Staff Ele for PvE

[Innocent.3861]

Is staff for dps Weaver/Tempest viable with the recent buffs? Or it's still just not worth it in most situations?

[Noodle Ant.1605]

i made another response in different thread but my run down is:

• condi staff weaver is competitive
• condi staff not-weaver is uncharted territory, but i doubt its good because weaver has can double attune + pyroclastic blast + primordial farts and has a thing of turning meh condi weapons into good ones
• power staff is non-competitive on anything thats not a huge hitbox
• power staff has LI capabilities
• staff still kinda sucks cuz it slow af, has garbo breakbar potential, lacks notable utility and has horrible self buffing capability

[TheAgedGnome.7520]

FWIW, these are the cele staff Catalyst builds I use in OW. I don't do fractals.

 

 

[Sifu.9745]

Celestial Staff Tempest works perfect for me in OW after buffs, nice dmg, great survivability and group support. I doubt it would work for Weaver, because replacing very powerful Overloard Fire and Flame Burst with a very weak Staff Dual Attacks (with longer cds) is a huge dmg loss. Also your healing and survivability will suffer as a Staff Weaver. Weaver is only really good as Sword/Dagger or Focus in OW. Staff Tempest is much better and way easier: you just want to stay in Fire for dmg, Water for healing and sometimes Earth for opening and survivability. Most of the time you only need to stay in Fire anyway.

Edited August 24, 2022 by Sifu.9745

[William.3871]

I find it very competent in open world, as condition hybrid (mix of viper and celestial items) and elementalist runes.

 

Currently using Marshall ascended staff from my old healer yet damaging build, so gotta refine the build a bit more, but has good potential for solo and group events (even for doing them alone). Need to say, I was staff master main for pvp and wvw back when game released, so im very used to the weapon even after such a long break.

 

dont think it will ever (or should) replace sword or dagger MH for fractals/raids unless you sure cant stay close to boss most of the time, but might replace scepter for long range? Gotta do more testing to be sure.

 

still, elementalist needs big PvE buffs still for water skill damage (not in staff though, its fine as more support weapon here), specially in scepter, where water should be the main attuenemnt for power build alongside air (and fire\earth for condition).

 

 

 

[soulknight.9620]

7 hours ago, Sifu.9745 said:

Celestial Staff Tempest works perfect for me in OW after buffs, nice dmg, great survivability and group support. I doubt it would work for Weaver, because replacing very powerful Overloard Fire and Flame Burst with a very weak Staff Dual Attacks (with longer cds) is a huge dmg loss. Also your healing and survivability will suffer as a Staff Weaver. Weaver is only really good as Sword/Dagger or Focus in OW. Staff Tempest is much better and way easier: you just want to stay in Fire for dmg, Water for healing and sometimes Earth for opening and survivability. Most of the time you only need to stay in Fire anyway.

Aaaaand you are wrong. Since Fire OL locks you out of 4s of using skills (thats 2-4 skills being used) and tempest has no dmg boosting traits (aside from Transcendent Tempest) unlike weaver. Ive tested this yesterday staff cele weaver performs a lot better in OW dps wise, cause you get the benefit of: Superior Elements (thats 10% crit), Elemental Refreshment (700ish barrier on dual skills - thats 3 dual skills per rotation), Weaver's Prowess (10% condi dps/20% condi duration - which saves a lot of stats for cele weaver), Elements of Rage (extra 8-10% crit chance and a dps boost of 5% condi and power). 
While tempest only gets you: OL with cast time 4 sec, and a cd of 20 with okaysh damage (sure a bit less with arcane), a bit of defensive boons (which you got covered with arcane usually), a 120-240 concentration (which you kinda get a lot of with cele and arcane), 15% dps trait (which is bugged atm?), and a bit of healing. 
Dps wise weaver outperforms tempest by a mile, the "weak dual skills" argument is a joke right (looking at you fire/earth, fire/air and air/earth)? As for survivability, weaver has nice barrier application on dual skills and can spec into GM barrier trait which basically is more free barrier coupled with perma vigor. Not to mention you can equip the Primordial stance for some more dps on a weaver (sure its melee, but the dps is nuts). As far as i tested survivability wise cele staff weaver looses by a bit to cele sword/focus weaver (which is one of the most survivable ele out there), but still op strong. 

[Bakeneko.5826]

18 hours ago, Innocent.3861 said:

Is staff for dps Weaver/Tempest viable with the recent buffs? Or it's still just not worth it in most situations?

Short answer: no.

[Minax.3284]

I don't see why it wouldn't be viable? It seems to be doing pretty great DPS with the buffs, on cWeaver at least?

 

 

[the krytan assassin.9235]

Staff works fine in OW, decent dps with loads of aoe, ranged attacks and quite alot of Pdps. For instanced combat it can offers some very niche usage, but in general simply lacks in to many departments to be viable ( needs a big hitbox enemy for optimized dps, requires stationary targets, lack of adds on boss encounters, lack of boonsupport/other utility, lack of defiance break skills, GoEP buildup time, lowest health & armor pool ingame)

[Innocent.3861]

On 8/25/2022 at 12:34 AM, Noodle Ant.1605 said:

power staff has LI capabilities

How would the LI build work? Been looking for power builds (for fractals) and using a hammer/sword just doesn't work well for me personally

[Noodle Ant.1605]

1 hour ago, Innocent.3861 said:

How would the LI build work? Been looking for power builds (for fractals) and using a hammer/sword just doesn't work well for me personally

it just camps fire and spams fireball, lava font, flame burst and glyph of storms off cd, meteor shower if feeling daring or on big hitbox/big group that wont die instantly. arcane blast/wave or defensive utility and elite elemental if you dont want to deal with conjures. espec is largely flavor, they all perform roughly the same since they all sit in fire and cant really use their mechanic as well as if they could switch (i prefer core but thats just me being eccentric)

ive been trialing it and performance-wise its ok (as LI it wont match god-level players ofc), but playstyle-wise you may or may not throw up. ive had my fireballs miss both moving and stationary targets, casted fireballs on enemies that just died the moment i finshed getting it out, enemies fleeing from my lava fonts as if allergic to it, interrupted my meteor shower on multiple occasions and casted those which ended up hitting nothing (is it me or is there a 1s delay between the visual and the hit?). i can feel every second the boon supports sleep on quickness and many times i have doubted the capabilities of the "healer" despite specifically searching for one on lfg...

im just trying to make it sound as bad as possible 🙂

tbh i cant really say though because theres the possiblity that im a fairly experienced player who is capable of making such a build work and or just working with all the problems it has. youre definitely free to try it for yourself however, maybe tell us how it goes 😆

edit: because im scared people will be after me if i encourage people to play core, heres a rough possible weaver setup which you can tweak. reminder that all especs perform roughly the same

edit2: tempest example

Edited August 28, 2022 by Noodle Ant.1605

[William.3871]

8 hours ago, Noodle Ant.1605 said:

it just camps fire and spams fireball, lava font, flame burst and glyph of storms off cd, meteor shower if feeling daring or on big hitbox/big group that wont die instantly. arcane blast/wave or defensive utility and elite elemental if you dont want to deal with conjures. espec is largely flavor, they all perform roughly the same since they all sit in fire and cant really use their mechanic as well as if they could switch (i prefer core but thats just me being eccentric)

ive been trialing it and performance-wise its ok (as LI it wont match god-level players ofc), but playstyle-wise you may or may not throw up. ive had my fireballs miss both moving and stationary targets, casted fireballs on enemies that just died the moment i finshed getting it out, enemies fleeing from my lava fonts as if allergic to it, interrupted my meteor shower on multiple occasions and casted those which ended up hitting nothing (is it me or is there a 1s delay between the visual and the hit?). i can feel every second the boon supports sleep on quickness and many times i have doubted the capabilities of the "healer" despite specifically searching for one on lfg...

im just trying to make it sound as bad as possible 🙂

tbh i cant really say though because theres the possiblity that im a fairly experienced player who is capable of making such a build work and or just working with all the problems it has. youre definitely free to try it for yourself however, maybe tell us how it goes 😆

edit: because im scared people will be after me if i encourage people to play core, heres a rough possible weaver setup which you can tweak. reminder that all especs perform roughly the same

edit2: tempest example

 If you gonna camp fire all the time it better to spec into Tempest or even core ele. 

[Noodle Ant.1605]

7 hours ago, William.3871 said:

 If you gonna camp fire all the time it better to spec into Tempest or even core ele. 

i wouldnt recommend tempest straight off the bat, even more so for an LI setup, because it has a dead traitline if the player cant manage their overloads

core gives people an excuse to kick you, which is more likely to happen if you struggle on it vs struggling on an espec

im going off the assumption that people have a preferred spec (like how mine is core) and they should just roll with that, seeing that none of the especs provide anything fundamentally significant to the setup. like i said, its mainly just flavor and you could even possibly branch out depending on what espec it is - using staff catalyst for example, if you manage to figure out how to minimise damage loss switching out of fire, you can drop spheres from the 3 other attunements and help out a bit more with boon support if needed

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

1 hour ago, Noodle Ant.1605 said:

i wouldnt recommend tempest straight off the bat, even more so for an LI setup, because it has a dead traitline if the player cant manage their overloads

core gives people an excuse to kick you, which is more likely to happen if you struggle on it vs struggling on an espec

im going off the assumption that people have a preferred spec (like how mine is core) and they should just roll with that, seeing that none of the especs provide anything fundamentally significant to the setup. like i said, its mainly just flavor and you could even possibly branch out depending on what espec it is - using staff catalyst for example, if you manage to figure out how to minimise damage loss switching out of fire, you can drop spheres from the 3 other attunements and help out a bit more with boon support if needed

LI tempest has already been done:  

Although if you give it more DPS utilities and have it press all of the button it can crank itself to around 30k DPS without leaving fire.

[Noodle Ant.1605]

42 minutes ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

LI tempest has already been done:  

Although if you give it more DPS utilities and have it press all of the button it can crank itself to around 30k DPS without leaving fire.

you cant just fly in and talk about LI condi scepter/whatever which i very well know exists when im talking about LI power staff

the existence of this build does not invalidate others

edit: check out this dumb fire camping variant that i played a year prior to that vid (and the LI craze) when condi breakbar bonus was messed up

Edited August 29, 2022 by Noodle Ant.1605

[Jees.5478]

I tryed the staff dps weaver in CM fractals. Sadly it was not so good :(. The main problem for me was the slow burst damage.

[soulknight.9620]

41 minutes ago, Jees.5478 said:

I tryed the staff dps weaver in CM fractals. Sadly it was not so good :(. The main problem for me was the slow burst damage.

And staff is rly dependant on target being 100% stationary. 

[Gibson.4036]

1 hour ago, soulknight.9620 said:

And staff is rly dependant on target being 100% stationary. 

I've been playing staff weaver in PvE recently, and am quickly learning how to lead mob movement with skills like Pyroclastic Blast and  Lava Font. With a little bit of practice, you don't need 100% stationary.

Except, of course, Meteor Shower, which I only rarely use for pure class fantasy and have to pretend like it's actually hitting anything.

Edited August 29, 2022 by Gibson.4036