Guild Wars 2

I was happy to see the devs responding to Mesmer concerns over their upcoming changes. I thought I would talk a bit about the Thief’s Shortbow.

The shortbow is an aoe weapon that is partly direct damage and partly condition damage. Due to this, almost no thief optimizes his build around Shortbow. It is used as a utility weapon.
(Spamable Blast finisher (only really awesome in melee range due to its long flight time, most fields have expired before the first shot lands at ma range.), Aoe poison field (useful for negating enemy healing, due to its design you can guarantee that the enemy will be poisoned for a little bit by spamming and using all your initiative for poison), and finally the teleport of 900 range (useful to “cheat” terrain and gain mobility, also blinds).

As a utility weapon the Shortbow is very strong and I can see why spreading poison over a node for as long as you can survive with little initiative can be very powerful, as can all its features. But if you plan on reducing its effectiveness as a utility weapon, buff it as a main weapon. My suggestion is to play around with either the auto-attack or cluster bomb. I would probably double the bleed stacks from cluster bomb (2 or 6 depending on if you detonated it.) Or increase its base damage to allow not detonating it be more viable for damage, if you have low condition damage. For now, detonating it properly is always more damage.

honestly, I feel sb is very close to main weapon viability.

Personally I feel that these few changes would make it viable without making it OP.
-double the speed of cluster bomb
-increase the damage of the stealth shot (instead of criting for 1.3k let it crit for around 3-4k with full zerker)
-let the #5 skill put you into stealth for 3 seconds.

Every one of your proposed changes is over the top OP. Please leave shortbow as-is.

Dakarius.3284:

honestly, I feel sb is very close to main weapon viability.

Personally I feel that these few changes would make it viable without making it OP.
-double the speed of cluster bomb
-increase the damage of the stealth shot (instead of criting for 1.3k let it crit for around 3-4k with full zerker)
-let the #5 skill put you into stealth for 3 seconds.

LOL
Every single one of ur points are beyond OP.

omg the last one really got me.

btw SB is fine imo, the incoming nerf is reasonable.

How is shortbow not a main weapon? Every single thief build that has existed has carried a shortbow lol If anything it needs nerfs. Specially an aftercast on shortbow #3.

All I really suggested was giving shortbow a few extra bleed stacks, or buffing its direct damage a little, nothing too over the top. I know the guy right after me went a little too far lol, but it would be nice to see some more builds focused on shortbow.

I am trying now to make a death blossom build viable, built tanky with SoM, Dev. Venom, caltrops, and 25% mov. sig.

Trying alternate builds is a lot of the fun of this game, sure shortbows utility is great and deserves some nerfs, but bring up its viability for things other than pve and utility.

Edit: The more I think about it, the bleed stacks might be over the top, but maybe increasing the auto attack dmg by 50% if it doesn’t bounce.