General PvE balance questions/suggestions

[SponTen.1267]

In this thread, I'm going to stay away from all the contentious stuff, and just ask/suggest a few things. Pretty minor overall, and more for just all of PvE in general, ie. not just instanced group content. I'm not a top-end player, so please be gentle if I miss things or my suggestions don't target your specific gameplay preferences; I've just noticed the below stand out so much that they're really apparent even to someone who mostly does OW, T3 Fractals, Dungeons, and the occasional Raid. I think the below affect everyone though.

Thief
Is there some way to make good use of Sword? Its auto attack seems to do less damage than Dagger, and both its dual wield skills seem to provide very minimal, or even no dps boost over its auto, despite them being a bit janky. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind forced-movement skills or being rooted in place (I know, I'm weird, I actually like strange skills), but it would be cool to have them actually deal noticeably more damage than the auto.

Elementalist
Is it just me, or are Air autos really weak? Air is supposed to be "heavy damage and control", and yet its autos seem to just suck.

Revenant
How long is Hammer going to be so much worse than every other weapon? Or am I missing some way to scale it? It feels like it does about half or even a third as much dps as Sword/Sword. Also its Coalescence of Ruin #2 is still bugged and starts its aoe about 200 range away from the Revenant.

Ranger
Is it just me, or does most of Ranger's power damage come from Soulbeast or Untamed? I know that the game isn't really balanced around Core, but it means that Core and Druid are just... so bad for power builds. Is that intentional? Similar to...

Necro
Same kind of thing with Necro; Core and Scourge power damage is so bad.

I know focusing on Core or specific Elite build types might seem like nitpicking or just a non-issue, but it means that when we get new weapons to play with, there will be a bunch of builds that will just be sooo much worse for Core Ranger/Necro, and Druid/Scourge. Even Micro_Hard's tests seem to verify this for maxed-out dps.

Anyway, that is all. Nothing too crazy, and would love to just be flat out wrong about all these; please let me know if there are ways to build for the above as I really want to try out these playstyles. Something about them being noticeably worse than the alternatives, even for a semi-casual like myself, just seems... odd. I'm never going to hit top tier benchmarks, yet the above builds are still so noticeably weaker than the alternatives that they feel weird and disappointing even in casual OW and story.

[SlayerXX.7138]

A

Edited November 18, 2023 by SlayerXX.7138

[Bankrotas.8215]

Here's a general a general suggestion: reduce max stat achievable crit chance to 50%

[Noodle Ant.1605]

i dont think ele air attunement was ever really designed to be a attunement you sit in for long.  usually if the auto is good, the #2/3 skills are not good (dmg wise) or the other way around. same for earth condi - its only meant to be a temporary state before returning back to fire

core builds is an interesting topic because soon there is the possibility of people with SotO but no other expacs - meaning they are locked to core specs only and no ascended viper gear (although can be partially bypassed with legendary gear) which means condi alternatives are also limited. but i feel like core balance is a huge undertaking the balance team might not be up for, despite them specifically creating instanced content that these players can access with only core specs at their disposal