Guild Wars 2

I’m posting this again, because it clearly doesn’t get the attention it should.

A few weapons have #1 skills that are too strong. Warrior Longsword & Ranger Shortbow are just two that I can think of off-hand. Having a very strong #1 means they do well above average sustained DPS with virtually no strategy and little effort on the part of the player. This makes them boring to play and contributes to some extent to large-scale weapon/profession balance issues.

Many weapons, primarily certain ranged ones (Pistol, Staff, Scepter, Longbow) have #1 skills that are too weak (probably due to a poorly calibrated aftercast), making them struggle to compete outside of highly specialized situations and/or requiring bizarre gimmicks to even be playable. A few examples -

Elementalist (Staff and Scepter) require attunement dancing to be at all effective when it should just be a feature adding versatility in utility.

Thief (P/P) requires dumping all of your Initiative into Unload constantly to maintain reasonable DPS, which breaks the whole set by forcing you to sacrifice too much damage to get any utility and too much utility to get any damage.

Mesmer (Scepter) is just terrible because, while it offers reasonably good utility, it has nothing that even attempts to compensate for the atrocious damage of its #1 skill.

The list could go on, but you get the point. My point is that #1 skills need to all be balanced relative to one another instead of being all over the place. Since the #1 skill is the primary determining factor when it comes to sustained DPS, there are huge weapon/profession balance issues in the game almost entirely stemming from this issue that tuning traits and utility skills endlessly will never fix.

They are balanced especially using your examples because your list is all ranged weapons. Range shouldn’t be pumping out damage like a sword auto attack. Everyone knows ranged is weaker then melee by design. If it wasn’t players would go range all day long because it has a automatic advantage vs melee in that it can force the use of important defensive abilities OR start doing damage before melee gets close.

Ranged auto attacks should be weaker then Melee that might not have been your point but that is what your list consists of so I can’t help to think that you believe range should have damage comparable to melee or that it should even come close to melee damage.

P/D power is decent damage for example on the auto so P/P auto has to be decent. Unload is channeled tracker and is very strong if you go glass while still maintaining some safety of 900 range. The set as a whole might not be better then the other sets but it has an advantage. In WvW you see a few more thieves running S/D with P/D offset because it lets them still get pressure against engi’s with pistol and necros.

If a necro lays marks at his feet and you are say running S/D, D/P, D/D on a thief and the other guy is running P/D power or P/P the pistol thieves don’t even have to worry bout the marks at his feet at all. Just because of the weapon set they are using currently it might not pump out melee damage but is safer. That is the inherent advantage of range in a example.

That could use a buff I would agree with necro staff auto needs something slight velocity increase would be ok. Mesmer scepter auto needs something the damage on it is actually good for range but its just bad attack speed and it’s like a 3 part channel skill chain.

oZii.2864:

They are balanced especially using your examples because your list is all ranged weapons. Range shouldn’t be pumping out damage like a sword auto attack. Everyone knows ranged is weaker then melee by design. If it wasn’t players would go range all day long because it has a automatic advantage vs melee in that it can force the use of important defensive abilities OR start doing damage before melee gets close.

what’s the point of a ranged weapon if it can’t do damage at range? especially when melee gap closers negate the advantage of ranged damaged almost immediately. sorry, but this argument sounds like “melee characters should ALWAYS trump ranged” and “melee characters should be immune to ranged damaged by default”

IF melee weapons DIDN"T have gap closers, i’d agree with you, but the truth is that gap closers give melee weapons the distinct advantage here, without risk to the melee user. the melee user SHOULD have to burn defensive cooldowns if surprise-attacked by a ranged weapon. it wouldn’t be fair if melee attackers jumped in and used their entire autoattack chain to find they did no damage to a target that was just standing there… so why is it fair that ranged characters can’t damage melee?

oZii.2864:

Ranged auto attacks should be weaker then Melee that might not have been your point but that is what your list consists of so I can’t help to think that you believe range should have damage comparable to melee or that it should even come close to melee damage.

i understand the mentallity behind the design choice for melee weapons (especially autoattack chain) being stringer than ranged weapon autoattacks. however, right now, ranged damage is still too weak. BECAUSE there is no threat to melee characters that a simple gap closer can’t overcome.

where is the risk / reward in a ranged vs melee fight?
ranged user: great risk, little to no reward
melee user: great reward, little to no risk
that’s not balanced. the scale is heavily weighted in favor of melee, all because of the gap closer.

EDIT: Einlanzer also suggested that ranger shortbow (a ranged weapon) is too strong #1 skill…. so appears to not be biased, to me.

oZii.2864:

They are balanced especially using your examples because your list is all ranged weapons. Range shouldn’t be pumping out damage like a sword auto attack. Everyone knows ranged is weaker then melee by design. If it wasn’t players would go range all day long because it has a automatic advantage vs melee in that it can force the use of important defensive abilities OR start doing damage before melee gets close.

Ranged auto attacks should be weaker then Melee that might not have been your point but that is what your list consists of so I can’t help to think that you believe range should have damage comparable to melee or that it should even come close to melee damage.

P/D power is decent damage for example on the auto so P/P auto has to be decent. Unload is channeled tracker and is very strong if you go glass while still maintaining some safety of 900 range. The set as a whole might not be better then the other sets but it has an advantage. In WvW you see a few more thieves running S/D with P/D offset because it lets them still get pressure against engi’s with pistol and necros.

If a necro lays marks at his feet and you are say running S/D, D/P, D/D on a thief and the other guy is running P/D power or P/P the pistol thieves don’t even have to worry bout the marks at his feet at all. Just because of the weapon set they are using currently it might not pump out melee damage but is safer. That is the inherent advantage of range in a example.

That could use a buff I would agree with necro staff auto needs something slight velocity increase would be ok. Mesmer scepter auto needs something the damage on it is actually good for range but its just bad attack speed and it’s like a 3 part channel skill chain.

I’m not saying they should all be exactly equal. I think whether it’s okay that melee weapons tend to hit harder than ranged weapons is debatable. Part of me is okay with it, part of me wants to argue that there are other balancing factors that aren’t considered that cause it to not make sense, like gap-closers, some professions being way more dependent on maintaining distance than others, and melee range giving you much better exposure to buffs and heals.

However, that debate aside, even within the current paradigm of melee>ranged, the weapons are not balanced appropriately. The gap is too large in many cases (80 dps vs 800 dps is absurd), and even within a given type there are odd discrepancies. Warrior Rifle, for example, completely out-damages Thief Pistol despite having longer range and more usable utility. This is due to faulty aftercast calibration. The specs on Bleeding Shot and Vital Shot make them look equivalent – Vital Shot is weaker and faster, but in reality it’s only weaker because the aftercast makes it as slow as Bleeding Shot. This is the kind of stuff I’m talking about. It’s actually a total joke that it hasn’t been identified and corrected already.

Forgotten Legend.9281:

oZii.2864:

They are balanced especially using your examples because your list is all ranged weapons. Range shouldn’t be pumping out damage like a sword auto attack. Everyone knows ranged is weaker then melee by design. If it wasn’t players would go range all day long because it has a automatic advantage vs melee in that it can force the use of important defensive abilities OR start doing damage before melee gets close.

what’s the point of a ranged weapon if it can’t do damage at range? especially when melee gap closers negate the advantage of ranged damaged almost immediately. sorry, but this argument sounds like “melee characters should ALWAYS trump ranged” and “melee characters should be immune to ranged damaged by default”

IF melee weapons DIDN"T have gap closers, i’d agree with you, but the truth is that gap closers give melee weapons the distinct advantage here, without risk to the melee user. the melee user SHOULD have to burn defensive cooldowns if surprise-attacked by a ranged weapon. it wouldn’t be fair if melee attackers jumped in and used their entire autoattack chain to find they did no damage to a target that was just standing there… so why is it fair that ranged characters can’t damage melee?

oZii.2864:

Ranged auto attacks should be weaker then Melee that might not have been your point but that is what your list consists of so I can’t help to think that you believe range should have damage comparable to melee or that it should even come close to melee damage.

i understand the mentallity behind the design choice for melee weapons (especially autoattack chain) being stringer than ranged weapon autoattacks. however, right now, ranged damage is still too weak. BECAUSE there is no threat to melee characters that a simple gap closer can’t overcome.

where is the risk / reward in a ranged vs melee fight?
ranged user: great risk, little to no reward
melee user: great reward, little to no risk
that’s not balanced. the scale is heavily weighted in favor of melee, all because of the gap closer.

EDIT: Einlanzer also suggested that ranger shortbow (a ranged weapon) is too strong #1 skill…. so appears to not be biased, to me.

So ranged weapons don’t do damage to melee? Or are you arguing that Ranged doesn’t do ENOUGH damage?

Have you ever ran a mesmer scepter in a zerker build? The OP also mentions the mesmer scepter which does have one of the worst auto attacks in the game probably. The damage on the auto is good the velocity isn’t good. It does however do 1k+ in a zerker build. The 900 Ranged channel from confusing images does more direct damage then Mesmer swords Blured frenzy.

Do you want a Warrior’s Bow auto attack to do significant damage cause it’s not like the rest of the weapon’s damage is terrible. The OP mentions a longbow on warrior auto attack. I went and looked at some vids of zerker warrior with bow doing 2k auto attacks cause the auto is 2x Arrows so that’s not enough damage from 1000+ range for you?

How much damage do you want ranged weapons to do? You are talking about making the weapons a threat and most ranged weapons have threat attacks on them just the Auto attacks aren’t all that great on many of them.

The topic is auto attacks but the rest of the weapons skills are usually good! You sound like you want the auto attacks on range to also be good or great even.

So what is your definition of a good strong ranged auto attack then! 2k damage on auto attacks sound good? Maybe your looking for 3k?

Give us something hard and specific then if you know what you want because it sounds like you might not know the damage of some of these weapons are capable at range even if the Auto isn’t doing melee auto numbers. Warrior 3 skill on bow can get over 10k damage and isn’t hard to setup if you can land a bola, pindown, or sword flurry the 3 skill is guaranteed if they don’t block or clear and escape.

Einlanzer.1627:

oZii.2864:

They are balanced especially using your examples because your list is all ranged weapons. Range shouldn’t be pumping out damage like a sword auto attack. Everyone knows ranged is weaker then melee by design. If it wasn’t players would go range all day long because it has a automatic advantage vs melee in that it can force the use of important defensive abilities OR start doing damage before melee gets close.

Ranged auto attacks should be weaker then Melee that might not have been your point but that is what your list consists of so I can’t help to think that you believe range should have damage comparable to melee or that it should even come close to melee damage.

P/D power is decent damage for example on the auto so P/P auto has to be decent. Unload is channeled tracker and is very strong if you go glass while still maintaining some safety of 900 range. The set as a whole might not be better then the other sets but it has an advantage. In WvW you see a few more thieves running S/D with P/D offset because it lets them still get pressure against engi’s with pistol and necros.

If a necro lays marks at his feet and you are say running S/D, D/P, D/D on a thief and the other guy is running P/D power or P/P the pistol thieves don’t even have to worry bout the marks at his feet at all. Just because of the weapon set they are using currently it might not pump out melee damage but is safer. That is the inherent advantage of range in a example.

That could use a buff I would agree with necro staff auto needs something slight velocity increase would be ok. Mesmer scepter auto needs something the damage on it is actually good for range but its just bad attack speed and it’s like a 3 part channel skill chain.

I’m not saying they should all be exactly equal. I think whether it’s okay that melee weapons tend to hit harder than ranged weapons is debatable. Part of me is okay with it, part of me wants to argue that there are other balancing factors that aren’t considered that cause it to not make sense, like gap-closers, some professions being way more dependent on maintaining distance than others, and melee range giving you much better exposure to buffs and heals.

However, that debate aside, even within the current paradigm of melee>ranged, the weapons are not balanced appropriately. The gap is too large in many cases (80 dps vs 800 dps is absurd), and even within a given type there are odd discrepancies. Warrior Rifle, for example, completely out-damages Thief Pistol despite having longer range and more usable utility. This is due to faulty aftercast calibration. The specs on Bleeding Shot and Vital Shot make them look equivalent – Vital Shot is weaker and faster, but in reality it’s only weaker because the aftercast makes it as slow as Bleeding Shot. This is the kind of stuff I’m talking about. It’s actually a total joke that it hasn’t been identified and corrected already.

The damage range is larger.

Looking in Game right now the damage range on
Exotic:
Pistol: 876 – 1029
Rifle: 986 – 1205

Bleeding shot 155 base damage .4 scaling
Vital shot 134 base damage .4 scaling

Damage done = (Weapon strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)

Why are you trying to compare a 1h pistol to a 2h rifle when the damage formula ingame favors the 2h rifle based on the avg weapon damage and the base damage?

Sure they both bleed on auto attack but and have the same scaling but that’s all they have similar. This is uniform across the game that 2h weapons have higher damage range then 1h weapons not just guns.

Without getting to IRL it’s not as if rifles out damaging pistols is unheard of.

Einlanzer.1627:

A few weapons have #1 skills that are too strong. Warrior Longsword

So… do you mean Greatsword, Longbow or Sword? Because let me tell you, none of them have that good of an autoattack. It’s well-known that if your target stays in range (such as in all of PvE), axe has the best autoattack out of all warrior weapons. And GS has one of the worst, especially considering the other skills on that weapon.

1. Elementalist (Staff and Scepter) require attunement dancing to be at all effective when it should just be a feature adding versatility in utility.

1. Thief (P/P) requires dumping all of your Initiative into Unload constantly to maintain reasonable DPS, which breaks the whole set by forcing you to sacrifice too much damage to get any utility and too much utility to get any damage.[/quote]

1. Elementalist should be like that on all weapons. After all, you’re given twice the skills of everyone else (in combat).
2. That has more to do with the rest of the P/P set skills not being fit for a physical attacker.

Spoiler: Combat should never, ever, be about using your #1 skill over the rest. So rather than looking at nerfing the powerful #1 skills, look at bringing up the #2-#5 to match. In most cases where you have a “weak” #1 skill, it originates from something other than the skill in question. Unload on Thief wouldn’t be an issue if Thieves had cooldowns like other classes. Not that it would be a good solution.

oZii.2864:

Einlanzer.1627:

oZii.2864:

They are balanced especially using your examples because your list is all ranged weapons. Range shouldn’t be pumping out damage like a sword auto attack. Everyone knows ranged is weaker then melee by design. If it wasn’t players would go range all day long because it has a automatic advantage vs melee in that it can force the use of important defensive abilities OR start doing damage before melee gets close.

Ranged auto attacks should be weaker then Melee that might not have been your point but that is what your list consists of so I can’t help to think that you believe range should have damage comparable to melee or that it should even come close to melee damage.

P/D power is decent damage for example on the auto so P/P auto has to be decent. Unload is channeled tracker and is very strong if you go glass while still maintaining some safety of 900 range. The set as a whole might not be better then the other sets but it has an advantage. In WvW you see a few more thieves running S/D with P/D offset because it lets them still get pressure against engi’s with pistol and necros.

If a necro lays marks at his feet and you are say running S/D, D/P, D/D on a thief and the other guy is running P/D power or P/P the pistol thieves don’t even have to worry bout the marks at his feet at all. Just because of the weapon set they are using currently it might not pump out melee damage but is safer. That is the inherent advantage of range in a example.

That could use a buff I would agree with necro staff auto needs something slight velocity increase would be ok. Mesmer scepter auto needs something the damage on it is actually good for range but its just bad attack speed and it’s like a 3 part channel skill chain.

I’m not saying they should all be exactly equal. I think whether it’s okay that melee weapons tend to hit harder than ranged weapons is debatable. Part of me is okay with it, part of me wants to argue that there are other balancing factors that aren’t considered that cause it to not make sense, like gap-closers, some professions being way more dependent on maintaining distance than others, and melee range giving you much better exposure to buffs and heals.

However, that debate aside, even within the current paradigm of melee>ranged, the weapons are not balanced appropriately. The gap is too large in many cases (80 dps vs 800 dps is absurd), and even within a given type there are odd discrepancies. Warrior Rifle, for example, completely out-damages Thief Pistol despite having longer range and more usable utility. This is due to faulty aftercast calibration. The specs on Bleeding Shot and Vital Shot make them look equivalent – Vital Shot is weaker and faster, but in reality it’s only weaker because the aftercast makes it as slow as Bleeding Shot. This is the kind of stuff I’m talking about. It’s actually a total joke that it hasn’t been identified and corrected already.

The damage range is larger.

Looking in Game right now the damage range on
Exotic:
Pistol: 876 – 1029
Rifle: 986 – 1205

Bleeding shot 155 base damage .4 scaling
Vital shot 134 base damage .4 scaling

Damage done = (Weapon strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)

Why are you trying to compare a 1h pistol to a 2h rifle when the damage formula ingame favors the 2h rifle based on the avg weapon damage and the base damage?

Sure they both bleed on auto attack but and have the same scaling but that’s all they have similar. This is uniform across the game that 2h weapons have higher damage range then 1h weapons not just guns.

Without getting to IRL it’s not as if rifles out damaging pistols is unheard of.

Yeah, and the bleed on the Rifle is 50% longer with an easier ability to add that with simple traits. The MH Pistol #1 is underpowered, period, and it creates a gameplay problem for the Thief trying to use one. The problem is that they are forced to spam Unload to maintain any semblance of reasonable DPS, which breaks the whole set.

I can’t believe how dense people are on this issue.

People are dense because there are no DPS meters to prove to them how kittened they are.

This game basically allows people to delude themselves, and it works for developers because as long as player’s can’t meaningfully track combat logs and present parses to make said devs accountable, this kind of obfuscation is the perfect excuse they can hide behind when they choose to do nothing.

Olba.5376:

Einlanzer.1627:

A few weapons have #1 skills that are too strong. Warrior Longsword

So… do you mean Greatsword, Longbow or Sword? Because let me tell you, none of them have that good of an autoattack. It’s well-known that if your target stays in range (such as in all of PvE), axe has the best autoattack out of all warrior weapons. And GS has one of the worst, especially considering the other skills on that weapon.

1. Elementalist (Staff and Scepter) require attunement dancing to be at all effective when it should just be a feature adding versatility in utility.

1. Thief (P/P) requires dumping all of your Initiative into Unload constantly to maintain reasonable DPS, which breaks the whole set by forcing you to sacrifice too much damage to get any utility and too much utility to get any damage.

1. Elementalist should be like that on all weapons. After all, you’re given twice the skills of everyone else (in combat).
2. That has more to do with the rest of the P/P set skills not being fit for a physical attacker.

Spoiler: Combat should never, ever, be about using your #1 skill over the rest. So rather than looking at nerfing the powerful #1 skills, look at bringing up the #2-#5 to match. In most cases where you have a “weak” #1 skill, it originates from something other than the skill in question. Unload on Thief wouldn’t be an issue if Thieves had cooldowns like other classes. Not that it would be a good solution.

No it doesn’t. Every weapon in the game that feels weak is weak because of their #1 skill being poorly balanced. The entire problem with Thief P/P is Vital Shot. It’s too weak to carry decent sustained DPS, so you are forced to try to compensate by spamming Unload. This breaks the entire set.

The #1 skill is the primary determinant of sustained DPS. weapons with very weak auto-attacks will always feel weak and clumsy in general game-play. It’s the main problem afflicting several weapons and several professions.

Einlanzer.1627:

Olba.5376:

Einlanzer.1627:

A few weapons have #1 skills that are too strong. Warrior Longsword

So… do you mean Greatsword, Longbow or Sword? Because let me tell you, none of them have that good of an autoattack. It’s well-known that if your target stays in range (such as in all of PvE), axe has the best autoattack out of all warrior weapons. And GS has one of the worst, especially considering the other skills on that weapon.

1. Elementalist (Staff and Scepter) require attunement dancing to be at all effective when it should just be a feature adding versatility in utility.

1. Thief (P/P) requires dumping all of your Initiative into Unload constantly to maintain reasonable DPS, which breaks the whole set by forcing you to sacrifice too much damage to get any utility and too much utility to get any damage.

1. Elementalist should be like that on all weapons. After all, you’re given twice the skills of everyone else (in combat).
2. That has more to do with the rest of the P/P set skills not being fit for a physical attacker.

Spoiler: Combat should never, ever, be about using your #1 skill over the rest. So rather than looking at nerfing the powerful #1 skills, look at bringing up the #2-#5 to match. In most cases where you have a “weak” #1 skill, it originates from something other than the skill in question. Unload on Thief wouldn’t be an issue if Thieves had cooldowns like other classes. Not that it would be a good solution.

No it doesn’t. Every weapon in the game that feels weak is weak because of their #1 skill being poorly balanced. The entire problem with Thief P/P is Vital Shot. It’s too weak to carry decent sustained DPS, so you are forced to try to compensate by spamming Unload. This breaks the entire set.

The #1 skill is the primary determinant of sustained DPS. weapons with very weak auto-attacks will always feel weak and clumsy in general game-play. It’s the main problem afflicting several weapons and several professions.

And yet there are weapons which are meta and have crap #1, like Warrior Greatsword.

Also the best DPS weapon in PvE, axe, is considered crap in PvP because of the autoattack.

Olba.5376:

Einlanzer.1627:

Olba.5376:

Einlanzer.1627:

A few weapons have #1 skills that are too strong. Warrior Longsword

So… do you mean Greatsword, Longbow or Sword? Because let me tell you, none of them have that good of an autoattack. It’s well-known that if your target stays in range (such as in all of PvE), axe has the best autoattack out of all warrior weapons. And GS has one of the worst, especially considering the other skills on that weapon.

1. Elementalist (Staff and Scepter) require attunement dancing to be at all effective when it should just be a feature adding versatility in utility.

1. Thief (P/P) requires dumping all of your Initiative into Unload constantly to maintain reasonable DPS, which breaks the whole set by forcing you to sacrifice too much damage to get any utility and too much utility to get any damage.

1. Elementalist should be like that on all weapons. After all, you’re given twice the skills of everyone else (in combat).
2. That has more to do with the rest of the P/P set skills not being fit for a physical attacker.

Spoiler: Combat should never, ever, be about using your #1 skill over the rest. So rather than looking at nerfing the powerful #1 skills, look at bringing up the #2-#5 to match. In most cases where you have a “weak” #1 skill, it originates from something other than the skill in question. Unload on Thief wouldn’t be an issue if Thieves had cooldowns like other classes. Not that it would be a good solution.

No it doesn’t. Every weapon in the game that feels weak is weak because of their #1 skill being poorly balanced. The entire problem with Thief P/P is Vital Shot. It’s too weak to carry decent sustained DPS, so you are forced to try to compensate by spamming Unload. This breaks the entire set.

The #1 skill is the primary determinant of sustained DPS. weapons with very weak auto-attacks will always feel weak and clumsy in general game-play. It’s the main problem afflicting several weapons and several professions.

And yet there are weapons which are meta and have crap #1, like Warrior Greatsword.

Warrior Greatsword #1 is not crap.

Einlanzer.1627:

My point is that #1 skills need to all be balanced relative to one another instead of being all over the place.

This makes no sense. Classes are entirely different. How can you try to balance their AA skills in a vacuum, as if you could safely ignore everything?

Einlanzer.1627:

Olba.5376:

Einlanzer.1627:

Olba.5376:

Einlanzer.1627:

A few weapons have #1 skills that are too strong. Warrior Longsword

So… do you mean Greatsword, Longbow or Sword? Because let me tell you, none of them have that good of an autoattack. It’s well-known that if your target stays in range (such as in all of PvE), axe has the best autoattack out of all warrior weapons. And GS has one of the worst, especially considering the other skills on that weapon.

1. Elementalist (Staff and Scepter) require attunement dancing to be at all effective when it should just be a feature adding versatility in utility.

1. Thief (P/P) requires dumping all of your Initiative into Unload constantly to maintain reasonable DPS, which breaks the whole set by forcing you to sacrifice too much damage to get any utility and too much utility to get any damage.

1. Elementalist should be like that on all weapons. After all, you’re given twice the skills of everyone else (in combat).
2. That has more to do with the rest of the P/P set skills not being fit for a physical attacker.

Spoiler: Combat should never, ever, be about using your #1 skill over the rest. So rather than looking at nerfing the powerful #1 skills, look at bringing up the #2-#5 to match. In most cases where you have a “weak” #1 skill, it originates from something other than the skill in question. Unload on Thief wouldn’t be an issue if Thieves had cooldowns like other classes. Not that it would be a good solution.

No it doesn’t. Every weapon in the game that feels weak is weak because of their #1 skill being poorly balanced. The entire problem with Thief P/P is Vital Shot. It’s too weak to carry decent sustained DPS, so you are forced to try to compensate by spamming Unload. This breaks the entire set.

The #1 skill is the primary determinant of sustained DPS. weapons with very weak auto-attacks will always feel weak and clumsy in general game-play. It’s the main problem afflicting several weapons and several professions.

And yet there are weapons which are meta and have crap #1, like Warrior Greatsword.

Warrior Greatsword #1 is not crap.

Greatsword autoattack:

1. Is slower than Axe or Sword and equal with Hammer. Rifle, Mace and Longbow are slower.
2. Has coefficients of 0.7/0.7/0.9, making it worse than Hammer (0.9/0.9/1.2), Mace (0.8/0.8/1.6), Axe (0.7/1.4/2.9)

Also, the meta rotation for GS/Axe+Mace only has room for one GS autoattack.

Einlanzer.1627:

Yeah, and the bleed on the Rifle is 50% longer with an easier ability to add that with simple traits. The MH Pistol #1 is underpowered, period, and it creates a gameplay problem for the Thief trying to use one. The problem is that they are forced to spam Unload to maintain any semblance of reasonable DPS, which breaks the whole set.

I can’t believe how dense people are on this issue.[/quote]

So now we are onto the condition damage of the weapon? You brought up Pistol 1 for thief vs Rifle 1 for warrior. What is the next variable your going to add in this comparison? Pistol 1 is underpowered period compared to Rifle! Yet in WvW you are more likely to see a Pistol main hand thief more then you will a rifle warrior thief. Thief is probably running condi the warrior wont run condi on the rifle he will use a bow and/or a sword. This is what coglin is saying comparing it in a vacuum. So sword on thief is better then sword on warrior for direct damage but warrior sword is better for conditions.

So if you put your game dev hat on should we put bleeds on thief sword and increase the damage on warrior sword so that they are equal? We don’t need to think about things like stealth or blind access things like that. Just buff sword auto for thief put bleeds on it.

Pistol main hand is better with a dagger in either a direct damage or condi build in a WvW or s/tPvP setting. Pistol looks bad when you put it with off hand pistol. We know off hand pistol is good when you put it with mainhand dagger or mainhand sword.

So to me it looks like the issue is synergy between Pistol main hand + Pistol off hand. Mix with another weapon they do well but together they aren’t so good as a main attacking set.

Carighan.6758:

Einlanzer.1627:

My point is that #1 skills need to all be balanced relative to one another instead of being all over the place.

This makes no sense. Classes are entirely different. How can you try to balance their AA skills in a vacuum, as if you could safely ignore everything?

It makes sense if you aren’t an idiot. The #1 skill carries more weight than any other single skill/trait/etc. when it comes to sustained DPS and overall balance. It’s stupid beyond all reason to leave egregious inequalities between autoattacks in place while trying to compensate through traits and other skills.

This whole paradigm is one of the most overt illustrations of the way balance is horrendously myopically focused on PvP, where sustained DPS doesn’t matter that much.

Olba.5376:

Einlanzer.1627:

Olba.5376:

Einlanzer.1627:

Olba.5376:

Einlanzer.1627:

A few weapons have #1 skills that are too strong. Warrior Longsword

So… do you mean Greatsword, Longbow or Sword? Because let me tell you, none of them have that good of an autoattack. It’s well-known that if your target stays in range (such as in all of PvE), axe has the best autoattack out of all warrior weapons. And GS has one of the worst, especially considering the other skills on that weapon.

1. Elementalist (Staff and Scepter) require attunement dancing to be at all effective when it should just be a feature adding versatility in utility.

1. Thief (P/P) requires dumping all of your Initiative into Unload constantly to maintain reasonable DPS, which breaks the whole set by forcing you to sacrifice too much damage to get any utility and too much utility to get any damage.

1. Elementalist should be like that on all weapons. After all, you’re given twice the skills of everyone else (in combat).
2. That has more to do with the rest of the P/P set skills not being fit for a physical attacker.

Spoiler: Combat should never, ever, be about using your #1 skill over the rest. So rather than looking at nerfing the powerful #1 skills, look at bringing up the #2-#5 to match. In most cases where you have a “weak” #1 skill, it originates from something other than the skill in question. Unload on Thief wouldn’t be an issue if Thieves had cooldowns like other classes. Not that it would be a good solution.

No it doesn’t. Every weapon in the game that feels weak is weak because of their #1 skill being poorly balanced. The entire problem with Thief P/P is Vital Shot. It’s too weak to carry decent sustained DPS, so you are forced to try to compensate by spamming Unload. This breaks the entire set.

The #1 skill is the primary determinant of sustained DPS. weapons with very weak auto-attacks will always feel weak and clumsy in general game-play. It’s the main problem afflicting several weapons and several professions.

And yet there are weapons which are meta and have crap #1, like Warrior Greatsword.

Warrior Greatsword #1 is not crap.

Greatsword autoattack:

1. Is slower than Axe or Sword and equal with Hammer. Rifle, Mace and Longbow are slower.
2. Has coefficients of 0.7/0.7/0.9, making it worse than Hammer (0.9/0.9/1.2), Mace (0.8/0.8/1.6), Axe (0.7/1.4/2.9)

Also, the meta rotation for GS/Axe+Mace only has room for one GS autoattack.

It’s not equal to Hammer in speed. Hammer is slower. Moreover, you are describing a relatively insignificant difference. I’m talking about 800 dps vs 80.

oZii.2864:

Einlanzer.1627:

The damage range is larger.

Looking in Game right now the damage range on
Exotic:
Pistol: 876 – 1029
Rifle: 986 – 1205

Bleeding shot 155 base damage .4 scaling
Vital shot 134 base damage .4 scaling

Damage done = (Weapon strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)

Why are you trying to compare a 1h pistol to a 2h rifle when the damage formula ingame favors the 2h rifle based on the avg weapon damage and the base damage?

Sure they both bleed on auto attack but and have the same scaling but that’s all they have similar. This is uniform across the game that 2h weapons have higher damage range then 1h weapons not just guns.

Without getting to IRL it’s not as if rifles out damaging pistols is unheard of.

Yeah, and the bleed on the Rifle is 50% longer with an easier ability to add that with simple traits. The MH Pistol #1 is underpowered, period, and it creates a gameplay problem for the Thief trying to use one. The problem is that they are forced to spam Unload to maintain any semblance of reasonable DPS, which breaks the whole set.

I can’t believe how dense people are on this issue.

So now we are onto the condition damage of the weapon? You brought up Pistol 1 for thief vs Rifle 1 for warrior. What is the next variable your going to add in this comparison? Pistol 1 is underpowered period compared to Rifle! Yet in WvW you are more likely to see a Pistol main hand thief more then you will a rifle warrior thief. Thief is probably running condi the warrior wont run condi on the rifle he will use a bow and/or a sword. This is what coglin is saying comparing it in a vacuum. So sword on thief is better then sword on warrior for direct damage but warrior sword is better for conditions.

So if you put your game dev hat on should we put bleeds on thief sword and increase the damage on warrior sword so that they are equal? We don’t need to think about things like stealth or blind access things like that. Just buff sword auto for thief put bleeds on it.

Pistol main hand is better with a dagger in either a direct damage or condi build in a WvW or s/tPvP setting. Pistol looks bad when you put it with off hand pistol. We know off hand pistol is good when you put it with mainhand dagger or mainhand sword.

So to me it looks like the issue is synergy between Pistol main hand + Pistol off hand. Mix with another weapon they do well but together they aren’t so good as a main attacking set.

Almost every point you made in this post is altogether incoherent, and you can’t even bother to format your posts correctly. I talk about bleeds because both Vital Shot and Bleeding Shot are hybridized as half direct, half condition skills. The point is that both the direct damage and the bleed damage on Bleeding Shot are superior for no coherent reason. Your attempt at an analogy with Thief and Warrior sword is completely irrelevant.

The reason you may see P/P more in PvP is because PvP is more focused around burst, and the Initiative system gives Thieves decent burst with P/P even if it’s entirely inept at anything else, including utility, mobility, AND sustained damage.

Einlanzer.1627:

Olba.5376:

Einlanzer.1627:

Olba.5376:

Einlanzer.1627:

Olba.5376:

Einlanzer.1627:

A few weapons have #1 skills that are too strong. Warrior Longsword

So… do you mean Greatsword, Longbow or Sword? Because let me tell you, none of them have that good of an autoattack. It’s well-known that if your target stays in range (such as in all of PvE), axe has the best autoattack out of all warrior weapons. And GS has one of the worst, especially considering the other skills on that weapon.

1. Elementalist (Staff and Scepter) require attunement dancing to be at all effective when it should just be a feature adding versatility in utility.

1. Thief (P/P) requires dumping all of your Initiative into Unload constantly to maintain reasonable DPS, which breaks the whole set by forcing you to sacrifice too much damage to get any utility and too much utility to get any damage.

1. Elementalist should be like that on all weapons. After all, you’re given twice the skills of everyone else (in combat).
2. That has more to do with the rest of the P/P set skills not being fit for a physical attacker.

Spoiler: Combat should never, ever, be about using your #1 skill over the rest. So rather than looking at nerfing the powerful #1 skills, look at bringing up the #2-#5 to match. In most cases where you have a “weak” #1 skill, it originates from something other than the skill in question. Unload on Thief wouldn’t be an issue if Thieves had cooldowns like other classes. Not that it would be a good solution.

No it doesn’t. Every weapon in the game that feels weak is weak because of their #1 skill being poorly balanced. The entire problem with Thief P/P is Vital Shot. It’s too weak to carry decent sustained DPS, so you are forced to try to compensate by spamming Unload. This breaks the entire set.

The #1 skill is the primary determinant of sustained DPS. weapons with very weak auto-attacks will always feel weak and clumsy in general game-play. It’s the main problem afflicting several weapons and several professions.

And yet there are weapons which are meta and have crap #1, like Warrior Greatsword.

Warrior Greatsword #1 is not crap.

Greatsword autoattack:

1. Is slower than Axe or Sword and equal with Hammer. Rifle, Mace and Longbow are slower.
2. Has coefficients of 0.7/0.7/0.9, making it worse than Hammer (0.9/0.9/1.2), Mace (0.8/0.8/1.6), Axe (0.7/1.4/2.9)

Also, the meta rotation for GS/Axe+Mace only has room for one GS autoattack.

It’s not equal to Hammer in speed. Hammer is slower. Moreover, you are describing a relatively insignificant difference. I’m talking about 800 dps vs 80.

Hammer is only slightly slower due to the time it takes to restart the chain. And looking at the coefficients, Hammer’s got 30% more going for it. The only reason Hammer comes out short in practice is because GS has more functional damage increasing traits. But that has nothing to do with the autoattacks themselves.

Hell, Mace has 40% more damage than GS and Mace is notorious for having a kittenty autoattack chain.

If you spend time autoattacking on a GS, you’re doing it wrong.

Olba.5376:

Einlanzer.1627:

Olba.5376:

Einlanzer.1627:

Olba.5376:

Einlanzer.1627:

Olba.5376:

Einlanzer.1627:

A few weapons have #1 skills that are too strong. Warrior Longsword

So… do you mean Greatsword, Longbow or Sword? Because let me tell you, none of them have that good of an autoattack. It’s well-known that if your target stays in range (such as in all of PvE), axe has the best autoattack out of all warrior weapons. And GS has one of the worst, especially considering the other skills on that weapon.

1. Elementalist (Staff and Scepter) require attunement dancing to be at all effective when it should just be a feature adding versatility in utility.

1. Thief (P/P) requires dumping all of your Initiative into Unload constantly to maintain reasonable DPS, which breaks the whole set by forcing you to sacrifice too much damage to get any utility and too much utility to get any damage.

1. Elementalist should be like that on all weapons. After all, you’re given twice the skills of everyone else (in combat).
2. That has more to do with the rest of the P/P set skills not being fit for a physical attacker.

Spoiler: Combat should never, ever, be about using your #1 skill over the rest. So rather than looking at nerfing the powerful #1 skills, look at bringing up the #2-#5 to match. In most cases where you have a “weak” #1 skill, it originates from something other than the skill in question. Unload on Thief wouldn’t be an issue if Thieves had cooldowns like other classes. Not that it would be a good solution.

No it doesn’t. Every weapon in the game that feels weak is weak because of their #1 skill being poorly balanced. The entire problem with Thief P/P is Vital Shot. It’s too weak to carry decent sustained DPS, so you are forced to try to compensate by spamming Unload. This breaks the entire set.

The #1 skill is the primary determinant of sustained DPS. weapons with very weak auto-attacks will always feel weak and clumsy in general game-play. It’s the main problem afflicting several weapons and several professions.

And yet there are weapons which are meta and have crap #1, like Warrior Greatsword.

Warrior Greatsword #1 is not crap.

Greatsword autoattack:

1. Is slower than Axe or Sword and equal with Hammer. Rifle, Mace and Longbow are slower.
2. Has coefficients of 0.7/0.7/0.9, making it worse than Hammer (0.9/0.9/1.2), Mace (0.8/0.8/1.6), Axe (0.7/1.4/2.9)

Also, the meta rotation for GS/Axe+Mace only has room for one GS autoattack.

It’s not equal to Hammer in speed. Hammer is slower. Moreover, you are describing a relatively insignificant difference. I’m talking about 800 dps vs 80.

Hammer is only slightly slower due to the time it takes to restart the chain. And looking at the coefficients, Hammer’s got 30% more going for it. The only reason Hammer comes out short in practice is because GS has more functional damage increasing traits. But that has nothing to do with the autoattacks themselves.

Hell, Mace has 40% more damage than GS and Mace is notorious for having a kittenty autoattack chain.

If you spend time autoattacking on a GS, you’re doing it wrong.

Yes it does! Functional damage increasing traits affect the autoattack most. But, like I said, I’m not talking about effective differences in the 10% range (which I’d estimate is what we’re talking about with the GS, Mace, and Hammer). I’m talking about differences in the 30+% range or even greater.

Again, this whole argument is a product of primarily pvp players not realizing how much a weak autoattack causes issues in pve due to the longer, less active nature of PvE combat, which you perfectly exposed with your statement about how anyone using GS autos is doing it wrong. Newsflash – you have to auto some, your cooldown skills aren’t always off cooldown.

It’s a problem that can be addressed easily without breaking anything in PvP.

Einlanzer.1627:

It makes sense if you aren’t an idiot.

Dismissive, much?

Einlanzer.1627:

The #1 skill carries more weight than any other single skill/trait/etc. when it comes to sustained DPS and overall balance.

To sustained damage? Maybe, but how about you show that, first. Balance? Yeah, well, better show that while you’re at it, because everyone can make random claims without backing them up.

Einlanzer.1627:

It’s stupid beyond all reason to leave egregious inequalities between autoattacks in place while trying to compensate through traits and other skills.

Not stupid at all. Equality forces homogeneous class setups, which are inherently boring. In PvE, where you aren’t forced to have one-for-one balance like in smallscape PvP, there’s no reason at all to ruin your class setup by wanting per-ability balance.

Einlanzer.1627:

This whole paradigm is one of the most overt illustrations of the way balance is horrendously myopically focused on PvP, where sustained DPS doesn’t matter that much.

This one is true. In a way.
See, you’re right, PvE is unbalanced and boring. But your conclusion seems to be to make it balanced and boring. I’d work on the boring first, the balanced hardly matters after that, it being PvE and all. Bonus if it’s also balanced. But if we assume no class is boring, each will have their own handful of overpowered PvE ability to add to a party.

An ideal PvE balance works on the basis that you want ~200 of each class in your team. If you could. Each has the equivalent of a nuclear strike, in their own class version, and each makes some kind of encounter you constantly run into dead trivial.

The limitation you cannot bring everyone is then what allows room for challenge, while the imbalance of abilities – coupled with their individual strength – adds the balance.

That’s the ideal PvE balance, and rather close to how WvW zerg combat already forms its balance. People are brought for the handful of overpowered abilities they add. Elementalists already work like this in PvE, btw.

As a staff ele I dont even use the auto attacks (besides chain-lightning very rarely). I consider them COMPLETELY useless.

Einlanzer you’re making a huge mistake in autoattacks comparison.

It’s quite ridiculous to compare just 2 skills side by side. Skills are designed with all the weapon skills pack and with all class mechanic. (For example, mesmer autoattacks are such low cause they rely heavily on phantasms damage).

About warrior vs thief, first, rifle warrior autoattack is around 17% slower than thief’s one. Then, Vital shot is replaced by a quite powerful autoattack when being in stealth. And finally, thieves can spam much more other weapon skills than warriors due to initiative and thief weapon skill mechanic. Initiative mechanic has a big problem, like all. It means a huge advantage on PvP, but thieves are struggled quite a lot in PvE.

PD: And please let me laugh at this stupid discussion about which autoattack is weaker of two of the classes with strongest autoattacks. Engineer pistol autoattack is even way more weaker than Vital shot.

Necro axe has horrible dps in pvp. Can I has buff?

Olba.5376:

Einlanzer.1627:

Olba.5376:

Einlanzer.1627:

A few weapons have #1 skills that are too strong. Warrior Longsword

So… do you mean Greatsword, Longbow or Sword? Because let me tell you, none of them have that good of an autoattack. It’s well-known that if your target stays in range (such as in all of PvE), axe has the best autoattack out of all warrior weapons. And GS has one of the worst, especially considering the other skills on that weapon.

1. Elementalist (Staff and Scepter) require attunement dancing to be at all effective when it should just be a feature adding versatility in utility.

1. Thief (P/P) requires dumping all of your Initiative into Unload constantly to maintain reasonable DPS, which breaks the whole set by forcing you to sacrifice too much damage to get any utility and too much utility to get any damage.

1. Elementalist should be like that on all weapons. After all, you’re given twice the skills of everyone else (in combat).
2. That has more to do with the rest of the P/P set skills not being fit for a physical attacker.

Spoiler: Combat should never, ever, be about using your #1 skill over the rest. So rather than looking at nerfing the powerful #1 skills, look at bringing up the #2-#5 to match. In most cases where you have a “weak” #1 skill, it originates from something other than the skill in question. Unload on Thief wouldn’t be an issue if Thieves had cooldowns like other classes. Not that it would be a good solution.

No it doesn’t. Every weapon in the game that feels weak is weak because of their #1 skill being poorly balanced. The entire problem with Thief P/P is Vital Shot. It’s too weak to carry decent sustained DPS, so you are forced to try to compensate by spamming Unload. This breaks the entire set.

The #1 skill is the primary determinant of sustained DPS. weapons with very weak auto-attacks will always feel weak and clumsy in general game-play. It’s the main problem afflicting several weapons and several professions.

And yet there are weapons which are meta and have crap #1, like Warrior Greatsword.

Also the best DPS weapon in PvE, axe, is considered crap in PvP because of the autoattack.

It’s not crap in pvp. One of the best WvW duelist roaming builds is an axe/mace+hammer lockdown+burst variant.

The reason axe doesn’t get used in tpvp is MOBILITY. In spvp it’s not only about damage, but getting around to points quickly, being able to aoe consistently, and CC. The mainhand axe lacks those with the exception of mace offhand which is a longer cd than hammer CC and lacks the aoe spam of longbow.

There is a reason why you see some warrior and thief builds in WvW that are OP in WvW that don’t exist in spvp. And the reason is spvp creates artificial incentives that are skewed toward targeted aoe and map movement. Killing the enemy is hardly the primary or most vital goal.

Zenith.7301:

It’s not crap in pvp. One of the best WvW duelist roaming builds is an axe/mace+hammer lockdown+burst variant.

The reason axe doesn’t get used in tpvp is MOBILITY. In spvp it’s not only about damage, but getting around to points quickly, being able to aoe consistently, and CC. The mainhand axe lacks those with the exception of mace offhand which is a longer cd than hammer CC and lacks the aoe spam of longbow.

There is a reason why you see some warrior and thief builds in WvW that are OP in WvW that don’t exist in spvp. And the reason is spvp creates artificial incentives that are skewed toward targeted aoe and map movement. Killing the enemy is hardly the primary or most vital goal.

Warrior doesn’t need mobility in s/tPvP you think Hambow is popular in s/tPvP now because of MOBILITY? Nothing about hammer+bow say’s mobility in the slightest.

oZii.2864:

Zenith.7301:

It’s not crap in pvp. One of the best WvW duelist roaming builds is an axe/mace+hammer lockdown+burst variant.

The reason axe doesn’t get used in tpvp is MOBILITY. In spvp it’s not only about damage, but getting around to points quickly, being able to aoe consistently, and CC. The mainhand axe lacks those with the exception of mace offhand which is a longer cd than hammer CC and lacks the aoe spam of longbow.

There is a reason why you see some warrior and thief builds in WvW that are OP in WvW that don’t exist in spvp. And the reason is spvp creates artificial incentives that are skewed toward targeted aoe and map movement. Killing the enemy is hardly the primary or most vital goal.

Warrior doesn’t need mobility in s/tPvP you think Hambow is popular in s/tPvP now because of MOBILITY? Nothing about hammer+bow say’s mobility in the slightest.

Don’t be stupid. The mobility from the weaponset is not needed given you can AoE from range, and hammer burst skill is still more mobility than what you get from mainhand axe on top of it being better aoe.

But on a weapon like the greatsword+longbow variant, which anas tarcis uses, the mobility is a huge aspect of it on top of the aoe potential. Which the mainhand axe doesn’t have.

If you’re running a 1v1 build, the axe+mace/hammer setup is easily the strongest build. It just so happens that spvp is not about 1v1 roaming.

Einlanzer.1627:

I’m posting this again, because it clearly doesn’t get the attention it should.

A few weapons have #1 skills that are too strong. Warrior Longsword & Ranger Shortbow are just two that I can think of off-hand. Having a very strong #1 means they do well above average sustained DPS with virtually no strategy and little effort on the part of the player. This makes them boring to play and contributes to some extent to large-scale weapon/profession balance issues.

Many weapons, primarily certain ranged ones (Pistol, Staff, Scepter, Longbow) have #1 skills that are too weak (probably due to a poorly calibrated aftercast), making them struggle to compete outside of highly specialized situations and/or requiring bizarre gimmicks to even be playable. A few examples -

Elementalist (Staff and Scepter) require attunement dancing to be at all effective when it should just be a feature adding versatility in utility.

Thief (P/P) requires dumping all of your Initiative into Unload constantly to maintain reasonable DPS, which breaks the whole set by forcing you to sacrifice too much damage to get any utility and too much utility to get any damage.

Mesmer (Scepter) is just terrible because, while it offers reasonably good utility, it has nothing that even attempts to compensate for the atrocious damage of its #1 skill.

The list could go on, but you get the point. My point is that #1 skills need to all be balanced relative to one another instead of being all over the place. Since the #1 skill is the primary determining factor when it comes to sustained DPS, there are huge weapon/profession balance issues in the game almost entirely stemming from this issue that tuning traits and utility skills endlessly will never fix.

Warrior Greatsword? Ranger Shortbow? Warrior greatsword auto is weaker than axe auto and hammer auto I’m pretty sure. Ranger shortbow will deal no bleed damage whatsoever if you run straight at it.

If we are talking about strong auto attacks how about Necromancer Scepter or Thief Sword? Both of these are absolute monsters

Lets clear something up right now about Ranger Shortbow

A. Rangers actually use every single of the abilities Shortbow has, You usually don’t notice them though because of Animation they do, Plus see part B.

B. All the Ranger Shortbow Attacks do the same damage, and i’m not kidding.. That is another reason it looks like Ranger is just pelting you over and over with Auto Attacks, Because none of their other attacks are big hitters

For example

Crossfire (SB auto attack) 278 Damage with a Bleed if I’m on the side or behind the target

Poison Volley 350 Damage if all 5 Attacks hit the target (the only attack that supposedly has more damage then the auto attack)

Quick Shot 278 damage, Evade + Swiftness

Crippling Shot 278 Damage, Pet Bleeds the Target + Cripple

Concussion Shot 278 Damage, Stun or Daze depending on if infront or behind.

As you can see, All the shots basically do the same amount of damage, and they’re all very short cooldowns so Rangers tend to use them pretty much when they’re up (except maybe the evade and stun)

Now you look at a 100 Blades Warrior, you know when he 100blades you because it does a lot of damage, and has a noticeable animation

Zenith.7301:

oZii.2864:

Zenith.7301:

It’s not crap in pvp. One of the best WvW duelist roaming builds is an axe/mace+hammer lockdown+burst variant.

The reason axe doesn’t get used in tpvp is MOBILITY. In spvp it’s not only about damage, but getting around to points quickly, being able to aoe consistently, and CC. The mainhand axe lacks those with the exception of mace offhand which is a longer cd than hammer CC and lacks the aoe spam of longbow.

There is a reason why you see some warrior and thief builds in WvW that are OP in WvW that don’t exist in spvp. And the reason is spvp creates artificial incentives that are skewed toward targeted aoe and map movement. Killing the enemy is hardly the primary or most vital goal.

Warrior doesn’t need mobility in s/tPvP you think Hambow is popular in s/tPvP now because of MOBILITY? Nothing about hammer+bow say’s mobility in the slightest.

Don’t be stupid. The mobility from the weaponset is not needed given you can AoE from range, and hammer burst skill is still more mobility than what you get from mainhand axe on top of it being better aoe.

But on a weapon like the greatsword+longbow variant, which anas tarcis uses, the mobility is a huge aspect of it on top of the aoe potential. Which the mainhand axe doesn’t have.

If you’re running a 1v1 build, the axe+mace/hammer setup is easily the strongest build. It just so happens that spvp is not about 1v1 roaming.

Obviously sPvP isn’t about 1v1 roaming. To base the strength of a weapon set only on that makes no sense when that is just a side meta to WvW. Also you must be on a dead tier if you can get away with 1v1 roaming with Axe/Mace+Hammer.

You stated that axe isn’t used in s/tPvP because of mobility that is not why it isn’t used. It isn’t used because hammer is better you can build tanky and still get access to good damage on hammer. Many warriors dropped axe when they moved the damage toward the end of the auto attack chain. The auto damage is terrible now before it could pressure people to blow dodges to setup evis now it doesn’t provide that kind of pressure. People still run classic axe/shield in WvW but I think Olba is talking strictly about s/tPvP. Anything is viable in WvW if you want it to be like 1v1 roaming with Axe/Mace+Hammer to me sounds like food for gank squads.

infantrydiv.1620:

If we are talking about strong auto attacks how about Necromancer Scepter or Thief Sword? Both of these are absolute monsters

My scepter does 1120 bleed damage in pvp and just about the same for poison on each 3rd attack.

oZii.2864:

Zenith.7301:

oZii.2864:

Zenith.7301:

It’s not crap in pvp. One of the best WvW duelist roaming builds is an axe/mace+hammer lockdown+burst variant.

The reason axe doesn’t get used in tpvp is MOBILITY. In spvp it’s not only about damage, but getting around to points quickly, being able to aoe consistently, and CC. The mainhand axe lacks those with the exception of mace offhand which is a longer cd than hammer CC and lacks the aoe spam of longbow.

There is a reason why you see some warrior and thief builds in WvW that are OP in WvW that don’t exist in spvp. And the reason is spvp creates artificial incentives that are skewed toward targeted aoe and map movement. Killing the enemy is hardly the primary or most vital goal.

Warrior doesn’t need mobility in s/tPvP you think Hambow is popular in s/tPvP now because of MOBILITY? Nothing about hammer+bow say’s mobility in the slightest.

Don’t be stupid. The mobility from the weaponset is not needed given you can AoE from range, and hammer burst skill is still more mobility than what you get from mainhand axe on top of it being better aoe.

But on a weapon like the greatsword+longbow variant, which anas tarcis uses, the mobility is a huge aspect of it on top of the aoe potential. Which the mainhand axe doesn’t have.

If you’re running a 1v1 build, the axe+mace/hammer setup is easily the strongest build. It just so happens that spvp is not about 1v1 roaming.

Obviously sPvP isn’t about 1v1 roaming. To base the strength of a weapon set only on that makes no sense when that is just a side meta to WvW. Also you must be on a dead tier if you can get away with 1v1 roaming with Axe/Mace+Hammer.

You stated that axe isn’t used in s/tPvP because of mobility that is not why it isn’t used. It isn’t used because hammer is better you can build tanky and still get access to good damage on hammer. Many warriors dropped axe when they moved the damage toward the end of the auto attack chain. The auto damage is terrible now before it could pressure people to blow dodges to setup evis now it doesn’t provide that kind of pressure. People still run classic axe/shield in WvW but I think Olba is talking strictly about s/tPvP. Anything is viable in WvW if you want it to be like 1v1 roaming with Axe/Mace+Hammer to me sounds like food for gank squads.

I’m going to agree with your thoughts on Axe. I’ve been trying to use it for a while now and I would honestly take a main hand Mace over Axe. A 3+ second stun is a death sentence if you don’t have a stun breaker. You can also bring the reflect missiles trait to force glassy ranged enemies to half kill themselves. With a GS and Unsuspecting Foe you also have 100% crit chance if set up correctly which deals more damage than Evis and has less risk of it failing you and not critting. That build also preforms fine without food, something the Axe/GS build can’t say imo having run both.

Axe skills 2 and 3 were never all that great to begin with so the AA nerf really hurt it’s functionality.

oZii.2864:

Zenith.7301:

oZii.2864:

Zenith.7301:

It’s not crap in pvp. One of the best WvW duelist roaming builds is an axe/mace+hammer lockdown+burst variant.

The reason axe doesn’t get used in tpvp is MOBILITY. In spvp it’s not only about damage, but getting around to points quickly, being able to aoe consistently, and CC. The mainhand axe lacks those with the exception of mace offhand which is a longer cd than hammer CC and lacks the aoe spam of longbow.

There is a reason why you see some warrior and thief builds in WvW that are OP in WvW that don’t exist in spvp. And the reason is spvp creates artificial incentives that are skewed toward targeted aoe and map movement. Killing the enemy is hardly the primary or most vital goal.

Warrior doesn’t need mobility in s/tPvP you think Hambow is popular in s/tPvP now because of MOBILITY? Nothing about hammer+bow say’s mobility in the slightest.

Don’t be stupid. The mobility from the weaponset is not needed given you can AoE from range, and hammer burst skill is still more mobility than what you get from mainhand axe on top of it being better aoe.

But on a weapon like the greatsword+longbow variant, which anas tarcis uses, the mobility is a huge aspect of it on top of the aoe potential. Which the mainhand axe doesn’t have.

If you’re running a 1v1 build, the axe+mace/hammer setup is easily the strongest build. It just so happens that spvp is not about 1v1 roaming.

Obviously sPvP isn’t about 1v1 roaming. To base the strength of a weapon set only on that makes no sense when that is just a side meta to WvW. Also you must be on a dead tier if you can get away with 1v1 roaming with Axe/Mace+Hammer.

You stated that axe isn’t used in s/tPvP because of mobility that is not why it isn’t used. It isn’t used because hammer is better you can build tanky and still get access to good damage on hammer. Many warriors dropped axe when they moved the damage toward the end of the auto attack chain. The auto damage is terrible now before it could pressure people to blow dodges to setup evis now it doesn’t provide that kind of pressure. People still run classic axe/shield in WvW but I think Olba is talking strictly about s/tPvP. Anything is viable in WvW if you want it to be like 1v1 roaming with Axe/Mace+Hammer to me sounds like food for gank squads.

Tarnished Coast, not quite the dead tier. Stop talking up your kitten .

The axe autoattack will do the same amount of damage at the end of the chain, and anyone who was blowing dodges on its autoattacks before was an idiot to begin with considering they were opening themselves not only to either eviscerate or the stuns, but to both instead.

Axe/mace+hammer has 3 stuns in it, with monster sustained damage, a healthy amount of snares, and the fact that it forces the opponent to choose between dodging eviscerate or dodging the hammer cc chain or dodging offhand mace’s knockdown makes it one of warriors’ more potent 1v1 sets.

Put it with condi removal, perma swiftness, endure pain+berkstance+fear me, and you will completely dominate most people. Nobody can go toe to toe with you.

And roaming isn’t a side meta. Zergs are not the only form of WvW. Said build excels in small scale skirmishes as well. It easily wears down bunkers and is fairly durable itself with plenty of cc to stop burst trains on teammates.

Really, the longbow is only particularly great in spvp because people are forced to stand on the point you just set afire and are pumping arcing shot into, because if they move off point they lose the point. This is not the case in WvW where the longbow’s main value was in two ground targeted abilities that are moved out of quickly, and the longbow’s remaining skills are fairly weak, beginning with the autoattack so it has no sustained damage whatsoever if you can’t get a target to stand in your fire field or eat an arcing shot.

Zenith.7301:

oZii.2864:

Zenith.7301:

oZii.2864:

Zenith.7301:

It’s not crap in pvp. One of the best WvW duelist roaming builds is an axe/mace+hammer lockdown+burst variant.

The reason axe doesn’t get used in tpvp is MOBILITY. In spvp it’s not only about damage, but getting around to points quickly, being able to aoe consistently, and CC. The mainhand axe lacks those with the exception of mace offhand which is a longer cd than hammer CC and lacks the aoe spam of longbow.

There is a reason why you see some warrior and thief builds in WvW that are OP in WvW that don’t exist in spvp. And the reason is spvp creates artificial incentives that are skewed toward targeted aoe and map movement. Killing the enemy is hardly the primary or most vital goal.

Warrior doesn’t need mobility in s/tPvP you think Hambow is popular in s/tPvP now because of MOBILITY? Nothing about hammer+bow say’s mobility in the slightest.

Don’t be stupid. The mobility from the weaponset is not needed given you can AoE from range, and hammer burst skill is still more mobility than what you get from mainhand axe on top of it being better aoe.

But on a weapon like the greatsword+longbow variant, which anas tarcis uses, the mobility is a huge aspect of it on top of the aoe potential. Which the mainhand axe doesn’t have.

If you’re running a 1v1 build, the axe+mace/hammer setup is easily the strongest build. It just so happens that spvp is not about 1v1 roaming.

Obviously sPvP isn’t about 1v1 roaming. To base the strength of a weapon set only on that makes no sense when that is just a side meta to WvW. Also you must be on a dead tier if you can get away with 1v1 roaming with Axe/Mace+Hammer.

You stated that axe isn’t used in s/tPvP because of mobility that is not why it isn’t used. It isn’t used because hammer is better you can build tanky and still get access to good damage on hammer. Many warriors dropped axe when they moved the damage toward the end of the auto attack chain. The auto damage is terrible now before it could pressure people to blow dodges to setup evis now it doesn’t provide that kind of pressure. People still run classic axe/shield in WvW but I think Olba is talking strictly about s/tPvP. Anything is viable in WvW if you want it to be like 1v1 roaming with Axe/Mace+Hammer to me sounds like food for gank squads.

Tarnished Coast, not quite the dead tier. Stop talking up your kitten .

The axe autoattack will do the same amount of damage at the end of the chain, and anyone who was blowing dodges on its autoattacks before was an idiot to begin with considering they were opening themselves not only to either eviscerate or the stuns, but to both instead.

Axe/mace+hammer has 3 stuns in it, with monster sustained damage, a healthy amount of snares, and the fact that it forces the opponent to choose between dodging eviscerate or dodging the hammer cc chain or dodging offhand mace’s knockdown makes it one of warriors’ more potent 1v1 sets.

Put it with condi removal, perma swiftness, endure pain+berkstance+fear me, and you will completely dominate most people. Nobody can go toe to toe with you.

Ok sooo can we put the little insults to the side at the beginning of each post? I disagree with you calling me names isn’t going to change my mind lol.

Axe auto attacks damage was spread even across the entire chain before the nerf. They moved the damage to the end of the chain. I have a warrior I don’t main it but I know that for a fact.

Many times before you where better off to not even use eviscerate unless you could guarantee the crit. You know before when berseker power and heightened focus use to be adept?

That is why axe was so good before the auto attack had great upfront damage add in the fact of the stun add in the fact of eviscerate and it made the weapon a monster. With the damage backloaded now it isn’t the monster it was before. That isn’t being a idiot that is facing a weapon that had extremely strong damage on it’s auto attack that applied alot of pressure outright. You could kill people quickly just auto attacking with axe.

You are talking about a dueling build there is no way your roaming with that in Tier 1 on TC no solo roaming for sure. You can use it in groups sure but roaming alone with that means you are getting rolled by gank squads and zergs there is no mobility.

If it is a agreed upon duel to the death sure it works so does hambow, so does PU mesmers, so does any build where the person willingly is going to stay there and fight you to the death in a Duel.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a Axe/Mace+hammer warrior out running around roaming. I just moved to maguuma from TC 5 days ago.

Well, yeah, because most warriors just follow the meta builds. Why experiment with effective dueling builds when you can copy youtube videos?

And who cares about gank squads or zergs. If a gank squad sets their eyes on you, it doesn’t matter what build you are. You will die regardless.

Hambow has much more obvious counters than the build I mention, but it gets used because it is a more versatile build.

To be quite honest for group pvp I’d rather go greatsword+longbow for the massive cleave and body coverage it has.

What I’m meaning to say is axe isn’t bad. It’s pretty stupid, in duels and PvE. It’s the highest autoattack weapon in the game after elementalist’s lightning hammer, and lightning hammer only works in pve for obvious reasons.

It just gives the impression that the axe is bad because warriors have such a variety of weapons in a ridiculously good if not OP state.

They are by far the most finished class alongside guardians, with prominence in all formats of pvp. And it’s no surprise considering that the guy who used to come on these forums all the time and disappeared as soon as people started rebuffing his ideas, Jon Peters, happened to be a dedicated warrior player. So during beta, all the warrior kinks were worked out whereas some classes are still in beta development like the ranger and engineer and mesmer.

P.S. Eviscerate is pretty much a guaranteed crit with a good mix of knights and cavalier pieces in WvW alongside high fury uptime from signet of rage. The whole point of using it was to force people to use defensives, because warrior spike skills have such low cd’s that they would be back up before the target;s defensive cd’s were back, and the target had little chance for recovery because on top of the high spike the warrior can have, he also has the high sustained from broken autoattacks to pressure.

And my statement about the change to the autoattack not mattering stays. It doesn’t matter if the final autoattack is the big damage. That just means a delay of about 2 seconds, and in a sustained damage scenario nothing changes. A target can’t waste dodges on the autoattack chain because then he eats the ridiculous eviscerate spike or the hammer stun chain (on top of hammer’s less ridiculous but still kind of ridiculous damage).

To put it another way: My 2.4k toughness bunker ranger can tank any target beating on him. Thieves are no problem, since they’re just spiky. But a warrior? My ranger might as well be glass cannon because just the axe autoattack chain alone will wear him out quick.

Warrior damage is just broken relative to other classes on an individual level.