What is THE most damaging single player activated skill in the game? (Power)

To clarify, I count skills with multiple packets of hits (such as ‘Whirling Axes’) as one skill.

So any ideas? Churning Earth and Ranger Axe 5 come to mind for me but I’m curious if anyone can provide a conclusive answer.

Cheers!

It used to be meteor shower (does it count?) But idk since they nerfed it.

Just to clarify, what do you mean by single player? A skill with no cleave? (Single target) or with cleave but only counting damage to one target? Also, is it combo skills only (100b) or do skills that deal separate packets of damage that dont add up in the screen (meteor shower, ranger lb 5, wells etc) count too?

From these you said, whirling axes has the higher base damage and power coefficient.

Bear in mind that skills vary in pve/pvp/wvw and that classes have different buffs. Also, crit is something to take into account, rev and ranger have a lot of ferocity and presc, while warrior doesnt (has less).

For my question meteor shower does count yes. By single, i meant no chains. Simply one key press and damage is done.

So id happily accept “Heartseeker @25% health” etc if this was the most damaging attack a player can activate.

I’m wondering basically what skill has the highest tooltip damage. I.e before crits are accounted for :)

I’ve never seen a table showing the highest damaging skills in the game before. I’d guess elementalist skills are for sure some of the highest.

This is all just my curiosity :)

Here are the 3 highest:

1. Elementalist's Meteor Shower (Staff 5) wins hands down with it's massive 38,4 damage coefficient in total, although with the recent nerfs this number will be alot lower. Still the number of hits still makes it miles ahead of the second on the list.
2. Warrior's Whirling Axe (Axe 5) comes second with a 8,388 total coefficient
3. Ranger's Whirling Defense (Axe 5) comes slightly behind second place, with a 7,92 coefficient.

The reason these skills make the top of the list, is because the damage is delivered in small packets over time and therefore designed to be dodged/mitigated by toughness. Next comes elite spec skills, after these come wells with uneven coefficient distributions and topping the one hit packets are Wastrel's Ruin and Churning Earth.

When it comes to most base damage for a single button press, Meteor shower is, and hopefully always will be, king.

The highest damage multipliers of a single hit skill I found so far are Necro's Frozen Abyss (Trident) and Reaper's Gravedigger - both with a value of 3.0 and Reaper Shroud's Executioner's Scythe with a value of 3.2 (below 25% HP).

But:

• I am not familiar with every single tooltip in the game, so I might have missed something!
• Damage is also calculated via additional multipliers in traits, so that the skill itself will not represent the final damage (e.g. the mentioned Necro/Reaper falls behind here as it lacks trait multipliers)

The question is vague though. If you can give the context for the question, we can waddle through the criteria to give a cleaner answer.

Citadel bombardment??? Any facts on that skill?

Hardest Hitting is Meteor Shower.Fastest Killing is Whirling axe with whirling defense at Second.Whirling Axe is probably the best of these because you can move while casting it and it hits fast AND hard AND 5 targets around you.

This isnt the highest in the game ofc but soul spiral has a neat 4.8 coefficient and with the added poison it's necromancer's hardest hit. The highest in the game is probably whirling axes tho

Warrior Kill Shot has 3.25 coeff and can hit like a truck.

Against a large target, I think it would be Lightning Hammer's Lightning Storm. It used to be Ice Bow's Ice Storm, but they gave that one an ICD.

Thanks for all these answers guys. Definitely satisfied my curiosity, especially with all the stats to back it up. I really appreciate it.

Warr Axe 5 surprises me of its damage as well as Reaper GS ‘Gravedigger’ never made a Necro to 80 so will defo give it a go.

Sounds as if Meteor Shower is still my answer even after all these years.

Will mark all as answers if i can but thanks for all your help!

Prime Light Beam has to be up there— 8.0 damage coefficient (with the field) and 30 seconds of burn ticks (icing on the cake).

You guys mention Meteor Shower.. what about.. Fire Greatsword 5? Smaller radius meteor shower but on steroids. It should come close, if not be far better now that the normal meteor shower deals reduced damage on subsequent hits.

And if we want to be cheeky we can count in Sohothin during the PoF story. That thing murders everything on purpose after all ;)

But besides that it is probably either a max Backstab or one of the other abilities with a ton of hits

@Blocki.4931 said:You guys mention Meteor Shower.. what about.. Fire Greatsword 5? Smaller radius meteor shower but on steroids. It should come close, if not be far better now that the normal meteor shower deals reduced damage on subsequent hits.

And if we want to be cheeky we can count in Sohothin during the PoF story. That thing murders everything on purpose after all ;)

But besides that it is probably either a max Backstab or one of the other abilities with a ton of hits

Haha forgot about Sohothin!! :smile:

Now if only one of you could distract Rytlock so i can pinch his blade and use it in open world pve and raids :trollface:

Maybe then I’d actually pass as a semi-decent player!

I believe Artillery Barrage is probably the single-strongest skill in the game right now.

Don't forget that, when comparing skills, you also need to compare the type of weapon they use. When comparing Artillery Barrage to Meteor Shower, you have to consider that AB uses 690.5 weapon strength and MS uses 1100.

Artillery Barrage: (15 1.5) 690.5/1100 = 14.12386Meteor Shower: (6.9 1.6) 1100 / 1100 = 11.04

Taking it a step further, you also have to consider all relevant damage boosting traits, and find the highest % modifier setup for a given class. Don't need to include runes/buffs/etc as those are accessible to all classes.

meteor shower is strongest, yes, but did everyone forget Lightning Storm and Overload Air? Those can certainly do more damage than Whirling Axe.

@"reikken.4961" said:meteor shower is strongest, yes, but did everyone forget Lightning Storm and Overload Air? Those can certainly do more damage than Whirling Axe.

Or fiery GS skill 5

You guys are forgetting OP's requirements:

• The highest BASE skill coefficientThis means disregarding any trait dmg modifiers, this means regardless of criticals, this means regardless of weapon strength, and this means regardless number of hits as long as it can be done with 1 button press.

Of course a skill with a 0.1 coefficient that hits 10 times and crits all with 900 ferocity will do more damage than a single 2.0 hit no crit. But that's not the question here. The question was which skill, and every skill on your bar comes with a unique coefficient, has the highest. The coefficient doesn't change with weapon strength. It doesn't change with trait modifiers. It doesn't change with stats. It's constant.

@sokeenoppa.5384 said:

@"reikken.4961" said:meteor shower is strongest, yes, but did everyone forget

Lightning Storm

and

Overload Air

? Those can certainly do more damage than Whirling Axe.

Firestorm is only 9x0.65 = 5.85

Whirling Axe is 8.4,Meteor Shower is ...actually only 12.48 now. Which is a lot lower than I thoughtLightning Storm is 0.5*36 = 18.0. But, as a utility skill, it uses unequipped weapon strength, making it more like 0.345*36 = 12.42Also speaking of weapon strength, Meteor Shower uses a two handed weapon, which has 10% more weapon strength, so it's more like 13.73Anyway, Overload Air does 0.715*14 = 10.01. Plus the static charge damage

Anyway, so it's Meteor Shower > Lighting Storm > Overload Air, but it's a lot closer than I thought. And Overload Air actually wins out in a lot of practical scenarios, such as with hitboxes that aren't the size of the sun.

Also worth noting that Lightning Storm almost immediately caps out vulnerability on the target, so if you're casting it by itself, it's gonna do a lot more damage than meteor shower will.

@reikken.4961 said:Also speaking of weapon strength, Meteor Shower uses a two handed weapon, which has 10% more weapon strength, so it's more like 13.73

Meteor Shower1.0 + 0.9 + 0.8 + ... 0.2 + 0.115 = 6.96.9 1.6 = 11.0411.04 * 1100/1000 = 12.144

Lightning Storm0.5 36 = 1818 690.5 / 1000 = 12.429

Overload Air0.715 14 = 10.0110.01 1100/1000 = 11.011 (assuming a staff is equipped)

Lightning Storm > Meteor Shower > Overload Air

@cat.8975 said:Meteor Shower1.0 + 0.9 + 0.8 + ... 0.2 + 0.1*15 = 6.9

it's not listed, but I ran a test and found that the minimum damage is actually 16% rather than 10%

@reikken.4961 said:

it's not listed, but I ran a test and found that the minimum damage is actually 16% rather than 10%

Ah, you're right. Was it always like this?

@cat.8975 said:Was it always like this?

no idea. I never tested it before

highest single hit coefficient i can think of is holosmiths photonic blasting module at 5.0.