Guild Wars 2

Hunter’s shot’s stealth mechanic has added some new strategy to ranger. It was a positive change, but I’d argue that it has at least one glaring flaw that could serve being looked at. It’s comparable to thief’s cloak and dagger in its stealth utility: you must score a hit to stealth. The problem is that the two skills are not equal when it comes to scoring a hit. Cloak and dagger must be countered by a dodge roll, block, or blind. Hunter’s shot, because it is a ranged projectile, tends to hit blades of grass, random terrain, or just completely miss altogether for no obvious reason. It will also fail to fire at all and trigger interrupt cooldown if the target runs through the ranger as it is cast.

Because that stealth is so valuable when needed, and to alleviate the issue of the delay between firing the shot and going into stealth (again, cloak and dagger does not have this issue) I would like to see longbow #3 changed to apply stealth to the ranger without firing a shot, swiftness to the pet, and to make up for the damage lost from not firing the shot either add 10 stacks of vulnerability to the current target (and remove that from rapid fire in favor of some other effect, it was better on a single hit) or add damage to the next attack used afterward.

Not only would a change like this make #3 less clunky, it would make for a unique utility skill rather than just another arrow shot and make the longbow stealth usable just as other classes have stealth that does not require a target. It also still wouldn’t be as powerful as cloak and dagger, as cloak and dagger does a fairly obscene amount of damage and can be used more than once even if it misses.

I think it’s fine as it is. Those problems you mentioned with obstruction and random misses have to do with with all ranged weapons, not just hunter’s shot.

The only problem with the skill, if any, is that your pet can give away your position if you are retreating from battle. But then again, since the skill is on such a short cool down it’s kind of a fair price to pay.

I agree with you op, but it won’t change. At the very least, the skill shouldn’t be blockable. If they ever make remorseless a useful trait, it could end up being quite overpowered if hunter’s shot had a 100% chance to stealth.