Warrior's Guide: Free Attack vs Auto Attack

What is Free Attack and Auto Attack?

Free attack and Auto attack are two different methods in which you can execute a basic attack with your weapon. Both cost no focus to use and have their own benefits. You toggle Auto-Attack on or off using the "T" key by default. When "Auto attack is disabled", you are now in Free Attack mode.

Auto attack swings your weapon automatically for you at minimum strength and great speed, requiring very little attention.

Free attack is a manual control. By holding down the left mouse button while in Combat mode, you can see a charge meter begin to fill seperated into different segments, or "ticks". Each tick Increases the strength of your swing, allowing your blow to do substantially more damage. Releasing the left mouse button will execute the charged attack.

What are the advantages of auto-attack and Free attack?

Auto attack requires very little attention and repeatedly executes at the quickest speed. It also is the easier choice for those who do not want to use the keyboard to fight.

Free attacks have a much higher damage output and, depending on the weapon, can do several times the damage of an auto attack in a single blow. Larger attacks also penetrate armor much better than weaker ones. It also substantially reduces ammo usage as an archer, is causes much less weapon wear than auto-attacks

What are the disadvantages?

Auto attack is comparatively very weak and wears your weapon out much more quickly. on a moving opponent, it deals substantially less damage than using free attacks. For archers, it also is a substantial drain on arrows.

Free attack is harder to learn to use, and is impractical for those using the mouse to move/fight. It adds another thing for your brain to focus on in a fight, and almost requires you to use the keyboard to execute combos (many use the mouse to do this)

Does the type of weapon matter?

Why yes, Jimmy, It does. Some weapons are more suitable for free attacks than others. The weapon that is most devestating with a free attack is the Longbow, as it can charge to a full 8 "ticks" allowing a single arrow to do several times more damage than a single auto attack.

On the other hand, a dagger can only charge to 2 Ticks. Its damage is only increased a little bit by using a free-attack.

As a rule, the larger the weapon, the greater the ammount of "charge ticks" it has in free attack mode, allowing for a much higher single hit damage potential in free-attack mode over smaller weapons.

 

Nice write up, very informative for a new and old player, and i mainly agree with you for a person who is generally not using magic much or at all its possibly the way to go. But for hybrids, people that use both or especially for those that predominantly use magic and use a weapon as their 2nd damage choice auto is the way to go 90% of the time i feel personally, as that time that they are charging up they could have used possibly 2 magic skills and still be doing some white damage in between which has the added effect or should have of interrupting other mages.

I do know the times i have used free attack as a archer i sometimes have had less damage from an eight stack or at least not much more than what i get from just using auto attack. It would be nice to see some numbers, obviously auto attack does(should) less damage, but does it do that much over time? How many auto attacks can be done in the time for one large free attack? and this can also be increased with flurry/haste potions/ skills/ musical instruments/ enchantments as well.

Certainly less wear and tear on weapons though and good for getting some big hits in at times, but be nice to get see some numbers. Nothing is clear cut as the best way imo but that's what makes the game unique as is same with player builds as no player here has the same character build or skills setup in the same manner, maybe auto attack suits some playstyles better than others, something a new player can tinker with and see what suits them best...Something to ponder on for sure.

 

Free attack cant be stacked so im not sure what your saying in the first scentence.

Side by side, free attack can do much more damage over time than auto attack, but the disadvantage of free attack is that it becomes another attack to worry about using. However, large single shot damage (tho it requires alot of practice) has the potential to penetrate heavier armor, while auto attack will recieve full mitigation even from lighter armors because the hits are so weak, causing free attack to be even more damage-effective against all but the heaviest armors.

Auto attack is the same speed and damage as an un-charged free attack (rapid clicking) and i believe it is the same speed for all weapons, giving smaller weapons a relative advantage with it. (Daggers have 2 charge ticks, so recieve 4x less damage bonus from a charged attack over an auto attack than a bow does).

Attack speed increases will cause Auto attack to execute more rapidly. Attack speed will cause free attack to charge much more rapidly.

 

pip or stack meaning the amount of levels it goes through when charging, i see you refer to as ticks on the meter, by saying 8 i was implying full, sounds a big number and was unsure of the max amount for my bow from memory, it was 4.38 am here!

Interesting to note the armour penetration with free attack, not something i knew...

I noted after posting in reply to you that this was a warriors guide and i assume archers as well. My point of it being better doing auto attack for a mage/hybrid still stands from my view point but not really relevant to this topic but still useful i feel to be taken into consideration especially as you make note of the added complexity in using free attack, i agree, it certainly curtails casting of spells for me at least and i prefer to be more versatile with that type of build.

agreed on it effecting both but does free attack really gain as much as an advantage as you imply here, i would have assumed it the same?

Not that i don't believe you! But i would love to see some numbers to back up the claim, scientific evaluation is always better than gut feeling....Do a video or a spreadsheet with numbers please I may try and do the same, maybe on a practise dummy as this should give a good base reading for evaluation over a mob, that's moving and other factors clouding the data.

Great guide though, more please

 

Using the mouse to click skills it the first thing I would stop doing. It just makes you too slow.
I think melee takes the most twitch skills to use effectively, that's why you don't see many very good melee Chars unfortunately.

 

Refer to the video above and you can see the difference there. I dont do exact numbers because i feel its a waste of time to min-max this game.

I built my char as a light armor melee with dual wield and minimal spell use (Whena fight is especially tough i use str and dex buff or douse or air shield when tryign to survive torc dawls fall) when persistance arrived, and at the time dual wield and light armor defenses were broken, and melee weapons were also broken damage-wise. Difficult times but i enjoyed playing it, now i can do things i didnt expect i would be able to do and have the luxury of playing how i feel liek playing. Light armor defenses got fixed, melee damage got improved, and im a pretty awsome light armored fighter now! Things change, and i dont find recalculating everything about combat all the time fun, so that why im not gonna provide spreadsheets and numbers. Sorry

I encourage everyone to build a character they enjoy playing, and to avoid feeling forced to go with flavor of the month. You can build however you want in this game, including doing everything if thats what you like, and still be able to take on the most difficult content. Some want it to be easy, others want it to be a challenge, everyone wants it to be fun.

If you arent having fun, then you're doing it wrong.

 

I did some testing on a dummy, it is based on 15 minutes of doing auto attacks and 15 minutes of doing fully charged free attacks.

First some info:
- To fully charge a attack with a bow takes 2 seconds (for me)
- In that time you do 3 auto attacks.
- Weapon of choice: Bow
- Adv level 85

So the results:

Auto attack:
- Highest non crit damage: 33
- Lowest non crit damage: 13
- Average non crit damage: 23

- Highest Crit damage: 70
- Lowest Crit damage: 37
- Average Crit damage: 53,5


Free attack:
- Highest non crit damage: 128
- Lowest non crit damage: 51
- Average non crit damage: 89,5

- Highest Crit damage: 277
- Lowest Crit damage: 151
- Average Crit damage: 214

So as you can see, it is worth it using for most damage over time. My personal best is currently at 326 crit damage for a free attack. Keep in mind that these numbers will be different for everyone else since it depends on gear, skills, buffs etc. I think that before people start trying this, that they should focus on their hit chance first.

Free attack does have it's flaws though. Sometimes you fail to charge up due to the fact that you are clicking on something (a switch, a corpse etc) This is a pain in the behind if you're in the heat combat. It's especially hard in tight spaces. Also, you do not always have the time to charge up your attacks. Sometimes when under heavy attack all you can do is spam skills to stay alive (or run away), at that point it would be wise to switch to auto attack to do at least some damage.

Agreed!

 

Thx for taking he time.

You said in the time for a full charge you can do 3 autoattcks..

Auto attack non crits....average = 23 * 3 = 66
Free attack non crits...average = 89.5

So free attack non crits does about 35% or so more damage

Auto attack crits....average = 53.5 * 3 = 160
Free attack non crits...average = 214

so free attack crits does 33% more damage

As free attack is more involved than auto attack the damage should be higher else why would anyone do over just letting auto attack take all the work. A 33% increase seems about fair i think.

Seems to be worth it for a pure warrior/archer if they can as you say keep that free attack constant else it will of course lower the extra damage from that mode, taking on one mob or not under pressure it seems it is likely the best way for a pure warrior/archer.

For me when playing as mage/archer i still think i would rather have the auto attack giving me extra white damage while I'm not using my main mage skills and utility skills but like you both say there's plenty of options for building a deck and a style you are personally happy with, a joy of the game. Advantages here/disadvantages there, as it should be.

Agreed!

Last time i was using free attack i was getting constantly interrupted, which then never fired an arrow when i did reach full charge, if that's the case still then that really destroys the dps of free attack but I'm assuming you now cant be interrupted? Since i gone full magic now i rarely use bow, but i still have a soft spot for and will be picking it up again soon and may give free attack another chance to impress me with the figures you state.

 

If you run around with a fully charged and hover over something with your mouse point it vanishes i think. But yea, this has happened with me as well.

Try it in combination with flurry.

 

When i was playing archer only, flurry was my first skill on!, that with extra 10% to attack speed on bow, and a haste potion i was a machine gun with auto attack, i will try with free attack.

That's lowers dps then but my issue was when i was fighting mobs not running around necessarily, charging it and getting hit, interrupting it, then when time to fire, was firing blanks!

 

I noticed this, but only a handfull of times. Not sure if i was accidently hovering over something with my mouse or not. Could be some type of bug as well. Not even getting knocked down will make me lose my fully charged attack normally.

 

Using auto-attack is more enjoyable for me, I can live with the lower damage. But the greater wear & tear is rather punishing alongside the weaker damage.

 

In PVE, atleast for me (melee), auto-attack is more enjoyable and more effective.
Various reasons have been given already as to why you can't fire off your fully charged free-attack all the time which mostly results in an almost similiar dmg output between the two modes.

I am not an clicker and can stack all the stuff quickly etc., but i am still not able to keep free-attack constant and i probably never will and that's why i see like no benefit in using it.

I also doubt (i may be wrong,) that many are good in using free-attack constantly to really shine above the auto-attackers. Simply because it is... yeah, quite another extra clunky mechanic to deal with in combat.

 

@DarkStarr this should be in an early tutorial.

 

Great writeup! I'm going to pin this guide.

 

Added a combat Q/A video from chris explaining auto and free attack

 

+1

 

Auto attack is for me, mostly because the mobs I usually fight are cultist and I always have one of their melee on me stunning me.