Lightbows - Swiftbow - Poor Swiftness design

Hello!

I’ve been a swiftbow enthusiast for a good while now. Recently got back to try this season and a long problem with the swiftbow has become increasingly obvious since the hunter nerfs that I feel the need to put it here.

Firstly, we have the issue of only having one playable bow because of swiftness design choice, that being Crestwind Swiftbow with an absolute minimal increase to the drawspeed/lockon of roughly 0.2-0.3 seconds with 0 swiftness.
It’s the only bow that sometimes has the chance to get a fully charged shot while fighting competent players and it’s important because currently a hunter gets 45 swiftness when hitting a charged shot which takes roughly 2.5 - 2.8 seconds without including the recovery frames after shooting.

I’ll argue that the way you gain swiftness with a swiftbow is backwards. Currently with a charged lock-on that hits you gain 45 swiftness for telegraphing an attack which the other player can easily see coming and evade or sometimes run and jump screwing up the tracking, negating not only the damage but also the swiftness gain. Trying to get a charged shot of this season is incredibly difficult with the movement/mobility nerfs and all the abilities each class has to partly or entirely ignore our traps in order to stagger hunters out of charging or forcing us to release it early hoping it hits for less swiftness makes it close to imposible.

Now, per M1 (leftclick) arrow that hits a hunter gains 2 swiftness. Landing multiple of M1s is a lot more difficult to manage mechanically but grants just about no swiftness.

Firing the 3 M1 chain takes about 1.3 seconds and IF all arrows hits grants 12 swiftness. Gaining equal swiftness to a draw shot means a hunter has to hit ALL arrows from 3,75 M1 chains. That means it takes roughly 8.3 seconds when ALL ARROWS hit to gain equal swiftness. During this Sentinel Strike is not a skill that exists or Sentinel Call can tank one attack and then despawn because its health is abysmal with low swiftness.

This is backwards and should be adjusted and is an easy fix of adjusting swiftness gain numbers. Normal M1s should grant more swiftness so that hunters can actually more reliably use abilities such as Sentinel Strike or our pokemon Sentinel Call.
If M1 swiftness gain is increased it also goes more into what at least I perceive to be the design of the swiftbow, semiclose range with good mobility. In order to hit the majority of our M1 chain we have to be fairly close to even benefit properly from a potential buff, risk vs reward.

If a swiftness rework is in the pipeline this is a very simple adjustment to make to give some more playability to at least the swiftbow and reward aim, timing and our small opportunity to chip in damage when others are in animations.

Anecdotally from my own experience duelling competent players I would say I have the ability to cast Sentinell Strike 1/5 duells. That is a terrible statistic for an ability to not even exist for that long of a time.

Since swiftbow has no reliable way to stagger/snare players (traits not working for swiftbow) so having access to Sentinell Strike/Call is important!

Thanks for reading! :)