Guardian Staff Needs A Serious Rework (Suggestions)

Please take the time to read this. Staff Guardian in it's current state is not a viable choice as a weapon for any specialization or build. Path of Fire brought Firebrand, which has the ability to be a decent support but lacks the ability to contest or replace any of the other support classes. I believe giving staff another look will make it so support Guardians will be a viable option to have in raids and high end fractals/ dungeons. Here are my ideas for reworked staff abilities:

• Staff 1 (Wave of Wrath). Comparing to other support classes, Guardians should have an option for a dedicated healing skill. Giving this skill the ability to heal would allow for Guardians to have a worthy chance of becoming a true support/ healer role. Tome of Resolve offers great heals but are locked behind pages and a fairly large cool-down. Having a 300 ranged, 5 person heal would also stay true to the close/ mid ranged support that has Guardian has been known for. I would suggest the heal be around a 400-600 base healing amount for it to be effective at competing with the other support/ healing class specs.

• Staff 2 (Orb of Light). This skill can be great, but does not function so great. It tends to go underground causing it to not activate or heal anyone. The skill should be changed to a ground targeted, activated heal that functions similar to how it does currently. This change will allow the caster to lay a 300 radius heal on the floor that is inactive initially but can be activated at any time within a 6 second duration. When activated, 5 players standing in the radius will receive healing and damage enemies. If the skill is not activated within the 6 second duration, the skill will activate automatically and heal players standing within its radius and damage enemies. Also, I've always thought this skill would fit having a blast finisher when it is activated. The healing values should either be slightly increased or stay the same, as well as the cool-down staying at 10 seconds.

• Staff 3 (Symbol of Swiftness). Swiftness is always a great thing to have, but this skill does not apply it in a great way. While this skill isn't horrible, a simple change would make this skill awesome. Allowing the player to activate the ability again should destroy the symbol and apply either the full amount of swiftness that would have been granted for standing on it for the full duration, or slightly less. The application of vulnerability to enemies should function the same way, applying stacks if activated to give the full amount or slightly less. The symbol can only be activated within 1 second of being it being cast.

• Staff 4 (Empower). This is a great support ability that does not really need anything changed. Maybe adding a blast finisher to the final pulse would be great!

• Staff 5 (Line of Warding). Creating a line that enemies cannot cross is useful in some scenarios, but very few. Give this skill the ability to be activated. After laying the line down, you can activate a second effect, making enemies in-between the line and the caster to be pulled towards them. This will allow Guardians to have a better chance to CC successfully using this skill. Nearby allies touched by the line are granted protection.

I love playing Guardian but supporting does not feel anywhere near as satisfying or efficient as the other support specs. These changes or something similar to this would make a huge difference, so please take the time to consider how Guardian Staff could use major improvements.Tagged: @Karl McLain.5604 @Irenio CalmonHuang.2048

Totally with you on this one.

Right now Staff skills are clunky and outdated. With the Firebrand we can finally start to play as a true guardian, but we lack the weapon to do it. A improved and updated Staff sounds like the perfect way to achieve it.

Please Arenanet!

I agree 100% with you for this and I hope anet looks at this and reworks the staff on guardian.

@Hellios.4108 said:Totally with you on this one.

Right now Staff skills are clunky and outdated. With the Firebrand we can finally start to play as a true guardian, but we lack the weapon to do it. A improved and updated Staff sounds like the perfect way to achieve it.

Please Arenanet!

Yes they are very outdated, but simple changes can make them great. I want to love staff, but the skills just do not fit the support role or function properly. What do you think about the ideas I thought of?

I was also thinking mantras could use an increase of their AoE radius as well. Maybe certain mantras should be specifically Cone or Ground Targeted/AoE.

• Cone| Flame Rush, Echo of Truth
• AoE(Ground Target)| Potent Haste, Opening Passage

If that is not possible, maybe a much wider cone area and increased distance for Potent Haste and Opening Passage will be a better option. The support mantras just do not function well with such a small radius and distance. The fast paced action and constant movement this game has does not allow these mantras to be great option for supporting allies, it is mainly useful for just the caster or if there is a single person that happens to be nearby.

General Support Utility Skills for Guardians seem fine. A change that would be awesome would be a bigger radius for Bow of Truth. A bigger radius would compensate for the delayed cast for the skill. Also the passive healing from Signet of Courage should have a 900 radius, and maybe a shorter passive healing interval of 5 seconds. This change would make the utility a worthy choice between the other ultimate abilities. Also, an increase to the radius of Merciful Intervention to 300 would be great.

Guardian's staff is probably the worst weapon in the game right now. It's a melee weapon, with little and clunky healing, and some swiftness and might.

Anet needs to make it a proper support weapon. Forget about the cone auto, and give us Heal Area now that the old Tome skills were deleted.

@RabbitUp.8294 said:Guardian's staff is probably the worst weapon in the game right now. It's a melee weapon, with little and clunky healing, and some swiftness and might.

Anet needs to make it a proper support weapon. Forget about the cone auto, and give us Heal Area now that the old Tome skills were deleted.

Holy crap! I knew about the tome but I never looked at the abilities. A cone heal would be good, but I really think that Heal Area would be a great option as well. That tome animation does things to me... I wish it were added to Firebrand lol.

Personally, even if one accepts that 600 range was too long (something I'm still sceptical about) I think cutting it down to 300 was serious overkill. About the only thing staff is really useful now is Empower, to the point where guardian would possibly be a stronger profession if Staff was deleted and Empower made into a utility. 400-450 would probably be justifiable, but 300 on something which was designed as a standoff weapon is ridiculous.

Putting a heal on it at about the same level as Solar Beam would probably be appropriate in cementing its value as a support weapon. Shorter range, but wider area of effect.

Orb of Light is in a bit of an unfortunate position because it's basically your long-range option (on the assumption that you're not running staff/scepter or staff/longbow) but the current mechanic is... clunky. I'd probably agree with making it ground-targeted, but rebalance the detonation effect so it can still have a 3s recharge. If there's a need for more burst healing, I'd put it on Empower or Symbol of Swiftness.

Line of Warding is probably okay as it. Possibly reduce the activation time so it's more practical to use it reactively.

@draxynnic.3719 said:Personally, even if one accepts that 600 range was too long (something I'm still sceptical about) I think cutting it down to 300 was serious overkill. About the only thing staff is really useful now is Empower, to the point where guardian would possibly be a stronger profession if Staff was deleted and Empower made into a utility. 400-450 would probably be justifiable, but 300 on something which was designed as a standoff weapon is ridiculous.I think adding a heal to the auto would justify the short range.

Orb of Light is in a bit of an unfortunate position because it's basically your long-range option (on the assumption that you're not running staff/scepter or staff/longbow) but the current mechanic is... clunky. I'd probably agree with making it ground-targeted, but rebalance the detonation effect so it can still have a 3s recharge. If there's a need for more burst healing, I'd put it on Empower or Symbol of Swiftness.Orb of Light has a 10 second cool-down when activated I believe. That's why I said 10 seconds, and we would have additional healing with Firebrand to burst heal when necessary.Line of Warding is probably okay as it. Possibly reduce the activation time so it's more practical to use it reactively.I really think adding an activated pull to this skill would be awesome in order to group enemies and CC bosses.

Just make sure it doesn't become ridiculous in WvW. Many guardians use staff in WvW , mainly for empower , symbol of swiftness, line of warding, and tagging enemies for loot.Burn guards in WvW sometimes use staff to proc burn too.

I don't see a great use in PvE though.

imo this is the most important issue with FB. FB lack a weapon that actually fit the survivability and skills provided in FB and staff could be such a weapon if tweaked.

Personally i would prefer that skill 1 was a single target spell that also hit targets behind the targeted npc/player. Moderate/low direct damage and moderate healing in 120 distance from column of the spell. Make it a fast moving and fast cast so it has some synergies with passive VoJ. Pretty much todays skill 2 but faster and without the detonation. 1200 range

Skill 2 could be wave of wrath with 200% increase in damage and 600 range. Add healing/protection to allies within the cone.

Skill 3 as is but it applies all the swiftness in the first tick.

Skill 4 as is but let us move while using it.

Skill 5, total revamp, make it a 900 leap that block all attacks during the leap and that heal 5 allies along the path and burn foes.

Reduce cd on all skills and balance the effect accordingly.

dont expect a decent rework, they even made spirit weapon worse than before.....

Maybe this is the best they can do....but i hope this is a temporary solution...

All I want is 1200 range on skill 1 that can hit to up 3 targets. Maybe something similar to Ele Fireball (staff skill 1 on fire) but with less damage, but able to heal up to 3 nearby allies around the target (around 100 pet hit / 200 with descent healing power).

Now Staff is a melee weapon. To have a 1200 range would be good for Core Guard and FB as well, even if does a lot less damage than DH longbow.

While staff needs rework, I'd rather it be a long range DPS/support option, with mace and shield being our melee support options. To make the Firebrand better at support I'd remove the cooldown on tomes entirely like kits, make the pages a shared resource system between them like thief initiative, place an internal cooldown on virtue activation traits so you can't abuse tome swapping, increase the range of mantras slightly, remove weapon swapping, and change power of the virtuous to affect page generation rate.

Support or DPS, Staff needs rework.Maybe we'll see it in 2-3 years.Here's hoping for that.

we been barking up this tree for how many years now?

I think a rework of staff is in order. There really is no reason not to rework it at this point. It's underperforming in every single game mode, staff usage is wayyyyy down since the nerf, it's not particularly good at anything, there are many options out there that surpass staff for what it is good at and many of its skills still deal with 2012-level gameplay mechanics.

Following are some suggestions that have been made here and elsewhere over time that I think would work well for staff. These suggestions are based off the idea that staff is supposed to serve as a ranged/support weapon which it doesn't do a decent job of right now. Here are said suggestions:

• Staff 1: Add a healing component to it. Decrease cast time/after-cast and/or increase damage. Alternatively, make it 600 range again but simply narrow the cone radius.
• Staff 2: Ground-targeted skill, orb very quickly reaches destination. Orb could linger at the destination, pulsing damage/burn to foes, or healing/condi cleanse to allies. Detonating the orb could do one of many things (aoe damaging wave, shadow step to location, aoe heal to allies, aoe blind, light aura, blast finisher, etc.)
• Staff 3: Keep it as is. This is a decent staff skill.
• Staff 4: Let this skill be mobile. 12 stacks of might in today's meta is not enough to justify a skill keeping you immobile in any game mode. Alternatively, could gain protection during the channel which would be nice.
• Staff 5: Very poor CC. It's pretty much ele earth staff 5 but worse. This skill could be tweaked numerically (20s cd, or ward lasts longer, or ward is bigger) but that would be pretty boring and wouldn't really bring any gusto back to the staff that it has lost. I recommend reworking this skill. For example, it could involve calling down a pillar of light that deals damage, and expands outward in a line ward afterwards.

STAFF REWORK! Cmon Anet, you know you want to!

@Incarne.4927 said:

@draxynnic.3719 said:Personally, even if one accepts that 600 range was too long (something I'm still sceptical about) I think cutting it down to 300 was serious overkill. About the only thing staff is really useful now is Empower, to the point where guardian would possibly be a stronger profession if Staff was deleted and Empower made into a utility. 400-450 would probably be justifiable, but 300 on something which was designed as a standoff weapon is ridiculous.I think adding a heal to the auto would justify the short range.

We already have mace and hammer (particularly with symbol traits) for melee-range support. I'd rather have a little more range and a weaker heal.

@Incarne.4927 said:

@draxynnic.3719 said:Orb of Light is in a bit of an unfortunate position because it's basically your long-range option (on the assumption that you're not running staff/scepter or staff/longbow) but the current mechanic is... clunky. I'd probably agree with making it ground-targeted, but rebalance the detonation effect so it can still have a 3s recharge. If there's a need for more burst healing, I'd put it on Empower or Symbol of Swiftness.Orb of Light has a 10 second cool-down when activated I believe. That's why I said 10 seconds, and we would have additional healing with Firebrand to burst heal when necessary.

It's twelve seconds untraited.

My concern is that the undetonated orb still has a purpose. The three-second recharge base orb means that a guardian can take a staff in lieu of a scepter or longbow (for dragonhunters) and still maintain some reasonably spammable long-range capability. Making it so that it's always used at the 'detonate' recharge destroys this capability, turning it into something like necromancer dagger where sure, a couple of skills are long-range, but ineffectual unless you're up close. Essentially, you'd have mace/shield and staff competing for the same role. Considering that most guardians will want a genuine melee weapon, and the Wave of Wrath boonsmiting makes Orb of Light even more important for maintaining standoff capability with the staff, if you remove the functionality of the undetonated Orb of Light, than the only times you'd be likely to see it is in situations where range isn't important... unless it's good enough to replace mace/shield and hammer as a melee support weapon, which wouldn't be good for either of those.

Simply put, staff needs some standoff capability to ensure that it still has a different role to the mace.

Line of Warding is probably okay as it. Possibly reduce the activation time so it's more practical to use it reactively.I really think adding an activated pull to this skill would be awesome in order to group enemies and CC bosses.

Strictly speaking it'd be a buff, sure. It'd be a new option that wasn't there before.

I don't think it fits the concept of the warding skills, though (they're not the sort of thing you collapse to cause a pull, like Temporal Curtain) and all things concerned, I'd really rather staff to have enough range to fulfill a different role to the melee support weapons.

@Knighthonor.4061 said:we been barking up this tree for how many years now?

The unjustified (in the most literal sense in that ArenaNet has not offered reasoning for such a big change) nerf to Wave of Wrath has added fuel to the fire. People who were content with the old staff are now looking for something to make staff actually worth using again.

@draxynnic.3719 said:

@Incarne.4927 said:

@draxynnic.3719 said:Personally, even if one accepts that 600 range was too long (something I'm still sceptical about) I think cutting it down to 300 was serious overkill. About the only thing staff is really useful now is Empower, to the point where guardian would possibly be a stronger profession if Staff was deleted and Empower made into a utility. 400-450 would probably be justifiable, but 300 on something which was designed as a standoff weapon is ridiculous.I think adding a heal to the auto would justify the short range.

@Incarne.4927 said:

@draxynnic.3719 said:

@Incarne.4927 said:

@draxynnic.3719 said:Personally, even if one accepts that 600 range was too long (something I'm still sceptical about) I think cutting it down to 300 was serious overkill. About the only thing staff is really useful now is Empower, to the point where guardian would possibly be a stronger profession if Staff was deleted and Empower made into a utility. 400-450 would probably be justifiable, but 300 on something which was designed as a standoff weapon is ridiculous.I think adding a heal to the auto would justify the short range.

Mace also has the symbol and Protector's Strike (which triggers when allies within a radius are struck).

The distinction is that keeping staff as effectively a melee range weapon - making it even more so if the functionality of undetonated Orb of Light is removed - means that it's fighting with mace for a role. One of those weapons is going to lost the fight and be regarded as useless except for doubling up if they both have the role of close-in support. We could end up "fixing" staff and then having the problem that nobody uses mace because staff does its job better.

Frankly, too, it would be nice for non-dragonhunters to have another standoff option than scepter.

@draxynnic.3719 said:

@Incarne.4927 said:

@draxynnic.3719 said:

@Incarne.4927 said:

@draxynnic.3719 said:Personally, even if one accepts that 600 range was too long (something I'm still sceptical about) I think cutting it down to 300 was serious overkill. About the only thing staff is really useful now is Empower, to the point where guardian would possibly be a stronger profession if Staff was deleted and Empower made into a utility. 400-450 would probably be justifiable, but 300 on something which was designed as a standoff weapon is ridiculous.I think adding a heal to the auto would justify the short range.

Problem with hammer and mace is that that they dont work well in ranged scenarios. I am all for 1200 range on auto and with a smaller heal, 300-400 and scale well with healing power. Skill 2 and 4 just dont work in pvp/wvw due to speed/unreliable detonation and immobility while casting and skill 5 lost all its value due to every one and his mother has access to stability and teleports. In 2012 the wards were great bot now thay are just weak skills that can be countered in so many ways.

The only skill that i actually could live with being as is is the symbol.

I wonder if any dev would respond to a question in tomorrows AMA about this or making a more visible health bar for supports...

@Incarne.4927 said:I wonder if any dev would respond to a question in tomorrows AMA about this or making a more visible health bar for supports...

Irenio is the Dev to talk about the Firebrand with more so than Karl from what I know.

Good luck with your endeavours to get improvements on the Guardians weapons but mainly staff. Cheers for the effort from Cave Rock and Bluevoltron42.

@Cave Rock.4869 said:

@Incarne.4927 said:I wonder if any dev would respond to a question in tomorrows AMA about this or making a more visible health bar for supports...

Thanks, and look what I found in the AMA... there might be hope yet:

We’re planning some changes for weapons we feel are under tuned, definitely.