Guild Wars 2

Hi there

As you may know, even though you have equipped 2 melee weapons, your character will only autoattack with the main-hand. That is because the mainhand and the offhand are considered two different weapons with different utilities and also because there is no true “autoattack”; the 1 skill just happens to be without a CD and is usually put on auto-cast, therefore getting labeled as “autoattack”, even though it’s not the same as the “white swing” of WoW or other games.

What I’m going to discuss in this topic is how to introduce the dual wield autoattack motion WITHOUT altering the 1 combo much. Let’s start:

Introduction
If you have played a thief, you know that according to which off-hand you have equipped, your 3 skill changes: if you have 2 daggers, the 3 skill will turn into a combined attack of 2 daggers, if you have 1 sword and 1 pistol, your 3 skill will turn into a combined attack of the two etc. This mechanic so far worked pretty well and it made a lot of sense that your skills change according to which offhand you are using.

Suggesiton
The suggestion is to add this same mechanic to the 1 skill ("autoattack) so that, if you have two swords equipped, you’ll get the visual effect that you are attacking with both swords.

From this suggestion some questions may arise:
1) How would you change the 1 combo attack without affecting the gameplay?
- I had thought of keeping the same damage and effects of our current mainhand attacks but to just add the VISUAL effect that we are attacking with both weapons. This would only be a cosmetic change.
2) Mh okay, this would work with melee weapons like swords, daggers, maces and axes… but what about offhands like focus, torch, warhorn, shield and pistol?
- In that case I’d keep the current mainhand combo unchanged, without adding any special effect. However, when offhand pistol comes to play, you could change the third attack of the main combo to a close-range shot. For example, if you are on mesmer and you are using sword + pistol, your first two attacks will remain unchanged but the third may turn into a close-range pistol shot(that will NOT hit people from distance; it will have the same effect and damage of the current mind-spike).
3) Talking about pistols, what about double pistol?
- This is a bit tricky: thieves and engineers can wield two pistols and the natural suggestion would be to make both pistols shot alternately. However, keeping the current mainhand pistol attack would led to a very slow visual (I mean, you would be shooting with 2 pistols but at the same rate of 1 pistol). In this case, you could make it look like you are shooting with both pistols at the same time (and so you won’t feel the “slow rate” shooting).

There are a few more things I’d like to discuss: getting the visual that you are attacking with both weapons when the damage and combo is unchanged, might led new players to question “wtf, I’m wielding two of these but my damage is the same!!”, in which case the only solution would be to redesign the whole combat, but that’s not viable in anyway.

The best compromise I could come up would be to slightly nerf the offhand skills and slightly buff (we are talking about 5-10%) the mainhand attack WHEN you are wielding TWO “offensive” weapons (2daggers, 2swords, 2axes, 2 pistols): this way you would keep balance but also add the “feeling” that wielding two weapons increases your autoattack damage. Alternatively, you can nerf the mainhand autoattack when only ONE of those weapons is equipped but this would put to disadvantage people who are using combos like sword+focus or mace+shield; in this latter case, to compensate, you could buff some traits affecting those weaponsets in order to keep up the same balance. In other words, you would just be deceiving your customers

This suggestion is mainly COSMETIC, trying to go for the least amount of changes to gameplay and damage in general. You know, when I started playing gw2 the first time, I have to say I was rather disappointed when I discovered that, even though I was wielding two swords, I was attacking only with one. Was trying to figure out what I was doing wrong before I realized how it worked. Once again, the main point of this topic is a cosmetic change. The second part about buffing/nerfing is just optional and open to discussions. I’m open to critics as also open to tweaks you would add to my suggestion

Thanks for your attention

>inb4 fanboy sheep, “WoW has dual wield auto attacks. Too much like wow. No.”

Personally, love the idea!

/Signed, tired of the visuals. However, I think the off hand should deliver damage as well. Seeing how mostly everyone uses two-handers.

+1 this

I have the strange habit of analise the attacks when I’m bored (SB thief pick an inexistent arrow from his invisible pack of arrows and shoots), and that’s true, thief D/D autoattack just uses the mainhand weapon

And pistols dont have a “chain of attacks” like many other weapons, so you alternate fire without changing anything else

When duel wielding set… I think the first attack should activate both of the weapons instead of one. Two pistol shots? You fire off both Pistols for double damage. Two Daggers? You slash twice for double the damage. Stuff like that! All there needs to do is just extend the timer a little.

I was kinda sad my S/S mesmer didn’t attack with her offhand I figured at least during Blurred Frenzy she would swing both, but no dice