ArenaNet talk:Skill feedback/Ritualist/Dulled Weapon

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i came in mind with the idea for this one due to the issue with splinter weapon and warmonger's weapon , i wanted to have something to counter them , whithout having to nerf them , so i thought that this useless skill could have some potential. 189.70.147.128 15:19, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

It's a hex spell with nearby range. Disabling critical hits is equivalent of reducing overall damage by 15~20%. I don't think it needs a change. Lightblade 08:14, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

i do think this needs a change , it's not worth the skill slot with just making the foes unnable to do critical hits , it's extremly underpowered 189.70.185.150 00:14, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

critical hits, while strong, aren't worth wasting a slot to disable. --Life Infusion «T» 02:00, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Critical hits does worth a slot to disable them. Dervish and Axe warrior relies almost exclusive to critical hits for damage. You should tackle it from a different way: Does it worth being punished so severely by Shatter Hex/HEV. Lightblade 19:37, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

As if someone runs HEV or Shatter Hex on GvG after izzy killed HEV. 189.70.189.48 19:48, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the skill needs a buff, although crits do quite a bit of damage, but I dont think it should be able to remove weapon spells. That would require a balance on all weapon skills, since most of them have a higher cost due to being non-removable. What would you guys think of making it not only remove crits, but slightly (think 1..14) reduce the damage from attacks. It becomes passive defense akin to Blurred Vision, which is considered very powerful. Not like it matters, but it also fits the theme of the spell, since dull weapons dont usually deal as much damage (with the obvious exception of blunt weapons). --Angelic Loki 20:55, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

OK, did a bit of research (i.e. I looked things up on the wiki) and this is what I came up with. Take an axe, one of the most critical-reliant weapons (in fact the table below shows it to be the MOST affected by critical hits). The axe has a dmg range of 6-28, which means on average it should hit for about 17 dmg. Now, on a critical hit, the damage is apparently root 2 * the highest damage a weapon can achieve. For an axe this should be 28 * 2^0.5 which comes out as just under 40. That means on a critical hit, an axe will do ~2.3 times as much damage as normal. Now, the formula for how often a critical is hit is still unknown, but with 12 axe mastery it's estimated to be ~20%. That means that your average damage bonus, with an axe, from critical hits, is just under 47% (correct me if I'm wrong with something here). Based on these assumptions (mainly that you will hit a critical hit 20% of the time), I calculated the effective base damage bonuses from crits (to 1 d.p.) for the following weapons:

Weapon	Bonus from crits
Axe	46.6%
Scythe	46.4%
Daggers	40.1%
Spear	37.3%
Bow	36.8%
Hammer	36.7%
Sword	33.6%

Possibly someone may want to add this to the critical hits page (or talk page, at least). Anyway, to get back on topic, it can be seen that Dulled Weapon should in theory be quite useful, but there are two or three important things to bear in mind:

• An assassin's Critical Strikes will increase dmg gain from crits and give energy, so Dulled Weapon will be particularly powerful against them.
• Fleeing foes are always struck for crits, further increasing the dmg gain from them
• Most dmg from attackers actually comes from skills, not from normal attacking, even with critical hits. Thus, while you may take even 1/3 of a foe's base damage off, this may end up as much less (consider Executioner's Strike, which deals twice as much damage as a normal attack even before you factor in the armour-ignoring element).

In short, this is fairly useful (just not really recognised to be so), but less powerful than Blurred Vision, which removes half of all hits, decreasing ALL damage by 1/2 AND preventing conditions and other effects, which far outweighs the half duration. So yes, this needs a buff, but not too big a one.

Yeah, buff this. Making it a counter to weapon spells too would be a great way to buff it since then weapon spell problems would be reduced (some weapon spells could even be buffed) and yet it would be more than just a niche counter since it would retain anti-critical ability.

Underpowered, underused

→ moved from ArenaNet:Skill feedback/Ritualist/Dulled Weapon#Underpowered, underused

Balancing a hex against another hex by doubling the duration is not a fair trade. A double duration hex is at least twice, perhaps four times, as likely to stick for the entire duration due to cover hexes and the fact that hex removal sucks. Likewise for larger AoE - it makes it far easier to overload enemy hex removal. -- Armond Warblade 01:04, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

No, I totally agree, but I think rather it should be more than half as powerful as Blurred Vision with double the duration because I would say that, due to hexes being removed before they last the full duration, double duration equates to less than double power. Of course this all depends on the build and context.

Underwood's Suggestion

Doing that to the skill would actually make it worse. It already negates crits but making people's attacks do that much more damage would actually benefit them overall. If that was just a typo and you meant to say the do that much less damage, then that's a good idea but it would be way OP, the numbers are too high.

You didn't see that it's for target ally did you?--Underwood 19:34, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh. OK, no I didn't, but the numbers are still a bit high. If you use an axe having a damage bonus that big would more than double your damage and that's provided it wasn't armour-ignoring (as it is it's ambigous - you haven't said whether it would be treated as +dmg or base damage, though base damage would be more sensilbe). By contrast, critical hits increase an axe's damage by less than half again (see above) so you'd effectively be giving your ally a maintainable ~25% damage bonus, and that would be with an axe. For weapons which are less reliant on critical hits (e.g. sword) or base damage (e.g. daggers) this would probably have an even greater effect. Not stacking with other weapon spells or enchantments (in PvP, at least) would help adress the problem but I still feel it would be a touch too good.