Guild Wars 2

I first noticed this quite recently on my Greatsword, Basically my damage doesn’t increase if I use whirling wrath, leap of faith, and binding blade. It does to some extent using the symbol of wrath but that is only as can attack while using it too. As for leap of faith and binding blade this isnt really an issue, I use them mainly for CC or to get blindness.
However I think of whirling wrath as the big skill for guardian GS. Much like warrior has 100 blades as a big damage dealer skill. But when I worked it out it does less damage than that of the standard chain. This maybe due to my build i have spec-ed to a 82% crit dam and a 40% crit chance. So when i hit any of my chain I am looking at 1.7k for first two and 2.3k for the end move. Whereas whirling wrath puts out roughly 5k total if that. This seems wrong to me as whirling wrath should be a skill to increase damage, yes it has mobility while attacking and attacks all around you, but you can easily have it to attack everyone with standard 1-1-1 combo.
I was wondering if anyone else had noticed this, and how you think it should be dealt with if you have.
Thanks

It might be helpful to hear what targets you’ve tested on, and whether this was in pve, spvp, or wvw, as what you’re hitting certainly figures into the damage.

The projectiles you cast out eat up the dmg.

If your casting out projectiles that dont hit anything, its completely wasted dmg.
WW needs to be hit dead-on since its a very mutli-hit type attack.

It has the ability to crit on individual strikes instead of, for example, Mighty Blow that focuses its dmg into a single strike. Because of the projectiles and the random critting it can be a wild card.

But yes the auto-attack (especially a triple crit) will most likely end up trumping the WW in total dmg.

Against 1 target, yea you’re probably right.

But whirling wrath blasts foes at a small range at 360 degrees. Also, you have to look at the other functions of each skill apart from the straight damage. GS gives you an aoe symbol that gives Ret not just for you but your allies too, gives you a gap-closer, a burn that can pull multiple foes to you at once, thus maximizing the GS’s abilities. it also has a light combo field, which is helpful when conditions get heavy (whirl) or inconjunction with allies.

Whirling wrath will not increase damage over autoattack unless you disable melee assist and whirl while inside your target.

Power/precision/crit damage will affect all skills equally (condition damage will favor whirling wrath due to passive virtue of justice). There will also be some bias if/when you take the critical hit numbers for your autoattacks and compare them to whirling wrath, because less than half of your WW hits are expected to crit with your current setup.

Finally, symbol of wrath itself does not do a huge amount of damage, but since you can do other things while the symbol is ticking, it’s actually a very significant boost in your DPS as long as the target stands in it.

Might need more power to go w/ the crit.

This is mostly intended. For all professions, your #1 is designed to do the most sustained damage. Your #2-#5 are designed as situational abilities. They provide burst or utility and your performance is directly dependent on when you use them.

Why would AOE or other abilities, like ones with a leap attatched, do more damage than a single attack ability?

Will go on record saying having an autoattack as one of five abiltities is lame in the extreme.

Seras.5702:

Against 1 target, yea you’re probably right.

But whirling wrath blasts foes at a small range at 360 degrees. Also, you have to look at the other functions of each skill apart from the straight damage. GS gives you an aoe symbol that gives Ret not just for you but your allies too, gives you a gap-closer, a burn that can pull multiple foes to you at once, thus maximizing the GS’s abilities. it also has a light combo field, which is helpful when conditions get heavy (whirl) or inconjunction with allies.

The hammer gives you a symbol that applies protection, a blast finisher to trigger AoE retaliation within that symbol, a ranged immobilize, a knockback, and I’m not really sure what to call ring of warding…

Relentliss.2170:

Will go on record saying having an autoattack as one of five abiltities is lame in the extreme.

Depends on your point of view. Many prior MMOs require you to repeat ability sequences over and over again to be efficient. However, that has a low skill threshold (it can be easily automated) and leads away from have an interactive game – you’re playing the UI instead. What GW2 does is remove that and make it all automated. However, in order to be efficient, you need to use the other abilities when interacting with enemies to allow you to damage them unopposed or prevent damage, etc. Decisions made about when you use those abilities and which of them you use determine your success – not how well you can repeat 1-1-1-2 all day.

Exedore.6320:

Relentliss.2170:

Will go on record saying having an autoattack as one of five abiltities is lame in the extreme.

Depends on your point of view. Many prior MMOs require you to repeat ability sequences over and over again to be efficient. However, that has a low skill threshold (it can be easily automated) and leads away from have an interactive game – you’re playing the UI instead. What GW2 does is remove that and make it all automated. However, in order to be efficient, you need to use the other abilities when interacting with enemies to allow you to damage them unopposed or prevent damage, etc. Decisions made about when you use those abilities and which of them you use determine your success – not how well you can repeat 1-1-1-2 all day.

When you only have 10 skills actually having it on the bar taking up a slot is lame.

Relentliss.2170:

When you only have 10 skills actually having it on the bar taking up a slot is lame.

Not really. The point is that you can’t have everything at once. In other MMOs with a lot of skills, they become very specific very quickly. GW2 limits your available skills so that the ones you have won’t be as limited or if they are, will be more powerful. It also preserves the idea of different builds that have strengths and weaknesses and allows for team play to cover those.

Exedore.6320:

Relentliss.2170:

When you only have 10 skills actually having it on the bar taking up a slot is lame.

Not really. The point is that you can’t have everything at once. In other MMOs with a lot of skills, they become very specific very quickly. GW2 limits your available skills so that the ones you have won’t be as limited or if they are, will be more powerful. It also preserves the idea of different builds that have strengths and weaknesses and allows for team play to cover those.

As such the classes are more like Moba characters in design. In Moba games you do Not have your autoattack taking up a slot. You also have much more character customisation than this game offers. Its like they took one or two things from Moba but left out the fun parts.

Whirling Wrath is weird. It actually makes up like 30% of the total damage with that skill, so if you’re not hitting anything with them, you’re actually losing out quite a bit.

Relentliss.2170:

Why would AOE or other abilities, like ones with a leap attatched, do more damage than a single attack ability?

Will go on record saying having an autoattack as one of five abiltities is lame in the extreme.

Anet has already stated before, that there is no “auto-attack” in GW2. And what they mean by that, is that it’s an actual skill that always has more effects than that of doing “white damage”. Like in many other MMOs (Rift, WoW, SWTOR), where you could kill an NPC without using a single skill. + with the old fashioned auto-attack, you could basicly hit twice with just 1 swing of your weapon, if you used an ability, at the same time your next auto-attack was ready, which makes about as much sense as kittenting in a hat.

Just be happy that Anet allowed you to decide for yourself which of your five skills that your character should use as often as possible (spam). Or you would have to spam that key with your fingers yourself.

I don’t know what to say to this, I have melee assist on and my auto attacks hit as high as 3.5k and I’ve seen whirling wrath hit for 7.5k in spvp, even a little out of range of the tip of my sword. I’ve never had to “stand within someone” for this ability to hit hard.

If GW2 could talk and heard “2,3,4,5 less powerful than 1” he would say “ah, the story of my life”.
Not that this game is based on “OMG im leet coz I hit 83 buttonz y’know” WoW bull, thankfully, but I still believe skills should be at least on par with 1, especially since they have a CD.

Greatsword is an AoE/multiple enemies weapon. If you said “2,3,4,5 less powerful than 1 while running sword/torch” hilarious laughter would ensue.

As 2-h weapon greatsword is an integrated package. All the buttons work together in exactly 1 way (compared to having multiple off-hand combinations), and that way is to injure and CONTROL a large number of mobs. You get to groups quick and mitgate their initial assault (2), group targets up (5,5), build aggro with their own damage while not dying (4), and hit just hard enough to keep aggro when the rest of your team dished their AoEs into your lovely pile up (3).

If you want “I’z gonna do high single target DPS” run Sword/Torch which has a fraction of the survivability and almost no control, but hits like a truck with a big ol’ Guardian Class Symbol stenciled on the side.

I solo sword/torch. I duo greatsword. Other classes can and will hit harder, but they hit harder still when every monster in draw distance has to look at me first .

Sierra.6352:

Just be happy that Anet allowed you to decide for yourself which of your five skills that your character should use as often as possible (spam). Or you would have to spam that key with your fingers yourself.

You can set your auto-execute on any slot…

I have run whole fractals with “For Great Justice!” on auto-execute (because I tend to forget to spam it) and done the staby-slashy button pushing manually.