[Poll] Which mesmer's MH weapon do you think needs the most buffs/updates/redesigns in PvE?

I wanted to make my 1st poll, but I also think that it's an interesting topic to gather some information on. :smile: So, which one?

I'll start: to my mind, it's scepter, followed by staff and GS. It's just the clunkiest one to me. I made a thread about it in the past, so if anyone's interested you can check it out.

pve? Surely greatsword needs the most work there.

Staff by far. Too many cooldowns, too little actual use of the thing. Scepter is at least useful albeit clunky, GS at least does great damage with autoattack from a distance (with zerker gear, GS is actually pretty good), Axe and Sword are fine TBH, but Staff is just weak. Chaos storm is cool, but on a long cooldown. Every other class with a comparable AOE skill has theirs on a much lower cooldown. Chaos armor is useless, the whole staff is condition based, except the phantasm which is power, Phase retreat is very cool, but without the other skills backing it up it's just cool, and the atuoattack i slow. Even the ambush sucks. At least it did, now they changed it and it's actually decent, but even with a good ambush skill, the rest of the staff skills need a redesign.

@Veprovina.4876 said:Staff by far. Too many cooldowns, too little actual use of the thing. Scepter is at least useful albeit clunky, GS at least does great damage with autoattack from a distance (with zerker gear, GS is actually pretty good), Axe and Sword are fine TBH, but Staff is just weak. Chaos storm is cool, but on a long cooldown. Every other class with a comparable AOE skill has theirs on a much lower cooldown. Chaos armor is useless, the whole staff is condition based, except the phantasm which is power, Phase retreat is very cool, but without the other skills backing it up it's just cool, and the atuoattack i slow. Even the ambush sucks. At least it did, now they changed it and it's actually decent, but even with a good ambush skill, the rest of the staff skills need a redesign.

Tbh in hindsight I'd change my vote to staff - simply because it's my favourite weapon and I won't say no to any quality of life fixes or buffs! :D I agree, staff 3 needs a rework, 4 needs something (even just a 3/4s evade framy like trident 3 would be good) and 5 ought to have at least the cooldown reduced to base 30s.

Damn, why did I vote for greatsword...

I actually use staff in my open world build. I find it compliments axe nicely. You can swap to staff to quickly get out of melee range when you need to with staff 2. I also tend to engage enemies with staff equipped so I can open with chaos storm, swap to axe, and spam axe 2 to combo the field for lots of confusion stacks. However, staff feels incomplete as a standalone weapon set. It appears they were going for a hybrid condi/power weapon, but it didn't really work out.

So what to do about it?

For starters, a cooldown reduction on staff 4 and 5 along with some trait synergy with chaos armor would be very welcome here. We have good access to chaos armor between staff 4 and leap combos on staff 5's field. The problem is that chaos armor feels pretty irrelevant. Compare to a class like tempest, where applying an aura really does something for you and your allies!

@Curunen.8729 said:

@Veprovina.4876 said:Staff by far. Too many cooldowns, too little actual use of the thing. Scepter is at least useful albeit clunky, GS at least does great damage with autoattack from a distance (with zerker gear, GS is actually pretty good), Axe and Sword are fine TBH, but Staff is just weak. Chaos storm is cool, but on a long cooldown. Every other class with a comparable AOE skill has theirs on a much lower cooldown. Chaos armor is useless, the whole staff is condition based, except the phantasm which is power, Phase retreat is very cool, but without the other skills backing it up it's just cool, and the atuoattack i slow. Even the ambush sucks. At least it did, now they changed it and it's actually decent, but even with a good ambush skill, the rest of the staff skills need a redesign.

Don't worry, it's not like they are going to listen to us anyway ^^ this poll is for fun, to see what other people think. I doubt it's gonna change anything.

Make everything Hybrid.Mesmer has always been a hybrid class for me and i think some condis would fit "power weapons" pretty good thematically. Examples here ; Gs 2 now inflichts 2 stacks of Confusion per Hit. Gs 5 inflicts 3 stacks of torment and confusion. Not more. Sword for example, 1 stack of bleeding on the third auto chain, 2 stacks on confusion on swap(sword 3). Things like this. Staff needs serious lookin at too. For example auto attack always applying vunerability + either bleed or burn. Extend burn duration to 3 or even 4 seconds. Add Conditions to Staff 3. Make Chaos Storm more predictable, for example pulse 3 named boons and 3 named conditions on every pulse, dazing just in the first hit and/or the last.

Change "create a clone" - skills to do something else when u have 3 illusions. For example Ambush sword skill ; strike twice if u allready have 3 Illusions.

Yeah this would be the dream for me tbh.

I voted staff because it has high CD on most skills....but that is not my point, the high CD would be ok when the skill 1 would have a faster cast time, a faster projectile speed, a lower after cast delay and a little bit more power dmg (since the condis are random...)....but with the staff now only skill 3 is really usefull....

My second vote would be sword (because: i find skill 1 should be a little bit faster and because you can not move while using sword 2...also sword 3 has a really short range and when you are in range, (red line under the skill is not in range) then you just need to be on uneven terrain and the skill has a 50% chance that you are in range and nothing happens...i would be happy when they change the animation to throwing an illusionary sword and increase the range, effect can stay the same.

Staff. It's such a fantastic weapon in a PvP environment but it really lacks pressure outside of Phantasmal Warlock in specific PvE encounters. Certainly the auto-attack could do with some more damage for PvE.

Edit: Whoops I clicked axe. Axe is pretty great in PvE... and a bit dreadful in PvP. So the opposite of Staff essentially.

I'm torn between Staff and GS personally. But I think Staff wins out just barely.

That said, I'm curious as to why you only focused on our MH weapons, and not which weapon needs the most work period?

@OriOri.8724 said:I'm torn between Staff and GS personally. But I think Staff wins out just barely.

That said, I'm curious as to why you only focused on our MH weapons, and not which weapon needs the most work period?

Well, I just thought the poll would be too big with all weapons. I'm not sure, but I guess there is a limit on the number of poll options?

@Curunen.8729 said:

@Veprovina.4876 said:Staff by far. Too many cooldowns, too little actual use of the thing. Scepter is at least useful albeit clunky, GS at least does great damage with autoattack from a distance (with zerker gear, GS is actually pretty good), Axe and Sword are fine TBH, but Staff is just weak. Chaos storm is cool, but on a long cooldown. Every other class with a comparable AOE skill has theirs on a much lower cooldown. Chaos armor is useless, the whole staff is condition based, except the phantasm which is power, Phase retreat is very cool, but without the other skills backing it up it's just cool, and the atuoattack i slow. Even the ambush sucks. At least it did, now they changed it and it's actually decent, but even with a good ambush skill, the rest of the staff skills need a redesign.

Well to be fair GS is also a fun weapon but it's not exactly stellar, just like the staff. :tongue: It's just that, i think out of the two, Staff has more problems. Because in power builds, i used GS and it's fine really, it's not great, but it's more like "eh, i'ts ok, i need a ranged weapon sometims it'll do". There's nothing really good about the GS either. It applies vulnerability sometimes if i'm not mistaken, but yeah...

Staff is just all over the place. It's like it's designed for some hybrid build, but i'ts bad at even that. Maybe someone should try Staff with sinister stats, power and condi, but even then, the core mechanics of it are just really bad. Like, just look at chaos storm, 35 seconds of cooldown for what, 2-3 random condis at best and some boons if a buddy happens to be standing in it? It doesn't even do good damage or even debuffs properly. Just compare this to something like Elementalist Meteor Shower. Way more damage, larger AOE and you know what you're getting. Plus, when that's on cooldown you still have 3 other attunements to cast and even within fire attunement, a lot of skills are repeatable without needing to switch. With staff, you cast Chaos storm, and you then wait for another chaos storm, that's it. Autoattack is garbage, evade is situational, the phantasm is useless if you're not power, but if you're power, then chaos storm is useless, and i won't even start about chaos armor, what even is that? What's it for lol?

Greatsword is kinda the same. For me that's the "i just wanna press 1 and stand way back" kind of weapon, it needs improvement. 2 generates a clone, 3 is laughable, 4 phantasm does good AOE damage actually but it's slow (a tradeoff i suppose), and a CC skill at 5. And none of those are kind of coherent. Especially 5. GS's autoattack hits more the longer the range, and you have to get close for 5 to hit.

Both GS and Staff need improvements. :tongue:

@Veprovina.4876 said:Both GS and Staff need improvements. :tongue:

Agreed.Sword and Axe are fine.Scepter, though boring, is doing its job and has received so many buffs over the years, it's in a pretty good shape.

GS and Staff lack as they just don't work in PvE very well.GS wants to be a power based max range weapon, but the attacks aside from the autoattacks are all meh. You don't need a pushback, CC-phantasm or boon removal in PvE, and even then these effects simply are too weak for a 2h-weapon.Staff has always been this weird hybrid of everything: A bit of power, a bit of condi, some defense, mobility and group support. This is great in PvP, but terrible in PvE. Personally I'd like Staff to be redesigned as a full condi-weapon.

Thumbs up for a full condi staff. But if anet wanted to do something with them they already would have. Staff just got an ambush update, but GS and staff have mostly been the same all the time since the beginning.

I never tried a staff as a PvP weapon though. Maybe it's useful in WvW zergs? I'll have to try it sometime.

Oh I'd rather staff remained hybrid - and further pushed towards this by making iWarlock hybrid. Looking at our other weapons, Scepter is already strong hybrid and Axe also has good hybrid damage (axe 3 crits pretty hard for example). I'm of the opinion that everything ought to be hybrid and let the players decide whether they want to lean towards power or condi, or stay in the middle.

Staff is actually pretty amazing in one situation - using Mirage with IH and full hybrid with Viper or even Sinister stats. The staff ambushes stack easy 25 vuln (damage boost for both power and condi), a good amount of burning and a kitten ton of bleeds especially if you also use Sharper Images. As well as this you can stack a huge amount of might on you by lining up your clones, traiting DE to ambush and stepping forward a bit after a dodge (DE clone casts ambush through you for more might).

That particular combination of stats and traits enables staff to melt through things.

However that's only on Mirage, and only with IH and DE (for flow of might stacking and clones). On core or Chrono staff is still mediocre outside of pvp.

But that doesn't change the fact that skill 3 and skill 4 are seriously underwhelming, and 5 is only good in pvp.

Staff for sure!

This weapon lacks a clear concept.

Skill 1 is a RNG condi that isnt that powerful to begin with, also the projectile is way too slow and cast time/aftercast could also be reduced. Bleeding and burning should be replaced with torment and confusion and vulnerbility should always be applied. The ambush attack should be rewerted to confusion and torment again since it's more mesmer like than burning and bleeding.

Skill 2 is the only good skill of this weapon: Instant cast, instant clone, instant retreat --> great skill!

Skill 3 is power based and doesn't make sense on this weapon. Staff should be a clear condition weapon, therefore skill 3 should apply conditions as well.

Skill 4 is just a chaos armor, very lame and uncreative. Should completely be revamped and replaced with a new, impactful skill.

Skill 5 is Ok but I would prefer if there was a guaranteed daze when you cast the skill. Shorter cooldown of 20-25 seconds would totally be appropriate.

@Sodeni.6041 said:Staff for sure!

This weapon lacks a clear concept.

Skill 1 is a RNG condi that isnt that powerful to begin with, also the projectile is way too slow. Bleeding and burning should be replaced with torment and confusion and vulnerbility should always be applied. The ambush attack should be rewerted to confusion and torment again since it's more mesmer like than burning and bleeding.Skill 2 is the only good skill of this weapon: Instant cast, instant clone, instant retreat --> great skill!Skill 3 is power based and doesn't make sense on this weapon. Staff should be a clear condition weapon, therefore skill 3 should apply condistions as well.Skill 4 is just a chaos armor, very lame and uncreative. Should completely be revamped and replaced by another skill.Skill 5 is Ok but I would prefer if there was a guaranteed daze when you cast the skill.

I'm ok with staff 3 phantasm being power based, i'd like it better if it applied like, a special condition that deals damage based on how many conditions the target has (that would enable it to be a condition based phantasm), but there's stats like viper's, sinister and similar for this hybrid stuff. But the phantasm is really slow, dependent on conditions being on the target and - is a phantasm, you need more than 1 to deal damage and you lose all your shatters then, you can't shatter phantasms unless for a specific situation (F3, F4) or you lose on DPS.

It would be ok if we could pair that phantasm with some other phantasm we have, but there's just no other phantasms that do condition damage. Torch one does, but that's only burning, and the staff phantasm needs different conditions for it to be effective. Which is what chaos storm is for, but those only last a second and the slow phantasm doesn't even attack in that time, and chaos storm has a long cd and well... The staff is a mess, we can probably all agree on that.

Are there even any specializations that go good with the staff? Like, have some synergies with staff skills?

Phase retreat is awesome though. Best skill in the game for mesmers, i love it. It's a shame it's on the staff. :tongue:I really love to play with the staff though, i just wish they made it more... something... it's in a really sorry state right now.Instead i play with a scepter, which is ok, it pairs really good with the Axe (torment and confusion), but it's sometimes really clunky to use.

I don't dislike staff and will use it from time to time and think it has its uses, but there's always been something a little unsatisfying about using it compared to the other weapons. It just feels so slow and not quite as impactful as the other weapons. Sword has leaps and it relatively fast. Axe has a lot of movement to it. Greatsword has you shooting beams out of a giant sword. Even scepter is a little flashy. Staff is just standing there and slowly tossing these hardly noticeable orbs of energy around. Even if it did a lot of damage, it just doesn't feel good.

@Cantatus.4065 said:I don't dislike staff and will use it from time to time and think it has its uses, but there's always been something a little unsatisfying about using it compared to the other weapons. It just feels so slow and not quite as impactful as the other weapons. Sword has leaps and it relatively fast. Axe has a lot of movement to it. Greatsword has you shooting beams out of a giant sword. Even scepter is a little flashy. Staff is just standing there and slowly tossing these hardly noticeable orbs of energy around. Even if it did a lot of damage, it just doesn't feel good.

Heh, well, that too, it really doesn't have any impact to the autoattack. But i don't like the "plonk plonk" sounds that a scepter makes when hitting either, it sounds like someone knocking two pieces of wood together it just feels so out of place. Greatsword attacks are satisfying though, especially once you're far enough and those crit numbers start flashing around. Plus the sound is great. Sword, GS and Axe have good sounds, but Scepter and Staff have really disappointing autoattacks. The scepter one with the out of place sounds, and the staff with pink balz (because spherical round objects that bounce, are used in sports and used to describe similar shaped objects are censored for some reason) of no impact lol. Even the wood on wood sounds have some impact.

Anet, fix staff! :lol:

@Veprovina.4876 said:

@Curunen.8729 said:

@Veprovina.4876 said:Staff by far. Too many cooldowns, too little actual use of the thing. Scepter is at least useful albeit clunky, GS at least does great damage with autoattack from a distance (with zerker gear, GS is actually pretty good), Axe and Sword are fine TBH, but Staff is just weak. Chaos storm is cool, but on a long cooldown. Every other class with a comparable AOE skill has theirs on a much lower cooldown. Chaos armor is useless, the whole staff is condition based, except the phantasm which is power, Phase retreat is very cool, but without the other skills backing it up it's just cool, and the atuoattack i slow. Even the ambush sucks. At least it did, now they changed it and it's actually decent, but even with a good ambush skill, the rest of the staff skills need a redesign.

I agree. Greatsword seems like a fun and functional set.

Haven't really ever been a fan of Sword. I like the functionality of the skills. You've got Boonstrip, Immobilize+Leap, Blur... but it hasn't felt as meaty as I'd want. It always felt like a utility weapon rather than doing any sort of meaningful damage. Scepter and Staff made sense because of their conditions, and Greatsword had the right feeling and burst combos. Sword just feels like its supposed to be for sustained dps outside of its utility, but while I haven't seen the numbers recently, it just feels like it isn't worth the hassle. That being said, I don't want a lot of mechanical changes for Sword, just some more oomph.

Scepter is the weapon I cannot find a use for atm, it lacks AoE or high enough single target to pick over other weapons. Everything else I can find a use for and enjoy using, scepter feels bad and is never the best choice in slot.

I feel the biggest problem with our weapons - or weapons in general in GW2 - is often a lack of focus and expected use.

For example for us, Sword and Greatsword are supposed to be the power weapons, Axe and Scepter the condi ones, leaving Staff as a defensive weapon.

Fair enough. But, for purpose of simplistic and pure design I'd want these declarations to exist cross-class. Staff = defensive, for example. If you see someone wielding a staff, you should know they'll be harder to kill while wielding it, lots of defensive effects, even the AA-chain should reinforce this. Sword = gap closer, as another example. Every class wielding sword should have 1-2 gap-closing effects on it and they should definitely define the weapon.

The problem is that this isn't really reflected all that well on many weapons, and as a result it is difficult to even figure out what'd need a buff or not.

Mirage.

Wait we were talking only 'bout weapons? Kitten...