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Staff


Shiyo.3578

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Staff was recently (over)nerfed and seems to be in a pretty bad spot. Could this weapon get some of the nerfs reverted or lessened please? Staff is really cool and the most "mage" or "caster" weapon the elementalist has but is VERY underwhelming now and not even worth the effort to play over any of it's other options.

I'm honestly curious, was it the developers intention that the traditional staff caster in a RPG to have their most effective build to be camping water as a full healer auto-attacking?

Please buff staff.

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Staff is still an extremely potent DPS weapon, featuring both high burst damage and large AoEs. It also does so at long range, making it much safer than alternatives.

You are right that staff is no longer the top single target DPS weapon for CMs and raids. However since it is a ranged burst weapon with tons of cleave there is basically no way that it can be a top single target DPS weapon as well in a balanced state.

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Revert all MS and Lava Font nerfs and decrease the cast for MS (even 0.5s less is good), CoR has both higher base value and co-efficient, making staff only top DPS in really large-scale fights. That's the easiest way to fulfill the QoL of the ele community. There are many suggestions but these are the simplest to do.

Now we have the PvE problem whivh could be solved by splitting.

After all the description says the class favors ranged (only have staff as ranged), but it seems melee now is better in most situations and across all modes.

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@Ensign.2189 said:Staff is still an extremely potent DPS weapon, featuring both high burst damage and large AoEs. It also does so at long range, making it much safer than alternatives.

You are right that staff is no longer the top single target DPS weapon for CMs and raids. However since it is a ranged burst weapon with tons of cleave there is basically no way that it can be a top single target DPS weapon as well in a balanced state.

Sitting at ranged isn't something that's good for optimal DPS in a game where you have to stack close for buffs.Deadeye Rifle is ranged and does top tier DPS.Scepter is ranged and does more damage than most melee weapons(Guardian).

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Staff in WvW needs some love and attention. It's 2019 and we still have boring, ineffective skills like Flame Burst, Pressure Blast and Monsoon.

The first one is a joke right now, because with all these conditions getting cleansed, the two burning stacks it applies is useless. Plus, it has zero damage at all—barely even reaching 1K sometimes.

I don't like Pressure Blast, purely because it's slow and is classed as a projectile. With so many bubbles around, and anti-projectile builds in blob vs blob settings, I find the skill somewhat frustrating.

Monsoon is rubbish. I have nothing else to say about that skill. I don't even use it.

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I'm surely not the only person who thinks that staff was fine before the overzealous nerfs, courtesy of the balance team at ANet. And don't forget that the changes weren't even split between game-modes to reflect the differences in gameplay (WvW/PvP neither have nor care about golem DPS meters). So it always seems to be a bit of a waste of time to have all these different threads pop up, suggesting how we might reinvent the class as a solution. It's unnecessary.Staff was fine before the consecutive nerfs to various traitlines and weapon skills from around what? March through June 2018? So rather than being overly complicated, why not just do the simple thing? Revert the nerfs. Split if required. But as was pointed out, when have you known the balance team to do a full U-turn on nerfs? I don't know if it's saving face or what but it's just plain dumb. And so tiring that you get used to it. A blob of people with retaliation will do more damage to me, more reliably, than I might to them using meteors. Can you believe it? AND IT'S STILL CAPPED BY DIMINISHING RETURNS OR NEGATED BY... BARRIER SPAM. Of all things. For those of you who play WvW, remember when we had guard stacks then they removed it because they thought it was unfair or power-creep or something? I forget. Funny that.

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@Usagi.4835 said:I'm surely not the only person who thinks that staff was fine before the overzealous nerfs, courtesy of the balance team at ANet. And don't forget that the changes weren't even split between game-modes to reflect the differences in gameplay (WvW/PvP neither have nor care about golem DPS meters). So it always seems to be a bit of a waste of time to have all these different threads pop up, suggesting how we might reinvent the class as a solution. It's unnecessary.Staff was fine before the consecutive nerfs to various traitlines and weapon skills from around what? March through June 2018? So rather than being overly complicated, why not just do the simple thing? Revert the nerfs. Split if required. But as was pointed out, when have you known the balance team to do a full U-turn on nerfs? I don't know if it's saving face or what but it's just plain dumb. And so tiring that you get used to it. A blob of people with retaliation will do more damage to me, more reliably, than I might to them using meteors. Can you believe it? AND IT'S STILL CAPPED BY DIMINISHING RETURNS OR NEGATED BY... BARRIER SPAM. Of all things. For those of you who play WvW, remember when we had guard stacks then they removed it because they thought it was unfair or power-creep or something? I forget. Funny that.

Yeah, this is the truth right here.

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I always loved staff and used to pvp with it for a long time, even if it was not meta. It's much harder, near impossible nowadays (spvp perspective), so i found a way to circumvent all the balancing issues of staff (and ele in general) with a rapid succession of deadly combos:

! I play Candy Crush

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I just don't understand the purpose of this weapon, or it's design intent.

It has nearly zero CC/break, the CC/break it has is laughably bad. It has zero utility outside of swiftness(this isn't very useful) and a water/ice combo field which is stretching pretty hard to call it "Utility". It has almost no healing if you aren't blasting your water fields as power specs for a pitiful amount of healing or sitting in water as full harriers auto-attacking(which is awful gameplay). On top of all this, it's damage far below any other decent builds.

Can this weapon have something? Anything? Perhaps damage back since that's all it had before?

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@"Shiyo.3578" said:I just don't understand the purpose of this weapon, or it's design intent.

It has nearly zero CC/break, the CC/break it has is laughably bad. It has zero utility outside of swiftness(this isn't very useful) and a water/ice combo field which is stretching pretty hard to call it "Utility". It has almost no healing if you aren't blasting your water fields, and even then that's a very minor amount of healing. On top of all this, it's damage far below any other decent builds.

Can this weapon have something? Anything? Perhaps damage back since that's all it had before?

CC has 10 targets which cant be blocked or dodged.

Ice field can't be blocked.

Heal is among highest in pve due to autoattack spam.

Dps is among highest in wvw due to meteor shower hitting a lot of people, usually very hard.

Boons are lacking, but that's the case with every ele weapon.

It's not as strong as it once was, but it's not worthless like you make it seem.

Gw2 isnt only golem fight...

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Sorry but sitting in water auto-attacking to heal is NOT a well designed weapon. That's also staffs best role, which is downright insulting.I sit in meteor storms in WvW now and don't even notice it doing damage.

I rarely see ele's in WvW anymore, only as roamers, zergs are just scourge/fb/scrapper/spellbreaker but ymmv.

None of the other stuff has any relevance in PvE. You say gw2 isn't only a golem fight, but staff was nerfed ONLY due to golem fighting. Have you tried using staff in general open world pve, raids, or fracts post-nerf? It's absolutely pathetic - so pathetic that it's been removed from every single websites benchmarks and guides.

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@Shiyo.3578 said:Sorry but sitting in water auto-attacking to heal is NOT a well designed weapon. That's also staffs best role, which is downright insulting.I sit in meteor storms in WvW now and don't even notice it doing damage.

I rarely see ele's in WvW anymore, only as roamers, zergs are just scourge/fb/scrapper/spellbreaker but ymmv.

None of the other stuff has any relevance in PvE. You say gw2 isn't only a golem fight, but staff was nerfed ONLY due to golem fighting. Have you tried using staff in general open world pve, raids, or fracts post-nerf? It's absolutely pathetic - so pathetic that it's been removed from every single websites benchmarks and guides.

And before nerfs it was all other weapons that were useless since they couldn't compete with staff. Actually it was all other classes...

I don't have any issues in open world nor wvw with staff. It doesn't have to be BiS weapon because IMO it's the most boring weapon that ele has, regardless of its strength.

Can it be buffed/have some skills reworked? Sure. Does it need to happen before buffing/reworking other weapons? Ofc not because it's already the best ele weapon for general purpose regardless of elite spec, for quite some time actually.

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I STRONGLY disagree. Staff was a bit too strong, scepter was and is still very good, warhorn was and still is very good, sword is very good. Dagger and staff are borderline useless in every single game mode.

Essentially deleting a weapon from the game isn't good.

Staff did not need to be nerfed as hard as they nerfed it, and some of the nerfs need to be reverted now - not 3 years from now.

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@Shiyo.3578 said:I STRONGLY disagree. Staff was a bit too strong, scepter was and is still very good, warhorn was and still is very good, sword is very good. Dagger and staff are borderline useless in every single game mode.

Essentially deleting a weapon from the game isn't good.

Staff did not need to be nerfed as hard as they nerfed it, and some of the nerfs need to be reverted now - not 3 years from now.

Come now. Staff was not strong. What are you smoking? It was perfect the way it was, until some carebears cried about the damage and got it nerfed. It takes a lot of hard work to actually survive and deal a lot of damage with staff given how squishy we are. And now it's even harder.

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The nerf to staff is just another removal of ele's punishment capabilities. I once had to go and defend garri and in the duration of 3 Meteor Showers, I had these stats from ArcDPS: 47 blocks and 64 barrier absorption, 47 + 64 =111 hits nullified, a godly Meteor Shower is capable of hitting 72 times, that's almost 1 1/2 Meteor Showers denied, so in terms of enemies' ability to sustain, it exists, why they melt so fast then when in balanced fights, go ask Heralds and Scourges, as Weaver's damage relies on enemies doing mistakes, while a Scourge or a Herald can pop a skill right away and see numbers. Another point about how the nerf was unjustified is this, during No Downed State week, we had to go and defend garri earlier in the morning as 10-15 vs 50+, it was really easy, the reason is probably because players are used to actually take a shower from this skill than actually trying to get out of the circle because there is no punishment for such act.

Staff's damage isn't the same as Scourge's or Herlad's, it relies on enemy's mistakes, if there are not, it will be impossible to land perfect MS's. Also, No Downed State was a perfect example of how the nerfs should be reverted. And finally, no class should ever cry for heals the moment they use a skill because they can no longer stop its effect unlike a shade or CoR, which are instant, lethal and short-lived.

Also, have fun with Lava Pudding, a name given by Deadeyes once they were able to pass Ele's staff's damage on golem benchmarks.

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@Auburner.6945 said:The nerf to staff is just another removal of ele's punishment capabilities. I once had to go and defend garri and in the duration of 3 Meteor Showers, I had these stats from ArcDPS: 47 blocks and 64 barrier absorption, 47 + 64 =111 hits nullified, a godly Meteor Shower is capable of hitting 72 times, that's almost 1 1/2 Meteor Showers denied, so in terms of enemies' ability to sustain, it exists, why they melt so fast then when in balanced fights, go ask Heralds and Scourges, as Weaver's damage relies on enemies doing mistakes, while a Scourge or a Herald can pop a skill right away and see numbers. Another point about how the nerf was unjustified is this, during No Downed State week, we had to go and defend garri earlier in the morning as 10-15 vs 50+, it was really easy, the reason is probably because players are used to actually take a shower from this skill than actually trying to get out of the circle because there is no punishment for such act.

Staff's damage isn't the same as Scourge's or Herlad's, it relies on enemy's mistakes, if there are not, it will be impossible to land perfect MS's. Also, No Downed State was a perfect example of how the nerfs should be reverted. And finally, no class should ever cry for heals the moment they use a skill because they can no longer stop its effect unlike a shade or CoR, which are instant, lethal and short-lived.

Also, have fun with Lava Pudding, a name given by Deadeyes once they were able to pass Ele's staff's damage on golem benchmarks.

You're comparing 1 skill to a zerg sustain, no class can do that amount of damage lol.. How would rev defend garri with its linear, 100 radius aoes? How would scourge escape pulls/CC's from the wall or even attempt to free cast from the sides? They cant because they have to stay near guards to be useful.

Yes, staff damage isnt same to scourges and heralds, it's a lot better. There's nothing wrong in relying on allies to do damage, it's an mmo so people should always have better results in groups compared to solo.

It's like complaining that 1 AC cant defend vs 50 people. If you used your lava pudding and other filler aoes before MS, you'd see a lot less blocks and barriers, but I guess it's too much to ask for.

There's a reason why ele is the best class for defending objectives.

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@steki.1478 said:

@Auburner.6945 said:The nerf to staff is just another removal of ele's punishment capabilities. I once had to go and defend garri and in the duration of 3 Meteor Showers, I had these stats from ArcDPS: 47 blocks and 64 barrier absorption, 47 + 64 =111 hits nullified, a godly Meteor Shower is capable of hitting 72 times, that's almost 1 1/2 Meteor Showers denied, so in terms of enemies' ability to sustain, it exists, why they melt so fast then when in balanced fights, go ask Heralds and Scourges, as Weaver's damage relies on enemies doing mistakes, while a Scourge or a Herald can pop a skill right away and see numbers. Another point about how the nerf was unjustified is this, during No Downed State week, we had to go and defend garri earlier in the morning as 10-15 vs 50+, it was really easy, the reason is probably because players are used to actually take a shower from this skill than actually trying to get out of the circle because there is no punishment for such act.

Staff's damage isn't the same as Scourge's or Herlad's, it relies on enemy's mistakes, if there are not, it will be impossible to land perfect MS's. Also, No Downed State was a perfect example of how the nerfs should be reverted. And finally, no class should ever cry for heals the moment they use a skill because they can no longer stop its effect unlike a shade or CoR, which are instant, lethal and short-lived.

Also, have fun with Lava Pudding, a name given by Deadeyes once they were able to pass Ele's staff's damage on golem benchmarks.

You're comparing 1 skill to a zerg sustain, no class can do that amount of damage lol.. How would rev defend garri with its linear, 100 radius aoes? How would scourge escape pulls/CC's from the wall or even attempt to free cast from the sides? They cant because they have to stay near guards to be useful.

Yes, staff damage isnt same to scourges and heralds, it's a lot better. There's nothing wrong in relying on allies to do damage, it's an mmo so people should always have better results in groups compared to solo.

It's like complaining that 1 AC cant defend vs 50 people. If you used your lava pudding and other filler aoes before MS, you'd see a lot less blocks and barriers, but I guess it's too much to ask for.

There's a reason why ele is the best class for defending objectives.

My point was predictability. Meteor Shower compared to CoR has flaws, it's not instant, 3s for the meteors to actually start raining down, which is a huge frame for anyone to move out of the skill, making the skill completely useless while CoR is instant, once set it's already over, and I don't think someone can predict a CoR as much as a MS, even the animation of MS is one of its kind. Predictability makes the skill easier to block, absorb, rotate heals around it, and CoR's 2nd and 3rd impacts hit harder than MS's first impact by quite a good margin, yet it's unpredictable. And regarding staying near guards, Heralds and Scourges don't cry out for heals if in a same position as much as an Ele that will certainly die if the enemy decided to have no mercy and take a shower. I am speaking of punishment for standing within the skills, not how a zerg can out-sustain. Heralds have 3 skills to punish you, Ele has a delayed solo skill, which should be a reason for greater damage, and that is the reversion of the nerf.

Another thing is - relying on allies isn't always good, like making them the dead end. In LoL, you were able to solo carry players back in the earlier seasons to an extent, now the game is 100% un-carry-able if your allies aren't performing well.

All I ask for is that MS and Lava Font get back what they lost, classes with twice the HP and more armor with better dueling/melee combat capabilities all on the same build to fill in the same purpose should by no means complain about being lower damage-wise by a margin, be it small or mid-large fights, they already got the instant skills vs those delayed ones. Else, the damage and sustain should drop across the whole board so the class can actually feel as rewarding as pressing 2 every 4s, or F1 and just roll your face through other F'x'.

Ele is only good for defending objectives because of walls and portals, once these are pressured, [insert class] will be a lot better at that.

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