Basic Attack does more dmg than skills.

[Drôwnêd]

My basic attack as a ranger does way more dmg than my skill and im at lvl 25.
I do have Support Gems in skills and leveled up the skills but it seems my basic attack is always strongest by making at least 3x dmg

edit: with skills i mean lightning rod and strike combo.

[Clyan]

you have to use combos, otherwise auto attack does indeed have higher dps

[Jesus Christ]

Originally posted by Paton:

Originally posted by David Hayter, ♥♥♥ Crusader:

Your basic attack is for dealing with single enemies. Skills are for dots, cc, aoe, status effects. I'm playing fire sorc in hardcore and so far I'll fire bolt if dealing with single enemy. Crowd shows up, I'll set up fire wall and fusillade then fire bolt while fusillade and fire wall are up.

This game is about utilising all your skills rather than just spamming one forever.

That's fair enough but the issue is when a boss takes 5 minutes to kill and you have nothing more effective than your basic attack for single target then the 5 minute fight is just basic attack, dodge, basic attack, basic attack, dodge, dodge, dodge, basic attack.

That gets old pretty fast. I'm level 39 right now and I just don't have any desire to hit play now. At all.

Most bosses I've seen so far have taken more than just basic attack. Devourer for example, likes to stay still a lot and spawns those grubs. Great time to put up dots and aoes. Easy to his with something that poisons is another though that comes to mind.

Or the frost witch at the beginning. Spawns wolves. Great time for aoe. She also doesn't move much, so dots and aoe is good too.

Rust king I spent a lot of time fire bolting because he moves around a lot. But he spawns adds which is good for aoe. And sometimes he'll stop moving for his super attacks. Good time to fire wall. Even though he'll move, fire wall has a higher ignition chance for the dot.

(These are just bosses off the top of my head since I was playing act 1 earlier)

There's opportunity a lot of the time to use most skills, even on bosses.

[Drifter]

Leveling my second character, a warrior. I was surprised to find that my basic attack does 4-3-4 times the dmg of any skill I can use. Boss fights were clunk and took forever using abilities, until I just started auto attacking and bosses melted. This is with a +skill weapon. Pretty weird balancing if you ask me, but we are in EA, so hey! It's understandable.

Originally posted by David Hayter, ♥♥♥ Crusader:

Your basic attack is for dealing with single enemies. Skills are for dots, cc, aoe, status effects. I'm playing fire sorc in hardcore and so far I'll fire bolt if dealing with single enemy. Crowd shows up, I'll set up fire wall and fusillade then fire bolt while fusillade and fire wall are up.

This game is about utilising all your skills rather than just spamming one forever.

You're playing a sorc, a class that has an ability for just about anything and decent aoe. Not every class has access to that, especially early. Some classes abilities just suck early and auto attack is all you've really good to work with. My first character I leveled was a sorc (in maps atm) and I never even thought about using my auto attack once. If I were to use abilities for bosses with my warrior apart from the totems I put down, the fights would take like 10 minutes, that is how little dmg they do.

[Wubbinz]

Originally posted by David Hayter, ♥♥♥ Crusader:

Originally posted by Paton:

That's fair enough but the issue is when a boss takes 5 minutes to kill and you have nothing more effective than your basic attack for single target then the 5 minute fight is just basic attack, dodge, basic attack, basic attack, dodge, dodge, dodge, basic attack.

That gets old pretty fast. I'm level 39 right now and I just don't have any desire to hit play now. At all.

Most bosses I've seen so far have taken more than just basic attack. Devourer for example, likes to stay still a lot and spawns those grubs. Great time to put up dots and aoes. Easy to his with something that poisons is another though that comes to mind.

Or the frost witch at the beginning. Spawns wolves. Great time for aoe. She also doesn't move much, so dots and aoe is good too.

Rust king I spent a lot of time fire bolting because he moves around a lot. But he spawns adds which is good for aoe. And sometimes he'll stop moving for his super attacks. Good time to fire wall. Even though he'll move, fire wall has a higher ignition chance for the dot.

(These are just bosses off the top of my head since I was playing act 1 earlier)

There's opportunity a lot of the time to use most skills, even on bosses.

In act 1 I didn't see the problems either. I'm not being sarcastic when I say I think your opinion is going to change in Act 3.

When you meet bosses that can 1 shot you with hard to dodge abilities so you need to stay on the ball, bosses that are very mobile and bosses that have huge health bars. When you combine these things then setting up and using combos becomes difficult to say the least.

Also for ranger, the class that I'm playing, I really don't see many abilities that combo that well. There are abilities that combo absolutely but they don't do much at all for single target situations. Great for group clearing but who really cares about the trash when the bosses are this big ♥♥♥♥?

[Drôwnêd]

Originally posted by Paton:

In act 1 I didn't see the problems either. I'm not being sarcastic when I say I think your opinion is going to change in Act 3.

When you meet bosses that can 1 shot you with hard to dodge abilities so you need to stay on the ball, bosses that are very mobile and bosses that have huge health bars. When you combine these things then setting up and using combos becomes difficult to say the least.

Also for ranger, the class that I'm playing, I really don't see many abilities that combo that well. There are abilities that combo absolutely but they don't do much at all for single target situations. Great for group clearing but who really cares about the trash when the bosses are this big ♥♥♥♥?

exactly my situation

[Wubbinz]

Originally posted by Drôwnêd:

Originally posted by Paton:

In act 1 I didn't see the problems either. I'm not being sarcastic when I say I think your opinion is going to change in Act 3.

When you meet bosses that can 1 shot you with hard to dodge abilities so you need to stay on the ball, bosses that are very mobile and bosses that have huge health bars. When you combine these things then setting up and using combos becomes difficult to say the least.

Also for ranger, the class that I'm playing, I really don't see many abilities that combo that well. There are abilities that combo absolutely but they don't do much at all for single target situations. Great for group clearing but who really cares about the trash when the bosses are this big ♥♥♥♥?

exactly my situation

It might be a ranger thing honestly, these sorcerers seem to be having a fine enough time. I'm not mad about it of course, it's a couple of days into EA but I think the feedback needs to be given when our class feels like crap to play.

Putting all difficulty arguments aside because I quite like it. Being stuck with basic attack the whole time is just uninteresting. Think I'm going to try a sorcerer though to see what they have to work with.

[Drôwnêd]

Originally posted by Paton:

Originally posted by Drôwnêd:

exactly my situation

It might be a ranger thing honestly, these sorcerers seem to be having a fine enough time. I'm not mad about it of course, it's a couple of days into EA but I think the feedback needs to be given when our class feels like crap to play.

Putting all difficulty arguments aside because I quite like it. Being stuck with basic attack the whole time is just uninteresting. Think I'm going to try a sorcerer though to see what they have to work with.

i dont have a problem with the difficulty its nice to not just stomp the game

[Jesus Christ]

Originally posted by Drifter:

Leveling my second character, a warrior. I was surprised to find that my basic attack does 4-3-4 times the dmg of any skill I can use. Boss fights were clunk and took forever using abilities, until I just started auto attacking and bosses melted. This is with a +skill weapon. Pretty weird balancing if you ask me, but we are in EA, so hey! It's understandable.

Originally posted by David Hayter, ♥♥♥ Crusader:

Your basic attack is for dealing with single enemies. Skills are for dots, cc, aoe, status effects. I'm playing fire sorc in hardcore and so far I'll fire bolt if dealing with single enemy. Crowd shows up, I'll set up fire wall and fusillade then fire bolt while fusillade and fire wall are up.

This game is about utilising all your skills rather than just spamming one forever.

You're playing a sorc, a class that has an ability for just about anything and decent aoe. Not every class has access to that, especially early. Some classes abilities just suck early and auto attack is all you've really good to work with. My first character I leveled was a sorc (in maps atm) and I never even thought about using my auto attack once. If I were to use abilities for bosses with my warrior apart from the totems I put down, the fights would take like 10 minutes, that is how little dmg they do.

I've played with all the classes we have access to so far. While I don't really like the way Warrior, for example, feels I can see where their utility is meant to be. Stunning, blocking, and being good with positioning.

Also, keep in mind that half of the weapns, and thus half of the ablities, are not able to be accessed right now. More utility will likely come in as those get added.

[wulfster42]

It's not a ranger thing, it's a weapon thing including sorc/witch weapons.

It includes the spells that come with staves etc. Early on especially if you pump up lightning bolt on a staff it dominates everything especially in combo with orb of storms.

Meanwhile melee and ranged weapons all can have the basic attacks upgraded with absolutly no mana cost, and no longer/slower attacks etc.

The attack speed boost support works great on all basic attacks making it significantly faster right away. You can add poison or bleed to them as well if you want or scattershot for instance to fire more projectiles (All for free).

But wait, there's more. I have played alot lol. There are unique weapons of every type and they often add significant abilities to the base weapon, to the point of making many skills obsolete, or upgrading skills significantly.

Lets briefly use mercenary as an example, although I may hit the others later. Mercs can get a unique xbow with no minimum level. The damage on it blows as it's the base xbow......so you would probably assume it isn't very useful past the early stages or at least act 1...right?

Not right, that xbow adds 2 chain to each attack, for free. It adds cold damage and boosts freeze build up as well (about the same as the support gem). You can slot your basic attack with faster attacking and say scattershot, and now it fires 3 projectiles that all chain twice. It also works with all your other ammo, so makes your cold ammunition much more deadly. Each projectile can chain to the same monsters, so if you have 3 monsters they can all be hit by the same shot 3 times. With the 10 shot ammo, all of it can chain 3 times to a group of enemies. Basically that early unique is still good in act 3, you just get damage boosts from rings/gloves etc to upgrade the base damage instead of the bonuses from higher crossbows. It's not great on bosses without adds (still great on some like the heyeena boss forget the name), but you just have a higher direct damage xbow on alt to use single target damage attacks with (probably with poison/bleed on it as well).

Sorc has great staves that just obliterate stuff, but sorc really does have strong spells naturally like arc which you get pretty fast early and orb of storms. Witch has some good ones as well, but both can also get very strong spells from staves or wands. The early staff for sorc gives a level 1 pretty worthless fire blast spell (but that can generate SRS when cast) but ALSO has level 3 of a spell that rotates around your head and then fires at a monster/enemy in a burst. It literally can 1 shot half the act 1 bosses lol. Once you get the SRS ability it can be used on a Witch to just obliterate everything.

Warrior gets both a great mace and shield early on. The mace adds plenty of damage and removes 38? I think it is additional armor per hit, and the shield has good block % and adds 50 spirit early in the game (which even for a warrior lets you pump up your aura etc).

Anyway many unique weapons allow you to drastically pump up your basic attacks for free. Many staves and wands (not even just unique ones) allow you to again pump up a spell and make it really strong without any worry about mana cost.

And remember, nothing says you can't use a different weapon than the class usually does. You can use the above uniques as ANY class. Want to walk through act 1 with a monk (not that you can't destroy act 1 with a quarterstaff), just equip the above unique xbow with the mods I mentioned and everything just melts/gets destroyed. Because of 2 chain, with scattershot on it, you just destroy entire groups of enemies without even slowing down.

Meanwhile you don't even need uniques to have VERY strong early game staves. Get a +1 lightning skill, lightning bolt staff for instance, pump it up with more damage from both lesser aoe (cause the aoe is so small anyay) and no crits, and you have 90% more damage, even without any spell damage bonus nodes at all in your tree, you will just be walking through destroying stuff, and meanwhile grab orb of storms to go with it and that takes care of AoE just fine. You can 100% easily beat act 1 with that setup as any class and never even spend a point on your passive tree if you want (but no reason to do that it's cheap to reset/remove nodes on it, so just get defensive nodes if you are using spells in a class with no spell damage etc).

Anyway you can get some skills to be very strong as well, but yes base attacks are often your best option early on. Rangers have lightning arrow which doesn't cost to much to cast and hits multiple enemies (also the unique bows kinda blow....one gives 155% bonus quiver stats for instance, I have not gotten the unique quiven, maybe they work well together).

Merc has good AoE elemental shots and grenades are good as well. Basic attack CAN walk you through everything but no real reason not to use the elemental shots when appropriate (you know if anything lives long enough lol).

Movement abilities are also vital in many battles (boss battles) so upgrading them and having them ready is important. Some classes get them faster than others, but they all get them.

Anyway I do think they have the cost/bonus ratio off on some of the skills. They slow down the attack speed and often drastically reduce the base damage on skills compared to normal attacks, which ends up making a normal attacks dps higher than the skill, AND the skill costs mana.....increasingly more as you support it, versus the basic attack being free (or skill given by a weapon).

That often leads me to using the expensive multiplier skills (think scattershot for instance is 140%?) on my basic attack, and then the "free" no mana multipliers (frost build up as an example, or the AoE one (just straight up 40% more AoE), on the skills that have a base mana cost.

It's a weird system but it works, I think one reason many have problems is they don't use/upgrade/support basic attacks and free spells enough. That has made the road through the game very easy for me as every class. You just need 1 or 2 uniques as well (even early level ones) to often make you exceedingly strong.

[Wubbinz]

So I've been playing a witch and I absolutely breezed through acts 1 and 2. So far my experience with the different classes makes them feel like difficulty settings. Some class balancing will be needed through Early Access I think.

[pponmypupu]

in the early game your basic attack will be best damage. once you start getting lv2 support gems, lv11 skills, and extra support gem slots for your skills then skill combos become really powerful

[BoiledTeaBag]

I feel this, as the warrior my melee does more damage then skills.
Got to the point where I only used skills to drive up stagger on bosses and mob groups to trigger skullshatter.

Even leveling the gems, having a weapon with +2 levels to them and having supports on them only made two of the skills useful outside of a boss.
(for reference I'm using the big node that lets me hold 2 handers in one hand)

[TIGERSTYLE]

My auto basic attack has been 2-4x my other abilities the entire playthrough to... *checks notes* level 48. I tried other builds but honestly just ended up support gemming it and now it claps everything in 1-2 hits on my monk. I am so lazy I barely use anything but the dash to get to the next mobs. On bosses I have high health/hit and I just stand there clapping my staff spam until they die. It's the strongest play for me and bores me to tears but playing any other build is just adding dance steps that take longer without any reward.

[Retsubty]

This game = pick a skill and scale it up.

Pretty much lol.

Combos can be worth it but in a lot of situations they are slow.

Or too useless because elemental inflictions are limited.

At least on mercenary. I just ended up using shotty the whole game. annihilating bosses in their face with high attack speed.

[Ghostlight]

Originally posted by Drôwnêd:

Originally posted by JinxTheWorld:

That's to balance it out. If the basic attack did nothing then nobody would ever use it lol.

well now i am 90% basic attack and thats not what is fun

Same. Poor design is poor design.