Guild Wars 2

Autoattacks are in a weird place in GW2, and have been since launch. I get there’s a lot of apprehension to make combat too focused around them, and of course I agree with the design goal of making combat as dynamic and reactive as possible and avoiding ‘skill spamming’.

However, there’s currently a rather egregious balance problem in the game created almost entirely by the fact that the #1 skills (which most players auto) are all over the place in terms of effectiveness. While I understand balancing has to take a lot of things into account, the #1 skill establishes the baseline for sustained DPS and therefore carries disproportionate weight in determining how effective a weapon is in any prolonged fight. If you set an arbitrary baseline for how strong a #1 skill should be, any weapon with a #1 skill significantly above that baseline will feel very strong most of the time while any weapon with a #1 skill significantly below that baseline will feel very weak most of the time. See: Thief/Engi Pistol and Mesmer Scepter for a couple of prime examples.

It seems to me that aftercasts were used to weaken the DPS for ranged weapons in an attempt to balance them against melee weapons, which (according to Anet) should be slightly superior, but that many of them were overtuned or poorly tuned. As an example, Pistol is supposed to fire faster than Rifle and do less damage per shot, but in reality it only does less damage and fires at the same speed, from less range, which makes no sense. This is why everyone complains about them being weak – because their #1 skills are poorly tuned.

Attention should be devoted to finding the ‘sweet spot’ for what a #1 skill should do, and then performing a major balancing pass to update them all to meet that criteria. What’s you’re doing is continually trying to do fine-tune (with trait changes) when there are very large coarse adjustments that need to be made first.

Engi Flamethrower kit. Such a sad weapon when it could be good.

Leviathan.9850:

Engi Flamethrower kit. Such a sad weapon when it could be good.

Also, Warrior Longbow – even though it’s effective situationally, the #1 skill is pathetic (it needs a dramatic reduction to its aftercast), which makes it really clunky and feeble in general usage.

Add Necromancer Axe, Necromancer Staff, and Elementalist Scepter (for fire, water, and air) to the list.

Then add Necromancer Dagger and Elementalist Lightning Hammer for examples of autoattacking being the highest DPS.

Then add Engineer Grenades for the largest cause of carpal tunnel syndrome in this game…

amiavamp.9785:

Add Necromancer Axe, Necromancer Staff, and Elementalist Scepter (for fire, water, and air) to the list.

Then add Necromancer Dagger and Elementalist Lightning Hammer for examples of autoattacking being the highest DPS.

Then add Engineer Grenades for the largest cause of carpal tunnel syndrome in this game…

Yeah, you’re illustrating my point perfectly. It’s a total mess. Anet seems to think the weapons can be balanced when autoattacks differ significantly in their efficacy, which makes no sense. It’s like trying to fine tune without doing any coarse tuning.

Einlanzer.1627:

Leviathan.9850:

Engi Flamethrower kit. Such a sad weapon when it could be good.

Also, Warrior Longbow – even though it’s effective situationally, the #1 skill is pathetic (it needs a dramatic reduction to its aftercast), which makes it really clunky and feeble in general usage.

On that note, i would love for ANet to account for aftercast in their cast time tooltip entries. Right now going by tooltip engineer pistol #1 should outperform rifle #1. But because of the aftercast on pistol #1 rifle #1 is on par, or even slightly ahead.

Then again, the game shipped with no cast time tooltips below 1s. I guess it was one of their misguided attempts at “promoting skill”. Meaning that people would pick weapon based on feel and seat of pants playing rather than numbers.

digiowl.9620:

Einlanzer.1627:

Leviathan.9850:

Engi Flamethrower kit. Such a sad weapon when it could be good.

Also, Warrior Longbow – even though it’s effective situationally, the #1 skill is pathetic (it needs a dramatic reduction to its aftercast), which makes it really clunky and feeble in general usage.

On that note, i would love for ANet to account for aftercast in their cast time tooltip entries. Right now going by tooltip engineer pistol #1 should outperform rifle #1. But because of the aftercast on pistol #1 rifle #1 is on par, or even slightly ahead.

Then again, the game shipped with no cast time tooltips below 1s. I guess it was one of their misguided attempts at “promoting skill”. Meaning that people would pick weapon based on feel and seat of pants playing rather than numbers.

The Rifle is almost certainly ahead due to the extended aftercast, as is the case with the Warrior Rifle compared to the Thief Pistol. Their idea doesn’t work when the numbers are so whacky that it even feels off. I agree though, the aftercast needs to be incorporated into the specs presented in the tooltips. Hiding it doesn’t do much good.

Let’s not forget.. warrior’s sword:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sever_Artery
Bleeds (x2)+ cripples (x1)+cleaves

Einlanzer.1627:

Leviathan.9850:

Engi Flamethrower kit. Such a sad weapon when it could be good.

Also, Warrior Longbow – even though it’s effective situationally, the #1 skill is pathetic (it needs a dramatic reduction to its aftercast), which makes it really clunky and feeble in general usage.

To be fair, some of the skills on longbow are particularly strong for the warrior, and the skill in its entirety SHOULD feel clunky seeing as you’re a heavy using a longbow trying to shoot more arrows than rangers and thieves while also lighting them ablaze. :\

It still does more damage than ranger longbow, though. Consequently, ranger longbow/non-pet power/precision builds need more attention to begin with.

I have actually calculated the DPS of all of the auto attacks (from information on the wiki and some of it may surprise you). Please note this is the base DPS and does not take into account scaling (different weapons scale differently with power becoming even better). Please use this for general comparison purposes.

For the Elementalist:

The Best Direct Damage (DD_ attacks are the Dagger Fire and Air at 378 and 409 DPS.
The Best DPS with conditions is: Scepter Earth and Fire at 482 and 492 DPS.
The Worst DD are actually the Scepter Fire and Earth at 66 and 79.
The Worst total DPS is Staff water and Staff Earth at 82 and 137.
I would like to note that the staff Fireball is DPS of 224 and is the best on the staff with air weighing in at 174

For the Engineer:

The *Best*DD DPS is: Bombs at 442 (The next is the repair kit at 337)
The Best total DPS is also Bombs at 442 (the second best is the Tranq gun at 361)
The Worst DD DPS is: tied between Pistol and Tranq gun at 157 DPS
The Worst total DPS is: The Grenade kit (without the extra grenade). With it (DPS 321), the worst weapons are the pistol and the rifle at 271 and 279 DPS.
The flamethrower actually has a respectable total DPS of 318 DPS due to 1 second of burning, 191 without burning.)

For the Guardian: none of their auto attacks inflict conditions.

The Best DPS skills are: The Greatsword, Sword, and hammer at 414 DPS, 417 DPS, and 420 DPS
The Worst DPS is the staff at 222
I would like to note that the scepter is the best 1200 DD ranged attack at 280 DPS

Continued in the next post…

For the Mesmer (only 4 total)

The Best DD DPS is the sword at 323 DPS
The Best total DPS is the Staff if it procs Burning for 325 DPS.
The Worst DD DPS is the staff at 82 DPS (also if it procs vulnerability)
Note that the scepter and greatsword are at 151 and (144 DPS at 0-300, 174 at 300-600, and 214 at 600-900, and 249 at max range)

For the Necromancer (3 total)

The Axe is 205 DPS
The Staff is 176 DPS
The Scepter is 135 DD DPS and 360 total DPS

The Ranger:
The Best DD DPS is the sword at 355 DPS
The Best total DPS is the swortbow at 485 if the ranger procs bleed.
The Worst DPS is the Axe at 168 DPS or the Longbow at 0-500 (137 DPS) or 500-1000 (176 DPS).
Note that the longbow is only a solid choice at the max distance of 1000+ at a DPS of 248, but that is the same DPS as the shortbow without bleed.
Also note that the Ranger Greatsword is the Worst melee DPS at 252 (ranges 120 – 150), the next worst is 323 DPS

The Thief: (4 total)

The pistol, 163 DPS
The Shortbow, 195 DPS
The Dagger, 367 DD DPS, and 529 total DPS
The sword, 387 DPS

The Warrior:
Longbow 178 DPS
Mace and Greatsword 347 and 355 DPS
Hammer 404 DPS
Rifle 161 DD DPS and 427 total DPS (With bleed)
Axe 490 DPS
Sword 379 DD DPS and 804 total DPS (with bleeds)
The sword has the highest total DPS of the game of 804, with one of the better DD DPS’s

Edited to correct misprint of Mesmers Greatsword, I did not state damages at greater ranges)

Aren’t all Elementalist and Engineer 1s kind of lackluster by their nature as a class which has access to many possible 2/3/4/5s at once? It would definitely be nice if those 1s could be brought up to be usable skills, and judged more on their impact as a time investment than as a skill you fall back on once you run out of CDs (which won’t happen if you’re playing these classes properly).

Sarrs.4831:

Aren’t all Elementalist and Engineer 1s kind of lackluster by their nature as a class which has access to many possible 2/3/4/5s at once? It would definitely be nice if those 1s could be brought up to be usable skills, and judged more on their impact as a time investment than as a skill you fall back on once you run out of CDs (which won’t happen if you’re playing these classes properly).

As for the Engineer I might give some kind of consideration since they can instantly equip and remove their kits, and their attack skills have very reasonable cooldowns. I know I have been known to switch into grenade kit use the one(s) I wanted and switch out. However keep in mind that kits are optional items, they are not part of every engineer build nor should they be required (they should be stronger on rifle and pistol).

As for the elementalist I very much disagree. Yes the elementalist can be played like a concert pianist, and it is currently the most effective (the only competitive) way to play. However, if you really want to allow an elementalist stay in 1 attunement or bounce between two, they have to have something to do while they are waiting for their 30-50 second cooldowns to expire.

Also for the Elementalist they have some of the worst (actually the worst auto attacks on the staff). Also those other skills are not as powerful as you would think. let’s do a simple comparison: warrior smacking around a target with a sword and an elementalist in fire going nuts, lets take 10 seconds of damage:

Warrior Damage for 10 seconds 8040 (after the bleeds he puts in that 10 seconds expire).

Elementalist: assume the elementalist can get the target to stand on 2 lava fonts, that is 2416 damage (assume total casting time is 1 second due to targeting and after cast).
Sets the target on fire with flame burst for 1640 damage over 5 seconds (.5 casting time with .5 to .75 aftercast). Casts meteor shower assume 1/4 of the 24 meteors hit (typical of standard sized targets) is another 2886 damage with 4.5 seconds of casting. that leaves enough time for 2 castings of fire ball and you get another 628 damage. That is about 10 seconds of mad clicking (meteor swarm is also now on a 30 second cooldown and lava font will be unavailable for another 2 seconds).

All of the hard work is a total of 7570 damage in 10 seconds or 757 DPS, which the elementalist cannot sustain. (before you mention the other elements any elementalist will tell you other elements have less DPS and you just locked yourself out of your best weapon for 9-16 seconds).

I am not nessisarily advocating for increasing the auto attack damage on all weapons, but on ones with notably lower DPS’s (Ele staff, Ranger Greatsword) they should be really scrutinized to ensure they are not too weak, or other weapons like the warrior axe and sword that they are not too strong. Expecially if one classes auto attack DPS is greatly higher than other classes with similar weapons (guardian GS at 414 DPS, warrior GS at 355 DPS and Ranger at 252).

Shadowfall, that’s very useful information and shows exactly what I’m referring to. However, I suspect if you pulled info just from the wiki it also doesn’t take aftercast into effect. Is that so? The aftercast is a problem on a lot of (especially ranged) #1 skills, causing the rate of fire to be painfully slow for the damage dealt, which affects the DPS on a lot of those skills a lot more than you would think by just looking at the cast time.

At any rate, the autoattacks need to be balanced within the context of other skills and traits and such, I get that, but it’s totally preposterous that one has a DPS of 80 while another has a DPS of 800. That’s exactly why it’s a problem. I feel like their design team overtly ignores autoattacks because they want to fix weapons without relying on them, but that makes zero sense. It’s very, very obvious that weapons need to have roughly equivalent #1 skills for them to ever feel very balanced.

Sarrs.4831:

Aren’t all Elementalist and Engineer 1s kind of lackluster by their nature as a class which has access to many possible 2/3/4/5s at once? It would definitely be nice if those 1s could be brought up to be usable skills, and judged more on their impact as a time investment than as a skill you fall back on once you run out of CDs (which won’t happen if you’re playing these classes properly).

The problem here is that Elementalists and Engineers are designed that way because they’re supposed to ‘specialize’ in versatility. But, what happens in practice is that you are forced to dance between tons of things to perform on the same level as any other class does with a single set.

That said, take Ele Staff as an example – Fire is mostly self sufficient while the other three are not. So even if forcing you to switch between attunements was their design goal (which would be a bad one – it makes sense for it to be ‘optimal’ but staying in one should be mostly viable), it’s still a failure because you can stay in Fire most of the time without suffering too much and therefore it becomes the only viable fallback attunement. At best, it’s a major balancing failure, at worst it’s an outright design failure.

Einlanzer.1627:

Shadowfall, that’s very useful information and shows exactly what I’m referring to. However, I suspect if you pulled info just from the wiki it also doesn’t take aftercast into effect. Is that so? The aftercast is a problem on a lot of (especially ranged) #1 skills, causing the rate of fire to be painfully slow for the damage dealt, which affects the DPS on a lot of those skills a lot more than you would think by just looking at the cast time.

At any rate, the autoattacks need to be balanced within the context of other skills and traits and such, I get that, but it’s totally preposterous that one has a DPS of 80 while another has a DPS of 800. That’s exactly why it’s a problem. I feel like their design team overtly ignores autoattacks because they want to fix weapons without relying on them, but that makes zero sense. It’s very, very obvious that weapons need to have roughly equivalent #1 skills for them to ever feel very balanced.

The Wiki had some after casts I included them were available. I intend to eventually use a program like bandicam to capture and record frames.

I am gathering information in preparation of the CDI on class balance, and I want some nice solid numbers backing me up. It is however a lot of work, so I went quick and dirty.

Skill damage co-efficients have never made any sense when you start examining them across weapons and classes.

It’s like the design team decided on the rough damage amounts for each skill while completely ignoring the amount of time it takes for the skill to be:
-positioned/orientated
-whether or not the skill roots you or changes the enemies or your own positions
-windup, execution and after-cast time for skill animations

There’s quite a number of skills with long channel times compared to their auto-attack chain and over the course of the channel these end up being a damage loss to simply auto-attacking (often by a large margin). I don’t believe this was intended behavior. Channeled attacks and non-autoattacks generally should be several times stronger than the damage inflicted by autoattacks because:

-They have a cooldown
-They can be interrupted/put on said cooldown
-They tend to be flashy, may having rooting animations, or are signature skills of the weapon skill-bar

FWIW, last time I tested in game I calculated flamethrower AA damage including conditions over time and it was roughly equivalent to pistol autoattack within a small margin (around 2 DPS or so from memory).

The flamethrower and pistol AAs are actually not a bad case for how autoattacks should work, as are ele attunements. The problem is that most other weapon bar skill sets in the game don’t work this way which is why we end up with this huge disparity in performance.

There are problems with the core design of some weapons (engie rifle is a good example) where the skills themselves don’t lend themselves too well to this kind of adjustment however.

But frankly I think these problems should have been fixed back in beta or even earlier. These aren’t the kind of changes I would expect to see rolled out 18 months past a games launch date.

icewyrm.5038:

Skill damage co-efficients have never made any sense when you start examining them across weapons and classes.

It’s like the design team decided on the rough damage amounts for each skill while completely ignoring the amount of time it takes for the skill to be:
-positioned/orientated
-whether or not the skill roots you or changes the enemies or your own positions
-windup, execution and after-cast time for skill animations

There’s quite a number of skills with long channel times compared to their auto-attack chain and over the course of the channel these end up being a damage loss to simply auto-attacking (often by a large margin). I don’t believe this was intended behavior. Channeled attacks and non-autoattacks generally should be several times stronger than the damage inflicted by autoattacks because:

-They have a cooldown
-They can be interrupted/put on said cooldown
-They tend to be flashy, may having rooting animations, or are signature skills of the weapon skill-bar

FWIW, last time I tested in game I calculated flamethrower AA damage including conditions over time and it was roughly equivalent to pistol autoattack within a small margin (around 2 DPS or so from memory).

The flamethrower and pistol AAs are actually not a bad case for how autoattacks should work, as are ele attunements. The problem is that most other weapon bar skill sets in the game don’t work this way which is why we end up with this huge disparity in performance.

There are problems with the core design of some weapons (engie rifle is a good example) where the skills themselves don’t lend themselves too well to this kind of adjustment however.

But frankly I think these problems should have been fixed back in beta or even earlier. These aren’t the kind of changes I would expect to see rolled out 18 months past a games launch date.

Skill coefficients across the board are definitely a little strange, but it’s the discrepancies between #1 skills specifically that cause the biggest balance problem in PvE at least (and stretches tendrils into other modes).

‘Autoattacks’ represent the baseline for sustained DPS which is then ‘modified’ by the other skills present in your set and how you use them. Therefore, having a very weak #1 skill sets a very low baseline for sustained DPS that is at best very difficult and in many cases outright impossible to overcome even with intelligent or skillful use of the other skills. Having a very strong #1 makes a weapon both very powerful and boringly easy to use. All #1 skills need to be brought toward a middle ground, which in quite a few cases means very significant adjustments.

Well I understand the intention of different weapons being meant for different roles, but I do agree that the discrepancies in DPS between them is considerably larger than it probably should be. Although to be fair, I think this is more of an issue due to the DPS meta than the weapons themselves.

Black Box.9312:

Well I understand the intention of different weapons being meant for different roles, but I do agree that the discrepancies in DPS between them is considerably larger than it probably should be. Although to be fair, I think this is more of an issue due to the DPS meta than the weapons themselves.

In PvE at least, it’s primarily because of the gigantic gap in DPS between #1 skills (seriously, it ranges between 80 and 800, which is absurd), which is the primary determining factor of sustained DPS output (and therefore general effectiveness) in any combat engagement taking more than a couple of seconds or being relatively passive.

In other words, the #1 skill is the primary factor determining overall effectiveness in the majority of PvE fights. Weapons with exceptionally bad #1 skills typically underperform and weapons with exceptionally good #1 skills typically overperform.

Mesmer Greatsword? I mean I know that inwards of 600 it deals less AA-damage than the Scepter, but I think there’s more to say about AAs than “too weak”.

For example the Scepter AA is ok in the total damage it deals, but for two problems:

1. It’s way too slow.
2. It’s damage depends on range, and it gains a lot from being in melee. This is a bug related to the advance of as chain, and should really be fixed.

The scepter’s raw strength is fine. And though the secondary effect is somewhat boring, the 2 and 3 skills are strong enough to make that specific part balanced.

Likewise the GS is weak when close, but it’s clearly not meant to be used when close. And since it’s attack can hit multiple targets, it can actually deal a ton of damage with it’s autoattack. Just use it as a ranged weapon, and don’t target the frontline enemy.

Carighan.6758:

Mesmer Greatsword? I mean I know that inwards of 600 it deals less AA-damage than the Scepter, but I think there’s more to say about AAs than “too weak”.

For example the Scepter AA is ok in the total damage it deals, but for two problems:

1. It’s way too slow.
2. It’s damage depends on range, and it gains a lot from being in melee. This is a bug related to the advance of as chain, and should really be fixed.

The scepter’s raw strength is fine. And though the secondary effect is somewhat boring, the 2 and 3 skills are strong enough to make that specific part balanced.

Likewise the GS is weak when close, but it’s clearly not meant to be used when close. And since it’s attack can hit multiple targets, it can actually deal a ton of damage with it’s autoattack. Just use it as a ranged weapon, and don’t target the frontline enemy.

What I’m referring to is DPS, which is a factor of both power and speed. The actual problem with most AA’s, especially on ranged weapons, is that they are calibrated poorly – they have very slow rates of fire for the damage they deal. This is the case with the Mesmer Scepter. It isn’t a bug, and it does not deal significantly more damage in melee range than it does at range – it just simply fires too slowly for the damage it does, which the utility does not fully compensate for, which gimps the entire weapon.

The range is incredibly large between the weakest weapons and the strongest weapons, and it creates a very real balance problem that is especially prominent in PvE. The Mesmer Greatsword actually used to be much worse, and they retuned it to cast faster so, much like the Ranger Longbow, it’s in better shape than it originally was. However, it is very arguably still not “fine”, even at long range.

Carighan.6758:

Mesmer Greatsword? I mean I know that inwards of 600 it deals less AA-damage than the Scepter, but I think there’s more to say about AAs than “too weak”.

For example the Scepter AA is ok in the total damage it deals, but for two problems:

1. It’s way too slow.
2. It’s damage depends on range, and it gains a lot from being in melee. This is a bug related to the advance of as chain, and should really be fixed.

The scepter’s raw strength is fine. And though the secondary effect is somewhat boring, the 2 and 3 skills are strong enough to make that specific part balanced.

Likewise the GS is weak when close, but it’s clearly not meant to be used when close. And since it’s attack can hit multiple targets, it can actually deal a ton of damage with it’s autoattack. Just use it as a ranged weapon, and don’t target the frontline enemy.

The DPS for Greatsword was listed for the 0-300 range. it is 249 at max range, 214 at range (600- 900) and 174 in between 300-600.

The scepters DPS is really terrible though, and there is no way around it

Shadowfall.6543:

Carighan.6758:

Mesmer Greatsword? I mean I know that inwards of 600 it deals less AA-damage than the Scepter, but I think there’s more to say about AAs than “too weak”.

For example the Scepter AA is ok in the total damage it deals, but for two problems:

1. It’s way too slow.
2. It’s damage depends on range, and it gains a lot from being in melee. This is a bug related to the advance of as chain, and should really be fixed.

The scepter’s raw strength is fine. And though the secondary effect is somewhat boring, the 2 and 3 skills are strong enough to make that specific part balanced.

Likewise the GS is weak when close, but it’s clearly not meant to be used when close. And since it’s attack can hit multiple targets, it can actually deal a ton of damage with it’s autoattack. Just use it as a ranged weapon, and don’t target the frontline enemy.

The DPS for Greatsword was listed for the 0-300 range. it is 249 at max range, 214 at range (600- 900) and 174 in between 300-600.

The scepters DPS is really terrible though, and there is no way around it

I’m fairly sure I recall the GS getting a reduction to its aftercast early on because it was originally beyond horrid even at max range. Ranged weapons just aren’t tuned correctly across the board. Since the #1 has less of an impact in PvP than it does in PvE, I’m not holding my breath for it to ever be fixed, which honestly frustrates the hell out of me.

Einlanzer.1627:

Since the #1 has less of an impact in PvP than it does in PvE, I’m not holding my breath for it to ever be fixed, which honestly frustrates the hell out of me.

So, just hope that attrition gameplay will become the PvP meta that the auto attacks imbalance matters also there?

pmnt.4067:

Einlanzer.1627:

Since the #1 has less of an impact in PvP than it does in PvE, I’m not holding my breath for it to ever be fixed, which honestly frustrates the hell out of me.

So, just hope that attrition gameplay will become the PvP meta that the auto attacks imbalance matters also there?

Not likely, as condition spam pretty much forgoes any kind of attrition build.

well some of your calculations arent true.

- u can only calculate without condition dmg or at least u should consider the amount of condition dmg and duration u have
- also does the attack cleave or not. does u count for 1 or more enemies getting hit.
- to see the complete power of aa u just need to break down the sum of dmg-coeeff and how long it takes to complete the whole rotation +avg weapon dmg

as example for ele:
the highest coeff for aa has fire staff (0,85). but its takes 1,4 seconds. so its around 0.61 per second * 1048 avg weapon dmg = 639.28 per enemy
dagger air has 0.7 and needs 1.15 seconds = around 0.61 per second * 952.5 = 581,03 per enemy
dagger fire has 0.38 per attack and needs 1 second. so only if all 3 hit its higher then everything else.. but unless dagger air or staff fire its only single dmg.

u see all its all related

and now comes the burner:
dagger water has only 0.33 per second but.. its a piercing projectile that can hit more than 5 ppl and normaly will hit a enemy two times.. so 0.66 per second per enemy *952.5 avg weapon dmg

for engi the best total dps is still bombkit unless u play a condispec or maybe hybrid.. but without clear information u cant just calculate it.

for the guardian its hammer (1.14 * 1048 = 1194.72) ->sword (1.24*952.5=1181.1) ->gs… (1.12 *1047.5 = 1173.2) u see for guardian there is no great gaps

for ranger and best total dps saying shortbow is total wrong. it depends on amount of condition dmg and duration + power + crit chance + crit dmg to get the break point under what circumstances its better than 1h sword. saying its the best range is true

Scepter ele autoattacks are probably the worst in the entire game. But that’s ok because scepter is broken.

I’d suggest nerfing scepter’s air attunement at the expense of buffing its autos (especially fire)

DeceiverX.8361:

Einlanzer.1627:

Leviathan.9850:

Engi Flamethrower kit. Such a sad weapon when it could be good.

Also, Warrior Longbow – even though it’s effective situationally, the #1 skill is pathetic (it needs a dramatic reduction to its aftercast), which makes it really clunky and feeble in general usage.

To be fair, some of the skills on longbow are particularly strong for the warrior, and the skill in its entirety SHOULD feel clunky seeing as you’re a heavy using a longbow trying to shoot more arrows than rangers and thieves while also lighting them ablaze. :\

It still does more damage than ranger longbow, though. Consequently, ranger longbow/non-pet power/precision builds need more attention to begin with.

Minus the burst I think most of the skill were just rip-off from GW1 rangers markmanship skills. So….

It seems to me that aftercasts were used to weaken the DPS for ranged weapons in an attempt to balance them against melee weapons, which (according to Anet) should be slightly superior, but that many of them were overtuned or poorly tuned.

Interestingly, rifles are the only ranged weapon that function around the level you would expect, with every other ranged weapon (except ranger SB and more recently LB) falling shorter.

First they have to decide which profession are burst profession and which are sustained (as we have statements that some profession will never be burster) and work to bring the weapons/skill in-line with their decision.

Unless they balance it correctly we will see profession pigeonholed into only only a one role in their PvP, and in the PvE profession grow further and further apart (potentially creating player not wanting to play with each other). Worst case they create the profession who would be king that can (depending on build) fulfill any role and exceed the performance of professions that have been place into their new set vision.

I made all relevant points in the first post, which is both objective and correct. I will only add that this issue still hasn’t been addressed, and as a result, many weapon sets in the game such as Thief and Engi Pistol, Mesmer Scepter, are garbage in PvE.

Einlanzer.1627:

‘Autoattacks’ represent the baseline for sustained DPS which is then ‘modified’ by the other skills present in your set and how you use them. Therefore, having a very weak #1 skill sets a very low baseline for sustained DPS that is at best very difficult and in many cases outright impossible to overcome even with intelligent or skillful use of the other skills. Having a very strong #1 makes a weapon both very powerful and boringly easy to use. All #1 skills need to be brought toward a middle ground, which in quite a few cases means very significant adjustments.

I completely agree with everything this man has said, When I play my d/d Ele I find myself camping air attunement when fire attunement is on cooldown for best sustained dps. Why? Because my auto attack in air (Lightning whip) is much stronger than anything Earth or Water attunement has to offer. Before you suggest churning earth, lets look at an example of possible dps from lightning whip in 3 1/4 seconds vs 1 successful Churning Earth.

3 1/4 seconds = ~7 lightning Whips. (Attacks twice per second)

3 1/4 seconds = 1 Churning Earth

7 Lightning whips with a base of 235 dmg = 1645 dmg (note air sigil could proc twice in this amount of time and is likely too)

1 Churning Earth = 1,092 direct damage. (2,720 bleed damage over 8 seconds)

Although churning Earth can do more damage over all opposed to lightning whip, it does much less direct dps, the bleeds can be cleansed, its not as reliable as lightning whip, I can’t move while casting churning earth, I could crit 7 times in a row with lightning whip and not crit with CE, which would mean casting that 3 1/4 second skill was a complete waste of my time perhaps? Most of the time in competitive play it is rather easily dodged if the elementalist casting it is spotted, which is likely. Moral of the story? While fire attunement is down, for best and most reliable sustained dps I’m much better off spamming 1 in air opposed to utilizing any skills in earth or water… this saddens me.

I’d much rather see each class have to land their skills intuitively in order to win fights opposed to spamming an auto attack button.

This is how I envision perfect balance when it comes to auto attacks:

Auto attacks are used to build up momentum while burst skills are on cooldown. This means low direct damage values. In order for the auto attack to still serve a purpose, add a condition like vulnerability or bleed with low duration in mind. While you auto attack you aren’t getting much DPS, but you are building up some momentum before you burst. Vulnerability stacks make the upcoming burst hit harder, stacking low duration bleeds on the end of a 3 chain attack makes you hit slightly harder the longer you auto attack, but doesn’t make the auto attack worth using over your skills with cooldown or initiative cost. If auto attacks always had a lower dps value than other skills available designed for dps but still served a purpose, we would start to see auto attacks functioning the way they should have and not the way they do now.