Core Class Weapon Skills Need Changing

[Sigwarades.1240]

I started the game around a month ago and I gotta say I love the game a lot, there’s a lot of ups and downs with the game but one of my biggest annoyances are how weapon skills are done for each of the core classes. 
 

I can’t speak too much for every core class as I have only levelled them to only 20 with only 3 of them actually getting to 80 and having an elite spec unlocked. A lot of the weapon skills for the core classes aren’t good at all. They mostly feel horrible and I’m struggling to get past 20 because combat feels bad and that’s because the weapon choices and skills don’t feel great. It could also be my inexperience that could be causing this too. 

 

The best example I can use is Elementalist, it’s weapon choices are Dagger, Sceptre, Staff, Focus and Warhorn. Honestly if your not using Daggers on either your main, off or as your secondary weapon, it feels like your asking for trouble. I thought some of these weapons skills were so bad, I was willing to only use Conjure Weapons alone  and not even use any of  my equipped weapon skills but then I realised how clunky they are. In regard to the weapons: Warhorn and Focus feel very situational in a way that feels almost useless. Staff seemed like it would have potential but it’s wasted. Sceptre is okay but could be much better. Dagger is the only one I actually find reasonable. Dagger 2 is a decent Conal fire breath attack, Dagger 3 is an okay ‘dash to your enemy’ type skill, Dagger 4 is a decent AoE fire field and Dagger 5 is a good skill for dealing nice damage and deals even more damage if your foe is burned.  I can say, I wish Air was more focused on DPS compared to Earth. I understand each weapon has its role CC, Support and DPS etc but most of Elementalist weapons feel way to support like and just doesn’t  contribute much that I can see to be of any real benefit in most open world encounters especially as your levelling.

An example of weapon skills I think are good are Warriors Axe and Guardian’s Greatsword. Warriors Axe skills in my opinion are very well done, and is a great example of how DPS focused weapon skills should be. It has a decent ranged attack, two skills that provide nice buffs and a debuff (Fury, Quickness and Vulnerability) that also do decent damage and the last skill does very high damage but is long to cast. What I like is how each of the skills interact with each other: you use Axe 3 to aggro the enemy, Axe 2 to apply Fury to yourself and Vuln to the enemy, Axe 4 applies Quickness which you then use for Axe 5 which speeds up the cast time, also most of them cleave as well which is really nice.
 

Taking a look at Warrior’s Greatsword (GS) its not so good, especially taking a look at Guardian’s variant. GS2 is not bad but it makes you very vulnerable to attacks and if you miss RIP. GS3 could be so much better, but the fact that you go forward and can’t stop yourself unless you weapon stow is awful, but if the enemy is in a corner or tight space then it’s pretty decent. GS4 is the equivalent of Axe 3 so it’s okay and GS5 is just terrible. A dash that once again you can’t stop unless you weapon stow, it also does low damage and if you miss your target you keep dashing forward...And only G2 and 3 cleave. Let’s take a look at Guardian’s GS variant. GS2 is pretty much Warriors Axe 5 that also fires projectiles at the same time which is really nice, GS3 is an okay damage leap attack that also has a little heal as a bonus. GS4 is tied to Guardians theme of using symbols so I won’t really speak much but it does good damage. GS5 is basically a DoT that can also pull in enemies affected by it. This is an overall much better set of skills that all cleave as well. You can use GS3 to leap to an enemy, GS5 to put dots on enemies and pull them in, use GS4 to place your symbol underneath the enemies and finally use GS2 to just deal massive damage as the projectiles from GS2 won’t miss and deals extra damage if your inside the enemies hitbox while the attack is firing off. And then I take a look at Warriors GS, and it’s just ‘Oh I guess I’ll just GS3 to close the gap and then run back to my enemy and GS2 and just AA since the other skills aren’t worth using...Right and if I miss GS2, nothing else is really worth using so AA it is :)’.
 

And this is only to name a few, some weapon skills are just not good and are almost borderline useless. I really hope this gets addressed especially with the Steam release seemingly coming within the next few months. 
 

Edit: Was mixing up Torch with Focus for Elementalist as Endaris pointed out

Edited July 11, 2022 by Sigwarades.1240

[Endaris.1452]

Yeah, Staff is pretty sad, it's not very useful in solo gameplay at all because it doesn't hit that hard and mobs will just run out of Meteor Shower and Lava Font if there isn't someone / something keeping them in there.

 

With Scepter I would agree as well, it has some good stuff but especially the earth attunement feels really bad to play with, being super slow and clunky. Air and Fire are quite alright, Water is okayish I guess.

 

Warhorn is actually a really strong weapon though, you have a ton of skills that help you deal with big mobgroups and that hit reasonably hard, you got CC, blind, protection, magnet aura and Air 5 on warhorn completely destroys things.

 

Torch...is actually not usable by elementalist, not sure from where you get that. If you're talking about focus, yeah that's kind of situational and it's more of a utility weapon but it's very powerful in its own right, having 2 sources of projectile hate, 2 sources of CC, 2 blast finishers, invulnerability and the damage on fire in focus is actually not too bad either. Focus is a fun weapon in solo play the moment you start to play around combo fields and finishers (like you're supposed to as elementalist) and it's as good as dagger off-hand if you ask me.

 

 

If you read around a bit in the Elementalist profession subforum you'll find out that you're not alone with your opinion and many players actually pinned big hopes on anet's announcement that they wanted to revisit underperform skills and weapons in the june 28 patch - which they didn't. Here's to hope that some of these get some QoL updates in the future.