Guild Wars 2

I was wandering what exactly the role of the shortbow is. I always thought of it as a medium range condi weapon. However the 2 skill suggest to use it more in a close range situation. Since a lot of it’s damage lies in the skill 2 it basicly wants you to stick to the enemy. Same as with the axe.
Axe/torch is also a short range condi weapon but outperforms the sb damage wise a lot. I know the sb has more defensive stuff on it but the damage difference is just huge.

I am mostly a pve player an have no idea why you should pick the shortbow there the axe/torch is just plain better in pve. Am I missing something? A suggestion from me would be to differentiate the sb and axe/torch more by changing the shortbow 2 to be a more medium range attack and thus giving the ranger acces to a prober ranged condi weapon.

What do you think about the role of the shortbow and where it should be?

should get changes so it can go back to what it was made for Medium range Hit and run tactics by being fast and maneuverable , the problem back then was anet put so much entwined utility into making SB viable its core abilities got screwed over and as the condi cleansing ramped up with additional healing the SB is now showing its bones rather than its age.

it need a overhall to match the skills in heart of thorns let alone heart of fire .

SB needs the Flanking as standard to add 1 extra bleed in addition to a straight up bleed +1 or changing into a three chain attack , 1.5sec bleed > 0.75sec cripple + damage if flanking > 3rd Damage + damage on flank with extra 1.5 second bleed chain takes total 0.75-1second or 0.20-0.30 per attack in the chain to finish a rapid 3 attacks (taking into consideration of the quickness access this will mean 4 bleeds per chain 2 carry over upto the third full chain rotations meaning a total of 8 bleeds will be maintained on basic condi duration) well alone those lines but to get that extra bleed and damage with projectile finisher(3rd in chain must flank) you still need to flank.

this is where the maneuverable part comes in rather than rely on utility and traits unlike other mobile weapon specs ranger alone doesn’t have enough mobile utility to pib around with without longish cooldowns and i don’t really want to see lighting reflexes cooldown lowered again ect to keep up with power creep by adding more evades ect.

so for SB it needs superspeed on 3 and a mechanic change so it jumps in the direction of your Keypresses W forward , S back ect giving it much more control in addition also trigger your pets next attack to cripple or cause bleed (so there is not as much reliance on bleed traits or sharpening stones or entangle utility slots to maintain any substansail bleeds when AA is stopped)

the last point is SB needs its own High damage attack or High spread AOE changing volly shot to apply 5 poison fields upon hitting the target (limited to one per target so 5 seperate targets will be needed for the overlapping poison fields lets say the fields last for 1.5-2seconds , projectiles will act as normal in poison fields the AA’s will apply poison on the SB AA 3rd in chain all this focuses on SB’kitten and run tactics get close move around , the change of mechanic to SB 3 with the W,A,S,D jump (rather than straight back) will boost its mobility massively allowing it to go back to what it was made for.

the poison field on volly shot will give it some AOE potentional with poison master (going down the druid,skirmishing,wilderness line since the suggestions above will free up a utility slot or two for glyphs.

anyhow i am horrid at making a statement , it looks a mess hope peeps understand it.

Short bow deals more Damage as axe / torch right equipped / traited

Flank enemies and you get longer and more Bleeds

The shortbow is a mobile medium range sustained condition damage weapon, primarily for fighting single targets (but can be traited for piercing). This is opposed to mainhand axe which is a close/medium range spike based condi weapon, which is better against multiple opponents, especially when comparing traited variants of both weapons.

There is a decent argument for both weapons being hybrid weapons, but the hybrid title definitely fits axe better.

I would adore if Shortbow’s poison volley was replaced with another poison inflicting skill effective against multiple opponents, but Thieves’ shortbow and our own Longbow’s volley doesn’t leave us many options.