Guild Wars 2

Just as the title states. I know bc of the SB rate of fire it has a slightly higher dmg output, but after this patch will bringing the LB be warranted since it could potentially deal more dmg than SB or will it still be sub-optimal? Also, do you think it’ll be worth bringing?

(Edit added the last question)

no. SB > LB using LB max range damage. LB max range damage is not increasing (only minor mid-range increases), therefore no single target scenario exists where longbow is the better dps no matter how close or far you are.

You think so even with the 20% buff its getting at close range? I mean as of now the dmg SB does isn’t that much greater, 20% might make a big difference.

And LB max range beats SB dmg, I just tested it.

/heavy sigh

If Shortbow’s Crossfire is allowed it’s bleeds, it eclipses everything Long-Range Shot is capable of. As far as I’m aware, this update didn’t alter that dynamic, as it’s only about increasing the first two bonuses.

Truthfully, between this obnoxious relationship with Shortbow, Unshakeable’s -50% effect on Vulnerability, and how jarringly out of synch Long-Range Shot’s gameplay is with everything but Wubwub Tower Keeps; I am just so fed up with this weapon.

I just tested it out in HotM and LB at max range did just as much as dmg and killed the golems at the same time. (That’s allowing crossfire to bleed) At the other ranges it definitely was slower but with a 20% and 15% boost that may change. Have you guys recently tested LB since the last buffs it received or are you basing your comments on hearsay?

Even just adding frost spirit to just LB, which is about 7% increase in dmg, at mid range LB does as much dmg as the SB.

As others have said, long range always out DPS’s the shortbow even when assuming you’re flanking 100% of the time.

The changes will allow the mid range to better compete with shortbow as well and it will slightly out dps shortbow at mid range due to flanking trait and vulnerability.

At min range, shortbow still wins.

Shortbow will always be better than Longbiw in a current state when we speak about <1000 range. Keep in mind AA on LB is slow as well as projectile, when SB offers DPS with comparable or even greater damage than LB while shooting more often, having bleeds and arrows flying slightly faster. When it comes to any form of PvP, Shortbow is better because attack are performed instantly, when LB AA needs over 0.5 second to charge up, making it very easy to break the shoot when target is very close, in result slowing you down and murdering dps.

Unless you’re in a group that provides 0 boons, I doubt it since the LB forces you to be far away from your team (boons have a 600 range) or causes you to lose a ton of damage when you’re close.

Rym.1469
Shortbow will always be better than Longbiw in a current state when we speak about <1000 range. Keep in mind AA on LB is slow as well as projectile, when SB offers DPS with comparable or even greater damage than LB while shooting more often, having bleeds and arrows flying slightly faster. When it comes to any form of PvP, Shortbow is better because attack are performed instantly, when LB AA needs over 0.5 second to charge up, making it very easy to break the shoot when target is very close, in result slowing you down and murdering dps.

I’m talking about a PvE perspective. Although, I do agree with the projectile speed on LB being too slow; I think it could be very useful in PvP power builds if the attacks like Hunter’s Shot were easier to hit.

Dahkeus.8243
Unless you’re in a group that provides 0 boons, I doubt it since the LB forces you to be far away from your team (boons have a 600 range) or causes you to lose a ton of damage when you’re close.

After the update they are buffing dmg done close range and with rapid fire and vulnerability stacks I don’t see how SB how dmgs longbow. Yeah if you solely base it on AA then it does but that’s not how you use LB.

Have you guys honestly tested this out in HotM or are you just typing what you’ve read in the forums? Because SB was far superior than LB in the beginning of the game, but since some nerfs to SB and buffs to LB as of now they aren’t that far apart. With this upcoming update they maybe equals or LB may be better, and that’s coming from a PvE perspective because in PvP it’s projectile speed is still too slow.

Both have their own merits , I have been enjoying a LB trapper build as of late , so godkitten fun . Having said that , both are lacking in performance

Some math on the damage:

Shortbow without counting bleeds:
0.7692 damage coefficient/second

Long range shot currently:
1,000+ range: 0.9 damage coefficient/second
500-1,000 range: 0.65 damage coefficient/second
0-500 range: 0.5 damage coefficient/second

Long range shot after patch:
1,000+ range: 0.9 damage coefficient/second
500-1,000 range: 0.7475 damage coefficient/second
0-500 range: 0.6 damage coefficient/second

Then you have the bleeds and poison shortbow does and the vulnerability longbow does. Accounting for this, longbow does more damage at max range, while shortbow will do more damage at less than 1,000 range even after the patch.

Nice finally someone with numbers. Now did you take into account remorseless and hunter shot couples with rapid fire for 20 stacks of vulnerability? How does that affect the damage? And also you mentioned the bleed and poison on SB but failed to mention rapid fire on LB which puts out a lot of dmg. I’m curious to how this affects your data.

Peter.9406:

Nice finally someone with numbers. Now did you take into account remorseless and hunter shot couples with rapid fire for 20 stacks of vulnerability? How does that affect the damage? And also you mentioned the bleed and poison on SB but failed to mention rapid fire on LB which puts out a lot of dmg. I’m curious to how this affects your data.

Rapid Fire is worth using, but only because of the vulnerability.

Neither remorseless or hunter’s shot are worth using because the attack does less damage and interrupts your attack cycle. This will not compensate for a free crit.

Peter.9406:

Nice finally someone with numbers. Now did you take into account remorseless and hunter shot couples with rapid fire for 20 stacks of vulnerability? How does that affect the damage? And also you mentioned the bleed and poison on SB but failed to mention rapid fire on LB which puts out a lot of dmg. I’m curious to how this affects your data.

Not to mention most people when they play bows take 25 in skirm and tend to test SB flanking but don’t test LB while flanking thereby missing out on a large chunk of damage.

Atherakhia.4086
Rapid Fire is worth using, but only because of the vulnerability.
Neither remorseless or hunter’s shot are worth using because the attack does less damage and interrupts your attack cycle. This will not compensate for a free crit.

Rapid fire is LB highest DPS attack it is totally worth for more than just the vulnerability imo. I mean 5% isnt too shabby and remorseless reapplies opening strike to pet when you kill someone, so thats 10% there and if you use hunter’s shot right after a kill thats 15%.

Peter.9406:

Atherakhia.4086
Rapid Fire is worth using, but only because of the vulnerability.
Neither remorseless or hunter’s shot are worth using because the attack does less damage and interrupts your attack cycle. This will not compensate for a free crit.

Rapid fire is LB highest DPS attack it is totally worth for more than just the vulnerability imo. I mean 5% isnt too shabby and remorseless reapplies opening strike to pet when you kill someone, so thats 10% there and if you use hunter’s shot right after a kill thats 15%.

Math shows its only use is for the vulnerability. Without it the attack is not worth using. The only value in remorseless that I can imagine would be to give your jaguar 100% crit chance while in stealth for the few seconds it’s there. I’ve never run numbers on pets. I may do some tests on them this weekend just so I can QQ about ascended armor when it finally shows up.

Bri.8354:

Some math on the damage:

Shortbow without counting bleeds:
0.7692 damage coefficient/second

Long range shot currently:
1,000+ range: 0.9 damage coefficient/second
500-1,000 range: 0.65 damage coefficient/second
0-500 range: 0.5 damage coefficient/second

Long range shot after patch:
1,000+ range: 0.9 damage coefficient/second
500-1,000 range: 0.7475 damage coefficient/second
0-500 range: 0.6 damage coefficient/second

Then you have the bleeds and poison shortbow does and the vulnerability longbow does. Accounting for this, longbow does more damage at max range, while shortbow will do more damage at less than 1,000 range even after the patch.

you can evade 50% of longbow shots at 1500 range,and you only need A and D.

It’s basically AA on quickness how is it not useful aside from the vulnerability?

What Bri said. Before LB’s autoattack buff, LB at max range was about the same DPS as shortbow without flanking. Hunter’s shot applying vulnerability took long enough that the damage you lost to use it just about offset the damage you gained from the vulnerability. So SB was always better.

After LB’s autoattack buff:
SB w/ bleed > LB max range > SB w/o bleed

LB does more DPS at max range than SB without bleeds. But SB with bleeds wipes the floor with LB. SB with bleed actually comes pretty close to sword DPS against a single target, and can equal if not exceed it if you’re running a condition build (i.e. both SB and sword using the same condition build. This is excluding the pet, because sword gives the pet might and the benefit from that depends on which pet you’re using.)

As for rapid fire’s vulnerability, RF has a 14.5 sec cycle time (4.5 sec channel, 10 sec cooldown). If you calculate it straight, its coefficient/sec is 0.833 making it slightly worse than LB autoattack at max range. So using it every time it comes off cooldown drops your average coefficient/sec to

( (4.5 * 0.833) + (10 * .9) ) / 14.5 = 0.879.

The 10% vulnerability gives an average 5% bonus for RF (due to the ramp-up), 5.5 sec of 10% bonus to autoattack, followed by an average 5% bonus to autoattack for 4.5 sec (due to the ramp-down). Since autoattack fires the end of each second, this is actually 5 attacks with 10% bonus, 5 attacks with 5% bonus.

( ( 4.5 * 1.05 * .833) + (5 * 1.1 * .9) + (5 * 1.05 * .9) ) / 14.5 = 0.9387

But here’s the catch. LB autoattack is a channeled attack. If you don’t start RF the instant after autoattack finishes, you will interrupt an autoattack and waste the time it had been channeling. So the numbers we calculated above are the best case. Worst case (RF interrupts autoattack’s channel just before it would have fired), this results in the loss of the equivalent of one full autoattack. So the above numbers change to:

( ( 4.5 * 1.05 * .833) + (5 * 1.1 * .9) + (4 * 1.05 * .9) ) / 14.5 = 0.8735

Average the two to simulate a player who just hits RF any time it’s off cooldown, so it usually interrupts autoattack halfway through its channel:

( 0.9387 + 0.8735 / 2 = 0.9061

Compared to just letting autoattack fire for 0.9 coefficient/sec, spamming RF to apply vulnerability increases LB’s DPS by just 0.68% if you aren’t careful to avoid interrupting an autoattack channel. Whereas if you are careful, you can get almost a 4.3% increase in LB DPS.

Exceptions are if you’re at short or medium range, or if your pet/party will also benefit from the vulnerability. If either of those are true, spamming RF becomes worth it. For the pet in particular, if you assume a 70%/30% ranger/pet damage breakdown, the 10% vulnerability will increase the pet’s component to

( (.3 * 4.5) + (.3 * 1.1 * 10) ) / 14.5 = 32.1%

For a net ~2.6% ranger + pet DPS increase from spamming RF. Whereas if you’re careful when you hit RF you’ll see a ~5.1% increase.

Edited to correct some math.

Bri.8354:

Some math on the damage:

Shortbow without counting bleeds:
0.7692 damage coefficient/second

Long range shot currently:
1,000+ range: 0.9 damage coefficient/second
500-1,000 range: 0.65 damage coefficient/second
0-500 range: 0.5 damage coefficient/second

Long range shot after patch:
1,000+ range: 0.9 damage coefficient/second
500-1,000 range: 0.7475 damage coefficient/second
0-500 range: 0.6 damage coefficient/second

Then you have the bleeds and poison shortbow does and the vulnerability longbow does. Accounting for this, longbow does more damage at max range, while shortbow will do more damage at less than 1,000 range even after the patch.

Kind of splitting hairs between .75 and .77 coeff/sec damage dont you think? I’d say medium range is a tie. So Long bow wins at long range, tie medium, and short bow wins <500.

I like long bow, if its closer than 500 use point blank shot or pull out a sword.

And yep, vulnerability is VERY group friendly… Your pet likes it too!

Peter.9406:

Nice finally someone with numbers. Now did you take into account remorseless and hunter shot couples with rapid fire for 20 stacks of vulnerability? How does that affect the damage? And also you mentioned the bleed and poison on SB but failed to mention rapid fire on LB which puts out a lot of dmg. I’m curious to how this affects your data.

Rapid fire does 0.8333333… damage coefficient/second during its channel not counting its aftercast, startup time, or vulneribility.

I had the exact numbers of it before they lowered the windup speed on the skill but don’t have the patience right now to test it again. However you can still tell that rapid fire is better than shooting at medium range with long range shot (even after the update), is less powerful than long range shot at max range, and is more powerful than the shortbow’s auto-attack, because of how little the windup and after-cast actually affects the damage.

As for using hunter’s shot with remorseless, because of the low base damage of hunter’s shot (around half the DPS of rapid fire or long range shot not counting its aftercast) you’ll need to make up for the lost damage.

To do this, using long-range shot at max range, you’ll need to attack for at little more than 4 seconds of the 5 second vulnerability duration to break even. This basically gives your character 10% bonus damage for less than a second.

But you also have a pet which also gets the 10% damage bonus, as well as the guaranteed critical. How much benefit these things give can vary greatly based on stats and pet choice, but overall the damage benefit of using hunter’s shot with remorseless is:

10% bonus damage for less than a second for your character
A guaranteed critical hit.
10% bonus pet and ally damage for 5 seconds
Pet swiftness for 10 seconds.

Its not a really big damage bonus but is still worth using, although you’d probably be better off choosing something other than remorseless, especially if fighting champions which half vulnerability duration.

Something else to consider is that the shortbow is currently bugged (well I think it still is, I haven’t checked in a while) and only receives half the attack speed bonus from quickness, making the longbow better with Quickening Zephyr.

Kilger.5490:

Kind of splitting hairs between .75 and .77 coeff/sec damage dont you think? I’d say medium range is a tie. So Long bow wins at long range, tie medium, and short bow wins <500.

No, because except for world bosses, it’s unrealistic to think shortbow won’t apply any bleeds or poison. Even for a zerker build with food and fury (2200 power, 100% crit chance, 100% crit damage, 0 condition damage), a single bleed stack represents almost a 3% increase to SB DPS. So it’s

.75 vs .79 with one bleed stack
.75 vs .81 with two bleed stacks
.75 vs .84 with three bleed stacks
etc

Even with this build, food, and fury which completely favors longbow, shortbow with a full bleed stack slightly edges out longbow even at long range.

And yep, vulnerability is VERY group friendly… Your pet likes it too!

Yeah, whether I use SB or LB depends on the fight and group. I’m running a mostly-power build. If I’m alone and will need to do a lot of dodging around but want to stay at range, I’ll go SB. If I’m in a group, it’s a tossup between LB for vulnerability, or just straight sword for higher DPS. In general I think sword + horn 5 exceeds LB’s vulnerability in a group. So I’ll open with vulnerability while we charge the target, then it’s usually sword all the rest of the way. Maybe if I take a lot of damage I’ll jump back and use LB for vulnerability while I wait for my heal to come off cooldown, filling in extra time with barrage.

Solandri.9640:

No, because except for world bosses, it’s unrealistic to think shortbow won’t apply any bleeds or poison. Even for a zerker build with food and fury (2200 power, 100% crit chance, 100% crit damage, 0 condition damage), a single bleed stack represents almost a 3% increase to SB DPS. So it’s

.75 vs .79 with one bleed stack
.75 vs .81 with two bleed stacks
.75 vs .84 with three bleed stacks
etc

Even with this build, food, and fury which completely favors longbow, shortbow with a full bleed stack slightly edges out longbow even at long range.

But if you include bleeding/poison you have to include vulnerability, which is +10% to +20% damage (depending spec pretty easy to double stack) on longbow, since its unrealistic that someone wont use rapid fire first. I was just keeping it simple since there are too many “what ifs” that both weapons can add.

Kilger.5490:

But if you include bleeding/poison you have to include vulnerability, which is +10% to +20% damage (depending spec pretty easy to double stack) on longbow, since its unrealistic that someone wont use rapid fire first. I was just keeping it simple since there are too many “what ifs” that both weapons can add.

Read my long post above where I cover vulnerability in depth. Because of the peculiarities of LB’s autoattack and rapid fire’s damage coefficient, In practice LB vulnerability is more like an overall 2.5% increase (most of that coming from the pet). About the same as a single bleed stack.

The vulnerability from opening strike applies to both the SB and LB for equivalent builds, so can be pretty much be ignored. Stealth and remorseless adds some complexity, but I think Bri has covered the marginal usefulness.

Solandri.9640:

Read my long post above where I cover vulnerability in depth.

You’ve made way too many assumptions that either are part of the game or assume the person playing is an automaton, ie. “autoattack interrupted at 50% by channel”… usually I dont think so, my instinct is to wait for the autoshot to go off and then hit my rapidfire. Also there are many traits to keep that vulnerability well between 10-20% in reality I dont have a problem doing this.

I’d rather give the person credit for making it work effectively, then assume all these mistakes. Keep it simple, anything else can be argued infinitum and I dont have the time.

The problem behind all this math is (WvW, PvP-wise) you can not write down the utility of each weapon.

3s Stealth every 9.5 sec… thats about 30% the time stealth. (you can possibly evade 30% of direct damage)
A knockdown/interrupt with 12s cooldown

Then sb got a possible stun and evade… All these things affect the effectiveness of the weapon!

Have you guys recently tested LB since the last buffs it received or are you basing your comments on hearsay?

I do tend to do a bit of Napkin Math.
…..but I also don’t really have any good system to getting this information to the public. It’s all just my own messy note taking. I’m totally willing to share it, but I’m not really sure if it’s all that clear to other people?

If I’m sitting around in my Berserker’s gear and 30 Marksmanship, my tooltips values (which what you would expect it to do versus Heavy Armored targets) are;

LRS :
Tier1: 544 (not sure what they mean by 20% increase, best guess)
Tier2: 678 (not sure what they mean by 15% increase, best guess)
Tier3: 817

CF:
Raw: 346
With Bleed stacks; ~ 42 per second per stack
Raw 0 stacks / Poach 1-2 Stacks / Simmer 3-5 stacks / Boil 6-8 Stacks (0, 1, 4, 8 used)

LRS takes 1 second, CF is a little over half a second but admittedly difficult to time. Will trust Wiki’s .54 until I can come up with a better way to double check it.

Over a 30 second stretch:

You fire 30 LRS’s:
Tier1 Raw: 16320
Tier2 Raw: 20340
Tier3 Raw: 24510

You fire 55 CF’s:
Raw 19030
with Bleed stacks: Poach 20290 / Simmer 24070 / Boil 29110
Going from Raw -> Boil you lose ~504 give or take; will happen at least once at the start

Hypothesis;
Simmer CF > T2 Raw LRS
T3 Raw LRS > Simmer CF
Boil CF > Everything
Even taking it’s Raw-> Boil at the start into account

Over a 30 second stretch adding Rapid Fire:

LRS with RF Vulnerability stacks;
Raw 0 stacks / Poach 1-3 Stack / Simmer 4-6 stacks / Boil 7-10 Stacks (0, 1, 5, 10 used)
Tier1: Poach ~549 / Simmer ~ 571 / Boil ~598
Tier2: Poach ~684 / Simmer ~711 / Boil ~745
Tier3: Poach ~825 / Simmer ~857 / Boil ~898

RF Raw: 3580
RF going Raw -> Boil with it’s own stacks: ~3718
RF With Vulnerability stacks: Poach ~3615 / Simmer ~3759 / Boil ~3938

Over 30 seconds:
(Raw -> Boil RF + 9 Boil LRS + 1 Simmer LRS + Simmer RF + 9 Boil LRS + 1 Simmer LRS)
= Tier 1: 3718 + 5382 + 571 + 3759 + 5382 + 571 = 19383
= Tier 2: 3718 + 6705 + 711 + 3759 + 6705 + 711 = 22309
= Tier 3: 3718 + 8082 + 825 + 3759 + 8082 + 825 = 25291

Hypothesis;
Adding Rapid Fire into the mix certainly helps…
But, still; Boil CF > Everything
Especially since any benefit here is undermined by Unshakeable’s -50% vulnerability duration getting into the picture.

All of my hate, Longbow.
All of my hate.

Vox Hollow.2736:

excellent math.

Peter, no matter how much you love longbow, shortbow will do more damage regardless of the range as long as you flank (and why wouldnt you?). (Shortbow at 900 while flanking) > (longbow at 1500 while flanking with vuln stacks).

Thats really all there is to it. The patch isnt going to effect longbows max potential at all.

In either case, in pve, from a pure damage min/max perspective, a ranger who isnt using 1h sword is holding back his team.

Kilger.5490:

Solandri.9640:

Read my long post above where I cover vulnerability in depth.

You’ve made way too many assumptions that either are part of the game or assume the person playing is an automaton, ie. “autoattack interrupted at 50% by channel”… usually I dont think so, my instinct is to wait for the autoshot to go off and then hit my rapidfire.

I made no judgements about your particular skill level. I gave the min and max as well as the average, so feel free to use the max if you think you’re that skilled. I simply used the 50% case for my full calcs because I really doubt most players realize they lose DPS by interrupting autoattack’s channel. Or they realize it but don’t think it makes that big a difference, certainly not the ~7% difference it can create in the min vs max case.

I should point out however that network latency makes hitting the max extremely unlikely; and the closer you push it to hitting the max, the more likely you are to miss-time it and end up with the min (i.e. RF triggers just before autoattack would fire).

Also there are many traits to keep that vulnerability well between 10-20% in reality I dont have a problem doing this.

Again, all other things being equal the additional vulnerability will be available with both weapons, so the difference will be minor. LB benefits slightly more from vulnerability at long rage due to its 0.9 coefficient vs 0.77. 10% of that difference is 0.013, or 1.44% advantage for LB at long range.

At medium range, SB actually benefits more from additional vulnerability because its base damage coefficient is slightly higher (.77 vs .7475 after Dec 10). So if you’re getting vulnerability from sources other than LB#2, that vulnerability actually helps SB more than it does LB. But as with the max range case, the difference is very minor (0.23% advantage for SB at medium range). If you spam RF on LB (as you should), it raises LB’s average base coeff/s 0.774. That’s the same as for SB, so any vulnerability available to both weapons simply doesn’t make a difference at this range.

I came back to post in this thread again because I forgot RF should be used at medium range with LB for its higher damage coefficient. If you include it, the coeff/sec for LB at medium range (after Dec 10) with both RF’s damage and 10% vulnerability included becomes:

min/avg/max = 0.7715 / 0.7986 / 0.8256

So it helps a little, but on average it’s still the about equal to SB + 1 bleed stack, and in the best case it’s just a little better than SB + 2 bleed stacks. Once you get to the 5-6 bleed stacks which are typical, SB wins handily at medium range.

(Barrage is an entirely different beast. If the target stays in the barrage circle the full duration, it’s a huge boost to LB DPS (adds 0.16 to coeff/s). But if the target rolls out quickly it can actually decrease LB DPS (lose up to 0.08 to coeff/s). So use it if you think the target will stay in place, save it if you think they’ll move out of the circle. And of course use it if you can hit multiple targets.)

Edit: And lest you think I’m biased, I usually use LB because it’s our only land weapon with an autoattack over 900 range. For me the additional range outweighs the higher DPS of shortbow.

The problem is that bows are not supported well via traits or utilities . Traps are too niche at the moment and the traits are all over the place. For example , warrior rifle trait gives both 20% cooldown and piercing shots . Compress some traits and boost traps to be usable with power builds ( high damage component on spike trap for example , weakness on poison or frost trap… ) and you got yourself a variety of well flowing options to keep enemies at bay

Wow this post blew up while I was gone. First, of I’m not an advocate of LB I’m just deciding if it’ll be worth it after the patch and playing devil’s advocate for the sake of a fair argument. Second, I’m getting mixed reviews from everyone people start off with SB is better but then say that LB has more dmg when it comes to scenarios when barrage and rapid fire are successful? So am I right to assume that LB is better in PvE if the skills fire off successfully?

Peter.9406:

Wow this post blew up while I was gone. First, of I’m not an advocate of LB I’m just deciding if it’ll be worth it after the patch and playing devil’s advocate for the sake of a fair argument. Second, I’m getting mixed reviews from everyone people start off with SB is better but then say that LB has more dmg when it comes to scenarios when barrage and rapid fire are successful? So am I right to assume that LB is better in PvE if the skills fire off successfully?

Well when fully comparing the two, it really depends what you are looking for.

The shortbow is a good primary weapon, can make effective use of piercing arrows to hit multiple targets, has an evade, and is good with both conditions and physical damage.

The longbow on the other hand is a great secondary weapon, being able to use barrage (which is also a great AoE) and rapid fire then being able to switch back to another weapon. As a primary weapon it has difficulty because of the distance requirement for damage, which also makes it harder to line up targets for piercing arrows. It also gets a great knockback skill and stealth which can often be useful.

When choosing which one is better it all depends on what you are looking for. Personally I find the longbow to compliment axe/axe or sword/axe better than the shortbow, but if you’re using a condition build with something like axe/torch, the shortbow is a better choice.

Well, I don’t want to give you the wrong impression, Peter.

I didn’t neglect Barrage because it’s damage potential is in any way bad,
but just because I’m still running it’s math myself. (All the tiers, possible numbers of enemies, and unshakeable is a friggin’ slog).

But I did get far enough to be able to hypothesize that when talking fighting Multiple Normal* Mobs, Barrage being AOE does help Longbow edge out Shortbow. Specifically vs. 2 mobs when you’re standing at Tier 2 range, and vs. 3 mobs at any range. And this is true if you use Rapid Fire before Barrage, or if you use Barrage before Rapid Fire.

However, when you’re fighting against one enemy, Shortbow with bleeds will beat out Longbow any which way I can imagine to calculate.

*mobs without Unshakeable

Longbow is very positional , its use is primarily in Zergs to tag for bags an in JP puzzle fights . Oh the fun i am having as longbow trapper in EB JP… O M G

I can’t argue the merits of longbow in PvE. Mainly because it’s PvE and I don’t think you can be unsuccessful in PvE unless you are genuinely trying to fail, because it takes more effort to be bad at PvE than to succeed (this obviously is implying open world, and not instanced, content).

As far as PvP/WvW though, it has it’s situation and it’s uses. My biggest personal use for it is in my power build. Plucking people for 2k hits at 1500 range to try to draw them in closer. I keep chipping them away with Rapid Fire and Autoattacks around the 1.5-2k area, and when they finally get too close after kiting them and playing keep away with LB 3 and 4, I switch to my sword and generally, most people are so low that either the sword kills them or scares them away. I sword 2 back into my LB if I need to, but generally, most people either die before I ever even switch to my sword, or they die to my sword.

Otherwise, it’s sword 2 back, LB 4 to create the biggest range gap possible, then continue the process of chipping away.

Shortbow just can’t do this because of it’s 900 range. At 900 range, most classes can close in on you too fast, and the shortbow is meant to be more of a short range skirmishing weapon to begin with, which means I lose out on my long range utility, something that I feel power builds most desperately need in WvW (unless they have healing power); range.

if u guys want dps use short sword and horn. forget range attacks. in this game range is always weaker

Solandri.9640:

Again, all other things being equal the additional vulnerability will be available with both weapons, so the difference will be minor. LB benefits slightly more from vulnerability at long rage due to its 0.9 coefficient vs 0.77. 10% of that difference is 0.013, or 1.44% advantage for LB at long range.

There is first strike, but I actually meant the way +40% duration and quick draw cd reduction can keep those vulnerability stacks rolled over through the next rapidfire giving you an extra bump.

Rym.1469:

When it comes to any form of PvP, Shortbow is better because attack are performed instantly, when LB AA needs over 0.5 second to charge up, making it very easy to break the shoot when target is very close, in result slowing you down and murdering dps.

Sure, shortbow’s damage is more sustained but rapid fire is the best spike skill between both bows and the longbow has an awful lot of utility to help create distance. It’s also a hell of a lot more useful in WvW due to open spaces and keep walls. I actually prefer longbow all around to shortbow in any form of PvP due to the nerf to shortbow’s range… and I see a lot more rangers using it as well.

LB is not better than SB in PVE. First off in dungeons, you rarely will have the distance needed for max dmg. Second, if you do get max range, then you will be out of range to receive group buffs or give spotter to your group. As for mid range dmg boost overtaking SB bleeds/flanking, nope. And honestly, if you are using any bow in dungeons as your main source of dmg, you are wasting your groups time. 1h sword/x is the way to go. I have both Dreamer and Kudzu on my ranger but my main weapon set is ascended 1h sword and dagger. I usually run SB in dungeons though as my secondary set if I mess up a dodge or evade and need to regen HP but still want to do dps. I will then switch to SB and flank till I regen some. LB was kind of a catastrophe to begin with in PVE and instead of bringing it up to what SB used to be, they just dumbed down SB to LB level thus more or less ruining ranged dmg period.