awesome!

its super super stupid. It's a canister. Traps don't need LOS. and yet

Honestly this isn't bad, but i would add: FIX THE LOS PROBLEM. You can drop your canisters, walk around the corner, and activate them and everything EXCEPT THE DAMAGE will go off. It will just flash "obstructed"

It's a bad support weapon. It's a pretty good tagging weapon. But that's about it.

Alright. So I've put a few hours into shortbow. These are my thoughts. TL;DR: This is NOT a boon support weapon. PROS The essence canisters (referred to as canisters from this point forward) act like Ranger Longbow 5, in that they can shoot from behind cover, over walls, etc. The auto attack is fast, and the fact it hits 4 targets means that it is pretty perfect for Lab farm or anything that requires you to tag large groups of mobs. Definitely my lazy PVE weapon along with flamethrower. Not that we needed *more* tagging power, but I guess that's fun. The canisters pulse damage, which again, goes really well for tagging. If you land a canister in the middle of an already active canister field, it does auto activate. Which is neat. CONS The damage on the canisters is entirely reliant on line of sight. Not the boons/barrier/condis. only the damage. This makes zero sense. If every other aspect of the weapon works outside of line of sight INCLUDING FIRING THE WEAPON, why is it that the damage is obstructed? I have video of this I'll be posting and I'll link to later. The AOE does not actually chain. If I have the barrier canister (SB2) at my feet, the heal canister (SB3) 180 units away, then the might canister (SB4) another 180 away from that, I do not get the Chain Reaction benefit from the might canister, even though it chain reacts down to me. Meaning that I, and by extension my allies, are REQUIRED to stand on the canister fields in order to benefit. In group content, with how mobile the game has gotten over the years, there is no way to reliably set that up with such small fields. There is no protection in the weapon at all. Support engineer relies heavily on protection in order to function. Anticorrosion Plating is a huge part of a lot of support engineer in WVW and as of now the only weapon that gives Protection is shield + Ally Ward. No engineer is going to give up a more reliable source of protection in shield for shortbow. While the barrier you gain from barrier canister (SB2) is stronger than what you get off of Mace 2, it is less reliable as you have to be IN the field for it to take effect. Compared to the 360 radius of mace 2, I doubt many will take shortbow over mace. Especially considering the above comment about shield. There is no mobility in shortbow. Yes, there is three seconds of superspeed in the slow canister (SB5) on a 25 second cooldown, but that is far from enough. Not to beat a dead horse, but no support engineer (Anet's claimed marketed demographic with this weapon) is going to pick shortbow over the other options. It feels in practice that all of the numbers are just... small. SB5 is 25 seconds for 3 seconds of superspeed and pulsing slow. This feels useless, except as a primer for the other canisters. If so, why 25 seconds? Having a bigger, pulsing barrier on 25 seconds, or protection would make more sense. Again, if the goal is to have this weapon be used for support. In conclusion: This weapon does not feel like a support weapon. This is a low power farming weapon. There is not enough boon generation for this to count as a support weapon. The lack of protection/vigor generation and generally low boon uptime even with full support gear is abysmal, and with no mobility it makes this weapon very ineffective against any enemy that has any amount of mobility. What it does well is tag enemies. It is very good at sneaking damage into zergs through all the barriers and reflects. It's great at pve tagging. But that's about it. There is however one really easy fix that makes shortbow useful. Give. Engineer. Weapon. Swap. That's it. That's all you have to do. Anyways, more later. But this is the major points.

But i want to hook people and pull them into mines or something. I dunno was cool.

Then WHERE IS MY GRAPPLING HOOK ARROW D:<

^ *THIS*

In PVP and WVW, all someone has to do is dodge once and you are on full cooldowns. In PVE, on any boss that has any mobility, it moves 300 units and all your abilities you just spent all that careful time setting up is useless. And if you swap to a kit? You can't set off your arrows. It feels clunky and not in keeping with any other weapons, or engi's general playstyle.

I apologize for my rant but i'm pretty livid when I saw the mesmer's support rifle and how cool it looked and we get... *this*

You say you want feedback, so here is my feedback: I watched the Twitch presentation about shortbow and, with such an outstanding array of new weapons given to every other class, why on earth did engineer get this?? To highlight my points: - In a game where you have been pushing for more mobility, why on earth would you give engineer which traditionally has less than average mobility EVEN LESS. Shortbow on every class other than Revenant has a bunch of mobility. -Claiming it is a support build then making every field only 180 radius seems extremely counter intuitive. Even if I was going to pretend it was purely a PVE weapon, how on earth are you going to keep a raid's boons and health up with four tiny arrows, with long cooldowns as well, with little puddles? And how are you going to chain reaction them together unless they are all clumped up in one spot? - With all of the creative space that you COULD have used with shortbow, why this? You could have had a batman style gadget bow that had tricks and things. A grappling hook, or explosive arrows or anything, but your choice was to go with static, unmoving ground wells that are flat out worse than other similar weapons like necro staff. - EVERY other weapon in that presentation had some flashy element with multiple parts. The whole necro sword thing with a thematic health mechanic? That's rad. Getting bigger with ranger mace? Not my favorite but it looks really cool and thematic. Engineer? We get little circles. That technically are kinda themed. Was Engineer a footnote? Because it feels like this was put together last minute. - Engineer ALREADY HAS A TON OF SUPPORT. We have ways of making every boon, giving barrier, healing... the list goes on. If you hadn't nerfed scrapper, engi would be *the* support. But after nerfing the support we already have then slapping on this garbage weapon, it really makes it feel like no one cares for this class. - The weapon looks exceptionally boring to play. It feels like no one there actually plays engi. Spamming four arrows is not exciting gameplay. Please rework this. SOME kind of mobility would be amazing but if not that, please just take another look at this.

To some extent yes.

It is frustrating because there really isn't a game out there like GW2. I really love this game and I wish there was more for solo players.

This made me sad. As primarily all the content i get from GW2 is roaming solo in WVW. I think i need a drink.