With the way the game has been going the current iteration of Guardian staff is beyond niche. It is lackluster in 2/3 (3/4 if you count open world pve) game modes, and even at it's best it simply serves as a "swiftness bot" for a zerg. I would enjoy seeing this weapon be reworked into something more aggressive in terms of game play.

Any thoughts on it?

Yea, Guardian staff is garbage. 1 is just....ugh. Hell, 1 2 3 4 and 5 are all ugh. So many more interesting things could be done with it than what it does currently. I think almost all of the weapon skills could be looked at and given some tweaks. HOw long has it been since they even did that?

With Firebrand, a long(?) range condi weapon would be nice.I know that Scepter with Justice procs and Symbol of Punishment you can rack up some pretty nice burn stacks but the weapon itself lacks any built-in condi.Swapping staff over to a condi option and just trashing the current staff would be nice

I like it as a support weapon but it certainly needs a lot of help.

And let's be real, base guardian needs more than just sceptre as its only ranged weapon.

While we are talking about it, Scepter animation needs to be looked at, too. That is just ridiculous pewpewing, and I play a Firebrand scepter/torch. It's such a silly animation I am surprised it got left as it has been for all these years without any modification. Perhaps they should stop adding so much cosmetic junk to the Gem store and add some more cosmetic character upgrades. I think it's time....

@Blue.1207 said:I would enjoy seeing this weapon be reworked into something more aggressive in terms of game play.Staff urgently needs a rework, but I don't think a total conversion from a supportive weapon into an offensive one is the right way. Give #1 some profile, since after the nerf it is a weak melee tickle that could just as well be removed and no one would notice. Rework #2 into a proper healing tool that also gives some relevant boon, give non-trash boons to #3. #4 can probably be left as it is apart from giving it slightly increased might duration (12-15 s baseline would be better) and #5 should do something for allies when they pass through it.

Staff 1 could be like druids solar beam. Staff 2 a blast finisher, it says detonate orb of light so why its not a blast finisher. Overall buff damage and heal and staff is useful. At least for me.

Staff 1 could also be an AE centered on the caster and not some stupid cone. He slams the staff into the ground in a combo (Nannie McPhee? LOL) pulsing AOE damage and heals, maybe pulsing damage and a shield effect AE wide...something..ANYTHING besides the cone.

I do agree that the guardians' staff needs an overhaul, so I'll do my best and give a few ideas on how to improve it:

Wave of Wrath

Increase the range of this skill from 300 to 1200, increase the damage by 20% and make it heal allies when it hits enemies, similar to the elementalists' staff auto attack while attuned to water.

Orb of Light

Increase the healing when you detonate the orb from 788 to 1000 and make it a blast finisher. Seriously, why isn't it a blast finisher?

Symbol of Swiftness

Increase the radius of the field from 180 to 240 or 300 and increase the swiftness duration from 4 seconds to 8 seconds.

Empower

Increase the pulse heal from 248 to 500.

Line of Warding

Change it so that it creates a 300 radius light field that foes cannot cross instead of a line and make the field heal your allies.

That's all I can come up with improving the guardians' staff. I know that it is really weak, but I believe that with these kind of changes, it could be better than what it currently is. I do like the idea of a supportive guardian using the staff to heal allies, but in its' current state it is very weak.

Becomes ranged to 1200. Increase damage and heal allies.

Orb of light. Ground targetted, blast when it reaches destination or detonate early, blast finisher for both. Damage and healing.

This needs to do something else in addition to swiftness. Maybe cause burning on first pulse.

Un-rooting this would help immensely. Buff if still too weak.

This needs to last longer and maybe knock-back or burn on detonate. Too easy and short to get around.

Some folks might be unaware, but Wave of Wrath was nerfed very recently:

August 08, 2017 Path of Fire pre-patch:Wave of Wrath: Reduced the range from 600 to 300. Increased the attack angle from 90 degrees to 110 degrees to better line up with its effect.

Replace Wave of Wrath with Heal Area.

Orb of Light should be ground-targeted.

The symbol should not give one of the weakest boons in the game.

Increase Empower's radius to 900 or 1200.

@Elva.6372 said:Some folks might be unaware, but Wave of Wrath was nerfed very recently:

August 08, 2017 Path of Fire pre-patch:

Wave of Wrath: Reduced the range from 600 to 300. Increased the attack angle from 90 degrees to 110 degrees to better line up with its effect.

Yeah, that's a large part of what's turned staff from being a controversial weapon to downright bad.

I've said it before and I'll say it again:

Weapons need to offer something at the baseline, then become optimal given the right build and stats.

Guardian staff on the other hand offers little to nothing at the baseline and becomes mediocre given a very specific build and stats and is really only used in one game mode.

It's about time staff got some serious love. I normally don't advocate reworks or overhauls since that takes away a lot of resources from the dev teams when normally, a simple numeric buff may do the trick but I really do think guardian staff needs that rework because the skills are a mess. For one, even if they hypothetically buffed the numbers to absurd levels, the skills would still be very boring.

I think the staff should be changed into a proper support weapon, not a condi/damage one. Keep it in line with the original concept of the weapon but bring it up in regards to the level of power necessary for current GW2 content. Either refine the skills by adding healing, relevant boon(s) and perhaps even condition cleansing or rework the skills to something more interesting and useful.

The auto attack is just woefully underwhelming right now, using 2 feels clunky, swiftness is useful sometimes but... well eh most of the time, I love the animation on 4 but it doesn't really ever feel worth it, and 5 is just the worst imo. Something needs to change and I'd rather not just get a slight buff that finds a middle ground between the old 600 range and current 300. There's a few good suggestions for awesome reworks on this thread and a lot on an older thread, really wish anet would consider their options here especially with all the reworks coming. Just my opinion as someone who keeps picking it up because I like the concept of staff Guardian but who also keeps putting it back down when I realise just how meh it is again.

Here is my proposed rework.

1- Should heal with more range either a larger cone or aoe around the caster, even something like Light of Judgement or Pillar of Light2- Add a blast finisher to the explosion, make ground targeted
3- Symbol of Resistance/Purification - cleanse x conditions and apply resistance every interval4- Buff the healing and/or might generation and range and provide an indicator for allies on the range of the ability, kind of like tome 45- Judgement This except on target or ground target and without blast (or could leave the blast finisher on this skill instead of having it on 2)

@"Fashion Mage.3712" said:

• Replace Wave of Wrath with Heal Area.
• Orb of Light should be ground-targeted.
• The symbol should not give one of the weakest boons in the game.
• Increase Empower's radius to 900 or 1200.

I also quite like the idea of staff reclaiming something akin to heal area, there's so much potential here for an interesting support weapon

No staff buffs this patch boys and girls. Maybe next year.

@Blue.1207 said:No staff buffs this patch boys and girls. Maybe next year.

My theory is that they plan on either bringing a lot of numerical buffs in or reworking staff skills like we've been asking for since they know it needs it. We don't have a whole lot of precedent but from memory, they're only going to do one of those 2 changes during a weapons overhaul across all classes so that could be many months from now...

The only thing on staff that really needs real attention is 1 its pretty useless but staff is honestly heavily been moved for support 2 is already super strong with healing power its just a skill shot and it gives light aura while a blast finisher would be nice its not really needed. The symbol is also 100% fine its a potent source of swiftness that hasn't changed at all simply need to stand in it to get its full effect like any other guardian symbol. Empower won't really see any healing buffs unless they reduce the amount of might it gives by no means is it weak. Line of warding again is 100% fine.

Seriously the main thing that sucks is the 1 skill.

1 sucks by a lot that taking the weapon is pretty much giving up having an auto on one of your weapons and the rest of the kit is simply not all that useful, there are just much better options that overshadow staff. Hopefully some kind of change comes for the weapon. Something like the recent additions to trident may be nice I dunno if there's any point to expect anything though. Would be nice to have a reason to use the staff in pve in a support/healer role.

You do use staff in pve as a support/healer role as firebrand support staff is a legit healer weapon between orb of light, empower and the symbol traited with writ of persistence not to mention all the other sources of healing and boons/utility

@Lalainnia.3598 said:You do use staff in pve as a support/healer role as firebrand support staff is a legit healer weapon between orb of light, empower and the symbol traited with writ of persistence not to mention all the other sources of healing and boons/utility

Every time I swap off of Mace/Shield to Staff while healing on Guardian, I wonder for 10 seconds why I ever bothered. The staff is pretty useless in PvE with Scepter doing a better job with the quicker symbol with writ.

@Azoqu.8917 said:

@Lalainnia.3598 said:You do use staff in pve as a support/healer role as firebrand support staff is a legit healer weapon between orb of light, empower and the symbol traited with writ of persistence not to mention all the other sources of healing and boons/utility

Yeah I use staff with mace/shield and feel the exact same way, I wanna like it but it just doesn't feel worth the bother. The recent rework to the engineer medkit looks interesting and is a lot like what I wanted for staff so I'm gonna check it out and maybe they can do something similar with guardian's staff in the future.

Those 2 statements make no sense to me between opening with detonate orb for a burst heal the symbol heal and empower into another orb detonate heal u dont stay on staff very long its mostly for the healing from orb and using scepter symbol in combination with staff symbol to double up on writ then going into empower for the might plus healing.

They make sense to me. I guess I would like staff to be a weapon you have the choice to stay on a bit longer with better support skill options rather than switching for 2 and 4 (which imo still aren't that great but the best of a bad bunch, it's the only other support option for guardian so we use it anyway) and then waiting on c/d to go back to mace/shield. I think a staff rework could go towards moving guardian to a more "optimal" spot for raid and high level fractal healing especially now they're starting to nerf druid. I think it could make playing a support guardian a lot more fun. Also making the 5 do more reliable breakbar damage wouldn't hurt and everyone I think agrees the 1 needs looked at.