Guild Wars 2

Are kit base damage numbers going to be increased with the addition of ascended weapons next week?

From latest patch notes:

“Fixed an unintended damage increase that caused engineer kits, elementalist conjures, and warrior banners to deal more damage than intended.”

Awesome.

Would be nice if they just re-designed kit damage entirely and had the Weapon Strength of your Rifle/Pistol be the modifier, and not the Weapon Strength of your kit.

May not be the simplest fix, but it is the cleanest, while still giving incentive for acquiring Ascended weapons.

I completely agree, but I suspect that there would be a non-trivial effort required to do that. It would also make weapon choices much more meaningful for engineers in general.

I would really like a confirmation to this! But likely we won’t know anything until next week.
Are there any Engi’s around with legendary weapons that can test this out for us? Instead of grinding out another 100 crafting levels, most likely spending a fortune in the proceses, and finding my bomb kit hits for the same.

To continue the speculation train, they could just leave ascended weapons with the same base damage as exotics, just with a stat increase. I mean trinkets don’t have any ‘base’ stats

Has it been confirmed that ascended/legendary weapons will actually get a damage modifier increase? I assumed it would just be a minimal stat increase. If it’s just the latter then it wouldn’t matter where our kits are concerned. I’m not keen on the power creep that’s going to occur, and will really be upset if they modify both the damage and stats.

Ascended Weapons being released next week ? were did you hear this from ??

google.3709:

Ascended Weapons being released next week ? were did you hear this from ??

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/september-03-2013/#new-features-12

an extra s sigil.. 1,029 + 250(bloodlust) :O! bamm! now pistol is more powerful than rifle ;p

non proven facts:

• Most engineers seem to run condi builds
• Power builds aren’t too popular because of how glassy they are!
• lots engineers hate rifle (self CC)
• 200 power will not make a difference on FT damage.. damage would still be sad and disappointing

just a guess, but it’s probably alot easier on both coding/balancing having all kits have the same default value, then having to check for weapon stats and such.

thanks Linc.6834!

google.3709:

an extra s sigil.. 1,029 + 250(bloodlust) :O! bamm! now pistol is more powerful than rifle ;p

One rifle with bloodlust, one rifle with whatever you want. Get 25 stacks, swap out rifle.
BAM rifle is now more powerful than pistol!

One pistol with bloodlust, one pistol with whatever you want. Get 25 stacks, swap out pistol. Bam pistol is now more powerful then rifle that was swapped out after having 25 stacks of……lol, this is neverending! ;D

It’s not though!
Both chars have 25 stacks of bloodlust.
Pistol dude has 5% in both pistols, increasing damage by 10%
Rifle dude has 5% in his rifle, increasing his damage by 5%. He is dealing 5% less damage!

But wait! Rifles max weapon damage is 15% more than pistols!

Rifle wins!

I think you got the right idea Phineas; I wouldn’t be surpised if kits will now take the quality of your currently equiped main hand to determine thier damage range, rather than the highest quality available to you at your current level.

Never apologize for your flock.

Ideas are a good for brainstorming.

Don’t let the snarky attitudes of your naysayers detract from the valid counter points they might be making.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Would be nice if they just re-designed kit damage entirely and had the Weapon Strength of your Rifle/Pistol be the modifier, and not the Weapon Strength of your kit.

May not be the simplest fix, but it is the cleanest, while still giving incentive for acquiring Ascended weapons.

Since the last one was deleted, here is why I think this would be bad. If they scaled off weapon power, then in power based kit builds, it would be mandatory to take a rifle if you wanted to max dps, instead of opening up more build diversity by allowing people to take something like pistol/shield, have access to a blast finisher, but not have to give up the incredible 15 percent damage increase they would get if they equipped a rifle.

In the current environment, if you are using a kit for most of your damage, you’re basically forced into p/p or p/s unless you want to give up a 5% boost to your main damage.

If you used weapon damage instead, you’ll let people choose between the weapons with some interesting tradeoffs.

15% extra damage vs. armor from a shield plus a sigil which reduces that gap.

Additionally, it is only 15% additional direct damage, and since all of our kits have a mix of both condition and direct damage, the real world applications would be a smaller gap.

Zerker bomb builds would probably be the only place that sees close to 15% damage increase, but most of those are already using rifle.

Hmm, let me try and explain why it’s bad in another way.

One weapon set should not dictate the dps of another weapon set. This would be the equivalent of telling a warrior that in order for them to achieve max dps on their greatsword they have to equip sword/sword in their other weapon set instead of something like a longbow in order to get a bonus from two sigils instead of one.

If anything, if they made such a sweeping change to kit damage, they should first just give us a sigil slot for our kits. Create a sigil slot on our character pane. When a kit is activated, it uses that appropriate sigil. That would go a lot further in balancing out the p/s or p/p approach most engineers are forced to take if they spend most of their time in a kit.

Rifle is more viable for PvE imo. #3 and #5 are so much burst compared to pistol skills. Swapping out of kits on CD necessary ofc. Also celestial works much more awesome with rifle then with pistols.

I don’t see it as any different than the warrior choices really. You want direct damage, use Axe and GS; you want condition damage, use sword and longbow.

For the engineer, it would be rifle = direct, pistol = condition, and you’ll still be able to take advantage of the numerous kits for either setup thanks to the skill design they have.

Forestnator.6298:

Also celestial works much more awesome with rifle then with pistols.

Can you elaborate?

I know this is going to be perceived as non constructive, but why at this stage in the game are we as a player base still having to worry about possible changes like this? If they do increase ascended weapon strength over current exotics and not just stats do any of us really believe that Anet will have thought of that before it goes live? Anet just needs to get off the fence on kit weapon strength and make them mimic actual weapon strength or come up with some other solution to allow for future increases, I know they say there won’t be any after ascended but yeah not holding my breath on that either heh.

I fully expected kit strength to be an oversight, which is why I posted this question in the first place.

Decklan.7540:

Phineas Poe.3018:

Would be nice if they just re-designed kit damage entirely and had the Weapon Strength of your Rifle/Pistol be the modifier, and not the Weapon Strength of your kit.

May not be the simplest fix, but it is the cleanest, while still giving incentive for acquiring Ascended weapons.

Since the last one was deleted, here is why I think this would be bad. If they scaled off weapon power, then in power based kit builds, it would be mandatory to take a rifle if you wanted to max dps, instead of opening up more build diversity by allowing people to take something like pistol/shield, have access to a blast finisher, but not have to give up the incredible 15 percent damage increase they would get if they equipped a rifle.

I don’t see how it’s any different than it already is. What damage options does the Pistol have for a Power-based build? Poison Dart Volley may do 5-6K in my Zerker/Scholar gear, but that’s pretty much the extent of its raw damage. Explosive Shot is just plain awful, and Static Shot is better used for its Blind than Confusion in most situations, imho.

Compare that to what the Rifle offers with Blunderbuss, Jump Shot, and Overcharged Shot, and it’s really not hard to see that the maximum DPS potential for many Engineer builds is already about wielding the Rifle. The fact is that most players just prefer the Shield anyway for its incredible utility and defensive measures—and I’ll take a Blast finisher over a Leap finisher any day of the week.

And is this about improving build diversity, or improving the damage of kits and keeping them in league with Ascended weapons?

Of course they won’t bump it up, there would be no incentive to craft 500 level ascended items to increase our kit stren…. oh…

Never mind, we have no incentive either way.

PS. I have a fractal pistol with no stats, can I just assume this will continue to be a useless non-skin skin that ANet expects me to transmute with the fancy Gem Store crystals?

One way they could do this is to make the kit damage based off the highest rarity weapon you have equipped when using the kit. So if you have only common weapons on your base damage will be low on the kits, but if you have a common and a ascended the kit damage will have ascended stats.

But my money is on anet forgetting about kits altogether.

Agree 100% sure Anet just gonna think about this problem when they read this topic (if they read this some day XD ) and thats goona be too late :P

I’ll bet they just forget again. And this is something that gets thrown in the pile of issues, and in a couple of months anet just buffs the flat stat on all kits to ascended level regardless of what you have equiped.

Which will please the few people that dont have ascended gear you, and leave the issue standing for those with legendaries. No eta when that would get fixed.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Would be nice if they just re-designed kit damage entirely and had the Weapon Strength of your Rifle/Pistol be the modifier, and not the Weapon Strength of your kit.

This probably would take a lot of extra coding for 1 single class, Anet prefers simple “fixes” in those cases.

Linc.6834:

To continue the speculation train, they could just leave ascended weapons with the same base damage as exotics, just with a stat increase.

This could be a possible solution but still won´t be sufficient: it was already mentioned, ascended weapons will have an infusion slot – will this stats from a future exotic/ascended infusion also work on our kits? Will the flexible stats from that great looking legendary pistol also transfer to our kits?

So to sum up, the options are:

- increase kit base damage from exotic to that of ascended (basically a free ascended wep when using a kit)
- base kit damage on weapon (effectively requiring rifles for all kit-heavy builds)
- leave kit damage unchanged (reducing the effectiveness of kits when compared to non-engis with ascended weps)

Option 1 seems the only logical choice. Whether I’ve got a rare or exotic rifle equipped now, my FT kit has the same base damage. Why should it be any different when ascended is available?

Base kit damage on weapon damage would only make rifles “mandatory” for power builds, as 15% base damage for a condition build can be overcome by the sigil.

I don’t think this is any worse than being compelled to go P/x for the extra sigil today.

Run a power build, use the power weapon seems straightforward enough.

You don’t see zerker Scepter/focus necros for the same reason.

Decklan.7540:

It’s not though!
Both chars have 25 stacks of bloodlust.
Pistol dude has 5% in both pistols, increasing damage by 10%
Rifle dude has 5% in his rifle, increasing his damage by 5%. He is dealing 5% less damage!

But wait! Rifles max weapon damage is 15% more than pistols!

Rifle wins!

The pistol portion of your post is completely wrong. 2 force sigils do not stack (same with accuracy or any other permanent boost for that matter).

Seras.5702:

So to sum up, the options are:

- increase kit base damage from exotic to that of ascended (basically a free ascended wep when using a kit)
- base kit damage on weapon (effectively requiring rifles for all kit-heavy builds)
- leave kit damage unchanged (reducing the effectiveness of kits when compared to non-engis with ascended weps)

Option 1 seems the only logical choice. Whether I’ve got a rare or exotic rifle equipped now, my FT kit has the same base damage. Why should it be any different when ascended is available?

or they just dont change the base damage of weapons only stats and slot.

Knox.8962:

Base kit damage on weapon damage would only make rifles “mandatory” for power builds, as 15% base damage for a condition build can be overcome by the sigil.

I don’t think this is any worse than being compelled to go P/x for the extra sigil today.

Run a power build, use the power weapon seems straightforward enough.

You don’t see zerker Scepter/focus necros for the same reason.

The difference is that those necros are using their weapons, as opposed to just having them equipped in the background. We’re talking about being forced to bring a utility weapon solely to boost the power of our actual damage-dealing kit. So I can’t bring P/S for an extra blast finisher with my FT build?

Seras.5702:

So I can’t bring P/S for an extra blast finisher with my FT build?

Who says you can’t? Even if they made this change, I would continue to use the P/S for a lot of situations.

Even right now, if you care about maximizing the damage of your FT build, you should be swapping to your Rifle and fitting in a Blunderbuss or Jump Shot as often as you can, since you’re already at 400 range or less.

In other words, taking the Rifle already means more damage for your overall build. This change would just affect the damage of the FT too, but marginally. The other reason this re-work would work is because if you took the Weapon Strength of your Pistol/Rifle when wielding the FT, you could also take the Armor of your Shield, which would be really nice on top of Juggernaut.

They should just eliminate all kit Weapon Strength and have them work on the Weapon Strength of your weapons. In one move they’d not only buff all kits’ Weapon Strength from 969 to something better, but they’d also give us a legitimate reason to go after Ascended weapons.

Somewhere. Right now. At this very moment. Some Anet dev is saying “Oh kitten we forgot about engineer kits scaling with the new weaps!….sigh oh well we’ll patch it laters”

Why no Dev post something, sometimes i wish more speeking with the players. But this seems to be a dream.

Riojin.2649:

Somewhere. Right now. At this very moment. Some Anet dev is saying “Oh kitten we forgot about engineer kits scaling with the new weaps!….sigh oh well we’ll patch it laters”

Anet Dev: “Engineer? What de kittn is that?”

Just watched the dev livestream on twitch regarding how crafting the new ascended weapons is going to work. Multiple people in the chat asked about engineer kit scaling, but sadly there was never a response given. I am sure it is not high on their radar atm, bascially though it’s a wait and see game like always for us

Decklan.7540:

google.3709:

an extra s sigil.. 1,029 + 250(bloodlust) :O! bamm! now pistol is more powerful than rifle ;p

One rifle with bloodlust, one rifle with whatever you want. Get 25 stacks, swap out rifle.
BAM rifle is now more powerful than pistol!

Use that whilst you can.
Dev mentioned it the other day & it is being “looked into”.
aka they`ll make stacks drop once you stick weapons in bags.

So I just wanted to say that playing my Engineer today, I noticed that my Attack value didn’t change swapping between my pistol and my kits.

The Attack value remained the same—3,106—when swapping between my Pistol/Shield and the Flamethrower. Considering that “Attack” is adding your Power and maximum Weapon Strength together, and that kits originally had 969 Strength to the Pistol’s 1,029 … this number shouldn’t stay the same. There was a difference when equipping the rifle or an offhand pistol, though.

Thoughts?

Fishbait.6723:

Use that whilst you can.
Dev mentioned it the other day & it is being “looked into”.
aka they`ll make stacks drop once you stick weapons in bags.

I fully expect that fix to bug out with kits, removing all stacks when they get equipped.

Phineas Poe.3018:

So I just wanted to say that playing my Engineer today, I noticed that my Attack value didn’t change swapping between my pistol and my kits.

The Attack value remained the same—3,106—when swapping between my Pistol/Shield and the Flamethrower. Considering that “Attack” is adding your Power and maximum Weapon Strength together, and that kits originally had 969 Strength to the Pistol’s 1,029 … this number shouldn’t stay the same. There was a difference when equipping the rifle or an offhand pistol, though.

Thoughts?

Did u do this in pvp? Because there is no difference. But PvE still like every day.

Forestnator.6298:

Phineas Poe.3018:

So I just wanted to say that playing my Engineer today, I noticed that my Attack value didn’t change swapping between my pistol and my kits.

The Attack value remained the same—3,106—when swapping between my Pistol/Shield and the Flamethrower. Considering that “Attack” is adding your Power and maximum Weapon Strength together, and that kits originally had 969 Strength to the Pistol’s 1,029 … this number shouldn’t stay the same. There was a difference when equipping the rifle or an offhand pistol, though.

Thoughts?

Did u do this in pvp? Because there is no difference. But PvE still like every day.

I did this standing in Lion’s Arch.

I also find your response confusing: what do you mean “because” there is no difference? Kits (supposedly) have lower Weapon Strength. The Attack value when wielding a kit should be lower than when you have a Pistol equipped, just as it is when you equip your Rifle.

Are we certain that kits still have 969 Weapon Strength?

Glad you posted this, I was actually planning on making the same thread. It’s very, very easy to imagine them forgetting to bump engineer kits’ base damage to Ascended levels with the patch next week, and it would be very nice to know that they’re not forgetting (or that we reminded them).

I’m assuming that if it takes roughly 2 weeks to make a weapon, we’ll be waiting until the 17th at least.

Dulfy has a screenshot of the stats of an ascended greatsword on her page which states a weapon strength of 1045 – 1155.

According to dw2db.com an exotic greatsword has 995 – 1100 (5% + for the ascended).

As the base-damage doesn´t get carried over to kits we´re probably doomed with kits – unless the base-damage of kits will be higher after today´s patch (what I don´t expect)

Phineas Poe.3018:

So I just wanted to say that playing my Engineer today, I noticed that my Attack value didn’t change swapping between my pistol and my kits.

The Attack value remained the same—3,106—when swapping between my Pistol/Shield and the Flamethrower. Considering that “Attack” is adding your Power and maximum Weapon Strength together, and that kits originally had 969 Strength to the Pistol’s 1,029 … this number shouldn’t stay the same. There was a difference when equipping the rifle or an offhand pistol, though.

Thoughts?

Phineas Poe.3018:

I did this standing in Lion’s Arch.

I also find your response confusing: what do you mean “because” there is no difference? Kits (supposedly) have lower Weapon Strength. The Attack value when wielding a kit should be lower than when you have a Pistol equipped, just as it is when you equip your Rifle.

Are we certain that kits still have 969 Weapon Strength?

For 2-handed weapons, Attack is your weapon’s maximum damage + power.

For two 1-handed weapons, Attack is ((main hand weapon’s damage + offhand weapon’s damage)/2) + power.

Pistol/Shield is therefore:
(1,029+909)/2 = 969

Kits use this particular number for their Attack modifier because it’s equal to the weakest (in terms of direct damage) weapon set engineers have.

No mention of kits in the patch notes. Sure would like to hear an answer to this.

Almost positive our kits were brought in line with the Ascended weapons’ stats with this patch. I’m seeing higher numbers from grenade attacks with the same build and gear (exotic Berserker armor + exotic Berserker pistol/shield + ascended/exotic Berserker-stat trinkets) against PvE mobs in Frostgorge Sound.

Also, character panel Attack Power stat with no kit equipped, no food buff(s), no Might stacks, and no Bloodlust: 3293. Same conditions, but with Grenade Kit equipped: 3341. Same 3341 Attack Power on the character panel with the Bomb Kit, Tool Kit, Flamethrower, and Elixir Gun.

I’ve no way to test whether turret damage was brought in line, as I’ve never used them, and thus have no numbers to which to compare.

In short: Initial — and by far mostly anecdotal — observations suggest that yes, our kits are now at Ascended damage levels (but I could very easily be mistaken).

Grenade 1 with random low level green rifle 216 damage
Grenade 1 with Predator 232 damage

It seems kits do know the difference between Ascended and non-Ascended. Anything that isnt Ascended prompts the kits their default stats, which is set at Exotic level. Anything that is Ascended/Legendary prompts a higher stat.