Stronger bowstrings, what the hell? Lots of us have known about this issue for a loooooooooooooong time and I figured “Hey, everything was looked at and touched up, huge patch, yada, yada. Maybe that one skill I might swap in during sieges in WvW was actually made useful.” Sure, I didn’t expect Rush to work properly cuz… Anet and animation/pathing bugs… but in this huge trait overhaul this MUST be something they finally went in and took an entire 30 seconds to fix right? It’s really just an issue of copy/paste… So into my traits I go, glance over my lbow skill tooltips, swap in stronger bowstrings, and immediately my palm seemed to block my vision…
Now for those of you who don’t know what I’m referring to, the 1-4 skills on the lbow read differently when you switch in/out of stronger bowstrings, and I’m not just talking about the range number.
Dual Shot – damage value drops 6.6666% and changes to 100% projectile finisher chance
Fan of Fire – the burn switches to read 2 seconds but only ONE burn across three shots? how? o.O (the little 3 on the burn condition disappears) and changes to projectile finisher
Arcing Arrow – damage value drops ~38.25%
Smoldering Arrow – damage value doubles but radius disappears
Pin down actually reads exactly the same.
(while reading the skills naked in spvp with a steady weapon)
Now this text was always waaaaay off for a while and all I could remember actually being off was the damage on the auto attack dropped if you traited range. Text is NOT a huge issue, but actual mechanics and damage are.
Having SOME faith in Anet, I eventually dragged myself into the mists, grabbed a steady longbow, stripped off my armor and amulet, reset my traits to 0/0/0/10/0, and headed off to the dps trial golems. Lots of running away from golems and swapping in/out stronger bowstrings later and we have…
Aspects tested
-AoE of smoldering/penetration of pin down (mass of heavy golems)
-combo finishers on dual shot and fan of fire (healing surge/berserker’s stance -> my own f1 -> firing off at nothing)
-burn applied by fan of fire (# of ticks w/single arrow or all 3 striking a single target)
-actual direct damage of each skill (non-crit)
Results
Smoldering/Pin down
AoE and arrow penetration both working, condition durations appear to be the same
Combo Finishers on Dual/Fan
Untraited – rare on dual shot, never on fan of fire
Traited – always on every shot of both
Burn Application from fan of fire
Both traited and untraited applied 1 burn tick per arrow hitting target
Direct Damage values of every skill
http://i.imgur.com/QAfrCyX.jpg
TLDR
Damage on 1 and 4 skill randomly change, distances do appear to work.
