ArenaNet:Skill feedback/Miscellaneous/Balancing all weapons

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Swords

Swords are underpowered because their critical damage is not good, they are based on Bleeding which is a weak condition, and they have a lot of weak energy based attack skills. Furthermore, a lot of their damage skills are either elite or very expensive. The solution here is

• Decrease a sword's attack delay to 1.20 seconds.

Axes

Axes are borked by their low minimum damage. I would say that their minimum damage needs to be increased to at least 10. Their maximum damage is fine as we don't want people hitting 63 critical damage unskilled every 1.33 seconds.

• Increases minimum damage to 10.

Hammers

Hammers are severely under-appreciated due to

• Slow attack rate
• Critical damage still overshadowed by a scythe
• Inability to use a shield with them.
• Lack of energy-based attack skills makes it a bad choice for secondaries.
• Attack skills cost too much adrenaline.

Solution

• Hammers should ignore an additional 1% of armor for each point in hammer mastery.

Daggers

Daggers are underpowered due to their damage being the lowest in-game(even lower than a staff or wand!) while being two-handed melee weapons. Their attack skills get repeatedly nerfed. Dual attacks by random chance do not apply to Lead attack or Off Hand attack skills, further devaluing them.

Solution

• Double strikes should occur with any attack. The second strike would not use a skill, but would do 2x the damage of a normal dagger attack.

Bows

Bows are perhaps the most underpowered weapon. Longest attack delay, low damage, and expensive nerfed skills make them obsolete unless you want to run Burning Arrow, Interrupts, or Barrage. Their only redeeming aspects are

• Ability to spread conditions
• Most spammable AoE attack
• Better interrupt rate than any other class

Solution

Expertise increases attack rate.