Guild Wars 2

I know the short bow has its uses for thieves as their secondary weapon, but shouldn’t more classes be able to use this weapon?

Maybe for a future elite specialization?

I was kind of surprised that it wasn’t given any profession when HoT came out. I mean 7 out of the 9 professions can now use staff but short bow is still limited only to 2 professions.

Any thoughts?

I would also like to see more shortbow added. Whilst the other legendaries are temporarily suspended, it makes sense to utilise this weapon a bit more.

Question is, what sort of profession elite would lead with a shortbow?

Shortbow and rifle are the ones who need more love. Both are used only by 2 professions, and aren’t optimal either.

Any scholar could use a shortbow, and is not hard to imagine a revenant using one. An Ele with a rifle wouldn’t be so farfetched, a Necro could be really cool.

I’d like the Warrior to be able to use Shortbows as a high-speed ranged weapon. Possibly as a scout/skirmisher.

I really hate that Chuka and Champawat can’t be used by Warriors (Seeking the greatest challenge to their martial prowess) or Dragon Hunters (They hunt dragons! Why can’t they hunt Dragons with Tigers?)

I used to use the shortbow on my Ranger years ago. I haven’t found a weapon that is as much fun as the shortbow was then. It’s increased damage when hitting from behind added a fun challenge and it dealt damage rapidly.
It’s not the same weapon now and I wont use it but the more people who can, the more people who’ll post here when it’s nerfed to fix some PvP problem, so go for it.

Ardid.7203:

Shortbow and rifle are the ones who need more love. Both are used only by 2 professions, and aren’t optimal either.

Any scholar could use a shortbow, and is not hard to imagine a revenant using one. An Ele with a rifle wouldn’t be so farfetched, a Necro could be really cool.

I agree. I actually hoped that thieves would be getting a rifle and be like a deadly sniper. Short bow on Necro would be cool.

Shortbow on Warrior would be interesting.

Fix ranger short bow first – terrible weapon.

I’ve always thought the engineer is too short on weapons. Aside from kits the only long range weapon is the rifle and it’s more of a mid-range plus it’s too slow. Engineers being a technical profession rather than magical should be able to use any non-magical weapon. A warhorn could have a concussive blast as one of the skills. Bows could have a grapple as a skill.

I’d say that Necro and Mesmer could both use a shortbow easily enough. For Necros, I’d go with the theme of some demons/evil spirits of some myths that used bows to spread sickness, poison, and plague. For Mesmers, I’d go for the feeling of “Cupid’s Bow” type skills, some of them maybe being buffs instead of attacks.

Between shortbow and rifle, I’d rather see elementalists get the rifle. Maybe I’ve watched too much Outlaw Star.

In pretty sure confirm short bow with axes work quite well cor a ranger right now, I’ve heard people recommend short bow for a revenant elite spec, I personally think it could make a fun Mesmer elite spec.

Shortbow for mesmer. It summons animated shortbows that follow the mesmer around.
Illusionary weaponry, baby. yeaaaaaah

Well different classes have different uses and side abilities to make up for lack of weapons; elementalists get 4 skill bars per weapon, and new weapons means you need to add traits to go with it which adds a whole level of rebalancing etc so it can apply both as a use and have synergy taken into account.

I think the initial problem with this isn’t the shortbow; I think the problem is with the idea arenanet has with every class filling every role— condition dmg with this weapon. It becomes a sub-par, fill-in-the-blank weapon that doesn’t do justice as usefulness goes. It isn’t a bad weapon, but people love capping out their dps and find zerker or similar builds to work much better than condi on ranger.

Instead of using weapons as a focus on the type of build that should be used on them, traits should be the customization of how you use your weapons— for instance….
On staff druid you can go full heal for fun, or zerker aoe large groups of mobs. This is applied through how you build your masteries, and when they implemented elite specializations, you have 2-3 different ways to build the new trait line with the new weapon. However, this was not applied to the initial release of GW2 and people now are wondering why some weapons feel useless compared to others. Some say elite specializations are superior, but I think the fresh design of elite trait to weapon builds is more flexible and welcoming.

Arenanet did say they did a lot of reworking for the original framework with HoT release of how the game works in both combat, traits, weapons etc, so I think a lot of things will be tweaked in the future— shortbows for sure.

In my honest opinion shortbow should be more for dueling/control, not condition. Trap rangers were originally the condition dealers for guild wars 1, and they even had ways to spread some effects with bows. I think rangers are just having an identity crisis because the way they applied conditions in guild wars 1 was completely changed due to how conditions work with the mechanics of this game, which made the conditions utterly useless for them(Guild wars 1 conditions were far more dangerous, especially from rangers).