Observations & Analysis on Caster Weapon Load-Outs

[Grim Daddy]

At the first tournament, I first started seeing casters use melee weapons instead of wands, particularly on casters doing support. As time has progressed, so had the number of casters using melee weapons instead of wands; even though they weren't using them to attack anyone (in both PvE & PvP at this point). It wasn't until I started to do the math that I started to understand what was going on, which is as follows:

The following is a rather large sample that deals with ways to gain extra defense & health through using three different methods for a caster:

I: Staff:
Dmg.: 11-22.
Maximum Unconditional Energy: 10.
Prefix Component: Ward./Shelt. +7, Def. +5, HP +30, or Energy +5.
Build-in Component: 20/20 to a specific attribute line, or 10/10 to all attribute lines.
Suffix Component: Ward./Shelt. +7, Def. +5, or HP +30.

II: Wand & Icon:

Wand:
Dmg.: 11-22.
Build-in Component: 20/20 to a specific attribute line, or Energy +5 (Conditional) w/ Halves Recharge (20%) to a specific attribute line.

Icon:
Maximum Unconditional Energy: 12.
Build-in Component: 20/20 to a specific attribute line, HP +45 (Conditional) or HP +30 (Unconditional) w/ Def. +5 (Conditional) or Halves Recharge (20%) to a specific attribute line or Halves Recharge (10%) to all attribute lines, Def. +5 (Unconditional) w/ Energy -5 & HP +30 (Unconditional), or Def. +10 vs a specific Dmg. w/ Halves Recharge (20%) to a specific attribute line.

III: Sword/Axe & Icon:

Sword/Axe:
Dmg.: 0 (I could have been nitpicking about it. But for all intents & purposes it's generally going to be zero with the exception of something like the premade Spell Slasher, which is pretty generous on my part.).
Prefix Component: [any/none].
Build-in Component: +15-20% Dmg. (Conditional), or Energy +5
Suffix Component: Ward./Shelt. +7, Def. +5, or HP +30 w/ +1 (20%) to a specific attribute line.

Icon:
Maximum Unconditional Energy: 12.
Build-in Component: 20/20 to a specific attribute line, HP +45 (Conditional) or HP +30 (Unconditional) w/ Def. +5 (Conditional) or Halves Recharge (20%) to a specific attribute line or Halves Recharge (10%) to all attribute lines, Def. +5 w/ Energy -5 & HP +30 (Unconditional), or Def. +10 vs. a specific Dmg. w/ Halves Recharge (20%) to a specific attribute line.

Note that you don't need to have anything into Sword or Axe Mastery to gain the full benefits from both the Build-in & Suffix Components or be a Warrior subclass for that matter. This alone would not be a problem, if it weren't for the fact that stacking an axe or sword with an icon does, in fact, give a greater advantage for energy/health/defense. This creates a rather large rift, where the rarest of the rare items (& NOT a player’s actual skill) play a large role determining in who wins a battle. This in turn means that there could end up being little to no advancement for players, who don’t use casters to farm for gold or rare items.

And for a caster, doing damage with a wand is not much or any of a loss, especially with support characters like certain types of Monks & Ritualists. Even for casters that are renowned for dealing out the hurt, it can often be undesirable to be carrying a ranged weapon, seeing as it can alert the enemy of one's presence before one has gotten the chance to attack. This is typically not a problem with seasoned players as much as it for newbies who might look into this as an alternative. With the loss of damage from a wand being moderate at best, the crime far and exceeds the penalty.

As for what this is doing to the Guild Wars Economy, it's derailing it in a big way. Just look at these price comparisons between staff, melee, & bow components as of 06-09-2006 (Keeping in mind that bows come in all sorts of varieties & that daggers have only been out for a relatively short period of time):

Staff:
Wrapping of Fortitude +30hp...................8-10k|D:M|S:M|
Hale Head +30hp.................................5-8k|D:L|S:M|
Wrapping of Defense +5........................1-3k|D:L|S:M|
Wrapping of Shelter +7.........................2-3k|D:L|S:L|
Wrapping of Warding +7........................2-3k|D:L|S:L|
Insightful +5......................................4-6k|D:L|S:M|
Defense Head +5...................................3k|D:L|S:M|

Hammer:
Fortitude 30hp................................10-25k|D:L|S:L|
Defense +5.......................................2-5k|D:L|S:L|
Shelter +7........................................2-5k|D:L|S:L|
Warding +7.......................................2-5k|D:L|S:L||

Daggers:
Fortitude 30hp................................20-40k|D:M|S:L|
Defense +5.......................................2-5k|D:M|S:M|
Shelter +7........................................2-5k|D:L|S:L|
Warding +7.......................................2-5k|D:L|S:L|

Bow:
Fortitude 30hp................................20-40k|D:M|S:M|
Defense +5.......................................2-5k|D:M|S:M|
Shelter +7........................................2-5k|D:L|S:L|
Warding +7.......................................2-5k|D:L|S:L|

Axe:
Fortitude 30hp...............................20-30k|D:H|S:M|
Defense +5......................................2-5k|D:M|S:M|
Shelter +7.......................................2-5k|D:L|S:L|
Warding +7......................................2-5k|D:L|S:L|

Sword:
Fortitude 30hp................................40-60k|D:H|S:M|
Defense +5.......................................3-5k|D:M|S:M|
Shelter +7........................................3-5k|D:L|S:L|
Warding +7.......................................3-5k|D:L|S:L|

Information gathered at: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/showthread.php?t=44867
I apologize in advance for not being able to get GWOnlines prices for comparison, due to being locked out of there.

As you can see, prices for axe or sword parts are much higher than that for hammer or staff parts, despite the compatibility of staff parts to 62.5% of the professions in Guild Wars. Should the trend of carrying swords or axes with icons continue, we could soon see (if not eventually) 75% of all the avatars for all players chasing after the top end gear for one profession, which would constitute 12.5% total with that one profession. And that's still including things like hammer parts which aren't sought for as much. This even goes further to fail to factor in new casters that could be introduced in the coming chapters. In summary, this creates an unusually (& unnecessary in my opinion) high demand for these items & ultimately creates a waste of resources on top of being impractical.

Honestly, I've got a few extra perfect warrior weapon upgrade components lying around my account (of which I only happened to come across), while I have not a single perfect caster upgrade component for a staff in my account. So, even though such an adjustment would actually hurt me monetarily; I'm still willing to take the hit for the sake of balancing out the weapon modifiers. This also means that I have the means to do this, but lack the willingness to what I see as stooping so low.

In my option, there are only 3 arguments that I can see for refuting my argument that there is an imbalance at work here:

1.) i want casters to pwn
2.) i got tons of uber tank components that i wanna make a phat stacks of plat off of
3.) every1 else is doing it, so why can't i b a clone

As one may be able to tell from my poor grammar & punctuation with the arguments refuting my position, I don't take any of them the least bit seriously.

My proposal to bring balance back is a simple one: If one has no attribute points in a melee weapon whatsoever, then one gets no bonuses from the weapon whatsoever. Of course, +50% to the attribute requirement will get one 50% of the bonuses off the weapon & so on. The reason for purposing a complete penalty as opposed to a partial penalty (as seen with energy received off of icons) is so that there's no incentive to prolong this exploit of these melee weapons any further than it already has to be.

If ArenaNet had intended players to have this great of an advantage with a Sword/Axe & Icon combination, then why weren’t such components that are on melee weapons implemented on wands/staves in the first place? Given the advantage that this combination provides & lack of such provisions on wands/staves, it’s extremely likely that the Sword/Axe & Icon combination was never intended to come into being, & to say that its very presence is good enough justification for such use is misguided considering the advantage it already brings.

[Nomad 2]

Bold move Grim, might I suggest adding this proposal to staves as well? So that touch rangers actually have find necro staves in order to be effective.

[Grim Daddy]

When dealing with touch rangers, there are much larger exploits at work than simple use of staves.

When I checked up on the Prophecies Manuel & compared to the Faction Manuel on the definitions of Expertise, I found that:

Points into Expertise decrease the Energy Cost of your attack skills, Preparations, and Traps.

Expertise lets you manage your Energy efficiency by shrinking the costs of non-spell skills.

With this change, this means that Expertise applies to Vampiric Touch & Vampiric Bite for reducing energy costs, which makes them not exploits unless ArenaNet decides to adjust it.

However, there seems to be an exploit with these two skills that someone mentioned on a Guru Thread (http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3072605), which is as follows:

...sense one is a bite ( physical action ) and one is a touch ( physical action ) leave them as such, but make the effect of evade/block work against them sense they are as discribed " physical actions "...

Commentary: It seems very unrealistic that someone is lunging to bite or touch their opponent & still would be able to hit them every time, despite being blinded or something to that effect. Sure since they steal life, the two skills are technically not considered attacks but they still go through the same physical motions as a melee weapon would go through to deal out damage, which is what makes them skills & not spells in the first place. Those are just my thoughts on the situation at least.

Anyways back to the topic:

Staves by their nature are extremely constrained with their built-in bonus of either: 20/20 to a specific attribute line, or 10/10 to all attribute lines. But they make up for this by having Prefixes & Suffixes that have unconditional stats on them.

Although wands & icons are not customizable; this loss can be made up for by either doubling up with 20/20 to a specific attribute line on a wand and icon, by getting conditional bonuses (that are more powerful than the unconditional bonuses when they are active) on both wand and icon, or some combination of the two.

With a sword/axe & icon setup is basically like stacking on the prefix & suffix of a staff onto a wand. This is perfectly balanced, so long as the person is actually using the sword or axe to attack with. The reason is because for primary Warriors they gain these benefits at the risk of not carrying a shield for additional defense while in the front lines & for subclass Warriors it’s the same deal but with a lack of heavy armor to consider as well.

It’s only when a caster or touch Ranger completely ignores attribute points (or doesn’t even bother using a Warrior subclass for that matter) to an axe or sword for its unconditional bonuses that this becomes an imbalance to the game-play, through providing the easiest & most impractical way to offset major and superior runes while still maintaining a large energy pool at the measly cost of doing no damage with the melee weapon of choice.

[Nomad 2]

...completely ignores attribute points... to an axe or sword for its unconditional bonuses that this becomes an imbalance to the game-play...

Very well, I concede the point.

[STINGER]

Touch Skills have always been influeneced by Expertise (at least as long as I can recall). Touch Rangers were actually a pretty damaging build prior to Factions the thing was there were less touch skills and one needed to be in Death/Blood/Expert to have enuff skills to string attacks but now with the addition of new skills, some copys of old ones one no longer needs the Death line and can go all out Blood/Expert and still be able to add somewhere else if they wish. Blood Spikers were also strong in Prop and now much stronger in factions due to more skills added.

I agree totally, all mods on items should require the attributes to get full effect of them.


With all that said, I dont have "big" issues with swords/axes being as good or better options than Icon/Focus.......it seems stupid to allow, but no biggie its been that way from the begginning wiht the Denravi Sword.

+5 energy here or there is not so impacting that I would consider it unblanced. It all still comes down to the player, team, skills, strat and tactics. At best I would give items a 5%........have the Best and you are the best player you are 100%.......have PvP build items only and you are the best player you are at 98-99%.

Most "high end" players only "show" you thier least amount of enrgy and switch to thier biggr energy setups when needed. This helps reduce the effects of EDraining builds against them. If you only show 40 you can only loose 40..........show 47 and you can loose 47.......show 40, loose it then switch to the 47 setup and you have 7 to cast that EDrain/Inspired/OoB/Drain Enchant/Power Drain...etc to get that energy back.


Like it was said above, not only touch Rangers benifit from the staff stuff, but Trappers and even Warriors do also especially Shock using ones.

Doubt anything gets changed here, unfortunately its been like this for so long and so little talk about it. It was discussed prior to release a bit but not heavily.

[Grim Daddy]

The previous examples I was addressing were ones that assumed that the person would be using the axe/sword & icon combo 24/7, which has become commonplace to see in the HoH. The problem typically occurs with spikers who are putting as much health & energy into themselves as possible (while not compromising energy regeneration at the same time), so that they can continually spike for longer periods of time. Given that a prolong spiking periods can end up only being a few seconds more, it can still produce an advantage that typically couldn’t have been gotten otherwise, especially with skills & spells that ignore armor. However, what you have just brought up Stinger brings about an entirely new set of issues altogether.

With the switching out of a load-out during, one little advantage becomes a big advantage. Instead of having to ask a teammate for assistance to recover energy in order to counter a case of energy denial, one can just recover it themselves, without any coordination on the part of the team. There’s also the matter that these weapons lack energy regeneration penalty that are typically be found on an icon/focus or a wand, which would be fine if they were being used to fight with as a Warrior would do in my opinion. On top of that, one can receive additional defense or health from the suffix of a melee weapon, of which cannot be found on a focus or a wand that carries additional energy to what it may already have.

Overall, this means that such an adjustment as I've purposed wouldn't affect those that switch to a load-out with a larger energy pool than in the previous load-out all that much. The reason being is that one could just as easily get by switching to an icon/focus with more energy but less regeneration to counter energy denial, as one would have with a melee weapon that had extra energy in it. Such a proposal would only affect those that use melee weapons to gain a solid standing for things like spiking, as I've previously mentioned.

Like always, I know that there’s a chance that I’ll be ignored by ArenaNet. But I’d rather take that chance over going quietly into the night, even if there’s a large probability that I’ll be ignored. Although ArenaNet has done a great job in making Guild Wars one of the most balanced MMO-RPG’s out on the market; I still think it wouldn’t be bad for them to go the extra mile & at least look into these areas being inquired about in case there actually is something off-key.