Charged vs. Uncharged Attacks

[Kaziscate]

Attacks comes in two forms: uncharged attacks and charged attacks. Charged attacks are more powerful, but there are times when uncharged attacks are better. Here's when you should use uncharged and charged attacks:

Use uncharged attacks when:

1.Using fast cooldown skills (5.5 seconds or less) against single targets or bosses
-Using only uncharged, fast cooldown skills has a higher damage per second than using only charged, fast cooldown skills

2.Spamming attacks

3.You don't want to wait for the charge time and you need to act immediately

Use charged attacks when:

1.Using skills with a slow cooldown (7 seconds or more).
-For Rogues and Warriors, not every skill benefits from charged attacks, so check if the skill you are using benefits from charging up.

2.You want to take advantage of a skill's or weapon's additional effect(s) when charged, especially against multiple enemies.
-Some skills provide things like increased range, hitting more enemies, or last longer when charged.
-Upgrades can also give additional effects when a skill is charged
-Charged weapon attacks can stun enemies.
-There are arcane and mythic weapons, starting at level 46, where their charged attacks get a proc as well.

3.You want to deal some heavy damage in one move, especially with skills that deal heavy single target damage (such as Lightning Bolt for Sorcerer or Aimed Shot for Rogue)
-Critical hits do 1.5x more damage, but there are upgrades that increase how much damage a critical hit does for that skill.
-Charged skills and attacks do about 50% more damage than uncharged, so a charged attack that is a critical hit can hit hard.

[slaaayerrr]

-Always charge slow cooldown skills to make the most use out of them before you have to wait for their long cooldown.

razor shield 20sec cd, there are some when u dont need to charge (same for gale force with mastery):
- when u see that u can be stunned soon (and dont have time for charge)
- when need remove slow/root effects faster and for short time
- ...



2.You want to take advantage of a skill's or weapon's additional effects when charged
hex staff doesnt proc at charged attacks, and its 1st weapon which new players choose



3.You want to deal some serious critical damage, especially with skills that deal heavy single target damage (Lightning Bolt for Sorcerer, Aimed Shot for Rogue, Axe Throw for Warrior)
-Critical hits do 1.5x more damage, but there are upgrades that increase how much damage a critical hit does for that skill.
-Charged skills and attacks do about 2.5x more damage than uncharged, so a charged attack that is a critical hit can hit hard.

- lighting strike atm the most useless skill (after curse ofc), frost bolt better, and mages killing now by procs mostly, not by skills
- axe throw is for pulling and reduce enemy's armor, why need to charge it in pve? no reason for charge
- while u charge aimed shot i will make uncharged aimed-pierser-nox, so, wheres "serious" damage?
- charged skills doesnt do "about 2,5x more damage", checked crits by aimed shot in infested swamp, uncharged 40k max, charged 60k max, its only +50% by charging

[Kaziscate]

razor shield 20sec cd, there are some when u dont need to charge (same for gale force with mastery):
- when u see that u can be stunned soon (and dont have time for charge)
- when need remove slow/root effects faster and for short time
- ...


hex staff doesnt proc at charged attacks, and its 1st weapon which new players choose



- lighting strike atm the most useless skill (after curse ofc), frost bolt better, and mages killing now by procs mostly, not by skills
- axe throw is for pulling and reduce enemy's armor, why need to charge it in pve? no reason for charge
- while u charge aimed shot i will make uncharged aimed-pierser-nox, so, wheres "serious" damage?
- charged skills doesnt do "about 2,5x more damage", checked crits by aimed shot in infested swamp, uncharged 40k max, charged 60k max, its only +50% by charging

Thanks for the feedback. I'll adjust a few things.

-For your points on razor shield, that falls under point 3 that I made with uncharged, but it conflicts with point 1 of charged, so I'll adjust that.

-For hex staff, when I was talking about weapon's additional effects, I was mainly focusing on the stun from a charged weapon attack, but Drag staff is also another weapon that new players would pick up as well and that does something different when charged up.

-I'll adjust the 50% charge damage.
-Addressing serious damage, you mentioned that aimed shot does up to 40k uncharged and 60k charged. That's a 20k difference and while it probably isn't that much of a difference in lvl 71 dungeons, 20k is still a noticeable difference.
-For lightning strike, while it isn't great as a mage skill as other mage skills because it lacks crowd control, it can help mages compensate for their lower damage when fighting against bosses. I understand that in order for lightning strike to work, it depends on crit damage, but that can easily be solved with ribbit's aa (+40% crit chance for 3 seconds). Ribbit a pet that players can pick up for dirt cheap. I do think that lightning strike should get a get a +50%-100% damage buff overall, so that it can do 30k or 40k on crit instead of 20k. It should be just enough to make its electrical discharge upgrade a more useful, making it more viable as a mage skill.

Of course this wouldn't really matter if they are using flame staff or drag staff since many mages use them for how cost effective they are, but these weapons are starting to stagger, especially the drag staff, and it won't be long until they're outdated. While I agree that mages depend heavily on procs, there is still gear in the game that doesn't depend on the proc as much. There is a reason why they are more expensive than these two weapons. There's the balanced staff, which was well known for how well its proc was, I'm not sure if it's still good since I never bothered with it much, but that was a thing. Horror staff and creep gun are sort of the "transition" gear of procs over stats. They have great procs and stats that can hold up. Tainted gear focuses more on raw damage, but still performs well. There's also spirit and ebon weapons, but spirit weapons take too much time to invest in and ebon weapons are expensive, so I'll leave those out.

-I don't really have much to say for axe throw since I don't play warrior much, but I just included it in there since it was the highest single target damage skill for warriors that I could find for now.

The last point that I wanna make is that these points are focusing on the later half of progression (lvl 46+). I agree with your points, but I don't want to tie these points exclusively to that later half. I also wanna focus on the earlier half of progression, where stats matter more than procs.

[ItsTheCat]

this is good advice !

[Ihavethisname]

Thank you for the info, will be using these strats

[Sip_Tea]

Thanks, rogues remember to charge aimed every now and then! Don't just spam.

[Kushout]

thanks for the devices :)