Guild Wars 2

What is weapon strength? I’ve been using the weapon with the greatest “weapon strength” stat. Then I began to realize that even though I use a weapon with a larger weapon strength number I am not seeing any increase in damage done. Sometimes a decision has to be made regarding supplementary stats on a weapon like +20 defense etc, but I was just wondering if anyone knows what is the significance of the weapon strength stat? Thanks.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Attack_
Just because you don’t notice the difference, it’s still there

From what I understand the damage you do is calculated from Weapon Strength + Power, something like that.

Now if you are testing this with lets say a weapon with 100 Weapon Strength compared to another with lets say 110 weapon Strength you wont notice much difference. However if you are testing with 1 weapon at 100 and another at say 10-50 you will notice a difference.

For myself I just use the best weapon I can for my level with pretty much the same bonuses as my armours. So in a way I think of my weapon as another piece of armour.

This still doesn’t add up. I am using a weapon with a range of strength of 244-275. My power additions are 25 and I still only do an average of 150 points of damage. So I don’t think the weapon strength directly correlates to damage. So if this is the case what do the weapon strength numbers represent?

Damage
(Don’t look at the attack page, it’s a defunct stat that doesn’t actually correlate with anything)

The formula for damage is:

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

Just like in GW1 (if you played that) the enemy’s armour plays a big part. You will always do more damage aginst the squishy targets for example like those that use magic. You can go to the sPvP lobby and test this against the dumies there too and see the difference between hitting hard, medium and soft targets. Also you will notice if you hit some real weak non monster creature such as rabbits etc that you will hit VERY high, this is due to the fact they have no armour.

Syeria.4812:

(Don’t look at the attack page, it’s a defunct stat that doesn’t actually correlate with anything)

That’s kinda obvious since the page clearly states this. Attack is a relative value to give you a basic idea whitout generating further questions like what’s a skill-specific coefficient.

dukefx.9730:

Syeria.4812:

(Don’t look at the attack page, it’s a defunct stat that doesn’t actually correlate with anything)

That’s kinda obvious since the page clearly states this. Attack is a relative value to give you a basic idea whitout generating further questions like what’s a skill-specific coefficient.

It’s not a relative value. It’s a defunct value that means absolutely nothing. It doesn’t give you a basic idea either. If I have an attack of 2000, it might mean I do 1000 * 1000 * coefficient / armor or it might mean I do 200 * 1800 * coefficient / armor. That first value is almost 3 times higher than the second, but they have the same attack. Going from 2000 attack to 2500 attack could mean my damage nearly tripled (from 200*1800 to 500*2000), stayed the same (1000*1000 to 500*2000), or fell by 1/6th (1000*1000 to 400*2100).

Paulytnz.7619:

Just like in GW1 (if you played that) the enemy’s armour plays a big part. You will always do more damage aginst the squishy targets for example like those that use magic. You can go to the sPvP lobby and test this against the dumies there too and see the difference between hitting hard, medium and soft targets. Also you will notice if you hit some real weak non monster creature such as rabbits etc that you will hit VERY high, this is due to the fact they have no armour.

Thanks Paulytnz: This does make sense as I have for the fun of it killed rabbits and such and do over 1000 or even 2000 points of damage. It seems that calculating damage for any one particular weapon is somewhat convoluted.