Guild Wars 2

Since the zerker whining thing is over now, let’s talk about the specifics of DPS being broken.

Right now, every character pretty much has one or two “best” weapons and the rest are mostly situational. Rolled a warrior because you like the way the way hammer skills look and wanted to be a hammer-swinging’ warrior? Tough luck, run Axe/Mace + GS or kick. Don’t want carpal tunnel mashing 1 on your engie to spam grenades? Suck it up and stop being a baby. And so on.

Right now, there is a ridiculously huge disparity between the DPS outputs on different weapons. Obviously something has to be highest DPS, but if different weapons are to fulfill different roles, the DPS disparity can’t be so huge as to totally negate the alternative benefits of the lower-DPS weapon. For example, the guardian’s staff: it’s got a giant AOE, heals, grants swiftness, stacks might, etc. Very good support weapon overall, but it’s still never going to see any use because you’re cutting your DPS by more than half just by equipping it. Ranger GS has evades and leaps and tons of other useful defensive stuff, but again the DPS loss from switching from a sword just isn’t worth it for the marginal extra utility you gain. The result is that for just about anyone, you ALWAYS use the same weapon. There’s literally no reason to use anything else. A 10-15% DPS loss for using a ranged or “support” weapon is reasonable. A 50+% loss isn’t.

As to cross-profession comparisons, is there really any reason why an elementalist (top tier DPS) deals 50% more DPS than a warrior (tier 4 DPS)? Given that all classes have unique utility options that justifies taking them even if they don’t actually hit any harder (i.e. warrior has banners, ranger has spirits, etc.) such huge DPS disparities aren’t really warranted nor necessary. An elementalist doesn’t need to deal 50% damage than average to be viable; if it dealt ordinary damage, it’d still be plenty good. Look at LH ele, it stacks might and fury to the max and it STILL deals more damage than average. Why.

tl;dr version:

1) Disparities among weapons too big to justify any potential benefit that could accrue from having support/utility options and/or range.
2) Disparities among professions too big and unnecessary for the most part.

I agree with what you are saying here. But what do you suggest?

Weapons are different. Why would anyone use an Axe if the hammer did the same damage but also stunned?

When all is said and done the whole berserker argument was never a legitimate complaint to begin with. The overwhelming majority of players have never been kicked for specing or playing one way or the other. These same players wouldn’t know if you were running in full yellows with a 0/0/0/0/0 spec or full ascended in a top tier DPS spec.

It’s only an issue because players like to believe the hype and are impressed with all the videos of speed clears. No one is pushing the 4minute barrier but top tier guilds that wouldn’t dare run with a pug, ever.

The whole thing just isn’t a real issue worth discussing. Especially in a game like GW2 where PvE is such a nonfactor to begin with.

Now back to your argument… there’s just no way every weapon for every class is going to be equally useful in every situation. If PvE content was complex and interrupting opponents was even the slightest bit useful, hammer would be preferred over greatsword. But it’s not. PvE is a joke. Weapons need to offer different utility and different gameplay experiences. Overall, I think ANet has doing a reasonable job at this with a few classes (entire classes, not just a specific weapon) being the exception.

Demanding some kind of fair effectiveness for every class is completely OK … but for every weapon? Dungeons are just a small part of the game.
If every weapons would be balanced for the current dungeon gameplay, then we would need to create new ones for PvP enviroments.

As a lot people have stated, the only way to bring more varied builds to dungeon, is about making control/conditons/healing/whatever more interesting, which basically requires a complete redesign of encounters and AIs

I don’t see the issue.

Everyone uses the same gear, the same specs, the same weapons and the same builds.

I don’t think anyone played this game because they were expecting something other than to rush to one FOTM after another.

I agree. While we’re addressing disparities between professions, we should bring warriors down to 10k base HP and switch them to light armor. And we need to remove warriors’ ability to swap between melee and range mid-fight. And we need to remove warriors’ passive healing. And we need to nerf warriors’ mobility.

And we need to realize that different professions are different and stop making balance suggestions without considering the whole picture.

+1

I for one would jump with joy if I could use a mainhand mace as a dps guardian/warrior. Granted, there will always be those one or two options that are deemed superior, but a little variety would be welcome.

shimmerless.4560:

Boils down to a lack of a PvP/PvE split OP

I see it a different way. I can’t remember who said it first but someone already pointed out that enemy AI needs a drastic overhaul. Right now, just about every single enemy just “attacks” players. They need to be programmed to kill players.

If a player is kiting, there should be enemies that can figure this out and use either cc to lock the player down or only long ranged attacks. Some should have deadly long ranged attacks and try to kite melee players.

Groups of enemies should be programmed to work together too. One could heal while another constantly uses cc on the player that outputs the highest damage and a third keeps pushing melee fighters away from the others.

Bosses and champions should have less skill rotations and more reaction skills. They should be focusing on countering team tactics as a whole. For instance, if everyone jumps into melee, the boss could trigger an aura that causes damage over time for everyone within melee range. To counter this, players will have to switch to ranged attacks or use some form of cc to stun the boss and put the skill on cooldown.

Speaking of using cc on bosses, Defiant needs to go altogether and I would prefer to see it replaced with City of heroes Mag system. For those whom don’t know, in CoH, stuns had a magnitude and all bosses had a natural resistance so, in order to stun a boss, you had to stack stuns high enough to overcome their resistance. That made sense and encouraged teamwork. It boggles my mind why this game didn’t use that system.

At level 25, a few select enemies should be focusing on condition damage and by 80, 33% of the enemies should use condition damage and their major focus. This would encourage pve players to at least have one condition clear at all times.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

As to cross-profession comparisons, is there really any reason why an elementalist (top tier DPS) deals 50% more DPS than a warrior (tier 4 DPS)?

maybe because the ele is 1. more difficult to play and 2. extremely squishy compared to an easy mode 19k hp warrior?

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

As to cross-profession comparisons, is there really any reason why an elementalist (top tier DPS) deals 50% more DPS than a warrior (tier 4 DPS)? Given that all classes have unique utility options that justifies taking them even if they don’t actually hit any harder (i.e. warrior has banners, ranger has spirits, etc.) such huge DPS disparities aren’t really warranted nor necessary. An elementalist doesn’t need to deal 50% damage than average to be viable; if it dealt ordinary damage, it’d still be plenty good. Look at LH ele, it stacks might and fury to the max and it STILL deals more damage than average. Why.

You complain that warrior in ideal situation deals less damage than ele? Do you now know why noone takes you seriously?

NoTrigger.8396:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

As to cross-profession comparisons, is there really any reason why an elementalist (top tier DPS) deals 50% more DPS than a warrior (tier 4 DPS)?

maybe because the ele is 1. more difficult to play and 2. extremely squishy compared to an easy mode 19k hp warrior?

You do know eles best staff damage comes from 2(3) skills only right?, talk about easy play here.

haviz.1340:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

As to cross-profession comparisons, is there really any reason why an elementalist (top tier DPS) deals 50% more DPS than a warrior (tier 4 DPS)? Given that all classes have unique utility options that justifies taking them even if they don’t actually hit any harder (i.e. warrior has banners, ranger has spirits, etc.) such huge DPS disparities aren’t really warranted nor necessary. An elementalist doesn’t need to deal 50% damage than average to be viable; if it dealt ordinary damage, it’d still be plenty good. Look at LH ele, it stacks might and fury to the max and it STILL deals more damage than average. Why.

You complain that warrior in ideal situation deals less damage than ele? Do you now know why noone takes you seriously?

Math shows that 2 ele specs deal more damage than warriors, warriors have Great burst but not particularly good DPS.

Azzer.8137:

Math shows that 2 ele specs deal more damage than warriors, warriors have Great burst but not particularly good DPS.

Thank you for proving my point.

NoTrigger.8396:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

As to cross-profession comparisons, is there really any reason why an elementalist (top tier DPS) deals 50% more DPS than a warrior (tier 4 DPS)?

maybe because the ele is 1. more difficult to play and 2. extremely squishy compared to an easy mode 19k hp warrior?

Sounds about right.

The op fails to mention that all the problems he sees are only in pve. In spvp most things are reversed: Hammer warrior is popular, GS warrior is not. Staff guardian is popular, 1h sword/focus is not. The disparity isn’t in dps of the weapons its the AI vs live players.

The AI doesn’t do anything that requires cc/supportive/defensive weapons, so the weapons with the highest dps potential are always chosen. Also, in spvp ele doesn’t do more damage than warrior. They just do not have the sustain to do it.

haviz.1340:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

As to cross-profession comparisons, is there really any reason why an elementalist (top tier DPS) deals 50% more DPS than a warrior (tier 4 DPS)? Given that all classes have unique utility options that justifies taking them even if they don’t actually hit any harder (i.e. warrior has banners, ranger has spirits, etc.) such huge DPS disparities aren’t really warranted nor necessary. An elementalist doesn’t need to deal 50% damage than average to be viable; if it dealt ordinary damage, it’d still be plenty good. Look at LH ele, it stacks might and fury to the max and it STILL deals more damage than average. Why.

You complain that warrior in ideal situation deals less damage than ele? Do you now know why noone takes you seriously?

He probably doesn’t play fractals. It’s literally impossible to have 100% uptime on LH without having either both a mes and a guard, or two guard, in the group. You’ll be dropping it often for a swirling, a cond remove on earth 4 or obsidian flesh. Or even just chill some boss. As for the staff dps build, it can’t actually be played without guard/mes or guard/guard pairing again. Any other group composition will force you into attunements other than fire, making you go from “top dps” to “worst dps in the game”.

The way attunement switching works makes anything beside fresh air builds worthless in content like fractals. Fresh air builds with dagger have decent dps, but it’s NOT top dps at all.

When you take non-100% uptime on LH or Fire on staff into account, their dps is not all that over the top. I don’t think any nerf would be justified without completely reworking the attunement mechanism, something anet is never going to do.

I think the claims that no guardian is using the staff because it has so low DPS are ridiculous. The OP himself wrote the reasons, why people are using the staff: giant AoE and superb support.

Similarly the OP is saying warrior’s hammer is crap weapon, because it does lower DPS compared to axe/mace + greatsword. Hammer melee train has been the meta in WvWvW since Autumn 2012 and the recent nerfs to hammer damage basically didn’t affect it at all. One could also argue that hambow warrior is borderline overpowered in pvp.

You cannot have everything in just one weapon: great support, great CC, great mobility and great DPS. It makes sense that the weapon offers one out of these four choices and not all.

For example guardian’s staff is clearly a support weapon and so is engineer’s elixir gun. Nobody choose elixir gun because it would do great DPS, but I have been using it very happily and I do NOT think EG needs any added damage (EG #3 should remove one condition from the engineer though, right not it cleanses conditions only from allies who are inside the rather narrow burst).

Warrior’s hammer is crowd control and arguably the most powerful CC weapon in the game.

Warrior’s axe is an example of a DPS weapon.

Warrior’s greatsword is an example of a mobility weapon (two mobility skills, GS #5 being currently the best in the game. GS also happens to do massive damage using 100 blades as well).

Some other weapons do well in several categories and I find this problematic. This is what pushes some weapons into almost every build e.g.

Necromancer’s staff does damage, support (condition transfer from putrid mark is amazing) and CC (chill from chillblains). Thus almost every single necro build uses it.

Engineer’s bomb kit has the highest auto attack of any engineer kit / weapon. But it also does lots of CC: area launch from big’ol’bomb, blind from smoke bomb and area immobilize from glue bomb. Combine that with blast finishers (big ol’ bomb is one itself), you can also get area might and stealth. No wonder why it is so popular in tpvp.

One could easily make similar examples for other professions and their weapons.

Now if all the weapons would do almost the same DPS there would be even less reasons for most players to do weapon swaps. Just spam the equally powerful auto attack and use the other skills on cool down. Making weapons clearly different promotes more intelligent play and weapon swaps.

So instead of complaining why some weapons do much less damage per second, I think one should carefully analyze why some weapons and weapon skills are doing a bit too many things at same time. And why many weapon skills look fully identical or almost identical instead of being telegraphed, making smart counter play more or less a guessing game. This game already has too much power creep and damage.

haviz.1340:

Azzer.8137:

Math shows that 2 ele specs deal more damage than warriors, warriors have Great burst but not particularly good DPS.

Thank you for proving my point.

As opposed to what? Fairy prayers?

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

As opposed to what? Fairy prayers?

As opposed to playing the game, not bashing dummies in LA. Have you ever tried your staff build for bosses like imbued shaman or archdiviner on high scales? I’m sure people would like to hear how well that went.

Azzer.8137:

NoTrigger.8396:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

As to cross-profession comparisons, is there really any reason why an elementalist (top tier DPS) deals 50% more DPS than a warrior (tier 4 DPS)?

maybe because the ele is 1. more difficult to play and 2. extremely squishy compared to an easy mode 19k hp warrior?

You do know eles best staff damage comes from 2(3) skills only right?, talk about easy play here.

i know what im talking about my son.
ele is more difficult to play than warrior.
or are you trying to tell me 10k hp and the lowest armor in the game is just as easy to play as a 19k hp warrior with alot more armor?

gg

play a full berserker ele in high level fractals. then we can talk again.

Let’s take a quick look at when DPS disparities are justified:

- Guardian hammer vs. GS gives perma-prot and a spammable blast finisher at the cost of a few percent (2-3%) DPS and potentially overwriting fire fields
- Thief sword/X vs. D/D gives a higher damage auto-attack and the ability to expend your adrenaline on non-DPS skills (i.e. Black Powder) at the cost of 10-15% DPS.
- Elementalist scepter/LH vs. staff gives huge stacks of might and fury and spammable blind at the cost of 20-30% DPS and having to be in melee.

Compare that to:
- Warrior hammer vs. axe/mace gives you a knockdown at the cost of 50%+ DPS.
- Guardian staff vs. GS gives you a swiftness symbol, a very minor heal, and a short duration burst of might at the cost of almost all your DPS.
- Ranger LB gives you the ability to range at the cost of 70-80% of your DPS.

The former set of weapons deal less damage than the optimal DPS setup but there are clear advantages to taking them anyway. Similarly, It’s clear what the latter set of weapons are supposed to do, but the DPS tradeoffs are just way too huge. Some roles just aren’t useful for PvE, but even for the useful roles (i.e. might stacking) they don’t warrant the huge loss. Would you take an LH ele if he did the same damage as a staff guardian, even with all the might and fury stacking he’d still be bringing? I wouldn’t.

your numbers seem to be wrong in some cases lol.