Guild Wars 2

Yes I know how many short bow rework suggestions there have been (lets face it, its a pretty terrible weapon right now ). But I have been thinking about the weapon for a while and interesting ways to bring it back. Id love to see a major rework of short bow; maintaining the theme of skirmishing and kiting using conditions and control but giving it some decent impact. Obviously these are very rough suggestions and would need some tweaking to be balanced. The new skills are roughly based on their previous forms but with some significant changes.

Crossfire
Fire an arrow which bleeds your target (1 stack) – if flanking the arrow fragments causing additional bleeding in an AoE (3 targets, 1 stack). Means you still get bleeds if you are not flanking but are rewarded for positioning.

Poison bolt
Fire a poisonous arrow at your target applying a toxic AoE to them which pulses poison to them and other nearby enemies (3 targets, poison combo field). This works similar to the debuff that enemies in HoT can place on you that damages nearby allies.

Quick shot
Evade backwards and fire a bouncing arrow which grants you swiftness (super speed?) for each enemy struck. also grants your pet one stack of the sharpening stone buff per enemy struck. (3 targets max). Gives you mobility in addition to the pet bleeds from crippling shot (now entangling arrow).

Entangling arrow
Fire a crippling arrow at your target which can bounce to enemies behind. if a second enemy is struck both targets are immobilized (2 targets max). This skill is based on the DH auto attack but with immobilize.

Concussive shot
Fire an explosive shot at your target which dazes them and burns enemies in a small AoE (3 targets max, daze is only on target). flanking applies stun and an additional stack of AoE burn. Also alot of people seem to want confusion on interrupt so replacing the burn with aoe confusion when interrupting the target is also an option

Would also change LoyF to suit these changes – keep the on dodge buff (maybe change it to on evade instead) but the trait now increases the AoE/bounce range of shortbow skills instead of piercing which doesn’t really work with the new skills.

Feel free to leave any comments/improvements

I would say that you have likely overbuffed the weapon.

All the skills on the weapon (or any weapon) dont need to have lots of damage, they just need to be useful. Shortbow skills 3 through 5 don’t need drastic changes, they all have good utility, and there are other things that should be fixed before they are changed. Poison volley isn’t so bad that it needs to be replaced. It is not great at long range, but poison volley is good at damaging enemies at close range, and having a close range attack on a long range weapon is not a bad thing.

The only thing that i think the shortbow needs is a buff to crossfire. The shortbow does lack consistent damage, and rather than spreading that damage over all of the skills, i would preffer that damage to be put into crossfire. Just giving the shortbow a guaranteed bleed on hit is all i would ask for on a first balance patch (and perhaps a range buff if i could be greedy).

I like it except,

quick shot. Too convoluted and not enough defensiveness in it. Thinking 2sec quickness/superspeed for ranger and pet with an evade window of 3/4sec and rollback 450. I’d almost suggest removing that silly loyf trait buff and put in, whenever you evade an attack with shortbow equipped, set a spike trap.

Another “problem” could be the aoe nature of some of the projectiles tied with the piercing trait. It would be strong and also a shortbow person would be “forced” to take the shortbow trait. Maybe remove the piercing from trait and put in attack speed? Or aoe increase on skills? Or improved flanking so that your skills requiring flanking are more lenient?

Other ideas:

Salamander.2504:

1. 2s of bleed on AA, an additional stack of 2s bleed when flanking.
2. Increase number of poison stacks to 2 per arrow, reduce poison duration by 1 s (25%).
3. Superspeed instead swiftness.
4. Immobilize instead of cripple.
5. Confusion on interrupt.

i love some of the ideas in the thread, sush as immob over cripple, perhaps immob then cripple?

But specifics aside i would really love to see the shortbow become the go to condi weapon inline with necro wells and such.

I dont think its effects are terrible as is if they got a little damage buff and more condi spread. SB1 bleed 5 targets like 2 does for example, maybe give SB2 an added burn, buff the baseline and condi damage a little.

It doesnt have to be drastic or total rework, its just needs a little love. A shortbow trap builds for condi point control would be a lot of fun if it was actually effective.