Took a couple of days to get debugging in on this. It is in fact a 40ms difference which equates to about 7% less damage when spamming 1. We made this change because it was creating some animation bugs to leave it where it was. It was also encouraging just spamming 1 which isn’t the most fun gameplay. If our data shows shortly that shortbow is now not effective we can certainly address that, but would do so by improving other skills on that weapon rather than by reintroducing the spam on 1 and the bugs that it was creating.
Something I find funny:
“It was also encouraging just spamming 1 which isn’t the most fun gameplay.”
Who dictates fun factor? I can tell you feeling kittened compared to a warrior with a rifle is certainly not very fun, and this change you implemented magnifies our differences more so.
“If our data shows shortly that shortbow is now not effective we can certainly address that, but would do so by improving other skills on that weapon rather than by reintroducing the spam on 1 and the bugs that it was creating.”
I understand that your proposing better game design, but you are willing to hurt us and analyze how hurt we are before offering improvements? The rangers have seen no real work since release and given it took 2 days to confirm what change actually took place, how long would it take for our other skills to be improved. Lets take a look at the current weapon line up rangers have:
Great Sword. No one uses this since beta test 2/3 where it was nerfed into nothingness. Its defensive nature is at odds with the fact that its melee and we can simply use ranged weapons to deal more dps from ranged (which is safer). Too little damage for the enhanced risk of being melee.
Sword. In general very meh; hard to build a strategy around it, used for snaring and keeping targets snared, but thats something rangers are very good at outside this weapon.
Longbow: Terrible attack speed, animations, and the kit in general. Damage is sub par to Warrior Rifle, never seen outside of WvW and even in WvW we only use it due to the traited 1500 range. Any ranger who has seen Engineer grenade spaming at 1500 range would gladly swap classes im sure.
SB: Every ability outside 1 does next to no damage. One relies on the pets hitting the target, which may as well never happen in PvP given our pets can barely keep up with mobile foes, let alone landing one of their painfully slow attacks or F2s.
Pets in General: Buggy, Slow, Ineffective in PvP and WvW. This is our unique mechanic, and outside tank and spank Pve they are pretty useless. Dungeons they get one shotted (even ‘tank’ pets).
So you made a change to a class that has one redeeming quality (our SB ‘1’ attack) and are now going to remain patient to see the fallout to determine next steps?
Let me ask this; wouldnt it have been a better decision as a game designer to come in here and make a post like
“Hey guys, we have identified some issues with SB #1, and are going to make changes to it, and wanted your opionion about Short Bow and what its lacking given that the dps on the auto attack might be scaled back a bit”. Then after a polite discourse and idea exchange, you would be empowered more and the players would be more content?
NOPE! THATS NOT WHAT YOU DID! Instead you ‘fixed an animation bug’ that no ranger I have talked to has ever noticed to disguise what would be an unpopular nerf to the class, and now that we basically are a terrible kitten class you are going to tell us you might review some data, which will spring the possibility for you to formulate a counter balance to the rest of our weak weapon?
If this is par the course for how you plan to introduce game changes, I may be looking elsewhere to spend my time.
is more than a 7% damage decrease for condition builds.