Questions about double strikes

I apologize in advance if any of these were answered in other threads, but I didn't see them if that's the case.

1. Can double strikes and criticals occur at the same time, and if so, do both hits critical or is each hit figured independently.

2. Can double strikes occur when using an attack skill? If they can, does the attack skill damage occur twice, or is it a second, but normal attack.

3. This sounds broken if it could happen, but can double strikes occur with dual attacks?

From what I saw playing the Assassin:

1.) Yes, and both.
2.) Yes, and yes, but it's VERY rare for an attack skill to accomplish that.
3.) Dual Attacks are skills, see above.

Sounds like locust's fury will be better than some people think.

Just to be sure I know what you're saying here..

Criticals can occur on double strikes, and they are determined independently. So you can have a double hit, but only have 1 of the hits critical.

Attack skills can trigger double hits.. but the second will only be a normal hit.

A dual attack can trigger double hits, so you could have as many as 4 attacks?

4 attacks rocks.

*Imagines Death Blossom on a tight mob with double strikes*

1.) If you double strike with critical, both are criticals
2.) If you double strike on a skill, it doubles the skill, damage wise, but the odds of this occuring appeared to be very low.
(i.e. Double hit on "Repeating Strike", you cause two "Repeating Strike" in terms of damage. I played the Assassin the whole weekend, only had a double skill trigger maybe 5-10 times that whole time.)
3.) Same as above, but with even less chance.

The Dual-Attack that happened to double trigger for me was in fact "Death Blossom"
At the time I had a Warrior (Gladiator Armor), an Elementalist, and some other caster...next to me.

After it double triggered....both casters were dead and the Warrior didn't take much to kill. It was frighteningly funny.

Hmm, I am having trouble believing some of the fact listed here.

If anything, double attack trigger on dual skills would make it into 3 hits.

However, I have trouble believing that skills can have double hit.

If it does double strike on skills, the ratio of it happening should be as often as you attack. I will test this more during the weekend by putting 7 skills (so it wont be just repeating strike) and 1 energy management to spam skills on every hit, this way all my attack will be skills and should be the same ratio as normal hitting if skills does double strike. If it doesn't have same ratio and it still does double strike on skill, then perhaps we got a more complicated formula comming up.

1.) The amount of double strikes is controled by a certain attribute. Dagger Mastery to my knowledge.
2.) Dual-Attacks Skills just uses both weapons, it's not actually two attacks, so a double strike would only be 2 attacks not 3.
3.)I only stated what I experienced, for all I know it was a bug and skilled aren't supposed to double.
4.) Repeating Strike was an example, other skills doubled.

I think for balance reasons, double strikes should still occur with skill usage, but only trigger normal attacks (attacks that can still crit, but don't carry skill damage to a second attack).

And they should still be able to trigger on dual hits, but only add one additional attack, and not double it to 4 total attacks.

I think any other situation, and you're looking at imbalances. If double hits can cause skill damage to count twice, then the skill damage would have to be lowered to compensate for this potential. This would mean assassins killing anything would largely be based on luck since the low end of damage would be rather small compared to the potential damage caused by double hits on attack skills w/ crits.

But, if you make double hits unable to trigger (or even at a lower rate) when using attack skills.. then you make both attack skills underpowered and double hits underpowered. You shouldn't be punished for using attack skills (by losing the ability to double hit), and you shouldn't be punished by pumping up your % either.


I'll test this next weekend too and hopefully get some helpful info.

1). A double strike is just two normal attacks, one after the other. The chance of one being a critical is independant of the other, so none, one or both can be criticals Also "on next attack" effects will only effect the first strike of a double strike.

2) No, double strikes can only occur on normal attacks, not attack skills. So if you're spamming attacks, you won't double strike very often

3) No. See above.

hmm... what do you mean by "spamming attacks"? Spamming attack skill? Just keep the auto-hit going? Since you wrote that double strike can only occur on normal attacks, how would you get "you wont double strike very often" when you be getting "none at all"?

Sorry, but it isn't very clear to me.

That seems contrary to what other people have said so far.

I hope you're wrong, that sounds pretty asinine to me. That would be like not being able to critical hit when using attack skills, but worse.. considering there are skills that increase your chance of double hitting. Wouldn't most situations involve an assassin using their attack skills?

EDIT: Some quick math to show my point here.

An assassin running critical eye and locust's fury at 16 dagger/13 critical, would average about 14 extra damage per swing from double hits. That means, unless you were getting at least 14 damage from attack skill, you'd actually be losing dps by using it (if attack skills disabled the chance to double strike). A critical dagger hit at 16 dagger mastery would do 38 damage.

Sorry, I was reffering to spamming attack skills. Most noticable when you're just tapping Repeating Strike, you'll just have a string of single attacks. So yes, that means you have to take into consideration the fact that you'll be loosing attacks when running a build like that. I think it roughly works out to loosing 7 potential damage on average when you use an attack skill at high Dagger Mastery and low Critical Strike vs 60AL

This is from my experiences during the PvP preview event, I've bolded relevant points.

1) A critical strike and a double strike can occur simultaneously, I have no idea whether the calculations are seperate for both strikes but I assume they are since each strike of a double strike doesnt (usually) deal the same damage. However, you may also want to consider this particular skill:

This particular Dual Attack causes a critical hit on both strikes though the skill description is unclear about it.

2) I have never had a double strike occur during an attack skill. During the event I tested Repeating Strike a lot because it seemed like such a great skill. With 15 Dagger Mastery, not one Repeating Strike was a double strike.

3) As I've mentioned before, I've never had a double strike trigger on any attack skill. However, with the limited time there was for testing (I wanted to play too :P) I cant give a definitive statement. I'm pretty sure that if it did occur, you wouldnt be doing two Dual Attacks if that is what you are implying.

Dont forget that daggers have the lowest base attack of all the weapons in Guild Wars. 7-17 on it's own is quite pathetic. Another thing I've noticed is that at 0 dagger mastery, you still have a very low chance of double striking. I'd imagine somewhere around 1~5% chance for a non assassin is probably accurate. Kinda useless, but interesting, nonetheless.

Each hit for a dual strike has its own critical hit chance.

What do you guys think on the balance for this?

Agree with me that attack skills should still be able to trigger double hits (without the attack skill damage doubling)?