Guild Wars 2

I tested weapon strength/rarity and how it affects phantasms vs normal attacks.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AohSpGgKCVZ7dE5lUnVXOEVQNEZrQnRyUUt0VWk4ZFE&single=true&gid=0&output=html

Explanation of the test parameters/data:
I decided to keep power a constant throughout my tests while only having weapon strength/rarity as variables. First thing I did was test pvp steady vs normal weapons in PvP (Columns F-K). For Columns F-I, the power was all at 916 but the attack range was about 800. Regardless of difference in attack, the average swordsman hit did not make a difference. So my initial conclusions were that attack made no difference. I then decided to test stuff in PvE (LA Dummies; Colums L-V)

Columns L-Q are phantasmal swordsmans while columns R-V are the first auto attack. For the PvE testing I only used an offhand or main hand sword. Never both at the same time since the weapon strength/attack are averaged between the two weapons. I made sure to keep power always at 1015 with a bit of topless shenanigans/traiting.

Column B: the raw attack numbers and also the % of attack with ascended =100%
Column C: Average and % DMG of the swordsman
Column Average and % DMG of the sword 1.1 and 1.2

Phantasm damage between white, blue, green and yellow weapons seemed to have very little to no difference in damage. This is consistent with the idea that differences in attack (or more so weapon strength) have nothing to do with phantasm damage and only power affects phantasms. HOWEVER, exotics and ascended items do ~15% more damage than the lower tiers of weapons. The difference between exotics and ascended was minimal. Keep in mind that I only have an n=~35 for each swordsman condition so the difference between exotics/ascended in my tests may or may not be true. I’m pretty certain that there are at least two tiers of weapons that determine phantasm damage.

For comparison, I briefly looked at the auto attack damage. These increased at a sorta linear rate compared to attack but the numbers seem a bit off.

TLDR: Phantasm damage will be minimally affected by ascended weapons: Up to 18 power and it doesn’t look like weapon strength is different between exotics and ascended. (Basically 1% increase in damage) However, I recall the devs also talking about engineer kits/ele conjures and how they are based off of exotic weapon damage at lvl 80 at the moment. Once ascended is the norm, they may change all of these to ascended as the default and buff phantasm damage at that point.

For other attacks/shatters, duel wielding ascended weapons can increase damage by ~6% and may still be worth it depending on your level of optimization/need to max.

Thanks for sharing your results. Hopefully they up the phantasm damage to bring it in line with ascended gear at some point.

thanks for sharing, I did some testing in LA and the damage increase on my sample was negligible

Great work, tyvm! share

First off, thanks for the testings

1. I don’t get the difference between Col6 and C7. It shouldn’t matter in which hand you’re using which weapon. I assume the difference of the result is just the variation. But having 1.03 avg damage makes it difficult for getting formulas.
2. Instead of power and attack, list power and weaponAtk.

Results:

1. In pvp, the weaponAtk is completely ignored. Steady weapon with 258 atk (didn’t they have 11?) and normal weapon with 1000 atk dealt the same damage.
2. In LA the white weapon dealt more damage than the blue, green and yellow one. That’d be odd.
3. No need to get formulas when a weapon with less atk (white) deals more damage than a weapon with higher atk (yellow).

Maybe this should be posted on the bug forums.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

For the PvE testing I only used an offhand or main hand sword. Never both at the same time since the weapon strength/attack are averaged between the two weapons.

I’m a little confused by this statement. I’ve never heard that weapon strength is averaged between 2 weapons. Based on the Wiki’s Damage Calculation page, it states:

“Weapon strength
Weapon strength is the average value of the damage range for a weapon. The weapon range is a uniformly distributed range of possible values with a single value being chosen at random. For one-handed weapons, the damage inflicted is calculated based on the weapon strength of weapon corresponding with the weapon slot. Main hand weapon slots inflict damage based on the weapon strength of the main hand weapon, off-hand weapons slots inflict damage based on the weapon strength of the off-hand weapon.”

Thus, in testing, the only thing that would determine the phantasm’s damage range would be the offhand weapon. That said, I also tested offhand ascended vs. exotic and came to the same conclusion that weapon strength has no bearing on phantasm damage. Since the only stat increase to zerker weapons is 9 power (4+5 infusion), 3 precision, and 0% crit damage, I see no reason to spend 50g + 10 laurels for ascended offhand weapons.

This is sad on the same level as Ele conjures and Engi kit damage not being pushed up to compensate. I’m still getting ascended just for the extra AR, but I sincerely hope they bump it at some point when most people are rocking ascended stuff .. or just actually make it scale off your equipped weapon, which is what it should do!

Well, I just tested some things myself. Basically same tests as the TS.

• Attacker: pSword
• Power: 916 (min; 0 traits)
• Weapons: SteadySword (258) & PvP Sword (905~1000)
• Setup: Tested Steady/Steady; Steady/PvP; PvP/Steady; PvP/PvP
• Values: 50 non-crit attacks averaged

• St/St
  642.24
• St/Pv
  646.04
• Pv/St
  645.88
• Pv/Pv
  654.1

Summary:
(At least in PvP with 916 power,) the weapon power does nothing.

Probable explanation:

• Phants have their own weapon
• Since weapon skills use the Atk of their weapon (skill #4 uses offhandAtk; skill #2 uses mainhandAtk) and Phants do not count towards weaponmastery, they simply use a different formula.