Guild Wars 2

So… why does Pistol Mastery grant 10% damage to pistols, but Dagger Training only grants 5% to daggers? And then Combined Training is even WORSE, granting 5% damage only to the #3 attack.
Deadly Arts is a serious mess right now, just all over the place.

Pistol mastery was buffed to 10%, because Pistol damage’s not doing well, and so they buffed that trait in January to try and solve the issue of Pistol being generally the weak weapon set.

ensoriki.5789:

Pistol mastery was buffed to 10%, because Pistol damage’s not doing well, and so they buffed that trait in January to try and solve the issue of Pistol being generally the weak weapon set.

Are you sure? It’d make a hell of a lot more sense to just boost the base skill damage.
Plus, I don’t think there’s another trait in the game crappy enough to only boost a weapon’s damage by 5%. They all either grant 10%, or grant another effect along with it, like increased range or reduced recharges.

It makes more sense, but they way they worded it back in the thread when they announced the change it seemed to be a “temporary” fix so they could monitor the results.
Obviously it’s been quite meager to the success of P/x

Daggers on the other hand are strong to the point that throwing another 10% on them is not necessary as they current are…post-26th who knows.
If I wasn’t a lazy kitten I’d find it and link you Jon’s reason.

Deadly arts is a bit of a mess but it seems to have a bit of everything for every build, just.

Grimwolf.7163:

I don’t think there’s another trait in the game crappy enough to only boost a weapon’s damage by 5%. They all either grant 10%, or grant another effect along with it, like increased range or reduced recharges.

While Thieves only get 5% damage increase on Daggers/Shortbow and #3 skills via traits they also have other things to balance out damage outside of that such as:

7% crit chance when flanking Critical Strikes 10
5% damage when flanking Trickery 10
5% crit chance with #3 skills Critical Strikes 20
10% damage when target has a condition Deadly Arts 25
10% damage when initiative is over 6 Critical Strikes 25
10% damage when endurance isn’t full Acrobatics 25
1% damage per initiative (Up to 15% with full initiative) Trickery 25

With 70 trait points it’s entirely feasible to get 20% passive damage increase for all weapons with various different circumstances.

Most classes don’t get these type of traits, and those that do only have 1-2 amongst all of their traits lines.

I think Taril’s points are spot on. There are tons of passive increases, so if they chose to make it 10% instead of 5% the damage increase would possibly be way too much. Also, I think that since it impacts the already high damage of backstab/heartseeker it would have to remain as it is.

Other classes DO get traits like those.
Ranger:
Hunter’s Tactics
Honed Axes
Peak Strength
Bountiful Hunter
Two-handed Training

Warrior:
Stick and Move
Berserker’s Power
Dual Wielding
Slashing Power
Critical Burst
Blademaster
Cull the Weak
Sundering Mace
Empowered
Burning Arrows
Heightened Focus

etc…
After looking around though, it seems other classes do have some 5% weapon damage traits. Most classes and trait lines are botched up and imbalanced…
Some grant 5%, some grant 10%, some grant 5-10% + another bonus like skill recharge. There’s no logic in it.
You can’t even say it’s because some weapons are baseline stronger damage-wise than others, because even ignoring the lack of sense handling it through traits, some extremely high damage weapons have the strongest traits as well. Like Slashing Power for the Warrior greatsword.