Guild Wars 2

Sorry if this has been asked before , have done a quick search and found similar topics but no definitive answer.

Elementalists do damage with our spells, we never actually “hit” anyone with our weapons, we do damage based on the spell effect which have damage numbers already

Now I know which combinations of weapons give different skills to use, my question is, aside from the +stats a weapon may give us, does that actual weapon damage mean anything to the affective damage of our spells? If so in what way, the damage never seems anywhere near the damage range.

Also I know we can’t switch weapons in combat, is there a way to auto switch between say twin daggers and a two handed staff?

Many thanks!

Yes, very much so. Every ability that deals damage uses your weapon damage for that in the formula: weapon damage X power(ability coefficient) / enemy armor.

So say you use fireball at 80 with only 1 weapon damage somehow on an enemy with 2.5k toughness and you have 2k attack or whatever. That’s 1 X 2000(.85) / 2500. That’s only .68 damage. Less then one. If you have 1000 weapon damage, suddenly that is 680. Weapon damage is very important.

Yes, the weapon’s base damage does affect “spell” damage, but what I’ve noticed is that it only affects the damage of the skills associated with equipping that weapon. For example, the weapon damage of a Dagger in your mainhand will only affect the damage of your first 3 skills. However, any “enchantment” bonuses on the items are applied to your character, and thus affect all skills and attributes.

There is no way to quick switch between weapon loadouts with this class. It is intentionally difficult to emphasize that you should only be swapping weapons out of combat when you are “safe”.

Thanks for the replies guys, very helpful

Full discussion of damage formulas is here:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage

Helpful table for Crit damage vs Crit Chance is here:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit

Perhaps help to explain tradeoffs between power/precision/crit damage

Froggy.5371:

Sorry if this has been asked before , have done a quick search and found similar topics but no definitive answer.

Elementalists do damage with our spells, we never actually “hit” anyone with our weapons, we do damage based on the spell effect which have damage numbers already

Now I know which combinations of weapons give different skills to use, my question is, aside from the +stats a weapon may give us, does that actual weapon damage mean anything to the affective damage of our spells? If so in what way, the damage never seems anywhere near the damage range.

Many thanks!

From a Lore perspective think of it as your weapon channels / focuses your magical powers. So the better the weapon the more power you can channel / focus.