Shortbow tweaking ideas

[csuvix.9284]

- Skill 2 blast finisher and Skill 4 fire field should be swapped

- Skill 3 should get Regeneration

- Skill 2&3 should be a 5x pulse and damage field. Might, condition removal and regeneration numbers can be tweaked according to the 5x pulse field

- Skill 2 cooldown should be 6 sec and Skill 5 cooldown should be 20 sec

- Skill 1 autoattack needs some extra. I leave it to the devs imagination

And that's it. Do it need to be exclusively a support weapon? 

(Altough I wish the design would be more impactful not the lazy all skills are/do the same. Something like the Engi hammer and Rev shortbow hybrid)

[Gendalfs.7521]

Skill 1 projectile finisher

[Calen.8945]

Sorry to say, but it's doubtful that Anet will ever touch the bow again, outside of small number tweaks.

[Ravenwulfe.5360]

3 hours ago, Calen.8945 said:

Sorry to say, but it's doubtful that Anet will ever touch the bow again, outside of small number tweaks.

I am curious what your evidence is other than to just be negative? I mean if we are going by past now, they certainly have been and do touch weapons and specs again and even have made several sweeping changes to them over time and not just number tweaks. Considering at this point over half the new weapons introduced are considered misses at this point, I am doubtful ANet is "never going to touch them again, outside of small number tweaks" with so many disappointed in what has been delivered.

Edited March 1 by Ravenwulfe.5360

[Custodio.6134]

Yeah, ANet definitely needs to change a few stuff on the Shortbow-skills. 

Because... it feels like.... the skills "don´t know what they want to be". Neither effect-wise, combo-field-wise (for those that place a field), nor name-wise. 

Breakdown: 

Essence of animated sand: 
- grants barrier (makes sense, ever since the introduction of scourge, sand is associated with barrier. no objections on that part)

-grants might (why? it wants to be a defensive oriented skill, so why give it an offensive boon), grants even more might on chain-reaction (same as before: why?)

Essence of living shadows: 
-heals and cleanses conditions on impact, cleanses additional conditions on chain-reaction. (why is this skill called "living shadows again"? the effect has nothing to do with shadows.)

-creates a dark field (i guess because it wants to be a shadow?) why is this a dark field, when it is clearly a healing/cleansing skill. this should be either a water field (for a healing-combo) or a light field (for a cleansing combo) and ofc being renamed. 

Essence of liquid wrath:
-grants protection and aegis upon impact (how is this related to "wrath" again? this doesnt make sense) and additional protection upon chain-reaction (same as before: why?)

-creates a fire-field (because wrath, i guess ?!?) 
 

Essence of borrowed time:

-Stuns enemies and applies superspeed to allies (yeah, makes sense, no objections)

-chain-reacts into more daze (yeah, nothing special, but makes sense)

 

It really feels like they rolled a dice on what the skills do, without any reasoning behind it. Especially Skill 2 (animated sand) and Skill 4 (liquid wrath) don´t have an actual skill-identity and are confused about what they wanna do. 

[Jerus.4350]

The skills are supposed to be canisters of other professions magic that we unleash.  So 2 is scourge, 3 is Specter, 4 is guardian, 5 is Mesmer. As for the dark field, it’s the one field Engi didn’t have access to, so this completes things (I’m a bit annoyed we lost the ethereal field on sb5, streamlined kits is a pain to use).  
 

That said I agree that the might and prot being swapped would make more sense to me, but that would also make always getting the bonus prot potentially harder depending on how it’s done (fastest recharge, might not have another detonate available for the extra prot).  

Edited March 1 by Jerus.4350

[Calen.8945]

4 hours ago, Ravenwulfe.5360 said:

I am curious what your evidence is other than to just be negative?

Partially being negative yes, but also because I knew that reworking a weapon takes far more work than just number tweaks. Add in the fact that the bow is very likely to be an unpopular weapon, the devs will be less incentivized to spend their limit time on it. The bow will be added to the ranks of the many, many, subpar weapons in the game already, all of them could use a rework but such a thing is very unlikely to happen when the weapons are 'good enough.' already.

[Custodio.6134]

well, about the popularity: we´ll have to see. 

I´ve tested it thouroughly at today's WvW-reset, and it went absolutely WILD. Consistently in top-5 cleanses, competing against every current "meta"-support. I barely needed to even use medkit, the barrier from shortbow, system-shocker and "ex machina" countered almost ALL the immediate pressure when pushing. and if that was not enough barrier, then Bulwark Gyro did the rest. I also never had any issues getting allies up if they actually managed to drop low (which, in 100% of cases, was the result of them being massively off-position). 

The changes to the animations, and the fact that you don´t need any double-activations anymore (them working as combo-fields and blast-finishers) got rid of the biggest issues that held back shortbow in WvW. 

I also don´t mind the ethereal field being gone from SB5 (though, it would have been nice on SB4 instead), but i don´t see any point in the dark field. and even the fire-field feels out of place, considering that the skill that creates it is 100% defensive, as well as SB2's cooldown getting increased since the beta. 

you used to be able to drop a cansiter with everything except skill 2, and then use skill 2 to detonate-->chain-reaction for every single skill, since the cooldown of SB2 was so low. Now, you have a preferred combo (in WvW) of SB3-->SB2 and SB4-->SB5 that you usually want to pair together (partially because of cooldowns, partially because SB3 and 4 are fields, while SB2 and 5 are blast-finishers)

[Jski.6180]

The 2 skills needs ammo you cant combo the other 3 skills effectively to get the Sbow full effect with out one more skill use. S bow feels like an kit more then an wepon and it work very well in wvw and big fights for support.

[Bunny.9834]

I really just need those fields to last a little longer cause the game play is too spammy. 

I think they mentioned though that it became a FPS issue cause of the effects. 

[Custodio.6134]

18 hours ago, Jski.6180 said:

The 2 skills needs ammo you cant combo the other 3 skills effectively to get the Sbow full effect with out one more skill use. S bow feels like an kit more then an wepon and it work very well in wvw and big fights for support.

well, you can combine 3-->2 and 4-->5 relatively good. but i aggree that getting a combo of 3 skills is quite unrealistic, and combining all 4 canister-skills is even worse. 

like i said before: it seems like you want to have 3-->2 as a defensive combo (healing, cleansing and applying barrier) and skill 4.-->5 as an offensive combo (fire-field blast, CC, because that´s how "offensive" works on a defensive support-class). 

The issue is (as mentioned above): the skills that you would usually use based on the situation (aka, offensive skills like 4 and 5, since those seem to "want to be offensive", or defensive skills like 2 and 3, since those seem to "want to be defensive") have the opposite side-effect. you can´t really use them as reactional skills (a bit more in PvP/WvW, and far less in PvE), since you need them in order to keep up boons (especially on scrapper, since it actually comboes nicely into kinetic accelerators)

I´d rather have skills, that have a clear purpose. which, aside from the weird combo-field choice, is only partially there. 

make skill 2 apply protection instead of might (this would make it your defensive skill of choice)
make skill 3 place either  a water-field (to further amplify its healing-aspect) OR a light-field (to further amplify its cleansing-aspect). this would make it your healing/cleansing skill of choice.
make skill 4 apply might (which we had on skill 2 right now) to make it the offensive choice so it actually fits the theme, and make it place an etherial field (for chaos aura that we do not have access to). this would make it your offensive boon-skill of choice
since i don´t see anything major wrong with skill 5 (decent CC, blast-finisher), leave it as is. this is your CC-skill of choice. 

with this kit, you have almost everything you want as a defensive support in both, PvE and WvW. Your kit would still be quite limited in WvW, but you´d get a lot of flexibility in PvE (since you´re getting 2 more fields and blasts you can actually utilize to keep up quickness, this opens up the possibility to get more creative with your utility-skills (though, most will probably keep sticking with elixir gun and blast gyro, but your 3rd slot already is flexible. if you don´t need the blast-gyro anymore, since elixir-gun is basically a to-go choice without competition, it could open up utility-slots for purge-gyro, throw mine or even Elixir R for its toolbelt, a skill that is massively underused currently)

[Jski.6180]

2 hours ago, Custodio.6134 said:

well, you can combine 3-->2 and 4-->5 relatively good. but i aggree that getting a combo of 3 skills is quite unrealistic, and combining all 4 canister-skills is even worse. 

like i said before: it seems like you want to have 3-->2 as a defensive combo (healing, cleansing and applying barrier) and skill 4.-->5 as an offensive combo (fire-field blast, CC, because that´s how "offensive" works on a defensive support-class). 

The issue is (as mentioned above): the skills that you would usually use based on the situation (aka, offensive skills like 4 and 5, since those seem to "want to be offensive", or defensive skills like 2 and 3, since those seem to "want to be defensive") have the opposite side-effect. you can´t really use them as reactional skills (a bit more in PvP/WvW, and far less in PvE), since you need them in order to keep up boons (especially on scrapper, since it actually comboes nicely into kinetic accelerators)

I´d rather have skills, that have a clear purpose. which, aside from the weird combo-field choice, is only partially there. 

make skill 2 apply protection instead of might (this would make it your defensive skill of choice)
make skill 3 place either  a water-field (to further amplify its healing-aspect) OR a light-field (to further amplify its cleansing-aspect). this would make it your healing/cleansing skill of choice.
make skill 4 apply might (which we had on skill 2 right now) to make it the offensive choice so it actually fits the theme, and make it place an etherial field (for chaos aura that we do not have access to). this would make it your offensive boon-skill of choice
since i don´t see anything major wrong with skill 5 (decent CC, blast-finisher), leave it as is. this is your CC-skill of choice. 

with this kit, you have almost everything you want as a defensive support in both, PvE and WvW. Your kit would still be quite limited in WvW, but you´d get a lot of flexibility in PvE (since you´re getting 2 more fields and blasts you can actually utilize to keep up quickness, this opens up the possibility to get more creative with your utility-skills (though, most will probably keep sticking with elixir gun and blast gyro, but your 3rd slot already is flexible. if you don´t need the blast-gyro anymore, since elixir-gun is basically a to-go choice without competition, it could open up utility-slots for purge-gyro, throw mine or even Elixir R for its toolbelt, a skill that is massively underused currently)

Well getting protection added hit is an added clear so getting one more 2 you can go for the double cc and the double clear with out loosening the the chose of getting the double protection. Also one more fast blast/barrier would go an long way to making the Sbow a realty good support wepon.

The 1 skill maybe should apply barrier or at least let you "charge" your own team mates to do an aoe lighting hit base off of there power/crits.