Guild Wars 2

Minimal changes which I consider required:
Hunter’s Shot (Longbow)
- damage reduced to 0
- instant stealth (no hit required)
- non-damaging condition on hit (stun/daze/cripple/chill/immobilize/blind)

Counterattack (Greatsword)
- knockback animation that allows unrestricted movement

Hilt Bash (Greatsword)
- improved animation that makes it much easier to land this attack

i would add Read the Wing & piercing arrows should also be passively available by default & not even traits

& Hunter’s Shot & Point blank shot should have a reliable character-rotating/turn animation like the short bow’s #3 because now if someone gets to you (which is rlly rlly veeeeeery easy) those two skills are almost worthless because most of the time they go on cd while not doing anything

Pretty much agree, though I don’t think hilt bash’s problem is the range, just the overly long animation that makes it clunky (why do I have to stop moving to cast it?). I feel it would be way better already if there wasn’t this half-second root on it before the start of the animation.

About read the wind and piercing arrow : read the wind would be too strong, so we’d see more incoming LB nerfs… and some people do not want to use piercing; forcing it on them wouldn’t be fair.

why wouldn’t you want piercing arrows ? especially in wvw.
I don’t see necros or mesmers complaining about their respectively staff & great sword AAs going through multiple targets. & they r not even an Archer type class … that’s just lame.

& read the wind would just make long bow reliable at hitting … definitely not overpowered

Sasajoe.1509:

& Hunter’s Shot & Point blank shot should have a reliable character-rotating/turn animation like the short bow’s #3 because now if someone gets to you (which is rlly rlly veeeeeery easy) those two skills are almost worthless because most of the time they go on cd while not doing anything

Definitely agree.
Longbow feels very clunky and is terrible at landing hits at a short range. I feel the damage reduction on the auto-attack should be considered enough of a penalty for fighting at short range.

Jocksy.3415:

Pretty much agree, though I don’t think hilt bash’s problem is the range, just the overly long animation that makes it clunky (why do I have to stop moving to cast it?). I feel it would be way better already if there wasn’t this half-second root on it before the start of the animation.

Yep it might just be the clunky animation. I’ll change the wording a bit

I removed my suggestions for Point Blank Shot and Protect Me. They seemed out of place for a “minimal changes” topic.

I’m also not going to add Read the Wind / Piercing Arrows defaulting to the list because it seems more prone to opinion.

Now this topic is just about things that don’t work properly on Longbow+GS builds. I think they’re a source of annoyance to every Ranger who uses these weapons. Feel free to suggest any other clunky/buggy gameplay features on other Ranger weapons/traits/skills and I might expand the topic.

I like the GS changes but how bout keeping hunter’s shot the way it is but increasing the damage (look at cloak and dagger)

I do think the stealth should be independent of needing to hit. However, every longbow shot should deal max range shot damage. If it hits, it should do some secondary affect as you described or simply activate a secondary ‘from stealth’ attack option like larcenous strike (per the discussion in the post-cdi ranger thread.

There’s no reason the skills should do no damage though. That’s what has gotten the weapon into the situation it is now with most attacks being a DPS loss when used.

Atherakhia.4086:

There’s no reason the skills should do no damage though. That’s what has gotten the weapon into the situation it is now with most attacks being a DPS loss when used.

Hunter’s shot would break its own stealth if the stealth was instant, but the damage on-hit. I think this is the main reason why Hunter’s Shot requires the hit for stealth to work (so it can apply the stealth after it applied the damage).

Removing the damage from the skill allows the stealth to be instant. However it’s strange to shoot an arrow at someone that does nothing (apart from giving the pet swiftness), so it would need a non-damaging on-hit effect to make sense. It would also be a fair trade for the loss in damage.

Hunter’s Shot‘s damage is already very low anyway, so it’s not a big drop in dps. It currently does less damage than Long Range Shot at short range.