Shortbow is nearly there

[Cuilan.7091]

 

This document mainly in a PvP and WvW context, but it would still cover elements in PvE when needed.

Shortbow is designed to be a support weapon and its defensive nature with its rather disgusting pulsing effects. Though as a weapon its nearly complete but its missing that edge to make the weapon a viable addition.

Engineer is still far behind Scourge (Actually giving Alacrity in WvW and PvP) , Chronomancer (Does everything) , and Druid (Heals mathematically more) and would need its set of changes to carve its own identity or to compete with the big three. 

Add On Impact effects for the Essence skills

Currently each Essence Canister has a rather long set up to detonation time, leading to moment to moment gameplay rather 'clunky' if the targets (or even your allies) decide to avoid your shots. Adding minor effects to keep enemies in check or some front-end support power for allies would improve the overall feeling without adding too much in terms of its budget. Note, since the skill itself is Unblockable the Impact effects are as well. 

• Scourge 2 
  • On Impact, Cripple up to 5 Targets f or 2s
• Specter 3 
  • On Impact, Daze up to 5 Targets for 0.5 s 
• Guardian 4 
  • On Impact, Cleanse 3 Conditions up to 5 Targets
    • (Moving the Cleanse part from Specter 3 to here would allow for better reactive play instead of back-loading Healing and Cleansing on the same skill.)
• Chronomancer 5 
  • On impact, Grant Superspeed to 5 Targets for 3s
    • (Having a delayed superspeed skill has never worked out so moving its effect on Impact would allow for more proactive utility. Well of Action is a prime example of delayed mobility effects being useless)

Overall these effects would help the Engineer lockdown targets more easily but also provide options when it comes to support allies. Chronomancer 5 for example becomes the perfect engagement tool or a solid escape option for the group, but also a extremely offensive tool to just ruin the fun of others with its pulsing slowness. Guardian 4 becomes a on-demand cleanse but loses it out on how much might it can generate if the Engineer isn't careful on placements .

Increase the Detonation and Pulse Radius of Essences, but keep the Chain Reaction Radius

As stated above, Deploying and Detonating these canisters take time and set up and even if you managed to trigger these effects the overall radius makes it difficult to maintain the value it can generate. Enemies can easily move out (Unless its SoS we're talking about, they just eat the cleave just to rez) and your and your allies may have to maneuver during a fight leaving your 4 Miniature Acid Bombs behind. 

Increasing the Detonation and Pulse radius to 240 (Or even 300) would add to the area control gameplay whilst improving the overall consistency of the skill. Allies have some space to move around a fight without the need to bunker down, an enemies can actually take more than a single strike from the fields themselves .Though leaving the Chain Reaction radius to 180 would still keep the choice between tightly packed high value fields or a wide, but low impact area of effect

Boons and Conditions 

The current set of boons and conditions aren't completely ideal for a support situation. Certain skills should have their attributes swapped out for another to round out the support / cover condition gameplay. Adding more damaging conditions would also enable more Condition Damage options and opens up more variety for Amulet selection in PvP and more defensive condition builds in general. 

• Scourge 2 -
  • Remove: Cripple from the pulse
  • Add: Causes Torment for 1s per pulse
  • Add: Cripple for 2s on detonation
    • (Torment is missing from the pool of conditions for engineer and allows from more damage and coverage conditions, Cripple should instead be front-loaded to enable lockdown against targets)
• Specter 3 -
  • Remove: Blindness from the pulse
  • Remove: Condition Cleanse on Detonation
  • Add: Resistance for 2s per pulse 
    • (A powerful boon that Engineer needs to be a viable support)
  • Add: Blindness on Detonation 
    • (Engineer does not need another pulsing blind field, we already have Smoke Bomb and Flash Shell that already perform this role and would only cause issues in the future)
• Guardian 4 -
  • Remove: Vulnerability from the pulse 
  • Add: Causes Burning for 2s per pulse
    • (Vulnerability is easily cover as an Explosive Engineer, but more so when playing in a group, replacing it with burning would allow extra pressure for more offensive builds) 
• Chronomancer 5 -
  • Moved: Superspeed on detonation to on impact
  • Remove: Slowness from the pulse
  • Add: Causes Stability for 1s per Pulse
    • (Extra stability is needed to compete with Mesmer and their Mantra on Concentration, Engineer currently needs to invest so much into giving group stability) 

Chain Reaction Effects

The current chain effects are mechanically solid, but could use an extra push to give extra thought and planning for the engineer to choose the most viable Chain Reaction Bonus.

• Scourge 2 
  • Barrier applied is now divided amongst the pulse instead of front-loaded, increase the total barrier by 25%
    • (This does bring concern of Mechanist easily sustaining Barrier but you have classes like Chronomancer and Scourge that dish it out for free)
  • Chain Reactions causes Cripple for 1s
• Specter 3 
  • Increase the pulse healing by 20%-33%,
  • Also grant Regeneration for 1s 
    • (Very few sources of group regeneration outside of Mace 2, Medkit 5, and Elixir Gun Toolbelt)
• Guardian 4 
  • Also Pulse Fury for 1s
    • (Scrapper is the only spec that has group Fury access outside of very niche situations)
  • Chain Reactions causes Burning for 3s
    • (Adds offensive utility to a rather defensive might stacking tool
• Chronomancer 5 
  • Pulse Chill for 1s instead of Slowness
    • (Stolen Time is a very offensive skill, but it shouldn't be throwing out 20 application of slowness. Having Chill creates a greater diversity of conditions without relying on Endothermic shells or Freeze Grenades) 

Additional Adjustments

• Each Essence Should count as an explosion
  • (Not sure why, they don't they do explode)
• Auto Attacks should have a bonus depending on what Essence the targets are standing on, These Effects would stack
  • (Currently the Auto Attacks are outclassed by even elixir gun, and there is minimal times where you would be using on even the most simplest support builds)
  • (Adding offensive Conditions would give the Engineer an extra option to double down on damaging targets)
  • Scourge 2
    • Causes Torment for 1s on Strike
  • Specter 3
    • Causes Bleeding for 3s on Strike
  • Guardian 4
    • Causes Burning for 2s on Strike
  • Chronomancer 5
    • Causes Confusion for 3s on Strike 

[Zzik.5873]

Yeah shortbow is nearly in the garbage bin but sadly it felt on the side floor and nobody bother to pick it up...

[Gendalfs.7521]

21 hours ago, Zzik.5873 said:

nobody bother to pick it up...

Why tho? 😄

[Tiviana.2650]

this is a joke right op?

[miriforst.1290]

Judging by the list of proposed changes I think I might have another perspective regarding what accounts for "nearly there".

[Cuilan.7091]

13 hours ago, Tiviana.2650 said:

this is a joke right op?

No this isn't a joke, but this entire forum is. 

I didn't come here to make jokes or quips, If I wanted to waste my time I'd go cope-seethe-mald (In no particular order) on Reddit, heck even 4chan since that place still has more reasonable grounds to communicate than the forums.

I Tolerate this 'community' since its an official support platform that is designed for discussion of the game but every time I come here its people making Middle-School level responses and people posting issues about Engineer that wasn't a problem to begin with. 

3 hours ago, miriforst.1290 said:

Judging by the list of proposed changes I think I might have another perspective regarding what accounts for "nearly there".

Since I take my time writing this out in the most technical way possible that leaves little room for interpretation. I can shorten this down to this~

• Make AoE bigger
• add useful boon and condi
• tune up auto attack

But I would rather give my reasonings and full suggestions (That make sense considering there's only 80~ Days left until release) since that's more useful for ArenaNet then what's been posted above. 

I'm not here to spout "Trash shortbow because no ones uses lmao" like majority of the community here and call it a day while everyone echo-chambers the same responses and pats themselves on the back saying that they're right.  Like this person.

On 11/30/2023 at 7:36 PM, Zzik.5873 said:

Yeah shortbow is nearly in the garbage bin but sadly it felt on the side floor and nobody bother to pick it up...

I want discussion, but guess I'm going to get a confused emote tagged into this by 7 other people. 

[miriforst.1290]

23 minutes ago, Cuilan.7091 said:

No this isn't a joke, but this entire forum is. 

I didn't come here to make jokes or quips, If I wanted to waste my time I'd go cope-seethe-mald (In no particular order) on Reddit, heck even 4chan since that place still has more reasonable grounds to communicate than the forums.

I Tolerate this 'community' since its an official support platform that is designed for discussion of the game but every time I come here its people making Middle-School level responses and people posting issues about Engineer that wasn't a problem to begin with. 

Since I take my time writing this out in the most technical way possible that leaves little room for interpretation. I can shorten this down to this~

• Make AoE bigger
• add useful boon and condi
• tune up auto attack

But I would rather give my reasonings and full suggestions (That make sense considering there's only 80~ Days left until release) since that's more useful for ArenaNet then what's been posted above. 

I'm not here to spout "Trash shortbow because no ones uses lmao" like majority of the community here and call it a day while everyone echo-chambers the same responses and pats themselves on the back saying that they're right.  Like this person.

I want discussion, but guess I'm going to get a confused emote tagged into this by 7 other people. 

Yeah sorry, I appreciate the thoughtful ideas and criticism. I am just used to conversations being either Doom or Denial, and I went in expecting the latter. I was pleasantly surprised to find out  it wasn't the case.

[inci.3705]

(WvW roamer)

Besides the lack of impact of the actual skills, my main issues with shortbow are:

1. AoE spamming like mortar/nades
2. Lack of active evade/blocks

 

Issue #2 might be addressed with your proposed changes, but I still can't see a world where I could run shortbow in a 1v1 or small-scale fight without slotting toolkit and/or photon wall and not get absolutely destroyed (which greatly restricts the number of builds I can run; I've accepted that even with any buffs we'll probably still want to run them anyway but a fuzzier choice would be nice 🙂). Getting focused by an equally booned (or let's be real: more booned up) enemy would negate a lot of the defenses/counterattacks you added to shortbow.

 

As for issue #1, I am literally sick of that style of gameplay (to the point where I've almost exclusively played Condi Holo for the last 2+ months).

 

I guess my main question to answer is: what tools does shortbow have to let me escape/survive being focused by a cele Willbender and how effective are they? So I'm just going to throw out alternatives and cross my fingers that something sticks:

• #2 can probably kept the way it is
• Change #3 to something like DH longbow #3 and add a manual detonation flip skill
• Change #4 to fire a series of arrows in a line that make a stab roads/prime light beam fire field effect on detonation (and please add the burning! I want to be lay down both at the same time for megaburns!)
• Change #5 to a channeled distort that you can end prematurely to shoot an insta-detonating arrow that is stronger the earlier you fire it.

Edited December 2, 2023 by inci.3705

[Valdel.7325]

Thanks for your input, but I fear that without an evade, knockdown or boon strip, we are just rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic. What hampers the support concept is that without weapon swap or mitigating kits, we will be eaten alive by every class in competitive play. It's telling, that the only workable use of the shortbow has been helping the Mech tank in open world. Still it's only the beta.

Edited December 4, 2023 by Valdel.7325

[Ironhide Wolf.3275]

I only tried it a little bit. It felt like a supportive grenade kit with extra steps... 

I understand that you need a masters degree in combo-fields for weapons like this. This is coming from the POV of someone who knows very little about these fields, like most of the community it seems...  So here's my tiny bit of input on this thing I know little about and tried little of in a class I don't play too often.... 

I did not see a tool tip on detonating these 'arrows' if they counted as an "Explosion" or not. If this does not act as an explosion, I would like to see it do so, so it will synergize with the traits like "Big Boomer" and other explosion-based traits... If it did count as an explosion, would like to see it in the tooltips. 

Would also be interesting if these skills counted as "Wells". It could take advantage of the scrappers "Gyroscopic Acceleration" trait for greater AOE. Would be a good trade-off between AOE/boon improving Scrapper and having a big mech that you can keep healed like what ranger should be like.