Guild Wars 2

Topic. The main culprit is huge variance in the speed/efficacy of the autoattack, which makes little difference in short, bursty engagements (most PvP) but has a dramatic impact on sustained DPS (all of PvE).

What is the deal with this, exactly? I can’t, for example, use Rifle or Longbow with my Warrior as a primary weapon in PvE because they simply have terrible sustained DPS on account of having extremely slow/weak autoattacks. What is the point of having a full weapon kit that is so highly situational that it has to be switched out of constantly when you don’t need a single skill from it?

Similarly, I can’t use Staff as a primary weapon on my Ele for any affinity except Fire, because the others all give up too much damage for their utility due mostly to having terrible autoattacks. That’s lame.

Well, i understand the complaint about warrior’s rifle, yes.
However why complain about the best DPS weapon in the game (yeah, staff Ele is considered as the best DPS in PvE, with Thief as the best single-target-only), that I can’t understand at all. Ele is not even able to switch the weapons during the combat, and Fire Attunement is designed around damage, every other attunement has it’s purpose, but only Fire is purely for damage purposes. Seems logic to me.

If you give ranged weapons same damage with melee weapons with no penalties, you end up in situations where everyone is staying in ranged pewpewing from safety. Look how terrible games like RIFT are. In a raid vs raid encounter, eveyone is charging, to stop at 30m range from eachother and start pewpewing.

Now for PvE situations, we’ll never see ranged, because the current meta way to do dungs is stack in 1 spot and melee burst down everything, sadly. If players played dungeons the way they were designed to be played in the first place, we could see ranged classes, and other builds. But as I said before, none wants to spend 2 hours for a single dungeon. Bad design.

Neither of you really understood my argument.

STRanger – I’m not complaining about Staff period, I’m complaining about the fact that I’m pigeonholed into using Fire as fallback because of the terrible DPS on the other affinities. What if I want to use Water as my primary attunement? The only way that’s even playable at all is if you’re always running in a full group.

Yelllow – I’m not necessarily saying ranged weapons should be equal in strength to melee weapons, I’m just saying they need to be balanced better. They aren’t even well balanced in relation to each other.

wow looks like you never touched a scepter there

Vikkela.7261:

wow looks like you never touched a scepter there

What? If what you’re saying is that scepters are good, that is not a counter argument. I am saying that ranged weapons are poorly balanced, not that all them suck.

You people should work on your reading comprehension.

The short answer is that the game is basically exclusively balanced around PvP, specifically conquest. In this game mode, ranged combat is significantly safer than melee during group fights on a point. Ranged weapons are thus balanced around this situation.

Ele attunement problems have more to deal with the attunements than ranged weapons. I’d love to see different weapons focus on different attunement sources for damage and utility effects and function differently, but that’s just the “vision” of the developers and how they handled elementalists.

Longbow and Rifle war are not really meant to be utilized as ranged DPS. I mean the rifle should be a kind of slow and clunky weapon thematically as it is, and using a longbow with plate armor with no formal and extensive training should lead to sloppier shots.

Why it shoots fireballs, I don’t know at all.

Ranged weapons aren’t so much imbalanced as they are situational. GW2 focuses pretty much entirely on melee combat and uses ranged as augments/options when melee is not possible.

So, do you think every profession’s highest damage should be from range like an Ele?
Or do you think firestaff Ele is OP?

Personally I’d agree with neither

Jerus.4350:

So, do you think every profession’s highest damage should be from range like an Ele?
Or do you think firestaff Ele is OP?

Personally I’d agree with neither

Neither of the two. Try again, please. This is exasperating.

The first thing I thought when I switched from GW1 to GW2 was: Oh, we can jump now! That means I can take a vantage point with my ranged weapon…. and I was wrong. Monsters go invulnerable if they can’t reach you. Which defeats the purpose of having a ranged weapon to begin with. That is stupid. I think they should fix that first and fore most.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

The first thing I thought when I switched from GW1 to GW2 was: Oh, we can jump now! That means I can take a vantage point with my ranged weapon…. and I was wrong. Monsters go invulnerable if they can’t reach you. Which defeats the purpose of having a ranged weapon to begin with. That is stupid. I think they should fix that first and fore most.

I think it’s stupid to expect to pew pew mobs from a place they can’t reach you. The fact that Anet considers it to be an exploit in cases when you can dmg mob but they can’t dmg you due to your positioning, tells me that generally a player is expected to play actively and use his skills to counter mobs. That’s a good thing.

Sebastian Knight.4736:

The short answer is that the game is basically exclusively balanced around PvP, specifically conquest. In this game mode, ranged combat is significantly safer than melee during group fights on a point. Ranged weapons are thus balanced around this situation.

Yes, and this is indeed the crux of GW2’s entire balance disparity. For some reason, the tiniest and least prevalent game mode holds a stranglehold (of sorts) on all things balance, which results in weak and washed out effects across the board to accommodate for the tiny team sizes.

Einlanzer.1627:

Neither of you really understood my argument.

STRanger – I’m not complaining about Staff period, I’m complaining about the fact that I’m pigeonholed into using Fire as fallback because of the terrible DPS on the other affinities. What if I want to use Water as my primary attunement? The only way that’s even playable at all is if you’re always running in a full group.

It seems that you haven’t got the idea of Elementalist attunements m8. Every attunement is there for a certain reason, “primary attunement” is not a thing, you use attunement which gives you the tools you need in a certain situation, that’s what Ele is about.
If you were able to deal good DPS in water attunement, what would fire attunement be for? Please think about that

Guardians, eles, engineers, and rangers ranged weapons are their best dps option ( or burst, in the case of rangers). Ranged weapons should be for kiting and recovering health, or harassing someone from afar without the penalty of going melee. It shouldn’t be the best damage option. IF anything, most ranged weapons should be nerfed.

You answered your own question. What’s the point of a lower dps ranged weapon? It gives you a range advantage, and a set of utilities to work with. If in a solo fight you need burning, you’ll probably use longbow. The thing is other weapons have better utilities and better damage, so you take them instead if you want to be useful. If you up rifle to the point it’s mandatory in a dps rotation just like ranger lb, you’re forcing everyone caring about their party to use it. Staff fire ele apply the same logic of dps versus utility. THe great utilities of water, air and earth ( swiftness, healing, condi clear, chill, blinds, aoe cc, immob) aren’t the point of a staff ele in combat. He’s here for dps, and a bit of offensive support via fury and vuln.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I can take a vantage point with my ranged weapon…. and I was wrong. Monsters go invulnerable if they can’t reach you.

Yay, 2014 MMO!

STRanger.5120:

Einlanzer.1627:

Neither of you really understood my argument.

STRanger – I’m not complaining about Staff period, I’m complaining about the fact that I’m pigeonholed into using Fire as fallback because of the terrible DPS on the other affinities. What if I want to use Water as my primary attunement? The only way that’s even playable at all is if you’re always running in a full group.

It seems that you haven’t got the idea of Elementalist attunements m8. Every attunement is there for a certain reason, “primary attunement” is not a thing, you use attunement which gives you the tools you need in a certain situation, that’s what Ele is about.
If you were able to deal good DPS in water attunement, what would fire attunement be for? Please think about that

Oh my god, you people. First, this is not true. “Primary” does not mean “only”, it means “dominant”. Fire is pretty much always your primary attunement, in the sense that it serves as fallback in the majority of situations. The reason for that is because you give up too much DPS in other attunements to stay in them for long. This remains the case regardless of your build. The only time it’s viable to stay in Water or Earth for long periods of time is if you always stay in a full party and are always trying to supporting that party instead of doing DPS.

Second, I never said Water should do as much DPS as Fire, I said it should do more DPS than it does. It serves no purpose for the gap to be as big as it is. Stop insulting my intelligence by insinuating I didn’t even think about this at the level of a 7 year old.

Hyperboles and strawmen, all of you.

Almost every single post in this thread is not actually comprehending the issue and continues to argue with strawmen fallacies. This is hilarious.

The answer to the question is actually what one or two of the more insightful people above responded – that the game is only balanced around PvP, so “sustained DPS” is never taken into consideration anywhere, and as a result PvE balance and playability suffers. That doesn’t mean it’s a status quo that shouldn’t be challenged, however.

the hole ranger profession have some nice mechanics makes it really fun to play.
even fun enough to be my main professions since i play gw2.

but the balance around rangers is just horrible since first day…
there is nobody on anet who spend his time for this profession.

and it looks like it’s also the profession gets the most random and ninja nerfs on builds which was not even broken as some builds on other professions.

would be interesten when anet could start to rebalance the ranger profession again
(same as they did on elementalist)

buff the vigor regeneration back to 50%
buff the burning duration back on sun spirit (engi just get burn for free on a 20 trait with much better burning duration)

maybe give back the quicknes on the beastmaster trait (quicknes was anyways nerfed in the past aswell)

rebuff the rez spirit, it just dies really fast and everybody can easy interrupt it anyways if you don’t give stability to it.

remove this kittened cast time on point blank shot, longbow is not even near to get a meta weapon for tpvp.

let rangers on offhand axe 5 also move, simply because you just let engi also move with his shield 4 but also give him a blast finisher on it…

look on the shouts of rangers, what an joke of skills

look on the traps of ranger, what an joke of skills compared to engis condi burst

etc etc..

Einlanzer.1627:

Jerus.4350:

So, do you think every profession’s highest damage should be from range like an Ele?
Or do you think firestaff Ele is OP?

Personally I’d agree with neither

Neither of the two. Try again, please. This is exasperating.

Hmm maybe you should try clarifying your point because it seems I’m not the only one that doesn’t understand what you’re trying to say.

I was under the impression you wanted balance among the range weapons, which would leave one of those two statements correct for your opinion.

Don’t get mad at other people because you’re unable to articulate your thoughts.

The problem with the elementalists auto-attack on staff is that it is so slow for the damage it does that most of the time its just better to keep your rotation going with your other skills. Most of the time I don’t use them at all unless I’m chilled and cant swap attunement.

Jerus.4350:

Einlanzer.1627:

Jerus.4350:

So, do you think every profession’s highest damage should be from range like an Ele?
Or do you think firestaff Ele is OP?

Personally I’d agree with neither

Neither of the two. Try again, please. This is exasperating.

Hmm maybe you should try clarifying your point because it seems I’m not the only one that doesn’t understand what you’re trying to say.

I was under the impression you wanted balance among the range weapons, which would leave one of those two statements correct for your opinion.

Don’t get mad at other people because you’re unable to articulate your thoughts.

I haven’t had any trouble articulating my thoughts. People just aren’t bothering to read or think about what I’m saying.

I think that ranged weapons should do somewhat consistent damage, and that that damage should be reasonably close to what melee weapons do, if not totally equal. The problem currently is that most ranged weapons severely underperform in general usage and become highly situational, with a handful of exceptions.

Fire Staff does good DPS, but Elementalists need to work well from range because of how vulnerable they are. The problem is that other attunements do horrendous damage, forcing you to always swap back to Fire when skills are on cooldown. It serves no purpose for Water to do 1/3 the DPS Fire does except for making Water impossible to use when solo. 2/3 the DPS of Fire would be far more appropriate.

Einlanzer.1627:

Almost every single post in this thread is not actually comprehending the issue and continues to argue with strawmen fallacies. This is hilarious.

That is strange. From my perspective, this is precisely what you are doing.

You can use long bow as your “primary weapon” for example, on a warrior. You assume that simply because it is out of your personally realm of skill, that it is factually impossible. The problem with a great deal of what your saying in this thread, as it reads to me, is that your claiming a vast amount of things can or do not work in ways that I see others do regularly. Your assuming to speak for everyone, and not just yourself, and push your opinion as if it were fact.

As to your references to elementalist, so what? It makes sense to me that one attunement does more damage then another. Another heals better. Yet another offers better CC. Still another offers more defensive factors.

It seems to me the problem is that you want to camp in one attunement or weapon. This is a game based around active combat, movement, dodging, swaping weapons, and utility and self heal skills. All of which, you use skills from as they are needed, depending on the situation. It is irrational if you ask me, to expect every weapon, kit, or attunement, to be as good as the next one, as every aspect of direct damage, avoidance, healing, CC, conditions, or cleansing.

coglin.1867:

Einlanzer.1627:

Almost every single post in this thread is not actually comprehending the issue and continues to argue with strawmen fallacies. This is hilarious.

That is strange. From my perspective, this is precisely what you are doing.

You can use long bow as your “primary weapon” for example, on a warrior. You assume that simply because it is out of your personally realm of skill, that it is factually impossible. The problem with a great deal of what your saying in this thread, as it reads to me, is that your claiming a vast amount of things can or do not work in ways that I see others do regularly. Your assuming to speak for everyone, and not just yourself, and push your opinion as if it were fact.

As to your references to elementalist, so what? It makes sense to me that one attunement does more damage then another. Another heals better. Yet another offers better CC. Still another offers more defensive factors.

It seems to me the problem is that you want to camp in one attunement or weapon. This is a game based around active combat, movement, dodging, swaping weapons, and utility and self heal skills. All of which, you use skills from as they are needed, depending on the situation. It is irrational if you ask me, to expect every weapon, kit, or attunement, to be as good as the next one, as every aspect of direct damage, avoidance, healing, CC, conditions, or cleansing.

Incorrect on all counts, and that, again, is not what I’m asking. Warrior Longbow has useful skills, but its extremely weak autoattack means that it has atrocious sustained DPS. This means it only works very situationally as a swap-in, swap-out type weapon in more passive/lengthy engagements – in other words, the entirety of PvE. My argument is that there is no purpose to having a full weapon set that is designed to work that way. It seems most people posting in these threads, like the balance team, are myopically focused on PvP when PvE is more than 80% of the game for most players. In PvP it matters less because skirmishes are quick and active, so utility and burst are both much more important than sustained DPS. In PvE, that is considerably less the case.

It makes sense for attunements to vary in the amount of damage they deal based on the utility they offer, but as I’ve stated no fewer than 3 times in this thread it’s the magnitude of variance that’s the problem. Water is flat-out unusable when solo because of how much damage it sacrifices to be comparatively good at healing, which is pointless and annoying. Earth and Air fare only somewhat better, both sacrificing a ton of sustained DPS relative to Fire in order to offer situational utility.

And here I was thinking coglin nailed it right on the head, but apparently he also doesn’t understand…

You want every weapon to be camped effectively, never being forced to swap back and forth… that’s not how this game is designed though. Your optimal performance will almost always require swapping around.

The only weapons I could see camping is GS on phalanx warrior, or Hammer on a guard that feels the need to have staff in his offhand for prefight/postfight utility. Other than those two situations you’re almost always going to be swapping weapons (or attunements/kits) throughout the fight.

Jerus.4350:

And here I was thinking coglin nailed it right on the head, but apparently he also doesn’t understand…

You want every weapon to be camped effectively, never being forced to swap back and forth… that’s not how this game is designed though. Your optimal performance will almost always require swapping around.

The only weapons I could see camping is GS on phalanx warrior, or Hammer on a guard that feels the need to have staff in his offhand for prefight/postfight utility. Other than those two situations you’re almost always going to be swapping weapons (or attunements/kits) throughout the fight.

Nobody said anything about performing optimally without ever swapping, even though that’s very doable with some weapons already. You swap weapons to gain access to different utility, not to frantically fight against the game to sustain mediocre DPS.

And yes, neither of you do. I know, abstraction is hard.

If you believe it is “very doable” to “camp” in a weapon and be “optimal”, then I do not think “optimal” means what you think it means.

As to abstract, I do not think it is hard. I simply do not agree with your opinion on the matter. In this case, I wouldn’t call it abstract. I believe it is more a matter of the manner in which your wording of your thoughts on the matter do not convey to others, what you are actually trying to say. It actually seems as if your two previous post contradict one another.

It doesn’t help when your claiming what weapons are capable of, while showing no actual comparative evidence of it. To say a weapon does or does not out damage another in certain scenarios means nothing. You have to actually prove the damage capabilities in this case, to give it any weight.

from a Thief pov, my best P/P 1000 range setup does not output a lot less dps than my best melee setup.

pug dungeon wise context.

rogerwilko.6895:

from a Thief pov, my best P/P 1000 range setup does not output a lot less dps than my best melee setup.

pug dungeon wise context.

It is a lot less dps. But then again you insist on being wrong consistently and when proven so you argument it with “but it’s fun!!”.

As for OP. Longbow for warrior is strong in pvp. Rifle isn’t. You can’t have it all can you?

Einlanzer.1627:

Nobody said anything about performing optimally without ever swapping, even though that’s very doable with some weapons already. You swap weapons to gain access to different utility, not to frantically fight against the game to sustain mediocre DPS.

But why do the two have to be mutually exclusive?
In erasing all non-DPS roles (well ok, down from 3, but originally there were 6), ANet also kind-of erased the DPS role. As without contrast, it loses meaning.

In other words, “doing mediocre DPS” (or high, or frankly whatever) is just another type of utility. Although even then, wording it like that makes no sense. It’s a “perk”. One element of your offensive.

There are setups which provide nearly none of it. And who won’t swap weapons to improve it. Because they’re not meant to.
But there are also specs who exlusively swap to maximize it. And which maximize some arbitrary non-direct-damage thing in the first place (Condi Warrior for soloing bosses comes to mind).

There’s no rule somewhere that it has to be one or the other.

robertul.3679:

It is a lot less dps. But then again you insist on being wrong consistently and when proven so you argument it with “but it’s fun!!”.

1). “a lot less”? Pray tell what that means. 50%? 75%? 5000%? Where and how did you test it and you saw that I was wrong?

2). Again you fail to understand the “MY best x/x setup” part. Can you grasp this concept? No you cannot, apparently.

3). I never talked about what the ‘meta’ is, and the fully dps focused setups that are meant to deliver the most amount of damage in a perfect situation while in a perfect party.

4). I did enough (again, enough for me) tests in the mists, in Orr and in dungeons, so I Know what each does and why. I also know what I like, what I prefer to play while with pugs, and so on.

I pity people who are stuck with their tunnel vision.

Should I be wrong and you are not one of them tunnel vision people, please do post your test numbers, that you tested Yourself.

coglin.1867:

If you believe it is “very doable” to “camp” in a weapon and be “optimal”, then I do not think “optimal” means what you think it means.

As to abstract, I do not think it is hard. I simply do not agree with your opinion on the matter. In this case, I wouldn’t call it abstract. I believe it is more a matter of the manner in which your wording of your thoughts on the matter do not convey to others, what you are actually trying to say. It actually seems as if your two previous post contradict one another.

It doesn’t help when your claiming what weapons are capable of, while showing no actual comparative evidence of it. To say a weapon does or does not out damage another in certain scenarios means nothing. You have to actually prove the damage capabilities in this case, to give it any weight.

There are several weapon sets in the game for which it is optimal to stay in them in most situations. I don’t really need to prove that mathematically as it’s intuitively true and common knowledge.

None of my posts contradict each other, you’re just continually failing to understand the problem, which is really quite simple – letting a weapon’s autoattack be really weak leads to that weapon having very poor sustained DPS, which cripples the weapon’s general usability in PvE. It’s very straightforward and obvious, and no matter how much you disagree it’s a fact that doesn’t change.

Einlanzer.1627:

coglin.1867:

If you believe it is “very doable” to “camp” in a weapon and be “optimal”, then I do not think “optimal” means what you think it means.

As to abstract, I do not think it is hard. I simply do not agree with your opinion on the matter. In this case, I wouldn’t call it abstract. I believe it is more a matter of the manner in which your wording of your thoughts on the matter do not convey to others, what you are actually trying to say. It actually seems as if your two previous post contradict one another.

It doesn’t help when your claiming what weapons are capable of, while showing no actual comparative evidence of it. To say a weapon does or does not out damage another in certain scenarios means nothing. You have to actually prove the damage capabilities in this case, to give it any weight.

There are several weapon sets in the game for which it is optimal to stay in them in most situations. I don’t really need to prove that mathematically as it’s intuitively true and common knowledge.

None of my posts contradict each other, you’re just continually failing to understand the problem, which is really quite simple – letting a weapon’s autoattack be really weak leads to that weapon having very poor sustained DPS, which cripples the weapon’s general usability in PvE. It’s very straightforward and obvious, and no matter how much you disagree it’s a fact that doesn’t change.

Common knowledge aye? Curious what you feel is best sitting in?

Even phalanx warrior can get a bit more oomph with an Axe/mace swap with a sigil of battle providing the might still while adding in some vuln.

Just because you don’t autoattack with a weapon doesn’t mean it’s crippled it’s use in PVE, that’s an opinion not a fact. Longbow for ranger, very mediocre auto attack in melee range, but you still use it to drop barrage and rapid fire, but then swap to Sword+X. That longbow still adds a spike in your damage which adds to your overall sustain.

Risk vs Reward

Being at range in pve is inherently less dangerous than melee for the majority of encounters in GW2. Therefore ranged weapons provide less reward, aka DPS, than melee weapons. This is basic game design and Anet got it right.

hybrid.5027:

Risk vs Reward

Being at range in pve is inherently less dangerous than melee for the majority of encounters in GW2. Therefore ranged weapons provide less reward, aka DPS, than melee weapons. This is basic game design and Anet got it right.

Please refrain from commenting if you didn’t even bother to read the post.

Einlanzer.1627:

hybrid.5027:

Risk vs Reward

Being at range in pve is inherently less dangerous than melee for the majority of encounters in GW2. Therefore ranged weapons provide less reward, aka DPS, than melee weapons. This is basic game design and Anet got it right.

Please refrain from commenting if you didn’t even bother to read the post.

I read the post. It just so happens I understand the design of the game and was sharing that knowledge for you. I wanted to explain why ranged weapons function as they do in PvE since you didn’t appear to understand. If you don’t like the answer, thats a personal problem.

hybrid.5027:

Einlanzer.1627:

hybrid.5027:

Risk vs Reward

Being at range in pve is inherently less dangerous than melee for the majority of encounters in GW2. Therefore ranged weapons provide less reward, aka DPS, than melee weapons. This is basic game design and Anet got it right.

Please refrain from commenting if you didn’t even bother to read the post.

I read the post. It just so happens I understand the design of the game and was sharing that knowledge for you. I wanted to explain why ranged weapons function as they do in PvE since you didn’t appear to understand. If you don’t like the answer, thats a personal problem.

I know the answer, and I’m fine with it as a general rule. The issue is twofold: a.) the magnitude of difference in some cases, and b.) ranged weapons are not even balanced in relation to each other.

The magnitude of the difference being an issue is a matter of opinion. Personally, my position is everyone should learn to melee in PvE so they should increase the differences even more to encourage skillful play as much as possible.

Ranged weapons tend to be pretty well internally balanced. Warrior rifle has significantly better dps than longbow, but longbow provide pretty exception utility, just to cite one example.

This is surely the most backpedaling, double speak riddled complaint about a condition weapon’s poor physical damage that I have ever seen…

If you want a LB that does great power damage than roll a Ranger. Warrior LB is obviously a condition/CC weapon.

From my understanding, you’re concerned about the disparity between the damage and speed of auto-attacks on ranged weapons. You feel that they are unbalanced. I dare say that you are right and they are meant to be so.

Here’s a general example. Mesmers have the greatsword, staff and scepter as long range options. The greatsword is undeniably the highest in terms of pure damage, speed and range. It’s my go-to weapon in pve when I need or want to keep distance between me and my opponent. However, if that opponent comes within 600 units of me, I switch because my damage drops off too much for it to remain effective. In wvw, I would only use a greatsword when I’m in a zerg or attacking/defending a walled structure. In any other instance, I consider every other weapon a better choice because players can close and create gaps too easily. Some players even do this on purpose because they know how much damage it loses. In pvp, I would never use a greatsword, regardless of its damage potential, because I’m constantly in the same situation where I would abandon it in wvw.

The staff is clearly weaker than the greatsword in terms of raw power but, out of my three mesmers, only one doesn’t have it equipped. The reason I favor the staff is because of its versatility. I can use it as a melee weapon, zone specific areas and turn it into one hell of a condition weapon as well as a decent bunker weapon. While I can’t kill minions with it as fast as a greatsword, I can actually solo champions faster. In pvp, I can win 1v2 with my condition build. One of the reasons why is because people only see the weak auto attack numbers and think they can take me. What they don’t realize is just about every time I or my clones hit them, they get a stack of bleeding. Within 7 to 10 seconds, they are losing 1k per tick. Cleansing does little because they can be reapplied easily and running is pointless because the stacks are already on them, not to mention clones will chase.

Now the scepter I don’t like. Personally I feel that anything it can do, the staff does better, even with the recent torment buff that everyone was excited/whining about. However, I do have a baseline understanding of its potential. I would not want to go up against a pro mesmer that knows how to utilize it. “Condition bomb” doesn’t even begin to describe what it can do at its finest.

The short version is weapons exists in what’s called a “perfect imbalance”. Each one has a niche. If you play towards their strengths instead of just considering their raw damage, you can do some amazing things. I believe it’s even possible with elementalist’s water attunement. If one day they gain the ability to weapon swap while sticking to just one attunement, an aquamancer may become THE meta bunker because just about every action they take would heal them.