Guild Wars 2

No wish to rehash a hundred threads on the merits of LB or its comparative DPS vs shortbow. BUT, I’d like to ask what people would think of a decent chance of a very brief cripple (maybe just 1sec) applied to the basic #1 LB shot?

Supporting logic: If LB is an at-distance weapon that would help a truely ranged Ranger to help maintain distance from the target. Arguably if the LB is a hard-hitting weapon, the momentary cripple would be an attribute of slamming the target harder than the SB.

Seems to me that would be a strategic-oriented adjustment rather than a straight-out damage buff, but one that could be a nice differentiator between LB and SB for those who like to use both. What do y’all think?

I think a spammable cripple on a weapon that can have 1500 range is potentially toxic for any and all PvP purposes.

How so?

I proposed a “chance” of a cripple, not a 1-for-1. Does that seem like a game-breaker?

I read over that word.

That being said, you’ll find yourself in one of a couple situations:

1) The cripple is good enough that my first reaction stands
2) The cripple is so weak that it might as well not exist
3) The percent chance turns the weapon into an RNG-fest, which can be frustrating for either party involved.

Personally, my biggest beef with the Longbow is it’s lack of flair. People say bad things about the Ranger Greatsword, but they rarely say it’s vanilla. The Longbow is vanilla. There’s no sense of it being used by a Ranger. You could take the current Longbow skills and put them on the Warrior Longbow and it would fit him fine.

Vecuu.2018:

I read over that word.

That being said, you’ll find yourself in one of a couple situations:

1) The cripple is good enough that my first reaction stands
2) The cripple is so weak that it might as well not exist
3) The percent chance turns the weapon into an RNG-fest, which can be frustrating for either party involved.

Personally, my biggest beef with the Longbow is it’s lack of flair. People say bad things about the Ranger Greatsword, but they rarely say it’s vanilla. The Longbow is vanilla. There’s no sense of it being used by a Ranger. You could take the current Longbow skills and put them on the Warrior Longbow and it would fit him fine.

What if it was an effect on the 1 attack? effect would be like “Shoot to maim” after 10 consecutive longbow shots they get crippled for 2 seconds. Then it’s not RNG, it’s not going to be up all the time, and it’ll be fairly reliable.

@Vecuu – ok, interesting thought. So how does a Ranger shoot a longbow differently than anybody else does? Assuming we set aside the stock effects like bleeds and such, what seems interesting from a nature / animal perspective that would not destroy the flavor of a longbow (i.e. not too gimmicky). Gotta ponder that one for a bit.

I agree with OP. I’ve been asking the same thing since the Beta.

Longbow 1 needs chance cripple badly. Look at the rifle, cripple has a refresh rate 3x faster than barrage and it doesn’t even have a range penalty.

If you make people operate at max range in order to get into the optimal killzone, you need to give them the means to take meaningful subsequent shots. It’s very easy to negate the max rage on the LB currently, back off slightly, gap close, or just strafe side to side, and pets are basically a non factor if you make them run to 1500 range since they’ll likely be half dead by then. There’s no way to keep people at that 1500 range to take subsequent shots.

Either add chance cripple or get ride of the range penalty.

I also find it ironic that high end longbows have conditional dmg as a bonus, when it’s completely useless unless you run Bleeding Stone or an offhand torch. How about having the conditional stat affect the frequency of the cripple and your critial stat to affect the duration of cripple?

I think if you’re going to add a cripple to LB it would have to be done with #3 or #4 skills. #3: reduce the vulnerability stacks from 10->5 and add a 1-2s cripple. Or #4 add a cripple with the knockback. Keep in mind, Barrage deals an aoe cripple, so I highly doubt this would happen.

Personally, I would rather see #4 skill change to an aoe combo-field initiator. It would add flair (as Vecuu wants) and give it more functionality other than just hitting a guy hard from a long way away. Throw in a poison field and you’ve got hard hits & reduced healing. Or a smoke field (heavy arrow hits ground hard, kicks up dust) that would let you deal blind and protect your melee buddies.

I already hit 3-4k crits with my Longbow. Vanilla or not, it’s an invaluable weapon for me.

I’d rather see it have a chance to daze/interrupt/stun, along with a crit, with the chance going up the larger the distance gets. It’s more “realistic” since the reality is that a single arrow from a long bow or crossbow could knock a person down and kill them outright on a good shot. Nothing even CLOSE to that mechanic exists anywhere in this game right now and I for one think it would be refreshing. It would definitely keep me on my toes if I knew I could get sniped and 1 or 2 shotted if I wasn’t at peak situational awareness, but it would also make wall zerging much less appealing in wvw, which is in DESPERATE need of some love from anet.

But imo the most important fixes for longbow right now is to find a way to fix the physics so blades of grass and 3" edges on keep walls don’t block targets that are clearly in line of sight and fix the side-to-side dancing hack. It makes longbow feel like a complete waste of time in pvp/wvw except for the psychological effect of barrage (when you can get it to target).

As for appeal in general, I’d like to see more situational shots available as Seras.5702 suggests. A cool-down enabled “super long shot”. AoE blind, stun, slow, poison etc. Maybe make them trait specific to keep them from being OP or something, but yeah, most of the skills for Ranger are just “meh” at the moment.

Am I the only one who has no beef with the longbow? I use shortbow/longbow and both have uses for me. Especially in PvP.

@Joey – I don’t necessarily have any beef with the longbow, but since its damage was nerfed so hard from BWE it definitely seems like it doesn’t have a whole lot going for it above other weapons. I love it in WvW, but PvE and sPvP it doesn’t feel nearly as effective as shortbow or axe.

Personally, I’d love to see Broad Head Arrow make a return. Something really punishing for hitting them, but on a huge arc. Say, a two-second daze with a 7-second cripple (5 seconds after daze wears off) with a 2x arc would be incredibly fun. Either punish people really hard for not kiting or have a great point-blank option if they can get to you.

Yes Broad Head Arrow would be nice and would help with making the LB fell more Ranger.

StevieMJH.9105:

I already hit 3-4k crits with my Longbow. Vanilla or not, it’s an invaluable weapon for me.

That is only possible with rapid fire. Even then, Poison Volley actually does way more damage, reduces healing and doesn’t require you to channel it. Longbow is just so bad a weapon that aside from the knockback/10 stacks vuln and the occasional rare situation where you barrage in WvW I would laugh at anyone using the weapon.

I think it would help in PvP. Longbow is kinda meh in PvP unless you’re standing on a tower or chasing someone and giving it a cripple would make it useful for kiting. In addition i’d like if the knockback cast time was reduced so that we can more accurately judge the position of the enemy before and after the knockback.

The only way to get serious players to actually use the longbow, is by either completely overhauling the weapon and giving it an entirely different skillset, or cranking up the damage to such near-overpowered extents that it is worth using again.

Though an important part of making it useful is getting rid of the severe range penalty.. giving it a range penalty like that, whatever else you do to this weapon, will always lock its purpose as a main weapon down to only dungeons. In pvp you always fight others at close and mid range, not at long range, and any weapon that is only useful at long ranges, will then become completely useless by default.

It also doesn’t make any sense, arrows simply don’t do more damage at greater range, they do less.. they do the most damage at closer ranges, as they haven’t lost any speed yet then. So imo the range difference should just be removed altogether so you can change the longbow to be useful as a main weapon in any situation, not just one or two. Many people don’t like the silly graphics of these small toy-like shortbows, and get totally turned off by being forced to use them if they want to be viable.

I don’t know why they overnerfed longbow like that in beta, they should have known it would become a completely useless weapon if they break it down that hard, they should have waited until a few months into the live game release.

I think the longbow should be viable in pvp for people that like going for power, and the shortbow should be viable in pvp for people that like going for condition damage. Right now the shortbow is better than the longbow with a powerbuild, and obviously better with a condition build as well.

As long as the longbow has this severe range penalty, it will never be useful for pvp even if you increase the total damage it does, because pvp never happens at 1000 range.

It would be completely unfair if a ranger could keep someone at 1000 range and kill them that way, there’s no counter for that and rangers would be overpowered. What needs to be changed is that the longbow is just as useful at close range with a powerbuild as the shortbow is useful at close range with a condition build.

Then longbow users would build skirmishing for pvp, and marksmanship for dungeons.

When I made the OP, it was not to gripe about the LB, nor to resurrect the well-beaten war of which is better, SB or LB. But like several here have echoed, the LB is designed to do its best at max range, but the reality is that targets (PVE and PVP alike) start to close after the first shot; by design the LB is at best a first-shot weapon you swap out immediately (and mind you, I have done that to get the speed boost and make the SB a gatling gun for a few seconds) – but that leaves the LB feeling more like a Sigil or something whose predominant value to many of us (admittedly not all of us) after the opening shot is to simply boost the other weapon.

I could see a short knockback, like PBS, but perhaps just a foot or so, that perhaps included an interrupt. That would certainly mesh with the “hits like a truck” imagery. It would in the very least do a bit to keep distant targets at a distance.

I could also see a bleed component, I didn’t play GW1 so I don’t know what broad head arrows were there, but as a hunter I have a lot of respect for a 4-sided razor blade doing a few hundred feet per second. If it is the heavier weapon, I’d argue it punches deeper and causes more bleeding.

Again, this isn’t a gripe thread, just trying to come up with some creative ways to bring something more to a weapon.

Graevarg.4871:

Again, this isn’t a gripe thread, just trying to come up with some creative ways to bring something more to a weapon.

People have also asked for a charge shot on the longbow in the beta. You’re rooted and the longer you hold down the key, the more powerful the shot. Not sure if Anet actually read the suggestions however.

What about keeping the first shot, and adding a chain to the first attack named split shot or something similar that applies two stacks of bleeding. That way you fill in some of the down time between longbow abilities, and justify a longer cast on ability 1. Not to mention, vulnerability and bleed seem like a good combination on a weapon such as longbow.

Just a thought.

One thing I don’t get, is why the LB and SB have the same base ranges. The longbow is used for more damage and longer shots… so why is the BASE range the same as the shortbow? I should be able to hit longer/farther than the SB without getting the LB trait…

Personally, I think the Ranger longbow and the Warrior longbow should be switched. it seems like the effects the warrior has on their longbow skills would make far more sense coming from a ranger who would attach traps to the arrows.

i disagree with the people who say longbow is sucks…actually its not…it depends on how well u put the traits and also your skill using the traps and also the pets that u use..it works well with me as i never die in fighting the group event monster even though a lot of player that die in front of me… it depend on your skill and your traits…i hardly die even never switched weapon during fight because the longbow is enough..

I’ve used the longbow enough to tell you it is worse than a shortbow (post nerf) in every situation possible. At long range you can’t even hit a moving target because the missile speed is too slow. You can’t defend a wall better in WvWvW because you have no CC and you can’t deal any significant damage unless you are fighting trash mobs.

Longbow needs a general 15% missile speed buff (+25% if you increase the range to 1500 units to compensate for the extra distance), and some kind of cc. Maybe a 3 second Daze on the knockback or vulnerability shot. Right now the dps on it is not only low, but terribly unreliable.

Anyone defending the longbow has not used it in PvP or explorable dungeons obviously. You can’t tell me that a SB ranger will lose to you using a LB. He can cripple you, daze an stun you, dodge 3 times (2 rolls+3rd ability), poison you, and inflict bleeds. You can apply vulnerability (assuming it doesn’t miss) and knockback once for a whopping 600 units. As soon as you fire Rapid fire all they have to do is dodge, break los, or even strafe at around 1000 units and make you simply miss every shot.

Hmm, if it only matters in PVP then i guess LB isn’t as useful.I love it however in PVE so eh. I normally run with LB/SB or LB/Sword .I just like to have fun i don’t much care about PVP honestly.I enjoy defending points and running off.

Maybe if from close range it crippled for 1 secound. That would be very useful. But also if they increased the range of the longbow so that it would really be a “Ranged Weapon”. There are so many tweaks that they could do! They should take advantage of them all!