Guild Wars 2

StickerHappy.8052:

Sorry for the necro but just curious, the sigil of earth on wh, how much does it help?

Hunter’s Call lasts about 4 seconds which means you can get 2 stacks from the sigil, at best.

Anyway, bleeding hearts build is about pumping out bleeding at an insane rate and thus I think this build is preferred:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNUQNBMhVakQlWWrZxhFqWDIIULDg5tdNkCtAzEoCK4RC-TlTAABYoE0PNMKcgAES9nc0DMjmAAOCAHb+5iDBwDHgAOOBAe8AA6Z/hoU+RKAIWDA-w

Shortbow has higher rate of fire and you can easily bleed-bomb your enemy with poison valley + sharp. stone. Make sure your opponent has at least 3 conditions before using entangle and it will really hurt.

When fighting against thieves, use entangle when they shadow refugee. For mesmers it can be quite good if you can hit 5 targets (clones or mesmer) because the vines can re-immobilise anyone that walks into them.

(Edit: Btw, this build has double bleeding duration)
(Edit2: The sigil of agony can be changed to something else because currently it gives 20% wasted duration. Or you could take the trait points from MM and dump it into BM for might/vigor, or something else to increase your own survival, like evasive purity)

Prysin.8542:

solrik.6028:

How the hell did you get 2176 condition damage?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJAsPEATAaTwpJA-T1xCABAcCAEa/hjfAAAqHwT1fSUJYWK/CAgAMzyMAGv4Fv4Fv4ZmzcmzcmzsUAQMNC-w

just add a few more condition infusions and you’ll get it…. it’s not hard…

WvW stacks + borderland Bloodlust + Corruption stacks can add to this making max condition damage stat somewhere close to 2600 or so at max….

Oh right! The dire set! Forgot about that one. Haven’t played WvW in a while becuase I’m mostly PvPing where such high condi dmg can’t be achieved

How the hell did you get 2176 condition damage?

@Vinceftw

RF is just like Kill Shot.
Kill Shot is a surprise attack, works wonders when you shoot someone who is occupied with something else.
Same goes for RF.

Any zerkbow ranger can be quickly killed because they have at max 1 stun breaker and that’s LR. I don’t even have to switch weapons because it’s enough to just time a knockdown (pet) and then Crippling Talon -> Serpent’s Strike -> Winter’s Bite -> SplitBlade -> Entangle. They won’t be able to escape because they either dodged 2 times to evade the first 2 or 3 skills or if they dodges entangle then they will be killed from what came before it.

Anyhow, whenever there is a group fight and I see arrows fly I immediately target the ranger and make him poop his pants.

Edit: Thieve’s aren’t any different, they can stealth, teleport to you for a backstab and teleport back. <— Very difficult to foresee

With rangers, the only thing you may have to use dodges for is RF, pet knockdown and/or PBS and those are very predictable.

Alright, but all that is canceled when you realise that GW2 actually works like a hack’n’slash game in the context of projectiles and slashes. Projectiles are simulated as projectiles and slashes hit when they ‘hit’ so to say.

In many (read: many) MMORPGs (including new ones) like ArcheAge, your attacks will hit if you can use them. A charge attack that closes the gap would hit if you are in range, can use a skill, but there is a table in front of you that blocks you. When the skill is used, you will inflict damage but haven’t closed the gap because the table stopped the movement.

Rym.1469:

solrik.6028:

Rym.1469:

There’s no strafe kiting/180 shot angle

There is strafe kiting with 180 degrees shot angle.

You mean, running in the circle with reduced movement speed? There’s no 180 degree straight kiting. Just trust me. Feel free to check out old Brang’s “How to” video on YouTube.

If I’m so wrong, tell me what “Strafe” is and also tell me what “180 angle” is.

Traps!

Change spike trap into a 3 seconds duration trap that applies 1 second cripple each second and 2 stacks of 5 seconds bleed each second.

After that change, we have 4 traps of which all have a duration.
Remove the 100% extra duration from Trap Potency and make it default.

After those changes, we have a GM trait “Trap Potency” that only reduces recharge on traps.

There’s the place where group support can be added.
Trap Potency:
Each trap receives a specific supportive property in addition to a common one.

Flame Trap: Pulses grant Vigor to allies.
Viper’s Nest: Pulses grant Regeneration to allies.
Spike Trap: Pulses grant Protection to allies.
Frost Trap: Pulses grant Retaliation to allies.
All traps: Traps cleanse 1 condition when triggered.

Might seem OP at first, but it is not. The ranger either has to be in melee and fight to gain the extra supportive effects or support allies by throwing the traps into the fight from range, but then the ranger wouldn’t have any condition cleanse or extra boons.

I tried to go for the boons that are the opposite of the conditions, but I had to keep the “everyone benefits” style of it. Everyone benefits from those 4 boons. A bunker might not gain noticable benefit from “Fury” instead of “Protection” and “Fury” is also more offensive than the others.
The traps are ordered in increasing cooldown lengths, which means vigor comes much more often than retaliation.

If it proves to be too powerful, the conditions for applying the boons can be changed to “…if there is at least one ally and one foe affected by the pulse” which would reduce the amount of pulses that apply boons. Also, a change like that would also create a distinct difference between low- and high-level play.
Low-level as in “average” players just continues fighting in the traps and
High-level as in “skilled” players will think “oh kitten gotta get out of the traps”

Rym.1469:

There’s no strafe kiting/180 shot angle

There is strafe kiting with 180 degrees shot angle.

The word nerf, which refers to a change to an ability or game mechanic that makes said content weaker, originates from when archers were nerfed in ultimate online.

The archers were too powerful, so their bows got a balance update which made them weaker. In fact, it made them so weak that they hit like noodle or like foam.

People started saying “archers got nerfed” because their bow attacks were so weak that they started calling it a “nerf” because the (physical) Nerf branded toy guns shoot foam bullets which are not likely to cause serious injury.

This actually means we have the more right to say nerf because we have 2 type of bows we can use.

Kthxbye

Kravick.4906:

The biggest thing holding back shortbow on ranger is the conditional bleed application. If it didn’t have the stupid flanking requirement, you’d see more people using shortbow with condition builds.

And then it would get nerfed because 15-20 constant bleed stacks from an auto-attack is too OP, not counting pet or other factors…

The thing holding axe main hand back is the fact its auto attack does pathetic damage. The auto attack needs to be buffed. Its also a weapon that doesn’t know what it wants to be. Is it a condition weapon? Is it a power weapon? It sure as heck isn’t a utility weapon. Both stats scale horribly with this weapon. The number two skill is horribly designed. In order to effectively use Splitblade, you have to be standing at point blank range for all the projectiles to hit. So its a ranged weapon that… requires melee range to use properly?
It is a conditions weapon. The auto-attack is not meant to damage your opponent, it can be used to generate might stacks in order to make your splitblade hard-hitting. And yeah, splitblade is a melee range skill but no one forces you to ONLY use axe

Right… Winter’s Bite. Eh, I don’t know what to think about this skill. Its pretty underwhelming. First, the projectile is so slow, good luck ever landing the skill on anything other than at point blank range. Second, the attached pet component is incredibly badly designed (all attached pet components on ranger weapons are bad design, IMO). Good luck having your pet actually land an attack since they are completely incapable of attacking while moving at the same time. Personally, I think 3 seconds of chill isn’t enough. Should be 4 seconds baseline. The projectile speed of Winter’s Bite needs to be improved as well.
There is nothing wrong with the speed. Throw it, and it tracks your opponent. The only way to miss it is if your enemy evades, blocks or the like, granted you’re in range when using the skill. The 3 second chill makes your enemy very slow, which allows the pet to attack him and inflict 10 seconds of weakness. Oh and by the way, weakness totally gimps any power build and it’s a 100% up-time.

Sword main hand, this is an obvious fix. Remove the stupid leap component on auto attack and more people will start using it. The fact the auto attack locks you out of being able to dodge is a no brainer. It is the main reason I refuse to use the weapon on my ranger. I have no problems with how the other two abilities on sword main hand work. They’re great and I love them. The auto attack leap is the only reason I refuse to use this weapon. NO ONE should need to turn off their auto attack to effectively use a weapon. Spamming one button over and over again to circumvent a poorly designed game mechanic is not an excuse for having a poorly designed game mechanic.
It’s possible to turn of the automatic attacking which can take you to new heights. Sword has a very high skill step which is hard to overcome. The basic attack can be used to escape pretty kitten far (faster than thieves can) or let’s you stick on your opponent when they are fleeing. It is still possible to effectively use the weapon even with auto-attack on if one learns when it is possible to dodge.

Greatsword. The auto attack needs to do more damage. Its just bad. Rangers have no good melee weapons. Sword auto gets you killed, greatsword auto does pathetic damage. The other abilities are fine on this weapon set, I think.
You get 2 seconds of evade on GS and you want it to deal more damage… Would it deal more damage, anet would have to nerf other parts of it.

Also, since we’re on the subject of rangers, devourer pets as a whole are useless. Do less damage than spiders, and their F2 skills offer nothing to compensate for the lack of damage. This is a real shame, because I love the concept of devourer pets.
I agree with this. Rending Barbs should be faster and have a cooldown of 20 seconds. The other two are just bad. Every pet skill that makes an AoE circle is bad because it’s not immediate (but they do work when holding a point in pvp, though).

Replied in bold

Still, “we” are not as many as the zerkbows. I see about 1 of 5 rangers that don’t use zerkbow.

Shortbow should get a little buff, not in terms of damage but improvements of what it is now. Like the ones in “Shortbow Rework Suggestion” thread.

The problem right now is that if I want to play a power build then I would have to use GS with Sword or LB to have range. Most of our weapons are condition oriented and sword does poor damage in pvp because it’s used to evades. Sure, shortbow is hybrid but it can’t do without conditions.

Add mace or dagger main-hand. Or btter that that, swod off-hand and dagger main-hand.

Well the problem here is that Anet gave in to the “average” pvp’er cries. That’s okay, because most players are “average”.

I’m okay with it to be honest, but the whole change is because people can’t predict it when getting in close or slot a stun breaker. That doesn’t surprise me by much because I’ve had people calling me a stupid longbow noob while using a/d and s/t.

I don’t mind as long as it’s not changed to an absurd long cast time.

There is one thing I don’t like, though;
Necro – Grasp (#1 skill on your staff) – Velocity of the projectile increased by 50% so players no longer escape from it when you cast it at max range

Now I’m asking “Why could you not do that with longbow’s Long Range Shot?”

Sooooo,
let’s talk greatsword!

The problem which people often face is that GS has very telegraphed skills. Maul is like a sign saying “I ATTACK NOW, YOU SHOULD DODGE!” and block is “Please hit me so I can try to kick you”

This results in 90% of mauls failing to hit (and a lot of statistics are made up when written). Workaround for this? Set it up with the block/hilt bash. The problem with that? It is too obvious about what you are trying to do.

But let’s look at the opposite. What is bad with maul? It is easily evaded. Opposite of that: What is good with maul? It is easily evaded.

Maul can be used to trigger dodge rolls & other evasion skills, often enough to make maul hit without setting it up.

There is a little trick with Maul that barely anyone uses and it’s called “Skill canceling”. When using Maul, it’s CD begins when the channel finishes. In order to make maul (almost) spammable, bind a key to “Stow weapon”. Now whenever you want to bait an evade just press maul and stow weapon right after. The bear spirit will slam down on your opponent but it will deal no damage. Maul goes on a 3 second cooldown (because canceling it counts as an interrupt). That’s all… figure out the rest. There are more skills which behave like this

PS.: Brace yourself, people will call you a hacker!

I can see this build failing against zerkbow rangers and high damage ranged enemies in general…

Edit:
Sword has one leap finisher.
Swoop counts as 2 leap finishers; first is the running part, second is the jumping part
It is possible to get a lot of healing with Sword, GS, Leeching sigils and Warhorn.

Whaw, at least explain why -_-

jcavlopes.1736:

I have been playing a condi ranger and been using the shortbow AA to stack bleeds. But for a long while, I’ve been noticing i am not stacking that many bleeds. I just went to try the skill on the golems, and many AA hits dont stack the bleed. Sometimes, it goes to the absurd of not stacking a single bleed for a long time.

Is this a know issue? Or am i doing something wrong? Im pretty sure this is a very bad annoying bug.

Read the tooltip of “Crossfire”:
Fire an arrow. Bleed your target if you hit them from behind or from the side.

OrangeMarmalade.6147:

NVM I’m rolling Celestial Engineer until they fix the shortbow for ranger, I hate having to go bleed build just because I like the shortbow. Call me when Ranger’s are not worse at ranging than warriors with a bow equipped.

Exactly what do you want shortbow to do?

Be a power based weapon?
Be a bleed weapon by default?
What is it?

We’ve had 3 people trying to discuss but they all got “no” back.

You are welcome to only use LB for PvE (or any mode in fact), but there are skilled players who use it in both PvP and/or WvW and it works for them.

Shortbow is a very good hybrid weapon which works well even with a celestial build. It’s fast fire rate can trigger “chance” things like sigils and traits very reliably.

There is not much to say other than what I and others’ve already said

jcbroe.4329:

solrik.6028:

jcbroe.4329:

…

Ha, so backstab is even easier to land than I thought…
Gonna change concussion shot…

Concussion shot changed

Yeah, attack a golem in PvP from the front and then slowly start to circle around it, and the moment when bleeds start to stack is the moment that you are now within “backstab bonus” range, or in our case, for flanking effects on Crossfire and Concussion shot and etc range lol.

What do you think about the other changes?

On-topic:
Most people’s builds are not oriented towards cleansing as many conditions as possible. Eg warriors tend to stand in the immobilise rather than cleansing it, while guardians are almost impossible to catch immobilised for more than 1 second and thieves are not even worth mentioning.

Also if you say that stunbreak breaks immobilise without saying “Stunbreaks that also cure immobilise” then how am I supposed to assume that you were referring to the latter?

I like it when people cleanse my bleeds from my shortbow, because I will just keep reapplying it and when they cleanse, they give me a chance to go in with my 12 seconds immobilise and they are just standing in it getting shot by me.

Instead of thinking that your “only damage option” is cleansed, think about how it can benefit you. Starting with sharpening stone, you can start the fight with a bleed spike which will obviously get cleansed right away, but then you can continue CCing your opponent with cripple, poison, immobilise and perhaps even use entangle.

How viable shortbow is can vary for different people. Some think that one must spec for as much bleed as possible, while on the other hand I think that too much bleed is bad because I can’t do anything else then. What do I do instead? Invest in pet condition duration or someone else that benefits me more.

Everyone experience fights differently; for some, it all seems to happen very quick but they win because they got good reflexes or lose because they don’t have time to react. For me, a fight feels like slow motion in comparison to how it feels when I play at night. Early in the day, I use everything in time and wonder why people are such noobs today but at a late night I tend to use my healing skill too late or use a stun breaker the moment stun expires.

Longbow got into PvP because for one, barrage casting time was reduced and second, rapid fire has a faster casting time now. These changes allow players to utilise 2 skills much better. For example, you can stealth and then use Barrage on yourself. People will think twice before walking into a barrage that deals 1k per second and cripples. Rapid Fire itself has a higher DPS while channeling, but still deals the same total damage. It deals more damage than LRS now because of it’s higher rate of fire.
Longbow is part of PvP now because ALL skills can be used for a reason. Pre-patch the only useful skills for it were LRS, Stealth and PBS.
Longbow have also been buffed in PvE too.

Play whatever you like because there is no one here that will or can force you to do the opposite.

A “though”:
I’m unsure of why you had to write “I’m getting very frustrated as I’m a loyal customer.”, because it is totally unnecessary.

Prysin.8542:

no, they never had global CD, even before BM nerf. They always had same CD. Only Jelly F2 has had issues with shared CD if my memory serves me right

This is like when I realised how babies are made

I like how everyone is talking about blackline, frontline, midline and such as if it was a real war on earth. Sadly, zergs are only blobs of players that can move through eachother and thus exploit the ability to stack on the commander. This leads to 2 blobs running through eachother, trying to deal as much damage as possible.

Like 2 cavalry units who can charge very well but are kitten when it comes to fighting face-to-face. Those 2 units keep doing hit-and-run on eachother until one flees or is wiped…

Wow, my original post is gone.

I am pretty sure I couldn’t use 2 dogs before for 2 knockdowns, but I don’t remember any tests, though.

I’m very picky with which pets I take and I do remember I never took 2 pets from the same family (eg 2 canines) because their skills had global cooldowns, almost as if they were tied to the ranger, as if the ranger used their skills.

jcbroe.4329:

…

Ha, so backstab is even easier to land than I thought…
Gonna change concussion shot…

Concussion shot changed

I’m not going to participate much more in this because I realised how awful I am when playing late in comparison to how well everything goes early in the day

Most people are also online very late and I’m not a late type of person!

Updated concussion shot to not be overpowered with moment of clarity

Spider for ranged attacks, which allows Winter’s Bite to apply weakness on the target. Paralyzing Venom is for kiting with SB.

EB + Sotf is for near condi immunity. (A bit too much tbh)

Wolf for the typical knockdown and fear, nothing else.

I tried to find some duels in the stream, but the commentators were horrible and the video is 4 hours long.

shadowpass.4236:

solrik.6028:

Valentin.2073:

You are asking for a very dangerous buff, my friend. But i like it.

Sincerely,
Spirit Ranger.

Yeah? Okay, care to tell us why it’s a very dangerous buff? Your post is useless if you don’t.

What’s with the attitude? Torment is obviously a stronger condi than bleeds. The target is usually in motion so the torment would almost always be doing more damage. If the target doesn’t move, then it’s easier to hit him/her. That is why its more dangerous.

And fyi, I was joking.

No attitude, just the truth. When someone replies without quotes, I automatically assume it’s a reply to the original post.

Torment would indeed be too powerful and there is no realistic reason why torment would be better than bleeding.

Valentin.2073:

You are asking for a very dangerous buff, my friend. But i like it.

Sincerely,
Spirit Ranger.

Yeah? Okay, care to tell us why it’s a very dangerous buff? Your post is useless if you don’t.

If you know how the dungeon works then you shouldn’t have any problems with sword after turning auto-attack off.

After a while I got used to manually pressing it, now I’m having it on auto again and have no problems timing the dodges right.

Sharpening Stone:
Bleed foes with your next five attacks.

The wiki’s description of what an Attack is:
An attack is an action intended to cause (Damage Icon) Damage on a specific target or area.

Action can be using crossfire, intending to cause damage to the enemy target. This is called an attack.
I activate sharpening stone to apply bleeding to my attacks.
After 5 attacks, the heavy golem has 5 more bleed stacks on it. Worked as intended

Piercing Arrows:
All arrow attacks pierce targets.

Arrow attack is an action that causes my weapon to fire an arrow against an enemy, making it an attack.

I trait for Piercing Arrows to make sure my Arrow Attack can’t be blocked by something else.
I activate Sharpening Stone to make my Arrows Attack inflict bleeding, for 5 Attacks.
After 5 Attacks, my target has 1 extra bleed stack on it. There were 4 other targets, which I did not want to Attack, infront of my target. Each of those 4 targets had also 1 extra bleed stack.

CONCLUSION:
Sharpening Stone works like this in practice:
Your next five hits inflict bleeding.

TESTING:
Line up 5 heavy golems in HotM and target the one all the way at the back, activate Sharpening Stone, fire once -> No sharpening stone left. The 5 golems received 1 stack each.

Prysin.8542:

I would reccomend rebuilding following these guidelines;
Regen setups should have 700+ healing power for strong hp/second regeneration
They should have 2750 defense/armor, that is the minimum needed to “become a effective bunker”
They should have one or several ways to mitigate damage (either vigor for more dodges, evade skills, signet of stone)
They need a efficient stun breaker on a low as possible cooldown
They need a reliable source of condition removal or condition transfer

Dual sword/dagger, take the vigor traits with energy sigils, full into bm, settlers amulet, two birds (the 2 with lacerating slash), learn in which order to use the 100 evades and troll people all day with a pet that does 6k damage in 1 second, cripples and then comes the next one out which again does 6k damage and re-cripples. (oh and perhaps take the poison master trait for added fun)

shadowpass.4236:

how about crossfire applies torment instead

#plzanet

Not sure if serious or just a failed attempt to be funny.

Bump

Updated all skills to better fit the role of the shortbow
Changed Poison Valley, Quick Shot range, Crippling Shot duration, , Concussion Shot duration

Also a “Movement Speed increased by X% while wielding a shortbow” trait would fit nicely. It can be added to “Strider’s Defense”

Strider’s Defense: <current description> + “Move 25% faster while wielding a bow” or “Move 25% faster while wielding a shortbow or an axe in main hand” if the former proves to be overpowered with 1500 range longbows. That would require full investment in MM ans Skirmishing, though.

My Sweet Lily.1952:

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.
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New EU King!
My Sweet Lily.1952
Build – http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAV8YjEq0xaLL+rQ1aADhqdLEsDLrAwd8+CXdBXOA-TpRFwANOCAAeAAJOIARLDo4CAka/BA
1) vs Bakeyy.2185 2-1
2) vs BolshoiBooze.3406 2-0
3) vs Joppelius.7029 2-0
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.
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I’ll fight you with the same build

I changed my mind… I’ll come up with something

I just don’t want to use the same build again and again and again…

Fluffball.8307:

Prysin.8542:

The pet choice(s) were terrible

Flopy the Rabbit might be the best 1v5 or whatever longbow ranger I’ve ever seen, and he swears by the thing.

I wanna see that video

Nice, I like the editing but the gameplay… oh bot the gameplay, it’s so terrible.

Using dodge to make a gap, spamming skills just because they are available. Using stun-breakers without actually breaking stun. Using S#2 with full endurance. I can go on with more….

Oh, and only victories, no defeats which make me wonder if it’s just a troll video with a zerkbow against bad players.

Cufufalating.8479:

-snip-

I certainly learned why axe dagger is better than axe torch!

Fluffball.8307:

The most number of defenses so far is roughly the amount of people we’ve had participate for either region. If we start getting 50 people playing per region, we can always up the number of defenses before a handicap.

Don’t you mean “defeats”, “victories” or “wins”, rather than “defenses” ?

Rym.1469:

Bump, as it will be continued, redesigned and finished in near future.

Key incoming changes:

1. Pets take 90% less damage and regenerate 1% (2% PvE) of their health every 2 seconds. All condition applied to pets are full-duration, although their damage is lowered by 90%. Movement-impairing conditions are of the same strenght, but reduced by 50% duration by default.

• Targeted * When Pet is set as Target for Player/NPC it looses it’s damage reduction and health regeneration, gaining undispellable debuff “Targeted” visible as a small red icon above Pet’s portrait. During the debuff, all condition damage done by targeting foe is regular damage.
  Debuff lasts until the Pet is swapped, downed or distargeted.

Lemme just target the pet to nerf it instantly. Should be something like “Pet receives only 50% of incoming damage for 7 seconds when entering combat or swapped. Does not apply if swapping out a pet that has more than 25% health.”

2. Pet’s health value is now filling it’s portrait with red colour to top (100% health) from bottom (0% health). When pet is downed/being rezzed the colour is orange.

I’d personally like to have a bar that displays exact health so that I can time my swaps to the last second!

3. Left from the portrait, is the place for Boon/Condition/Debuff affecting your pet in form of regular icons.

Why not… It would be useful.

4. Old Pet’s health bar is now Symbiosis mechanic bar, charged with green colour. There are also 3 splits (25%,50%,75%) on bar for better visibility. Number of resource avalible is displayed on bar by default. The maximum value of Symbiosis is up to discuss, as the numbers are not yet tuned properly.

Why not just add a second bar?

5. Symbiosis abilities are no longer charged, they have one value for each weapon/F2.

Does that mean symbiosis expires when I swap weapons?

6. Using same Symbiosis ability more frequently than once ( every X seconds/not interrupted by using Pet’s/Player’s different Symbiosis ability – up for discussion ) for one weapon/pet enables debuff Exhaustion .

This assumes that the ability doesn’t have a cooldown and can be spamming

7. Exhaustion increases the resource cost of using same ability by X% and decreases Symbiosis generation by X% for X seconds/other condition (up to discussion).

• X – unknown number, yet to be tuned.

Cleanse “Exhausted” by swapping?

8. Pet’s basic damage is further reduced, allowing AI designers to improve Pet’s attack connection without making it too strong.

No, please no. Try to improve the pet mechanic instead of compromising. It can be done through giving each new thing a consequence.

Commented. (With bold inside the qoutation)

My suggestion for F1:
The F1 button toggles between red and green color. When it’s green, the next press will issue an attack command. When it’s green, the next press will issue a return command. The return command applies 3 seconds of evasion to the pet, with an ICD of 12 seconds. The attack command applies 5 seconds of swiftness, this shares the ICD with the return command’s bonus.

F2 – As is with a slight change. If the F1 button is green, F2 will be used without a target or won’t be used at all if it’s a single-target attack. If red, then the F2 skill will be used on the pet’s current target, not the ranger’s current target.

F3 – Symbiosis skill.

(PS.: Nice necro-posting!)

Cufufalating.8479:

I agree either everything except Crossfire.

The problem I have is this… Compared to other bleed inflicting AAs our SB has by far the highest potential thanks to it’s speed and range… if they made it work from any angle it would go from having the highest potential to flat out being the best at all times. Anet would follow this by nerfing it somehow, and since the bleed duration is already extremely short the thing they would likely target is attack speed.

I don’t want them nerfing my SB somehow just to make it bleed from anywhere… the angle you need is already extremely generous and it’s not hard to stack plenty of bleeds in a fight.

The other attacks though, I agree. Especially on Poison Voley because really, it’s pretty poor. I also wouldnt mind seeing an arrow speed increase on Concussion Shot, just because I feel it’s a little slow to reliably interupt at range.

That’s a good point and I will change crossfire, but not to what it is now.

I feel these changes would make an SB ranger something to fear. People would think “Oh kitten don’t go behind me”.

I am unsure if 2 stacks from behind is too powerful, but if we think about it; the ranger is the winner either way if the enemy is running away (which means the ranger is shooting the target in the back).

Weapons like axe and dagger are good without traiting them but with SB I feel that I am forced to complement it with other utilities/traits to make it effective. I can play all cond, bunker, posion power etc builds so it’s not a l2p issue

CROSSFIRE CHANGED

kyubi.3620:

///Poison Valley///: Fire a posionous arrow that explodes on target and poison it for 8 seconds and adjacent enemies for 4 seconds. Blast finisher.
Reason: Poison Valley is only worth using if you get really close, either for preventing a full heal or for stacking bleed stacks with a bleeding build. By making it into a finisher, the SB will have a special thing for itself, while not being OP together with the other changes.

You played dark souls 2 for to long look you talking about poison valleys

I actually don’t play that game xD Thanks!

You can’t hit anyone beyond 1600 unless the target is just standing still or coming straight at you, so there is nothing silly with it.

Same goes for ele fireball and any other projectile that arcs.

I really hoped this event would become something that lasts but it seems like people have no interest, for some reason.

Maybe if we created some site for it? Then we could redirect people in the game

Atherakhia.4086:

saving space

The new poison valley would shoot the same kind of arrow as it does now, with the same speed as all other arrows. The damage would be the same as a regular shot (besides poison) and aftercast zero.

Concussion shot can be changed to a knockdown instead, with the description “A well placed shot which knocks the opponent to the ground”

I don’t know how keen anet is about giving rangers torment

Edit: The shortbow has always been a sustained weapon and I don’t want to change that. Mainly because making sb into a burst weapon would require re-making all of it’s skill slots.

@Bakeyy, I’m sorry for I can’t make it today.

@Cufu
I usually only switched to sword when I started healing myself and the evades gave me some “free health” as I call it. But it was in no way a burst build but a constant bleed.
This was over 5 months ago though and I haven’t really roamed a notable amount of time. (Stopped playing because I got bored of it. The constant running was boring (don’t mix that with “constant deaths” ) and I hate zerging mainly because there are too many “average players”, as anet calls them. But the loot from an organised zerg is heaven!)

There is unfortunately no space in pvp that is good for SB because a wall or boundary is quickly reach.

I will, however, say that I use a SB and S/D for roaming in wvw and it works, but it has it’s reason. First, the build uses rabid gear and condition duration weapons together with krait runes to achieve 100% bleeding duration. Utilities are 3 traps (not poison) and Rao pluss TU. It works because the bleed applied is too much to handle and anyone who comes close gets eaten by traps while they see me rolling with the sword and fly away after a while only to switch to SB and restart the rotation.

In pvp, I can’t get 100% bleed duration, eat the 40% duration food, fly great distances and no cond duration weapons.

(I’m one of those who kite by moving directly away from the enemy by strafing left/right, not backwards)

Crossfire: Change to inflict 2 stacks of bleeding when attacking from behind.
Reason: Let’s face it. When fighting with an enemy, (s)he is going to have the front side towards you, which means that your kiting will result on hitting the target slightly from the side and inflict 1 stack. Having 2 stacks of bleeding applied when attacking from behind means that the ranger can actually utilise skirmishing tactics in order to be more effective. For clarification, the skill would only apply 1 stack from the sides. (Example: Muddy terrain to immob. and then kite around to the enemy’s back)

Poison Volley: The firing cone is narrowed to have the width of 3 projectiles and the 2 extra are placed between those three. These arrows pierce up to 3 times.
Reason: Poison Valley is only worth using if you get really close, either for preventing a full heal or for stacking bleed stacks with a bleeding build. By making it narrows and letting them pierce, it works more like a poison bomb without being an exploding projectile. Also, the problem with preventing full healing with this skill is that any reasonable person would first place her/himself into safety before using a healing skill, which means that posion valley have to be used at range which in it’s turn means that the ranger has to time the skill into a 2 second window which isn’t very effective since most healing skills have less tthan 2 seconds casting time. Other healing skills that are over 2 seconds have bonuses to compensate.

Quick Shot: Increase the range slightly (by ca 100). Increase swiftness to 5 seconds. Always gain swiftness.
Reason: As it is now, it’s only useful for evading a specific attack or random evade when retreating. Increasing it’s jump range would help the shortbow user to skirmish more.

Crippling Shot: Increase cripple to 5 seconds.
Reason: The tooltip is misleading, because it only applies Cripple. The pet applies 1 stack of bleeding with each attack for a maximum of 3 stacks. The current 3 seconds of cripple is too short against anyone (and that is many) who has a gap closer. The duration of 3 seconds is simply put not enough to have any noticable effect. 5 seconds, as said before, helps with skirmishing. (Changed from 6 seconds to 5)

Concussion Shot: Fire a powerful arrow that knocks out your foe. Daze 1 second if hit from front. Knockdown 2 seconds if hit from side or behind.
Reason: Think about it, what can you do with the shortbow in that 1 second of daze? The skill itself has an aftercast which means that you’ll only start firing after that daze expires. On the other hand, this skill is often used to interrupt very telegraphed attacks or to interrupt healing. Healing is usually done at half hp which means that the ranger is most likely playing with the secondary weapon set. After playing around with SB, I also realise that 2 seconds would be too powerful, so it’s changed to 1 second for the front. Since the “hit from side” angle is very big, 3 seconds would often be applied, so that is changed to 2 seconds for the sides. 3 seconds for behind deserves to be 3 seconds because shortbow needs to have a personality.

Your mission is to find how this would make the shortbow overpowered or out of balance

removed history… no point in ahving that…

If for pve:
You should just go full berserker gear, or knight’s if you’re, uhhm, unsure of your skills.

Troll unguent is not a boon but an effect. Just like consumables have an effect, they don’t count as boons. That is, troll unguent will always heal you when used and can’t be ripped, cleansed, stolen etc like the boon regeneration.

Axe is imo inferior to Sb but I won’t go into details and formulate a 1-page long paragraph.