Guild Wars 2

Axe seems like a PvE weapon that provides cleave to condi mesmers. even the clones cleave.

they don’t spam clones like sceptre because it’s not axes job to produce an endless stream of shatter-fodder. axe clones actually do serious damage (not as much as duelist phants will, but duelists don’t cleave).

…and then there’s axe ambush. which is pretty, but nearly useless. I got nothin’ there.

I’m pretty sure the high damage attack is its crippling attack that it’s supposed to use every ~10 sec. haven’t been paying too much attention to it outside of when it’s killing teq’s fingers (which is condition immune :/) so not 100% sure, but it definately occurs at very regular intervals.

regarding ele’s signet: there’s a gm trait that allows them to utilize both the active and passive parts at the same time. it’s pretty stong with that, but going heavy earth for that generally isn’t worth it due to signet builds having relatively poor defenses.
They’d benefit from the active doing something other than healing, so that it doesn’t have to be balanced around having that GM. For example, granting quickness would be neat as a berzerk button for those without it, while still synergizing with the passive if you do opt for the gm.

regarding war’s signet: the problem is really that that’s no gameplay required to access it’s power, and it’s one of the strongest sustain heals in the game.
honestly, the best structure for it would be a lower passive regen, but change the active to be a very strong heal over time. a bit like a combo of ranger’s troll ungent/signet of wild passive.
at least, i think that’d make it more fun to play with/against.

I can only guess that this is a side effect of nerfing series 7.

right now, it’s damage is so low that the entire 7 second channel does significantly less than the basic spammable punch.

honestly, the damage would have to be buffed tenfold to make it not a giant waste of time. it would be a good idea to split the skill from the npc version so you don’t have to worry about breaking one skill by balancing another.

maha.7902:

http://gw2dps.david-reess.de/

Stick in a composition with a ranger, EA warrior, guardian and then like phalanx warrior and engi to handle might/vuln. Then swap the EA warrior for a 30/25 warrior and the guardian for like a thief or something. Then take a look at the numbers for those two classes compared to ranger.

Interestingly, while the ranger’s personal dps isn’t anything special, when you look at the total party dps it looks like rangers bring enough to make them competitive with thieves and eles. …and easily surpass warriors by 2~3k (that is, warriors other than the 1 PS for 25might)

of the available builds there, mesmer, necro and gaurd appear to bring poor damage.

war, engy and ranger table boosting overall party dps as their claim to fame – and thus, if you’re trying to optimize, you don’t want more than one of each.
(their value appears to be, in order: PS war, vuln engy, spirit/spot ranger)
(other note: a 2nd ranger is noticably worse than a 2nd engy or war)

thief and ele for high personal dps.

while gaurdians bring so much defensive utility that having relatively weak damage doesn’t matter that much, for mesmer and necro, this is very much grounds to exclude them from a party… in the same way you might exclude someone for wearing soldier’s instead of beserkers.

at least, that’s what i observe.

slapping permanent retalition on everything instead of just fixing the one problematic ability is silly. there’s plenty of other abilitys that deliver high hit counts that aren’t broken at all.

I can’t imagine it would be all that difficult to reduce the dozen or so fields it throws down to just one. which could then be given an actually balanced DPS.

assuming the tooltips are correct, weapon rarity and strength are completely irrelevant.