Stat Revamp 1.7: Weapons

I agree with everything you stated except that Shield is faster than MA.
Shield is significantly slower weapon both melee and ranged combos wise, it would be normal/expected for Shield combos to hit harder than MA's.

MA spinning punch and smoke bomb parsed well for me. clipping with them was similar to the other good melee attacks.

Shuriken Storm parsed very poorly for me.

When you say similar to other good melee attacks, do you mean that the damage per second from long combos (where you have to risk interrupts, etc.) was the same as short combos, or you mean it was superior? Otherwise it still doesn't make sense to take the risk, does it?

Also, I think basically the devs are saying "any combos that are clippable will do a lot less damage if not clipped. So for people who are used to setting up dots with nature and then doing combos in between, it's either, find a power to clip them with, or go with WM combos. Otherwise you're condemned to subpar dps if you're actually letting the animations play out. Which is kind of stupid since, why bother having cool animations if we always have to clip them for max dps?

"Clipping will tend to have an advantage over not clipping, but this lets us narrow the gap"

If I understand that "Narrow the Gap" part, I guess that means Clipping will probably have small benefit over not clipping weapon combos.

If I read that wrong, and if you still want to play out animations. I'd probably go with Rifle for the time being since that would be an okay weapon to work with since Nature has the dots going for it.

If I were to use it, I'd probably go: Swarm*Activate him first* Serpent Call, Vine Lash, Briar, Harvest, and then probably Robot sidekick or a Supercharge.

Swarm's a temporary pet, so it won't override RS if you decide to use it.

And then it's simply a matter of using rifle's ranged or melee combos a certain number of times and refreshing harvest and swarm until the adds are dead.

Yeah, the way they say it makes it sound like the differences are minimal, but if you actually parse it, it's like the difference between 9k dps (just an example) and 7k dps. That's pretty signficant.

Eh I'm not gonna dig too deep into it anyways, pretty much everyone who's tested this stuff knows that weapons need to be considered in other areas before we can truly consider this stuff even remotely balanced.

Been testing 2h and I'll be honest, Mega Smash got a big buff... But outside of that, WM arrow Storm and Spinning Punch are the only other good combos.... That leaves for very bland gameplay and very very one move attack. (Arrow Storm for the win...)

With the recent changes to some cooldowns, Mega Smash doesn't sync up well with the weapon buff (Battle Display.) You can only get one Mega Smash in during the duration. Having to refresh it every other smash is painful. The Arrow Storm fits better, but still gets out of sync and you can't clip any of them due to cast bars on them.

I don't think 2h is doing well at all.

I think staff is pretty good if you learn which combos are AOE (Downward Smash) and which are single target (Martial Flowers, Leaping Overhead Strike). Downward Smash is good for clipping a 3sec power. Launching Roundhouse Combo is... odd. I have a tough time with the combo but the final tap can crit high. Roundhouse isn't bad, considering 5 taps, but the last hit is not AOE while the 4 preceeding taps are.

Compare that to Air Launch Master which is 4 taps 1 hold. The Hold is still single target and doesn't seem to be a huge improvement over Roundhouse. Cleave Mastery is nice and quick and all AOE. It's good for getting back on rotation. I was actually seeing some of my highest parses on Quantum by going WM while using GW, WR and clipping AW.

Staff's new combo is AOE. I tested it out in the Penguin boss fight in the T2 solo, there's plenty of mobs and each one of them got hit. Another good thing about the Ranged Combo is that it's clippable, I was able to clip this new ranged combo multiple times with Ice's snowball and I'm sure once you get used it, it'll work fine with other abilities too.

I think the ranged cone could be extended though, that's just me.

Yeah I noticed that. Pretty sure it was single target when it was added last year, but a couple days ago I tested it on the league hall dummies and noticed the final burst is AOE. It parses fairly well also.

I don't really see the problem here with making clipping and weapon mastery superior to not clipping.

Clipping is great, but the thing is not every playstyle benefits from it. If you're going all weapon attacks, you can't clip because there's no way to clip weapon with weapon. If you're setting up dots and then doing weapon attacks while they burn, you have nothing to clip with either.

And WM only gives you 4 combos to work with max.

I understand maybe there is no way to balance this (minus removing clipping which would get a ton of people up in arms), but my point is simply then: why even have the other combos in the game?

Why should I waste my time doing a five input combo if from the beginning I know I'm going to be doing way subpar damage? Are the other combos there just for the pretty effects? I'm just wondering what the devs' take is on this. What do they envision as the difference between Clipping, Regular Combos and Weapon Mastery Combos? Is the idea that weapon mastery combos should put out more dps than regular combos (without clipping)? Or maybe clipping could be removed from the longer combos and they could be buffed?

They should just make weapon mastery clippable. Make it like normal weapon combos. Weapon mastery is wack the way it is currently. It hits hard but i find it boring.

Adding on to this, making weapon mastery normal weapon combos could solve a few things like melee weapons having good range combos and range weapons having good melee combos. If this was balanced right people could use weapons that they like rather than weapons that are overpowered. A good example would be live right now. Most sorcery and earth dps use handblast for range, and 1 handed or staff for melee because they are so much better than everything else and they dont even like any of those 3 weapons. I believe that all the powers and weapons on the game should be balanced well enough to be competitive if used right, and this would also add alot of variety to the game play because there would be so many things to experiment with. So making weapon mastery just like normal weapon combo could help with making the game more fun.

Weapon mastery is clippable, there's just sort of a delayed window. I miss the glowing circle and the little *ping* that told me I got it just right.

Even "Weapon Focused" players are going to use super powers to augment themselves and clip with. They're just getting most of their damage from weapons.

WM combos shouldn't be fully clippable. You want to overpower hybrid dps? Because thats how you overpower them.

No.

They can adjust the damage and also then combo powers are overpower bc they hitting like weapon mastery but u can clip out of combos so what is ur point? Also hybrid and combos should be the strongest play styles because not only do i have to clip i also have to spec into more stuff and combo powers is to add your weapon into them so those i understand. Weapon mastery guys only need precision, play from the tray only need might and a bit of power but hybrid needs might prec and power.

By clippable i mean like you can clip out of solar flame

You had to make an alt account just to say that?
Could have PM'd me on your main account Duck lol.