Hei there!
What I’m posting now is my opinion, feel free to tell me what you think and/or why I’m right or wrong with my thoughts.
So recently I thought a bit about the general role of bows (or other ranged weapons in the terms of power, not condition damage) in this game and came to a conclusion.
Like about everybody should know ranged weapons lack in damage because of the advantage to be… yes… ranged. Less risk – less reward.
If I look at the ranger’s bows I see two weapons trying to deal decent damage but they won’t because they aren’t allowed to hit as hard as a melee weapon.
If I look at the thief’s and warrior’s bow I see two (self) support weapons working very well regardless what the other weapon slot contains.
ANet tries to make our bows dps weapons but fail at it because of their own rules. In PvE it’s acceptable but it bothers me the most in PvP/WvW. The only advantage of a ranged dps weapon here is when standing in the backline of a zerg as full zerker. Ranged dps weapons are easily counterable. Stability and gapcloers or stealth for thieves. Or just orbit the enemy to cancel his auto-attacks while keeping him in CC. Even soft CC prevents an enemy to build up distance. And even if the enemy can create a gap with the help of a specific skill – you’re at him again.
I think the recent longbow bug worked so well because we took the fury with us after swapping to a melee weapon – thus supporting ourselves. With the rules of ranged dps an actual archer using a bow as main-weapon isn’t possible. Yes, the warrior’s bow is good – not because of it’s damage but because of the gimmicks it provides: a long root, a fire field and a nice AoE blind. Kinda same goes for the thief: a high mobility spell applying blindness and a poison field. So far I’ve never seen a good warrior or thief only using the bow. And even the rifle only works fine in a full zerker setup when you manage to hit an distracted enemy. It’s just for the lulz.
As I already said, making a good dps archer isn’t possible because ANet would have to breake their rules for ranged damage. ANet should either screw this rule and give us atleast a decent burst skill that we can combine with SoH or MoC (A burst skill would work very well with remorseless – use hunter’s shot, channel the skill in stealth, land a crit from opening strike) or rework our bows to make them viable as supportive weapons.
What do you think?
