Question: Are basic strikes supposed to be the main attack for Warrior?

Hello,

I'm having some difficulty understanding the various abilities of the Warrior, and which ones would do the most damage.

If I look through my skills window, it seems that every ability I have deals less DPS than the basic strike skill with my weapon (see images below).

It makes it very hard to determine why I would even consider using the other abilities at all. It's been decent fun to use rolling slam to stun mobs, and than use Boneshatter, but if I look at the values it seems like this is a worse idea than simply holding left-click. Ina similar vein, I have Armor Breaker, but I don't understand why I would bother attacking an enemy with reduced damage for a debuff that falls of very quickly.

Maybe I'm simply not understanding things properly, but is all of this intended? And if so, could you please clarify what I'm supposed to do?

Many thanks!

Images: https://imgur.com/a/JgEGIJh

on surface level basic attacks can have very high dps.

but there are a few things to consider:

1. attack skills are not at level 20, they have room for growth
2. similarly they can be given quality, to further push their power

3. there is a variety of special effects that skills can do such as more aoe, damage conversion, movement, etc.

4. you are actually encouraged to play "build up/payoff" such as have you basic attack shred enemy armor. then when the armor is broken, use a skill that can "consume" the armor break status for extra damage/effect. this payoff could possible give a huge damage bonus that makes the dps calculation become inaccurate as it only gives the estimate of average damage without considering the payoff.

5. it is entirely possible to make your basic attack super strong. but still, as strong as it is, having a payoff skill would do wonders for a huge spike in damage.

I'm assuming you're still in act1 or 2 with low gem levels. Skills scale as the gem levels up and you get mods on items. And the rolling slam does more you're probably just looking at the first attack it does not the finish. At level 10 the first slam does 164% of attack dmg and the second strike does 329%. At lvl 16 the skill does 244% and 489%

Assuming you're early on, give it some levels. Perfect Strike is a fantastic example for you. As is Sunder. The "sheet dps" may be higher on your auto attack, but the calculated dps of your other skills will be astronomically higher.

Don't get discouraged with it. Warrior is a slow class, but eventually it comes online and you will be deleting everything that gets in your way