Guild Wars 2

Warrior: Dual-Wield Agility
Warriors who love to dual-wield will have a new option in their Arms line with Dual-Wield Agility. This trait will increase your attack speed by ten percent when wielding an off-hand axe, mace, or sword.

For a grandsmaster trait, this is just BAD!

Nah, the Rangers grandmaster is bad. This looks pretty good.

This is a horrible idea ANET I hope its not true.

Why?

A. There is no reason to go 30 in arms while duel wielding Axes or maces in the off hand.

B. The only weapon worth going 25 deep in arms is swords. That is only for power builds w/ swords.

C. In case you hadn’t noticed off hand sword is a condition weapon. How does attack speed help condition builds? A measly 10% at that.

D. Off hand axe is terrible and In case you weren’t playing your own game no body uses it because its so bad that the Auto Attack chain of all of warriors other 1h weapons does more damage than the off hand axe does in the time it takes to spin.

C. Off hand mace is interesting and I have tried to make it work but the cool down of tremor is too long even while traited and the mace trait only increases damage to weakened foes which off hand mace does not do. And still the cool down is too long.

D. Sword has it own major problems Flurry does not hit 8 times like it is supposed to. Final Thrust the cast time is too long. A 10% increase is not going to help this skill enough to make it really good like it should be. You nerfed leg specialist to give us a 1 sec cripple on sword AA #3 that was not worth nerfing leg specialist. Put the sword back to having bleed on the 3rd AA chain and put Leg specialist back you noobs.

E. The attack speed on main hand mace is terrible. It is way too slow. So slow that 10% will not help this.

F. You nerfed Axes really bad already and moved all the damage to trpple chop while nerfing AA 1 and AA 2.

This is a horrible idea for a grandmaster trait. And its placement at 30 in Arms makes it useless to any build except a sword power build. Even so It isnt enough to make up for swords bugs, shortcomings and the trade off of giving Leg specialist an ICD for a worthless 1 sec cripple on the 3rd AA.

I honestly hope someone that knows anything at ANET reads this because the people who are coming up with this stuff know nothing. Please explain how a 10% in 30 in arms opens up any warrior builds. After reading what I wrote. You wont and you cant. ANd you know its sucks and you know its true.

Romgaard.1965:

Warrior: Dual-Wield Agility
Warriors who love to dual-wield will have a new option in their Arms line with Dual-Wield Agility. This trait will increase your attack speed by ten percent when wielding an off-hand axe, mace, or sword.

For a grandsmaster trait, this is just BAD!

Its not bad, it just doesn’t incentivized hammer and greatsword .

I’m glad this isn’t as overpowered as I thought it was when I first read it. I was like: ok, eles get a useless heal and warriors get extra attack speed?! But if you guys don’t like it, then I’m ok with that.

I’m sure Axe/Mace users will love this trait. Since they (myself as well) love triple chop the increase on how fast that combo goes down will be a nice dps touch imo. I could be wrong. Plus since this is only part of the trait changes I’m sure we’ll be getting some other decent touches besides this. Maybe the other changes will give an incentive to actually speccing for 30 in arms.

It’s great for those duel sword condi builds. Moar bleeds! Faster cripples! I can hear all the outrage now ^.^

ThiBash.5634:

I’m glad this isn’t as overpowered as I thought it was when I first read it. I was like: ok, eles get a useless heal and warriors get extra attack speed?! But if you guys don’t like it, then I’m ok with that.

LOL ya this trait is not even in contingency to be as good as the majority of warriors Adept traits. And its placement makes it useless for all duel wield builds and Impractical for the only weapon it helps swords.

Sword/Mace = Mace off hand the tremmor skill is bad. The Cool down is way too long.
Sword/Axe = Terrible Axe off hand is just terrible. No explanation needed.
Sword/Sword=Condition build this trait does nothing for it.
Sword/Sword Power build why? Because the Sword/Sword condition build is better? Would this trait make a sword power build better than a condition build NO.

Warhorn and shield would of not been a bad trait if it worked with these weapons too and duel wield mastery worked with them as well. Again ANET does not play their own game well. They have little knowledge of it.

I’m cool with it. The current Grandmaster Traits in Arms are Furious (which I like, but its use is debatable) and Last Chance, which I consider useless.

A 10% attack speed buff is nice, regardless of the weapon you’re using. Just because a trait isn’t specifically associated with your meta builds doesn’t mean it’s bad. Promoting build variety is a good thing, and anything that could help out some builds that aren’t part of the current meta is good in turn. Not everyone plays the game to speed-run dungeons and the like.

THEmeltor.7295:

I’m cool with it. The current Grandmaster Traits in Arms are Furious (which I like, but its use is debatable) and Last Chance, which I consider useless.

A 10% attack speed buff is nice, regardless of the weapon you’re using. Just because a trait isn’t specifically associated with your meta builds doesn’t mean it’s bad. Promoting build variety is a good thing, and anything that could help out some builds that aren’t part of the current meta is good in turn. Not everyone plays the game to speed-run dungeons and the like.

Problem is that current meta builds will still be superior. If they would add new possible builds that would be strong as meta builds now i would love it, but they just add new traits that gives new possibility but weaker then what we use now.
And that means no reason to use it for most people. Not everyone but most.

daros.3407:

THEmeltor.7295:

I’m cool with it. The current Grandmaster Traits in Arms are Furious (which I like, but its use is debatable) and Last Chance, which I consider useless.

A 10% attack speed buff is nice, regardless of the weapon you’re using. Just because a trait isn’t specifically associated with your meta builds doesn’t mean it’s bad. Promoting build variety is a good thing, and anything that could help out some builds that aren’t part of the current meta is good in turn. Not everyone plays the game to speed-run dungeons and the like.

Problem is that current meta builds will still be superior. If they would add new possible builds that would be strong as meta builds now i would love it, but they just add new traits that gives new possibility but weaker then what we use now.
And that means no reason to use it for most people. Not everyone but most.

The problem is the trait doesn’t help or incentive any warrior builds. Even ones that people don’t play. If you had read my 1st post you would under stand why.

/thread

The only build that it could potentially help is sword/sword Power Spec. They go 25 into arms anyways. 10% isn’t going to boost that build over any other build. And most power users do not use sword, mace or axe off hand they use warhorns or shields. Becasue sword off hand is a conditon weapon, axe off hand is bad, mace off hand is semi decent but is kinda bad except for the vuln.

I don’t think adding another useless trait to a bunch of other useless traits is any kinda buff. Its just another trait that no one will use just like the ones that are already there.

30/30/0/0/10 build can work in PvE with pure axe. Sad it won’t give a bonus with warhorn. :C

edit: The Empower allies builds bonus still seems to be better for a groupwide dps increase.

Warlord.9074:

daros.3407:

THEmeltor.7295:

I’m cool with it. The current Grandmaster Traits in Arms are Furious (which I like, but its use is debatable) and Last Chance, which I consider useless.

A 10% attack speed buff is nice, regardless of the weapon you’re using. Just because a trait isn’t specifically associated with your meta builds doesn’t mean it’s bad. Promoting build variety is a good thing, and anything that could help out some builds that aren’t part of the current meta is good in turn. Not everyone plays the game to speed-run dungeons and the like.

Problem is that current meta builds will still be superior. If they would add new possible builds that would be strong as meta builds now i would love it, but they just add new traits that gives new possibility but weaker then what we use now.
And that means no reason to use it for most people. Not everyone but most.

The problem is the trait doesn’t help or incentive any warrior builds. Even ones that people don’t play. If you had read my 1st post you would under stand why.

/thread

The only build that it could potentially help is sword/sword Power Spec. They go 25 into arms anyways. 10% isn’t going to boost that build over any other build. And most power users do not use sword, mace or axe off hand they use warhorns or shields. Becasue sword off hand is a conditon weapon, axe off hand is bad, mace off hand is semi decent but is kinda bad except for the vuln.

I don’t think adding another useless trait to a bunch of other useless traits is any kinda buff. Its just another trait that no one will use just like the ones that are already there.

I read your first post and i agree. Like you said only build it helps is Sword/sword power but this build is far from being good as other builds. So like i said current metas will still be superior so noone will use it.
I personaly use warhorn in of hand.

Dalanor.5387:

30/30/0/0/10 build can work in PvE with pure axe. Sad it won’t give a bonus with warhorn. :C

edit: The Empower allies builds bonus still seems to be better for a groupwide dps increase.

Except. There is no 20 point arms trait that helps that build. I could point out other reasons why 30 in arms helps main hand axe very little. 30/x/0/x/30 witll still be stronger.

Now if this new grandmaster trait was a master teir skill and they wanted to put it in the discipline tree I could see it opening up some builds and being useful. This is the only spot this trait would be any decent.

Warlord.9074:

Dalanor.5387:

30/30/0/0/10 build can work in PvE with pure axe. Sad it won’t give a bonus with warhorn. :C

edit: The Empower allies builds bonus still seems to be better for a groupwide dps increase.

Except. There is no 20 point arms trait that helps that build. I could point out other reasons why 30 in arms helps main hand axe very little. 30/x/0/x/30 witll still be stronger.

Now if this new grandmaster trait was a master teir skill and they wanted to put it in the discipline tree I could see it opening up some builds and being useful. This is the only spot this trait would be any decent.

Not to mention this build loses Fast Hands, which is like the defining trait for countless Warriors.

Only way I see this useful is on Sword mainhand, where it speeds up the rate at which you can apply bleeds, increasing your DPS significantly. Axe and Mace all see essentially nothing from this trait, as it just doesn’t compare to other options like Berserker’s Power.

Anyways who would of guessed ANET is so oblivious to thier game. ANET thinks ya lets puch the condi war meta ever further we totally want this and lets nerf hammers and axes and kitten like that its pretty typical. we dont want warriors doing CC we want mesmers to disable people for 10 seconds GG ya we are so smart.

I use currently 30/0/0/10/30, but if this trait increase attack speed by 10% and if the damage from the axe comes from the auto attack and that gets faster, that means more damage.

The question for me is: is the +10% attackspeed en 30 points in arms enough to compensate for the loss in critical hit chance with full adrenaline.

I could see this being an adept trait in Strength or Arms. Would probably make Axe/Mace Axe/X better than Axe/Mace and Greatsword.

I run 30 in Arms for multiple builds and several different weapon sets. I’ll gladly take a look at a 10% attack speed increase. I usually default to Furious simply because there’s not a better option. I may not decide it’s worth it but I don’t see a reason to complain about more options. And it’s not as if this is all written in stone. It’s an initial starting point, and if its found to be not worth it, maybe they’ll change it.

I am not going to complain about additional options being added. Then again, I don’t run the copy/paste builds and never have. I enjoy doing my own thing. I don’t understand complaining about them attempting to promote build variety. It doesn’t accomplish anything.

30/30 and then 10 in literally any of the other lines will probably be meta now. Which means it opens up empowered, cull the weak or signet mastery as our choices of traits to take.

hendo.1940:

30/30 and then 10 in literally any of the other lines will probably be meta now. Which means it opens up empowered, cull the weak or signet mastery as our choices of traits to take.

Doubt it weapon swaps are too good.

All this trait does it open up one build.

0/30/25/0/15 Sword Power

and makes the condi war build better.

Warlord.9074:

Doubt it weapon swaps are too good.

Unless you forget about Greatsword and focus on Axe/X DPS (if that is superior to GS/Axe combo with this trait).

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Warlord.9074:

Doubt it weapon swaps are too good.

Unless you forget about Greatsword and focus on Axe/X DPS (if that is superior to GS/Axe combo with this trait).

Not sure why anyone would do that if they are going 30 in arms. Forceful great sword is a 20 point arms trait and there is nothing else in 20 points that really helps duel wielding. Besides maybe the 10% crit chance sword trait and that only is for MH sword.

Weapon swaping is important in AXE builds also becasue they way its played. We use axe as main hand on both swaps and the weapon swaps with superior sigil of battle while AA to stack might.

Pure axe builds don’t even take 15 in discipline for fast hands right now anyway, so I’m not sure what you’re even talking about. When you go 30 in arms you’ll just take rending strikes, deep strike and dual-wield agility.

hendo.1940:

Pure axe builds don’t even take 15 in discipline for fast hands right now anyway, so I’m not sure what you’re even talking about. When you go 30 in arms you’ll just take rending strikes, deep strike and dual-wield agility.

Since when did pure axe builds not take 30 in disciple. For axe mastery and Heightened focus? Also who the Eff is using off hand axe?

I want this trait yes please. This would be amazing for my dual mace build. But I would have to experiment with it

Ya there is no way a 10% attack speed bonus on an Axe AA chain is going to out DPS have 5 sec wep swaps and 100 blades on a rotation. The Current Axe meta build is 30/10/0/0/30. And it can com close to the DPS of the Axe/mace/GS build only because of the crit power. With the nerf to crit damage and also not have as much crit damage now with 30 in arms it will come no where close to out DPSing the the meta.

bobomb.5209:

I want this trait yes please. This would be amazing for my dual mace build. But I would have to experiment with it

Its funny you say that becasue I can see this trat helping main hand mace more than any other weapon besides swords. simply becasue the attack speed on main hand mace is so slow a 10% increase will shave off 1/2 seconds and 3/4 seconds attacks more than it will shave of 1/4 second attacks. That goes without saying the DPS will still be too slow.
10% of a 1/2 second is more than 10% of a 1/4 second. BTW I’ve counted 1 one thousand 2 one thousand 3 one thousand like that wile AA with a mace and I could sweat the AA is longer than 1 second.

Warlord.9074:

This is a horrible idea ANET I hope its not true.

Why?

A. There is no reason to go 30 in arms while duel wielding Axes or maces in the off hand.

B. The only weapon worth going 25 deep in arms is swords. That is only for power builds w/ swords.

what the ….. r you talking about? You play the warrior meta build 30/25/0/0/15 with greatsword and axe/mace or axe /sword

axe /sword dps > greatsword
with the increased dps its possible i think you play completly without greatsword and spend 20p in tactis fpr eompowerd allies

if you talk about pvp go play your hambow and shh shh shhh

Warlord.9074:

1. The only weapon worth going 25 deep in arms is swords. That is only for power builds w/ swords.
2. In case you hadn’t noticed off hand sword is a condition weapon. How does attack speed help condition builds? A measly 10% at that.
3. Off hand mace is interesting and I have tried to make it work but the cool down of tremor is too long even while traited and the mace trait only increases damage to weakened foes which off hand mace does not do. And still the cool down is too long.
4. Sword has it own major problems Flurry does not hit 8 times like it is supposed to. Final Thrust the cast time is too long. A 10% increase is not going to help this skill enough to make it really good like it should be. You nerfed leg specialist to give us a 1 sec cripple on sword AA #3 that was not worth nerfing leg specialist. Put the sword back to having bleed on the 3rd AA chain and put Leg specialist back you noobs.
5. The attack speed on main hand mace is terrible. It is way too slow. So slow that 10% will not help this.
6. You nerfed Axes really bad already and moved all the damage to trpple chop while nerfing AA 1 and AA 2.

1. Last time I checked, one of the meta build for PvE was 30/25/0/0/15 with GS and Axe/Mace
2. S/S is a popular condi weapon, the attack speed boost will speed up the condi application on the autoattack chain.
3. Again, OH Mace is part of the meta PvE build.
4. I guess you weren’t around for the short period of time when Leg Specialist was bugged and had no cooldown. People were raging about the sword perma immobilize.
5. … Yeah, that’s why it’s an attack speed boost?
6. Well let’s be honest, before the change people were literally cutting the autoattack chain in the middle due to lost DPS. It should be so that using the full chain is a better option than cutting it off. The damage should escalate the deeper you go in. Right now, it’s a bit too steep, with something like 50% of the damage on Triple Chop.

Warlord.9074:

hendo.1940:

Pure axe builds don’t even take 15 in discipline for fast hands right now anyway, so I’m not sure what you’re even talking about. When you go 30 in arms you’ll just take rending strikes, deep strike and dual-wield agility.

Since when did pure axe builds not take 30 in disciple. For axe mastery and Heightened focus? Also who the Eff is using off hand axe?

He is talking about axe mainhand only, also you really don’t need the extra crit chance from Heightened Focus.

On paper it seems like it is a terrible trait, in game it will probably be just as terrible.

Currently there really isn’t any reason to go 30 in arms, albeit maybe for condition builds. But even then the attack speed doesn’t help that much. I would much rather take another trait.

Going 30 in arms as a sword/sword power build is just .... no. Terrible.

So in summary the two issues are:

30 in arms are only good for 1 build, two at the very most.
The grandmaster trait doesn’t warrant going 30 into arms for.

Warlord.9074:

hendo.1940:

Pure axe builds don’t even take 15 in discipline for fast hands right now anyway, so I’m not sure what you’re even talking about. When you go 30 in arms you’ll just take rending strikes, deep strike and dual-wield agility.

Since when did pure axe builds not take 30 in disciple. For axe mastery and Heightened focus?

Those are lower dps options. The current meta pure axe pve build is 30/25/0/10/5. Not having Rending Strikes in your build is a failure as a warrior in pve.

I have to disagree, a lot of classes are getting an option to get pushed farther into what they’re meant to be. More classes in GW2 are all “blobs”, where they can all essentially do the same thing (don’t take this literally).

Rangers get to shoot farther, Ele’s can become more of a healer if they need or want to, Necros and Thieves are now extremely harder to kill. But what we (and mesmers but they can argue about that on their forums), is just garbage.

Almost every other class gets something that affects the character itself, and not necessarily it’s weapons. To take advantage of that 10% speed increase, we’d need to equip a certain loadout, and some people aren’t comfortable with that.

IMO A-Net needs to release something that will affect the warrior regardless of what weapon they have.

Tree.3916:

Warlord.9074:

hendo.1940:

Pure axe builds don’t even take 15 in discipline for fast hands right now anyway, so I’m not sure what you’re even talking about. When you go 30 in arms you’ll just take rending strikes, deep strike and dual-wield agility.

Since when did pure axe builds not take 30 in disciple. For axe mastery and Heightened focus?

Those are lower dps options. The current meta pure axe pve build is 30/25/0/10/5. Not having Rending Strikes in your build is a failure as a warrior in pve.

I thought people went 30/10/0/0/30 to get rending strikes?

With 25 in Arms you are also hitting Attack of Opportunity, which grants a flat 10% increase in damage against bleeding enemies.

lol you expect Anet to buff warriors more? in your dreams. AhaHaa!

30/10/0/0/30 is a little behind the 30/0/0/10/30 build in terms of personal dps, and a bit ahead in total team dps. Which is to say they are both 3-4% behind any of the 30/25 variations in either case.

All that said, this trait is a straight up 10% dps boost for a pure axe build, which is certainly better than anything else you could do with the 5 trait points in a pure axe build. I don’t expect this to have pvp applications though, because it competes with Furious in Arms which is far better in a condi build, and im not aware of power builds for warrior in pvp that go very deep into Arms at all.

killahmayne.9518:

On paper it seems like it is a terrible trait, in game it will probably be just as terrible.

Currently there really isn’t any reason to go 30 in arms, albeit maybe for condition builds. But even then the attack speed doesn’t help that much. I would much rather take another trait.

Going 30 in arms as a sword/sword power build is just …. no. Terrible.

So in summary the two issues are:

30 in arms are only good for 1 build, two at the very most.
The grandmaster trait doesn’t warrant going 30 into arms for.

Then pls say you talk about PvP or cheap WvW-gank builds.

In PvE I think the trait is quite awesome and you will play without GS and only Axe/mace or Axe/sword with 20 in tactis for Empored Allies.

Cool but..wheres the dual wielding animations?

30/30/0/0(10)/10(0) for max dps (pure axe) or 20/30/0/20/0 with EA (or 30/10/0/20/10).
Probably 10/30/0/0/30 for Evis, have to calculate it.
This trait will kill the GS in PvE if there will be no other, better GM traits in Strength or Disciplin.

This isn’t the only change I am sure. This could mean they are actually gonna take stance on trying to improve the other weapons to be more equal to GS and perhaps even make conditions a GOOD form of dps if you choose to go that route in nearly all scenarios.

On paper with the current game, yeah its not good, but I doubt with them redesigning traits they will want their hard work to be worthless and a waste of time for them and the players. Perhaps the days of every warrior being GS clones of each other or indeed every class essentially being expected to be clones of each other are drawing closer to an end. Maybe not with just this patch, but perhaps with enough future ones players will be able to open up to a wider range of game play.

Olba.5376:

Warlord.9074:

1. The only weapon worth going 25 deep in arms is swords. That is only for power builds w/ swords.
2. In case you hadn’t noticed off hand sword is a condition weapon. How does attack speed help condition builds? A measly 10% at that.
3. Off hand mace is interesting and I have tried to make it work but the cool down of tremor is too long even while traited and the mace trait only increases damage to weakened foes which off hand mace does not do. And still the cool down is too long.
4. Sword has it own major problems Flurry does not hit 8 times like it is supposed to. Final Thrust the cast time is too long. A 10% increase is not going to help this skill enough to make it really good like it should be. You nerfed leg specialist to give us a 1 sec cripple on sword AA #3 that was not worth nerfing leg specialist. Put the sword back to having bleed on the 3rd AA chain and put Leg specialist back you noobs.
5. The attack speed on main hand mace is terrible. It is way too slow. So slow that 10% will not help this.
6. You nerfed Axes really bad already and moved all the damage to trpple chop while nerfing AA 1 and AA 2.

1. I guess you weren’t around for the short period of time when Leg Specialist was bugged and had no cooldown. People were raging about the sword perma immobilize.
   .

You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. The old sword…The only Cripple it had was on a skill called hamstring which was replaced by final thrust. That skill was the only cripple skill on the sword a14 sec cd. It was extremly hard to land. In order to land it you had to do Savage leap then hamstring. No other skill on the sword had cripple.

The nerf to leg specialist came in the same exact patch that we saw the buff to sword. You must have either never played a warrior back then becasue you have no idea what you are talking about.
Patch for details that it came in the same patch.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-June-25th-2013

Heres a video from 2012 to show the sword had none of the stuff u claim it had.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=316W_z9cnGM

The Problem you are talking about was a bug in leg specialist and arrow carts had nothing to do with swords or any warrior weapons. This was fixed before Leg speclist was given and ICD. And sword was buffed.
Patch here
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-April-30-2013

/owned

You guys dont get it. On a Sw/Sw condi this is an awesome trait, swords are where the majority of your DPS comes from. Granted condi is the only thing really good for this trait

Stop stressing.. There will be 40 new traits. With 8 professions, that means 5 new traits per profession. You are going to be mixing & matching all those 5 traits into your current builds, with or without an existing meta-build.

10% isn’t a massive amount. Anything under a second is reduced by such a small amount that I can’t see the investment being worth it as a grandmaster trait. Generally speaking, when you are trying to approach damage increase through increased speed once you get to around 0.5s any additional improvements are so small that they are not worth doing.

1.0s = 0.91s
0.75s = 0.68s
0.5s = 0.kitten
0.25s = 0.23s

*Altered to use base/(1+attackspeed) as per Wethospu’s correction.

450ms is apparently a bad word when I state it as a fraction of seconds.

I don’t mean to diss PvE heads of this game, but seriously? an extra auto every 10 auto-attacks? Is that what you guys are excited about? "Zomg! it’s not useless an extra 10% attack speed that is so amazing!". Most aspects of PvE is mindless and devoid of any special skill or strategy involved, everybody just run berserker and kill everything. Doesn’t matter if you go down, just keep attacking.

As you said, PvE is about the damage. So of course people get “excited” of new damage traits.

Warkupo.1025:

10% isn’t a massive amount. Anything under a second is reduced by such a small amount that I can’t see the investment being worth it as a grandmaster trait. Generally speaking, when you are trying to approach damage increase through increased speed once you get to around 0.5s any additional improvements are so small that they are not worth doing.

1.0s -> 0.9s
0.75 -> 0.675s
0.5s -> 0.kitten
0.25s -> 0.225s

450ms is apparently a bad word when I state it as a fraction of seconds.

It’s actually X/(1 + 0.1), not (1 – 0.1) * X. So 1.0s -> 0.91s. While improvement for one attack is small, you have to keep in mind that you get lots of attacks during a fight so it adds up.

Something to keep in mind is rounding. If it works in our favor then we might see bigger improvements.

Another thing to consider is cooldowns. Issue with Axe is that the damage is backloaded. You should finish the chain before using any other skills to not lose damage. If higher attack speeds makes cooldowns match worse then this won’t be so good. However, it may also make them match better.

Also attack speed doesn’t mean more attacks but more autoattacks. But I guess it won’t make big different with Axe as all skills have pretty similar dps.

Also on top of the ~10% more damage, we get more hits so more adrenaline and more on-hit effects (for example Rending Strikes).

Wethospu.6437:

As you said, PvE is about the damage. So of course people get “excited” of new damage traits.

Warkupo.1025:

10% isn’t a massive amount. Anything under a second is reduced by such a small amount that I can’t see the investment being worth it as a grandmaster trait. Generally speaking, when you are trying to approach damage increase through increased speed once you get to around 0.5s any additional improvements are so small that they are not worth doing.

1.0s -> 0.9s
0.75 -> 0.675s
0.5s -> 0.kitten
0.25s -> 0.225s

450ms is apparently a bad word when I state it as a fraction of seconds.

It’s actually X/(1 + 0.1), not (1 – 0.1) * X. So 1.0s -> 0.91s. While improvement for one attack is small, you have to keep in mind that you get lots of attacks during a fight so it adds up.

---

Something to keep in mind is rounding. If it works in our favor then we might see bigger improvements.

Another thing to consider is cooldowns. Issue with Axe is that the damage is backloaded. You should finish the chain before using any other skills to not lose damage. If higher attack speeds makes cooldowns match worse then this won’t be so good. However, it may also make them match better.

Also attack speed doesn’t mean more attacks but more autoattacks. But I guess it won’t make big different with Axe as all skills have pretty similar dps.

Also on top of the ~10% more damage, we get more hits so more adrenaline and more on-hit effects (for example Rending Strikes).

Depends on where it is being rounded, although I doubt it would work out to be anything other than the exact value given how traits generally work. If I get boon improvement the tooltip usually updates to say something ridiculous like, 20(1/25) and such. I imagine it just uses a very close approximation of the exact value. Either way, we’re talking about gains in the thousands place of a second; the amount of damage increase either way is going to be so small that it isn’t really worth trying to record.

The arguments you’ve outlined are applicable only if this was a substantial decrease in animation time; it’s not. It will not have a noticeable effect or make a large contribution to your overall damage. Consider your build and what you would have to give up to get it as well when considering whether shaving milliseconds off your cast time is worth it.

Warkupo.1025:

Depends on where it is being rounded, although I doubt it would work out to be anything other than the exact value given how traits generally work. If I get boon improvement the tooltip usually updates to say something ridiculous like, 20(1/25) and such. I imagine it just uses a very close approximation of the exact value. Either way, we’re talking about gains in the thousands place of a second; the amount of damage increase either way is going to be so small that it isn’t really worth trying to record.

The arguments you’ve outlined are applicable only if this was a substantial decrease in animation time; it’s not. It will not have a noticeable effect or make a large contribution to your overall damage. Consider your build and what you would have to give up to get it as well when considering whether shaving milliseconds off your cast time is worth it.

Tooltip may not reflect the actual effect. It will be fairly easy to test and see if they have messed up.

Are you sure you realize how percentiles work? Sure, for one attack (1 s) the difference is minimal. But when fight lasts 60 seconds you get 6 additional attacks which means 10% more damage.

Normal attack speed (values are cooldowns, negative means how long the skill has been ready):

• Cyclone (Cyclone 6s, Crushing -0.5s, Tremor -0.5s)
• Crushing (Cyclone 5.25s, Crushing 15s, Tremor -1,25s)
• Tremor (Cyclone 4.75s, Crushing 14.5s, Tremor 25s)
• Axe (Cyclone 1.15s, Crushing 10.9s, Tremor 21.4s)
• Axe (Cyclone -2.kitten , Crushing 7.3s, Tremor 17.8s)
• Cyclone (6s, Crushing 6.8s, Tremor 17.4s)
• Axe (Cyclone 2.4s, Crushing 3.2s, Tremor 13.8s)
• Axe (Cyclone -1.2s, Crushing -0.4s, Tremor 10.2s)
• Cyclone (Cyclone 6s, Crushing -0.9s, Tremor 9.7s)
• Crushing (Cyclone 5.25s, Crushing 15s, Tremor 8.95s)
• Axe (Cyclone 1.65s, Crushing 11.4s, Tremor 5.35s)
• Axe (Cyclone -1.95s, Crushing 7.8s, Tremor 1.75s)
• Cyclone (Cyclone 6s, Crushing 7.3s, Tremor 1.25s)
• Axe (Cyclone 2.4s, Crushing 3.7s, Tremor -2.35s)

With 10% faster attack speed (0.5 -> 0.45, 0.75 -> 0.68, 3.6 -> 3.27)

• Cyclone (Cyclone 6s, Crushing -0.kitten , Tremor -0.kitten
• Crushing (Cyclone 5.32s, Crushing 15s, Tremor -1.13s)
• Tremor (Cyclone 4.87s, Crushing 14.55s, Tremor 25s)
• Axe (Cyclone 1.6s, Crushing 11.26s, Tremor 21.73s)
• Axe (Cyclone -1.67s, Crushing 7.99s, Tremor 18.46s)
• Cyclone (Cyclone 6s, Crushing 7.54s, Tremor 18.01s)
• Axe (Cyclone 2.73s, Crushing 4.27s, Tremor 14.74s)
• Axe (Cyclone -0.54s, Crushing 1s, Tremor 11.47s)
• Cyclone (Cyclone 6s, Crushing 0.55s, Tremor 11.02s)
• Axe (Cyclone 2.73s, Crushing -2,72s, Tremor 7.75s)
• Crushing (Cyclone 2.05s, Crushing 15s, Tremor 7.07s)
• Axe (Cyclone -1.22s, Crushing 11.73s, Tremor 3.8s)
• Cyclone (Cyclone 6s, Crushing 11.28s, Tremor 3.35s)
• Axe (Cyclone 2.73s, Crushing 8.01s, Tremor 0.08s)
• Axe (Cyclone -0.54s, Crushing 4.74s, Tremor -3.19s)

As you can see, it already causes minor changes to the skill rotation (in this case). No idea how this would affect the dps but few percentiles there and there and 10% more damage can easily become something between 5-15%.