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Is staff too weak?


HowlKamui.5120

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Aside from being used by healers or backline wvw zergers, I think staff should be competitive with dagger or sword variants of the elementalist for dps roles in raids/fractals/small scale. Staves are afterall a signature weapon of wizards and many people like playing rpgs as their favorite archetypes.

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@mikdepadua.8376 said:Aside from being used by healers or backline wvw zergers, I think staff should be competitive with dagger or sword variants of the elementalist for dps roles in raids/fractals/small scale. Staves are afterall a signature weapon of wizards and many people like playing rpgs as their favorite archetypes.

Why would you use a 1200 range weapon from the frontline ? I'm all for balancing range and melee so you can play both, but when you take a range weapon, you're supposed to go backline :)

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@Kulvar.1239 said:

@mikdepadua.8376 said:Aside from being used by healers or backline wvw zergers, I think staff should be competitive with dagger or sword variants of the elementalist for dps roles in raids/fractals/small scale. Staves are afterall a signature weapon of wizards and many people like playing rpgs as their favorite archetypes.

Why would you use a 1200 range weapon from the frontline ? I'm all for balancing range and melee so you can play both, but when you take a range weapon, you're supposed to go backline :)

I dont think i ever mentioned frontline in the post. When I said be competitive with, i meant numbers wise.

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@Kulvar.1239 said:

@mikdepadua.8376 said:Aside from being used by healers or backline wvw zergers, I think staff should be competitive with dagger or sword variants of the elementalist for dps roles in raids/fractals/small scale. Staves are afterall a signature weapon of wizards and many people like playing rpgs as their favorite archetypes.

Why would you use a 1200 range weapon from the frontline ? I'm all for balancing range and melee so you can play both, but when you take a range weapon, you're supposed to go backline :)

It's not competitive in any range though. Also, most end game pve is in melee, so your weapon range is irrelevant, only numbers matter and staff lacks those.

I think staff is one of the weapons that's hard to balance just due to meteor shower. But for some reason buffing other skills is taboo. Halving cast times on ice spike and eruption is already a huge gameplay improvement, but the weapon still lacks in damage considering that most of its damage comes from 3 fire skills and they are all weak damage wise compared to GS on mesmer or LB on ranger for example.

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I think a really big change that would help staff is reverting nerfs on meteor and increasing the size of lava font for fire attunement AND/OR adding a heavy DPS skill to air attunement.

I would completely remove air 4 (aoe swiftness, which is outdated and weak these days) and move air 5 into air 4's slot (since you can self blast if you need swiftness or use it as it currently is) then create a new skill for Air 5. I'd really like a lightning storm similar to that of Glyph of storms that gives 1 stack of vulnerability on each hit or a wind gust (similar to a small tornado) that funnels or sucks all enemies into the center; this would synergize with the change to air 4, trapping enemies inside.

This change would totally bring staff back into the meta and make it worth using without making it OP. Also all the other attunements would be useful as well. As it stands, your DPS options are limited to one skill (meteor) with a huge cast time and mediocre damage unless you spec glassy. Water and earth are fine as they are defense/utility - it's just fire/air that are lacking currently in my opinion.

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@Kulvar.1239 said:

@mikdepadua.8376 said:Aside from being used by healers or backline wvw zergers, I think staff should be competitive with dagger or sword variants of the elementalist for dps roles in raids/fractals/small scale. Staves are afterall a signature weapon of wizards and many people like playing rpgs as their favorite archetypes.

Why would you use a 1200 range weapon from the frontline ? I'm all for balancing range and melee so you can play both, but when you take a range weapon, you're supposed to go backline :)

Staff water 1 is a good AOE heal tho

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I know that thematically two-handed weapons are supposed to have a slower attack speed than when dual wielding (sword/focus), but I think that's one of the problems that staff has. It has a very slow attack/animation speed without having bigger damage numbers. When compared to any other main hand weapon it just feels weaker.

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@SAROMON.9158 said:I play with staff sometimes in SPvP and in many cases it makes the big difference and we win the game.

Indeed! I also play staff tempest with sage amulet. Top healing is a given, but i sometimes get top damage as well using Fire/Water/Tempest. Hence why I didnt list sPVP in my original post. The presence of nodes you have to stand on in the game mode makes staff's slow-to-have-an-impact damage AOEs much less of a problem. in WVW small scale however, it just feels clunky to use when roaming solo/in a small group.

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@Kulvar.1239 said:

@"mikdepadua.8376" said:Aside from being used by healers or backline wvw zergers, I think staff should be competitive with dagger or sword variants of the elementalist for dps roles in raids/fractals/small scale. Staves are afterall a signature weapon of wizards and many people like playing rpgs as their favorite archetypes.

Why would you use a 1200 range weapon from the frontline ? I'm all for balancing range and melee so you can play both, but when you take a range weapon, you're supposed to go backline :)

So if you're doing raids/fracs/dungeons/strikes/etc. you should move off the stack and not get buffs/healing and potentially make it harder to dodge attacks, simply because "you're supposed to go backline"?

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@Wasabi Kitty.8247 said:

@"mikdepadua.8376" said:Aside from being used by healers or backline wvw zergers, I think staff should be competitive with dagger or sword variants of the elementalist for dps roles in raids/fractals/small scale. Staves are afterall a signature weapon of wizards and many people like playing rpgs as their favorite archetypes.

Why would you use a 1200 range weapon from the frontline ? I'm all for balancing range and melee so you can play both, but when you take a range weapon, you're supposed to go backline :)

So if you're doing raids/fracs/dungeons/strikes/etc. you should move off the stack and not get buffs/healing and potentially make it harder to dodge attacks, simply because "you're supposed to go backline"?

The tradeoff is supposed to be : range = safer, melee = stronger.If you're both safer and stronger stacking in melee range, the tradeoff become meaningless.The issue is that stacking in melee is not dangerous enough, while being at range is deadlier.But it's on the boss designer to balance melee and range.There are some means by which boss design can balance melee and range :

  • Threats that can only be dealt with from afar
  • Phases when melee is too deadly so range DPS can catch up
  • Having a stacking damage debuff at close range so melee DPS have to retreat a bit to allow the stacks to reset
  • Making a boss that teleport so melee waste time closing the distance
  • Spawning adds with range attacks so melee waste time switching target back and forth.
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@Kulvar.1239 said:

@"mikdepadua.8376" said:Aside from being used by healers or backline wvw zergers, I think staff should be competitive with dagger or sword variants of the elementalist for dps roles in raids/fractals/small scale. Staves are afterall a signature weapon of wizards and many people like playing rpgs as their favorite archetypes.

Why would you use a 1200 range weapon from the frontline ? I'm all for balancing range and melee so you can play both, but when you take a range weapon, you're supposed to go backline :)

So if you're doing raids/fracs/dungeons/strikes/etc. you should move off the stack and not get buffs/healing and potentially make it harder to dodge attacks, simply because "you're supposed to go backline"?

The tradeoff is supposed to be : range = safer, melee = stronger.If you're both safer and stronger stacking in melee range, the tradeoff become meaningless.The issue is that stacking in melee is not dangerous enough, while being at range is deadlier.But it's on the boss designer to balance melee and range.There are some means by which boss design can balance melee and range :
  • Threats that can only be dealt with from afar
  • Phases when melee is too deadly so range DPS can catch up
  • Having a stacking damage debuff at close range so melee DPS have to retreat a bit to allow the stacks to reset
  • Making a boss that teleport so melee waste time closing the distance
  • Spawning adds with range attacks so melee waste time switching target back and forth.

I dont have enough experience in raids but i gotta ask. Are all 900/1200 range weapons "weak" dps wise compared to melee counterparts for all classes? Because this quoted statement will only hold true if all ranged weapons behave like this.

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@mikdepadua.8376 said:

@mikdepadua.8376 said:Aside from being used by healers or backline wvw zergers, I think staff should be competitive with dagger or sword variants of the elementalist for dps roles in raids/fractals/small scale. Staves are afterall a signature weapon of wizards and many people like playing rpgs as their favorite archetypes.

Why would you use a 1200 range weapon from the frontline ? I'm all for balancing range and melee so you can play both, but when you take a range weapon, you're supposed to go backline :)

So if you're doing raids/fracs/dungeons/strikes/etc. you should move off the stack and not get buffs/healing and potentially make it harder to dodge attacks, simply because "you're supposed to go backline"?

The tradeoff is supposed to be : range = safer, melee = stronger.If you're both safer and stronger stacking in melee range, the tradeoff become meaningless.The issue is that stacking in melee is not dangerous enough, while being at range is deadlier.But it's on the boss designer to balance melee and range.There are some means by which boss design can balance melee and range :
  • Threats that can only be dealt with from afar
  • Phases when melee is too deadly so range DPS can catch up
  • Having a stacking damage debuff at close range so melee DPS have to retreat a bit to allow the stacks to reset
  • Making a boss that teleport so melee waste time closing the distance
  • Spawning adds with range attacks so melee waste time switching target back and forth.

I dont have enough experience in raids but i gotta ask. Are all 900/1200 range weapons "weak" dps wise compared to melee counterparts for all classes? Because this quoted statement will only hold true if all ranged weapons behave like this.

Depends on the content. Some are strong, some weak, but generally all of them have some kind of use where they are at least good.

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@mikdepadua.8376 said:

@mikdepadua.8376 said:Aside from being used by healers or backline wvw zergers, I think staff should be competitive with dagger or sword variants of the elementalist for dps roles in raids/fractals/small scale. Staves are afterall a signature weapon of wizards and many people like playing rpgs as their favorite archetypes.

Why would you use a 1200 range weapon from the frontline ? I'm all for balancing range and melee so you can play both, but when you take a range weapon, you're supposed to go backline :)

So if you're doing raids/fracs/dungeons/strikes/etc. you should move off the stack and not get buffs/healing and potentially make it harder to dodge attacks, simply because "you're supposed to go backline"?

The tradeoff is supposed to be : range = safer, melee = stronger.If you're both safer and stronger stacking in melee range, the tradeoff become meaningless.The issue is that stacking in melee is not dangerous enough, while being at range is deadlier.But it's on the boss designer to balance melee and range.There are some means by which boss design can balance melee and range :
  • Threats that can only be dealt with from afar
  • Phases when melee is too deadly so range DPS can catch up
  • Having a stacking damage debuff at close range so melee DPS have to retreat a bit to allow the stacks to reset
  • Making a boss that teleport so melee waste time closing the distance
  • Spawning adds with range attacks so melee waste time switching target back and forth.

I dont have enough experience in raids but i gotta ask. Are all 900/1200 range weapons "weak" dps wise compared to melee counterparts for all classes? Because this quoted statement will only hold true if all ranged weapons behave like this.

The more utility you have on a weapon, the less is deal damage of course.But for mostly damage weapon, range weapon usually have 60-70% of melee weapon DPS.

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@Kulvar.1239 said:

@"mikdepadua.8376" said:Aside from being used by healers or backline wvw zergers, I think staff should be competitive with dagger or sword variants of the elementalist for dps roles in raids/fractals/small scale. Staves are afterall a signature weapon of wizards and many people like playing rpgs as their favorite archetypes.

Why would you use a 1200 range weapon from the frontline ? I'm all for balancing range and melee so you can play both, but when you take a range weapon, you're supposed to go backline :)

So if you're doing raids/fracs/dungeons/strikes/etc. you should move off the stack and not get buffs/healing and potentially make it harder to dodge attacks, simply because "you're supposed to go backline"?

The tradeoff is supposed to be : range = safer, melee = stronger.If you're both safer and stronger stacking in melee range, the tradeoff become meaningless.The issue is that stacking in melee is not dangerous enough, while being at range is deadlier.But it's on the boss designer to balance melee and range.There are some means by which boss design can balance melee and range :
  • Threats that can only be dealt with from afar
  • Phases when melee is too deadly so range DPS can catch up
  • Having a stacking damage debuff at close range so melee DPS have to retreat a bit to allow the stacks to reset
  • Making a boss that teleport so melee waste time closing the distance
  • Spawning adds with range attacks so melee waste time switching target back and forth.

This concept died after PoF and yeah melee is where you are even with 1200 so not sure why they gimp long ranged weps randomly

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