Guild Wars 2

As the topic title suggests I figured I’d start a thread about the amount of more or less passive damage that exists in GW2.

I realize that this is game made much in the same way as other MMOs where passive damage (such as autoattack) is a part of a players attacks. The issue I have been having with this type of damage in GW2 is that I feel it pretty much lowers the skillcap by so much that it’s very existance (or atleast the level it’s at) should be questioned.

Very often it feels like the raw damage output that is in the autoattacks in this game is what kills me. I dodge more bullrushes than not. I don’t get hit by cheesy pistol whip thieves (atleast not as much as they’d like). But in the end what’s the point? There I am, dead on the ground looking at a summary of my taken damage that involves 90% autoattack (or bleeds etc that can be traced back to autoattacks).

When I first picked up GW2 I was more hopeful than I am now. The dodge mechanic seemed solid. The game seemed fun. Now all I see it autoattack damage. I realize not everyone will agree with me but I figured I’d start a topic and see what people think. The way I see it is that if more damage was placed in moves 2-5 (default keybinds) there would be an even bigger chance for dodging to be key and an even better chance for skill to make a difference.

I can’t agree more. Surely, from a PvP perspective, but also in PvE it’s rather boring to have optimal damage simply be autoattack. When facing a non-challening encounter I hardly use my weapon skills because auto attack is simply better. I hope more damage is shifted to the 2-5 slots. Not so much that they’re specifically being used for damage rather than their “intended” uses, but enough to tone down the auto.

Draehl.2681:

Not so much that they’re specifically being used for damage rather than their “intended” uses, but enough to tone down the auto.

I agree with that aswell and should have mentioned this. I don’t want damage to be added to abilities that are meant to be CC (like having necromancers staff fear do massive damage). There should still be a choice between damage and CC on some level.

Before anyone says anything I’m not saying that I get shot down by autoattacks in 2 seconds flat. I’m just saying that it’s crappy that you can bring your A game and still die to it as fast as you do. It’s actually a very flawed design atm.

Apparently it’s more relevant to discuss the fact that we have to showdown wearing either red or blue in PvP and how this affects our quality of life than actual issues with the games balance. Good to know, I love you all, totally.

This is extremely true with the Ranger’s overbuffed Shortbow auto. Dear lord. I was actually testing build with Short/Long bow’s and in a power/crit build Shortbow auto actually did the same as rapid fire, it’s basically perma-rapid fire with a bleed on top of it.

I even dumped longbow and just used shortbow exclusively with haste + immobilize (both I also feel are problematic effects in the game), and could mow down multiple people with it in like 2 seconds and stack 13+ bleeds.

The thing is, some weapons are designed that way on purpose like Shortbow, every other ability shortbow has is situational/utility, and not used for dmg at all, where otherwise until you use them, you’re just going to be auto’ing for dmg.

They should probably make ability synergize with eachother a little more for dmg output, and maybe even play with auto attack combo’s that have unique effects, so you can stagger auto’s to chain things together. For example, Hammer Warrior or Guardian on the third auto chain has a blast finisher, so say you auto twice, hold it, place a field down, then finish your auto chain for the finisher. Currently you’re auto chain resets if you use something else.

I agree with autoattack being retardedly high at some classes, shortbow ranger being definetly the worst. But I dont feel its as bad as other sources of “passive” dmg.

For example the mesmer class basically plays itself, just pop your phantasms and roll arround while they kill your foe. As a mesmer I didnt even have to bother use my autoattack. Same goes for Thief elite that pops two thieves that damage, cc and root you making killing the thief just impossible. When you look at it, every class has a pet or some kind of mechanic that deals damage for them (except warriors). I really think these should be made less powerful, so that the player skill actually matters more than his ability to summon something to do the job for him…

For those of you complaining about the Rangers shortbow, it only applies bleeds if the arrow hits the enemy from the side or back. You shouldn’t be letting rangers have a free shot at your back anyway.

Pete.6037:

For those of you complaining about the Rangers shortbow, it only applies bleeds if the arrow hits the enemy from the side or back. You shouldn’t be letting rangers have a free shot at your back anyway.

That frontal “blind spot” for bleeds is like a small 20* – 30* cone in front of them. Basically the only way they will avoid a bleed is if they look DIRECTLY at you. This is why I tend to use the Thief runes for really glass cannon builds, that 10% overall dmg increase on flank is very reliable.

Besides it’s not even the bleed that’s good for shortbow, it’s literally a perma rapid fire. You can remove the bleed and it’d still be good. The bleed is just a bonus. I’d rather they revert the buff to it’s direct dmg instead though, since shortbow is supposed to be more condition dmg/utility.

On the Ranger Shortbow, it’s not as bad by far as it’s being made out to be. It’s rate of fire is only very slightly faster than other class’ #1 skill. Comparing it to the longbow is silly, because it starts with the assumption that the longbow is good – which its not. The shortbow is honestly fine, and the fact that it does as much power damage as the longbow is a tribute to how awful the longbow is, not to how strong the shortbow is. The longbow is far and away behind other class’ options for damage. Heck, so is the shortbow. The class is designed that way, because a lot of Ranger damage is supposed to come from the pet.

The shortbow (and longbow, for that matter) has an incredible weakness that at anything more than very close range, half of the autoattack shots miss even to non-dodging opponents simply because of its slow trajectory travel. Because Rangers are also enormously weak at managing CC, the way to deal with them is to chill, cripple, or immobilize then and get away. All of a sudden, they can’t even hit you. Alternatively, you could immobilize them and then kill them, since once you do immobilize they don’t have many options to get away from whatever you want to hit them with.

As to the larger point, it’s correct. While the shortbow isn’t by any means overpowered, its not by any means especially fun, either. Like most weapons for most classes in the game, it’s really a matter of strafing around while the CPU autofires for you.

I think the big culprit is that we only have 5 skills per weapon, or 10 total (though we can’t really say we have 10 skills because of the weapon swap cooldown). In other games, most classes would have 20 or 30 abilities which, depending on their spec, they may use 10 or so out of. However, of those 10, perhaps 2 of them would have no cooldown, a few might have 3 – 6 second cooldowns, still others 10, and a few at 20 or 30. This is not counting, by the way, the utility abilities that each class would bring.

This meant combat involved using your cooldown free skills most of the time while constantly managing the cooldowns on your shorter and moderately timed abilities, throwing in utilities when necessary. It took thought. Right now, this game is honestly about running around, letting autoattack spam, and using your other situational abilities when those very obvious situations came up in which to use them.

I think this is why of all the classes I’ve played, the Engineer feels more like a real MMO class. With its various kits, it has a wide range of options to use in combat and I am actually rarely letting my autoattack fire. Even the thief feels closer to having skill involved, because it has a resource to manage.

Pete.6037:

For those of you complaining about the Rangers shortbow, it only applies bleeds if the arrow hits the enemy from the side or back. You shouldn’t be letting rangers have a free shot at your back anyway.

This is not true with the sharpening stone skill or the trait that activates said skill at 75%.

I would however like to point out that rangers are weak atm (this seems to be an accepted fact) and I don’t think they need more love than anything else. That being said the reason that I didn’t use a class as an example was that this is a general problem, not one that exists with a specific class. Sure, it will be more visable on classes using a ranged weapon since they will get in more autoattacks but still, it’s a general problem.

I mostly play necro. I play it condition specced without pets. Using my staff the game feels good. I have to actively stack up my bleeds, I have to use all my moves (“1” doesn’t really do that much damage since it doesn’t bleed and fit into the spec). Changing weapon to my trusted scepter however I feel like the bleeds from my autoattack stack up so fast and do so much damage it’d just silly. Once again necro isn’t that strong atm and also doesn’t need the hate but since it’s what I play I figure I’d try to take the focus from rangers in this thread.

Rifle warriors running the “run and gun” spec advocated by Taugrim (no hate intended at that guy, he seems really nice) also end up doing insane amounts of passive damage to me. Everyone does. Even melee classes when I’m trying to defend a point. I dodge that 100b, I dodge that pistol whip, I dodge that illusionary unload. I die to the random hits that you can’t really get away from since you are trying to kite 2-3 people on a very small area. I die. I feel no real will to respawn since I was clearly making 3 people look like they didn’t even know how their classes worked and I still died.

Another problem is the downed state and going for an execute. The amount of damage you take just from passive attacks is silly. Let’s say I’m defending a point against two people. I kill the first, I feel manly. I do some more damage to the second and wait until he’s put his “big damage” moves on CD (cooldown). I try to finish the first guy. Now, first off he’s going to fear/knockdown/teleport away. So fun. During this first attempt the CC I threw on the second guy has worn off and some of his CDs might even be back. I finish the guy after redoing what I just did.

Problem here is I’ve probably just taken 20k damage from autoattacks (and the guy who was downed clicking “1” like it’s his life calling).

I don’t see the fun. I have no problem loosing to players who played better than me. I have no problem getting killed so much it’s sickening if I’m facing players that I can actually see are doing something right and deserve to kick mykitten I do not enjoy losing to people who random click buttons and I do not enjoy how hard the autoattack damage makes 1v2s and 1v3s. Strength in numbers isn’t always a bad thing but with this amount of autoattack damage in the game I dare say it is.

Skolops.2604:

On the Ranger Shortbow, it’s not as bad by far as it’s being made out to be.

Already said this but let’s not make this a thread that hates on specific classes. Let’s discuss the general problem.

I agree, most of my deaths in PvP is due to either auto-attacks or conditions applied by “spammable” attacks. This needs to be looked into by the developers.

Agree. Its very silly indeed and needs rebalance.

Figured this thread would get more love. Less passive damage would lead to a higher skill cap.

Haven’t had much chance to mess around with it in PVP but in PVE I’ve noticed that my Elementalist Scepter Auto attack (err rock knives or somethin like that) seems more powerful then me blowing my best CDs . It shoots 3 rocks all of which adds bleeding damage, foes drop insanely faster using that then when I’m trying to generate more damage.

Bad design? probably, even though Earth with scepter and dagger doesn’t have very many damage options other than that.

Hmm….

For argument’s sake, i will have to disagree.

The auto attack is a moderate damage skill. Consider your health bar to be the attrition factor in a game. Without some kind of factor that you are constantly losing, there would be no challenge in playing the game. There is no mana to control or any other resource for that matter. So instead, health has to step up and be that factor. The longer you are in a fight, the more health you will lose. It is as expected and as should be. That is where your ability to manage your cooldowns and use your class as it should be used comes into play. As a character who is utility based, you can sit and do moderate damage with your weapon to force the opponent to do something, if you didn’t have that ability, then you would sit at a point all day and do absolutely nothing. This auto attack game even adds attrition to players who would otherwise be invincible. I play a guardian, and if it weren’t for this factor, I would literally never die. I have an ace for every bit of pressure and spike that comes my way, the difference between me and another guardian honestly comes down to how I manage my cool downs. If I blow them all at once to block all your skills, I will probably die to your auto attacks. If instead, I pepper in defense, use some dodges, and kite intelligently to make certain my cool downs don’t go to waste, I can live through the auto attacks.

Honestly, it just takes a bit of imagination to see how the health bar has been transformed in this game to be the attrition factor. If you want to win a 2v1, you need to be smart about your moves and mitigate as much damage as possible and not blow all your utilities immediately. If you are a class that depends on blowing all your skills at once, then you most likely won’t win a 2v1 unless you blow your skills, run away, come back and blow them again.

The factor of auto attack is something that elevated gw1 pvp quite honestly. It allowed pressure to exist if the appropriate actions weren’t taken to mitigate damage. That is how you need to think in this game. Not how can I block their big damage, but rather how can I best mitigate damage continually over time while being conservative with my utilities?

Diage.6451:

The factor of auto attack is something that elevated gw1 pvp quite honestly. It allowed pressure to exist if the appropriate actions weren’t taken to mitigate damage. That is how you need to think in this game. Not how can I block their big damage, but rather how can I best mitigate damage continually over time while being conservative with my utilities?

I agree with you in a way. I do however feel like the amount of autoattack damage that can be put out by alot of classes is too high for this to be true. When it comes to utilty classes/specs that kind of autoattack damage is fine. I do understand that you can mitigate this type of damage aswell by line of sighting, using certain skills etc. but at the same time when almost all my deaths are caused primarily by autoattacks I feel that something is wrong. There is a difference between putting out good pressure and forcing choices and the damage being so high that it’s just a matter of time before you are downed by a person who isn’t really doing anything, and right now I think that that time is too short.

Edit: Would also like to note that I run 1.8k toughness at a minimum so I do not really consider myself a glass cannon.

I don’t think I have ever seen a situation at the level of play that I have been accustomed to, where someone has died to auto attack alone UNLESS they are a pure damage spec with no defensive utility. It all comes down to you. If you die to auto attacks alone, it came from your spec or your inability to mitigate damage (by “you” I don’t mean YOU lol). Perhaps you can argue some classes have too high of a relative auto attack damage, but that doesn’t mean the concept is broken. Whether you can mitigate their damage by killing them quickly, using your skills wisely, or just realizing their spec is a counter to you and not “falling” for it, they’re all ways you yourself choose to handle that situation.

Let’s say you happen to be fighting a ranger whose moderate auto attack damage is high but his other skills are mostly utility based. Without that damage, he would do nothing. You should either do something to force him to use his mitigating skills or use your own mitigating skills.

You make good points and a good case, and like I said I don’t really disagree but I just don’t see how moving some of that damage to the 2-5 attacks would be a bad thing. I’m not saying all the damage, just a portion. In the case of rangers moving more damage into their “2” spell making more of their damage skillshot based. I play a ranger and in my opinion that would make the class more fun.. But maybe I’m one of the few people who think so.

I just feel that the option of being able to do more damage by hitting with a CD attack that is dodgeable would make the game more skillbased and fun.

EDIT: I kind of feel like we want the same end result but have different views on how to get there Diage

Ya, well I can agree with either approach. I just wanted to make the point that they both can lead to a game that requires skill. This current approach is more interesting simply because fewer games have done it. You just need to watch where the skill is being manifested. In guildwars, its about mitigation and management as opposed to other games where its about damage maximizing. This is historically how it worked in guildwars 1 as well.