Guild Wars 2

A weak #1 skill is easy to overlook in PvP due to the comparatively frenetic nature of PvP combat where you spend more time dodging and blasting cooldowns than you do autoing, but it’s a problem in PvE (including leveling) where you spend significant time autoing because you’re fighting an HP sponge, don’t need to move much, and your other skills are on cooldown.

This problem makes several (mostly ranged) weapons perform poorly in general purpose usage in PvE (and to a lesser extent in PvP). They all are in need of a buff.

Elementalist Staff Earth and Water – yes, they bring utility, but the only effect that sacrificing so much damage for that utility has is making them useless outside of zergs, which is why Staff feels a little weak in general usage – because only Fire and to some extent Air do adequate damage (though Lightning Surge needs a buff too), leaving you with two mostly useless attunements.

Mesmer Scepter – the third attack in the chain clearly has too long of a wind-up time, dramatically crippling the overall DPS of the weapon. The clone generation utility does not fully compensate.

Thief and Engineer Pistol – both seem to have mis-tuned autocasts, making them do inadequate DPS. This causes overall damage problems with all MH Pistol sets on both classes. The warrior and engineer’s rifle both do significantly more damage with greater range, which doesn’t really make sense.

Elementalist Water Dagger – Vapor Blade’s damage should be significantly higher than it is. That’s all.

Ranger and Warrior Longbow – Ranger’s Longbow #1 got a substantial buff a while back, which was the main reason it was so terrible before. Warrior’s Longbow #1 is still terrible. Nobody complains much about the latter because of the accepted niche it has as a non-primary skirmish weapon, but it’s still poor in general and the #1 still needs a buff.

I’m sure there are others I’m missing (I haven’t played Necro or Guardian much), so folks can feel free to chime in.