Guild Wars 2

There are no traits that buff shortbow, the attacks are really slow – even with quickness (compared to ranger’s SB skills), and it is a two handed weapon – which I use only for the fifth skill.
I don’t get why would I need a two handed “utility” weapon.
Is it viable in some way for dps?

In some ways yes, it can be used for attacking large groups because of the AA and #2/#4, but it doesn’t shine against single targets. P/P is definitely better against single targets/small groups, I’d even say better against large groups, even though it doesn’t hit multiple enemies at once. The point of the shortbow as a thief is to use #2 as a blast finisher for might, tagging enemies with the AA, having mobility with #5, and making poison fields with #4, also with a built in evade with #3. P/P is gonna serve you much better as pure ranged DPS, but shortbow brings much more utility. I’m no expert on thief so anyone can feel free to correct anything I’ve said, I’m just going on what I think.

hmm for shooting AE into a fight 2+4 is OK. I use it for mobility as alls thiefs do and somtimes open a fight with a poision field then swap.

I wish the auto-attack had the same rate of fire that the Ranger’s Shortbow has.

short bow is a strong zerging weapon for WvW even after all nerf to choking gas it still a pretty strong move.

Kageseigi.2150:

I wish the auto-attack had the same rate of fire that the Ranger’s Shortbow has.

Agreed.
Even when I face large groups of enemies i prefer using staff or d/d because they are faster and deal more damage and can hit multiple targets.
SB seem to be too clumsy for damage dealing.

Sb is very viable, that is ofc your play style suits it. I have been running sb since I started thief so I wouldn’t know what double melee sets are like and I peroannly wouldn’t run 2 anyway. Short aa ranges from 1.5-2K crits depending on the build I am facing wich I think isn’t too bad.

I have maxed out at 12k damage in SPvP with cluster bomb

SB is only good for the following things:

1) Mobility.. if you wan to move the fastest as possible from A to B, use Shortbow 6 Spam with a Build that lets you regain quickly Initiative, like Roll for Initiative being part of that

2) Group Support in regard of AoE Combo Fields for exampel to buff up quickly your group with long lasting Maximum Might Stacks or to stealth your whole group to spamming a Blast Finisher into a Blind Field

3) WvW zerging when you have no attention on you and you can spam your aoE skills safely into the enemy groups to keep groups of enemies bleeding, poisoned and to deal good DPS agaisnt an enemy group as long they stay together and you hit this way as many foes as possible at the same time.
Thus its good to force smaller enemy groups to stop stacking and spread out, so that they don’t get all hit by you.

But compared to other weapons of the thief, it feels underwhelming and not beign of equal power.
The weapon could be more powerful and useful, if it wouldnt be so heavily tied to the superior mobility this weapon gives, why its pretty much a must to use SB as thief mostly everywhere in the game.

In PvP to be able to rotate quickly enough from point to point, in PvE (Fractals/Raids/General) to travel fast enough and in WvW also to travel fast enough to Camps, or to flee fast enough

I wish the thieves Shortbow would profitate alot more from the traits of this class to enhance the weapons usage in different ways

Examples:

Panic Strike > adding to the Jump Back Skill #3 the effect of Panic Strike with a shorter ICD when usign the skill for example against targets with a little higher health threshould like 66% health instead of 50%, so that you can bind with SB foes more effectively on place, whiel evading their attacks to make kiting also a bit easier.

Dagger Training should be renamed to “Poison Mastery” and should add to ALL Thief Weapons that the thief can use the chance to add poison with AA attacks, so that shooting foes with SB’s Trick Shot should have the chance to poison with 1 shot up to 3 enemies or to poison a foe with multiple poison stacks if the bounced arrows hit the same target again and each time they poisoned the foe. Maybe with an increased chance to do so, if you shoot your arrows through your Choke Gas which poisos foes already to give this way foes alot quicker high poison stacks.

Exposed Weakness should give Shortbow increased Damage + 20%, when you hit with it enemies that have conditions to give Shortbows here a bigger damage boost than other weapons so that SB profitates more from this trait, or instead should deal shortbow attacks agaisnt foes with conditions some kind of interesting side effect, like that Trick Shots cause on foes with Conditions random additional conditions of the arrow hits the same target twice to improve this way the list of conditions you can deal with shortbow from just only bleedign and poison to all conditions, turning the SB into a full condition weapon this way through this trait.

Keen Observer, should provide a much bigger Critical % boost when using ranged weapons like Harpoon Gun, Trident, SB and Pistols and in general the trait shoudl loose this health threshold garbage that makes the whole trait just only unreliable and useless. It should add also eventualy when used with SB a unique side effect that makes it more interestign to use SB, like for example increasign the amount that SB’s AA bounces by +1, or increasign the range of ranged thief weapons from 900 to 1200, or letting thiefs with Keen Observer that use SB/Pistols become able to see stealthed enemies, when they use the weapon, before the enemy has used the stealth skills.

Ankle Shots, should simply include also Shortbows!

Meld with Shadows, could for example increase the range of SB’s #6 skill or make it cost lesser initiative or deal additional aoE damage at the location where you shadow step to that creates a darkness field or a blind fielt on target ground to make #6 more offensively useful, instead of it beign juts only a mobility skill permanently

Shadow Protector could give Shortbow #3 additionally the side effect of lettign it grant you stealth when using the skill when you jump backwards for like 3 seconds, so that SB receives a way with that you can gain directly Stealth

Expedious Dodger, could reduce for example the initiative cost of shortbow #3 by -1, while adding for the skil lthe effect of grantign Vigor when successfully evadign with the skill an attack. That way could get Feline Grace return to its original effect that was way bettr than the effect it has now

Pressure Striking > renamed to Pressure Making with changing Torment to become everyones thieves weapons AA’s additional effect to cause Torment, so that for example a trick Shot could cause to up to 3 targets a stack of Torment or to a single target multiple torment stakcis if bounced arrows hit the same target multiple times.

Havoc Mastery: could add to the SB#s #2 and 4 additionally effects to make the aoe damage skilsl of the SB cause alot more, you know.. havoc, by #2 causing instwead of Bleeding Burning to foes that are hit under a certain health threshold and increases the aoe range of #2 and the number of targets you can hit with the skill from 5 to 10
Same for #4, lettign the skil lhit more targets, have bigger range and let it cause additionally to the posion Confusion to targets, that stand longer than x seconds in the poison field, or let the choking gas interrupt foe and daze them for like 1 second when they stand longer than a second in the poison field of the choking gas.. you know, its CHOKING GAS, it makes you forcefully choke and nobody shoudl be able to fight efficiently while choking and coughing for fresh air to be able to breathe normally again, somethign I woudl expect from havoc mastery to improve the efficiency of the SB’s offensive skills

It is sad to see, that the shortbow mostly has absolutely no Trait Synergy in the game and this basically since the introduction of Traits into the game … and all of this, when the SB seriously has some great potential to get more Trait Synrgy, like you can see in my simple examples here.. maybe not exactly those kinds of suggest, but you can get a picture from it, what would be theoretically possible to add to make SB a better weaon with more trait synergie,s where traits could really effectively change also the skills of the SB and the SB’s gameplay around other thief mechanics like Boons, Stealth, Shadow Steps ect.

Somethign ,where I think the dev responsible for the thief gamepaly and balance design has never made hisself thoughts about these things

Cameron.6215:

I have maxed out at 12k damage in SPvP with cluster bomb

Let’s dissect this to the extreme. Berserker Scholar Thief running the most damage Dealing Spec of Da/CS/DD with a force Sigil and full Blood lust against let’s say an Elementailist at 45% health so the thief has executioner.

This uses perfect conditions with hitting at Max weapon Damage with every modifier available for damage against a Pure glass Ele.
(1000*2625*1.45)(2.4999*1.2*1.1*1.1*1.1*1.07*1.07*1.05)/1888=9,673.36

So 2.4k away from 12k on the lowest armor with no damage reduction modifiers factored in which are thrown around PvP like no other between Bulwark Gyro, Prot and Frost Aura.

Now even if the Assassins Signet is used it would bump that up to 11,124, again on a pure glass non meta build with every damage modifier and max Blood Lust stacks against a pure glass Ele……

Now let’s say you had full Might as well as the calculations above with Assassins Signet.

(1000*3,375*1.45)(2.4999*1.2*1.1*1.1*1.1*1.07*1.07*1.05)/1888=14,302.76

Hey look we got over the 12k in a perfect bubble with perfect conditions on a pure glass…..

Shortbow is mainly useful for stacking party stealth with pistol offhand and for mobility. If you don’t need to port up walls or stealth teammates, there’s not much other reason to take it over P/P or staff imo.

That said, the mug>detonate clusterbomb combo still works really well vs squishies (esp with air/fire sigils) and doesn’t require a target. I’ve killed more than one thief fishing for a backstab just by dodging and detonating cluster bombs on myself, and nearly one shot power mesmers with it. So it depends how you use it I guess. It also doesn’t require a lot of ini to be useful, which is a big plus point.

shortbow is quite strong weapon set it quite like s/d it had quite learning curve but once you get it you can do some very interesting results with it

Shepstar.8429:

shortbow is quite strong weapon set it quite like s/d it had quite learning curve but once you get it you can do some very interesting results with it

“I do not think it means what you think it means.”

No, it’s not really viable as a damage dealer. You run it for the mobility, period.

Yes, sometimes you’ll use it to attack things when it’s not safe to dive into melee, or because you’re locked into the set by weapon swap cooldown; or maybe you have a target at 1 health that’s just out of range and you need to just poke them down.

I’ve never had a situation where I’ve been like ’I’m going to go into that fight and fight with a shortbow’, at least not since the 6/23 patch. The weapon is just not remotely competitive at fighting, if you can’t get into melee you should find another fight to be in.

Funny thing is, that i can deal better dmg with my SB if i play condi builds: use your Skale and Spider Venoms and you can do pretty nice dmg in pvp. Not as strong as P/D but not far behind and you don’t need to be in a melee range like you have to be if you use your #3 P/D skill.
As a power weapon SB is not strong enough, neither is D/D or P/D. You just need to play these three weapon sets as condi to get max results. Also SB offers better survivability than P/D so it is worth to have it as a secondary weapon as condi d/d Thief.

Only really if you are low on cool downs and skirt around the outside of a group fight firing off AOE and AA into the middle. It’s also OK for dodging back on Skill 3 if you want to kite a bit.

The only real DPS application is using Choking Gas on downed enemies to hinder rezzing till you can get a stomp which can come in handy on points or if a +1 turns up after the fact. Outside that your better off with P/P for DPS at range. Like others have said it’s pretty much just 5, 5, 5, switch weapons.

5,5,5,4, swap ….

In WvW I find it only really useful for damage when en enemy is static. As example Guards in camps clustered it can be more efficient in a Condi build to use the AOE choking gas. In a condition build it decent for damage on people manning a ram or catapult near a gate ot wall for that same AOE field that will also damage the siege.

In a p/d sb condition build I found the SB will take out left behind siege faster then the p/d especially if it clustered and you can get multiple pieces under the AOE field.

It can work at chokepoints such as bridges in conjunction with a venom for decent AOE damage.

In a power build its usage for damage is yet more limited and your other set generally a better choice.

I would never rely on it as a main set for damage. It just too slow for the damage output.

Mapisto.2154:

There are no traits that buff shortbow, the attacks are really slow – even with quickness (compared to ranger’s SB skills), and it is a two handed weapon – which I use only for the fifth skill.
I don’t get why would I need a two handed “utility” weapon.
Is it viable in some way for dps?

Auto attack is very good in WvW zerg fights. You don’t even have to aim or pick a target.

Auto attack is also good for clearing out Mesmer clones.

Choking gas is useful at all times for nerfing the enemy’s healing.

But as a primary damage weapon, no. Mostly for softening up enemies when your gap closers are on cool down, or if there is too much AOE in a group fight and you want to plink from range a bit to soften them up.

Damage wise, shortbow is a pretty nice Aoe weapon.
Incase you combine Choking Gas and Clustering bomb you deal some remarkable aoe damage. Same when you autoattack and are facing more than one enemy.

Other than that, P/P deals more ranged single target damage.
Yet I didn’t encounter too many situations tho where you need P/P (talking about PvE).
Thief ’s main source is melee damage (D/D or staff), and if you find yourself downed much in fractals or raids, you should work at dodging / positioning yourself.

For my two cents, I would like to see an across the board increase in projectile speeds, especially on #2. . . seems like it would be fair considering our short range/speed based class style.