Staff Updates - Wrong direction

[Einlanzer.1627]

Staff is a "support weapon". We get it. But the long-standing status quo of fire being the only decent damage attunement is not healthy. 

Elementalists desperately need to be able to swap attunements without absolutely cratering their DPS. Staff is the most iconic weapon wielded by magic users in fantasy, and it is not effective in solo or small group play, which dominantes most peoples' playtime, simply because it does not do anywhere near enough damage outside of Fire.
 

Even though the other attunements are more support focused, they need to be able to provide a reasonable enough DPS baseline that you can afford to spend a little time in them. To that end, the #1 skills need to be substantially beefed up and some damage really should be added to some or all of the support-focused skills. I'm not sure why this would be perceived as a balance issue, since stat combos disproportinately determine how effective a given set of effects is. Because of this, you'll never be able to be an elite healer while also being an elite damage dealer, for instance. Hence why water skills should have reasonable (not optimal) damage add ons.

What am I missing?

Edited February 11, 2023 by Einlanzer.1627

[Sporks.4395]

If they fixed the auto attacks, it would help tremendously. They are just to slow. They felt slow when the game came out, and they are incredibly slow now that the power creep is upon us. All you have to do is side step to avoid the damage, and that is, especially a bad design in pvp style settings where people are always moving. 

[Strider.7849]

On 2/10/2023 at 9:14 AM, Einlanzer.1627 said:

Staff is a "support weapon". We get it. But the long-standing status quo of fire being the only decent damage attunement is not healthy. 

Elementalists desperately need to be able to swap attunements without absolutely cratering their DPS. Staff is the most iconic weapon wielded by magic users in fantasy, and it is not effective in solo or small group play, which dominantes most peoples' playtime, simply because it does not do anywhere near enough damage outside of Fire.
 

Even though the other attunements are more support focused, they need to be able to provide a reasonable enough DPS baseline that you can afford to spend a little time in them. To that end, the #1 skills need to be substantially beefed up and some damage really should be added to some or all of the support-focused skills. I'm not sure why this would be perceived as a balance issue, since stat combos disproportinately determine how effective a given set of effects is. Because of this, you'll never be able to be an elite healer while also being an elite damage dealer, for instance. Hence why water skills should have reasonable (not optimal) damage add ons.

What am I missing?

I completely agree with what you said.

 

One of my old suggestions, a long time ago, was to add damage into Air. My suggestion was Air #5 would be a lightning storm, pulsing vulnerability/hitting rapidly. The current Air #5 (AoE stun) would replace Air #4, which previously just gave swiftness and removed movement impairing conditions. I thought that was a complete waste of a slot because elementalist already has good access to clear conditions on both itself and allies, even within its DPS builds. I find Air to be where staff is lacking the most.

 

Unfortunately my opinion on this was met with a lot of disagreement here.

[Imba.9451]

2 minutes ago, Strider.7849 said:

I completely agree with what you said.

 

One of my old suggestions, a long time ago, was to add damage into Air. My suggestion was Air #5 would be a lightning storm, pulsing vulnerability/hitting rapidly. The current Air #5 (AoE stun) would replace Air #4, which previously just gave swiftness and removed movement impairing conditions. I thought that was a complete waste of a slot because elementalist already has good access to clear conditions on both itself and allies, even within its DPS builds. I find Air to be where staff is lacking the most.

 

Unfortunately my opinion on this was met with a lot of disagreement here.

Staff 4 has always been a rather "meh" skill to me, and my impression of it got worse over the years. Swiftness wasn't hard to come by then, and it certainly isn't now. It really is a waste of a slot imho. You have mounts in open world, and some form of swiftness wil generally be created by someone in group content. It`s pretty much a dead slot.

[Jski.6180]

Staff an utility wepons you can use it for support but you can also use it for dmg. Now things like MS the icon dmg skill needs an update for sure but the other "2 skills" air earth and water all do good dmg all be it burst only with a long delay. Over all making staff dmg more about contorting an space then just raw dps.

This update did not make the staff weaker for dps it simply made the dps have more utility. What the ele class is realy missing to "fixs" something like this is an real dps utility skill set that is on par with say MS skill. Arcain and glyphs are not enofe and conja wepons simply replace your wepon (and are way too melee base).

I think staff dps ele is better off from these update then worst staff just not an pure dps wepon like hammer scepter (maybe sword).

[Esquilax.3491]

I think they've made it clear they want staff to be a healer weapon unfortunately. What we need is a ranged weapon with damage focused skill kit, but that's unlikely to happen any time soon since with the latest expansion announcement it seems new specs are off the cards for now.

[the krytan assassin.9235]

Im genuinely curious what people define as "decent" dps. Sure the elementalist has 3 builds running 42k+ dps right now, but this doesn't mean that a build that is able to deal ~35-36k dps output isn't viable. There are enough scourges, reapers, mechanists and dragonhunters etc running around right now. There are only a couple of builds that can deal over 35k dps on ranged anyways, let alone on power. 

Berserker, grieving and viper staff Weaver all have a decent amount of dps, can be easily transformed into LI and deal a crapload of aoe dmge (only downside is you need somewhat stationary targets). 

Staff has gotten quite some buffs over the last couple months aswell (like stormsoul, weave self, superior elements, Swift revenge, elements of rage, added burning on fireball lava font and flame burst, higher dmge modifier on fireball, flame burst, stoning and shock wave).

Staff really isnt as bad as people make it out to be. Sure staff could use some small tweaks but thats it imo (like adding breakbar dmge and make it easier for the skills to connect in WvW). Continuously comparing certain builds to the top tier meta builds (especially when people suddenly seem to forget about the inherent weaknesses of those specific builds) isn't healthy and will simply result in more powercreep in the long run (if anything some of the top tier meta builds deserve to be nerfed instead)

[Forgotten Legend.9281]

from the beginning, Anet said that Staff is a support weapon. some of us presumed that meant that Anet would eventually give us a true ranged (1200) DPS weapon, but instead we had too many people complaining that fire on staff was DPS enough to count as a ranged DPS weapon, so all 3 e-specs catered toward very close ranged (less than 600 range) combat, which favors PvP modes, but (in my opinion) totally ignores full ranged combat. (tempest overloads are close range, weaver sword is melee, catalyst hammer is a a new version of dagger / dagger)

i have personally asked for the minor master traits in each elemental line to be changed to ranged spells for this reason as well. they currently cater to close range combat on a class that is described by Anet in game as a class that favors ranged combat. (but really favors close range combat).

i, and others, have asked for an espec favoring the full ranged longbow in response to all the close ranged favoritism of the devs (who are speculated to only listen to the PvP crown and the WvW boon-ball crowd.)

i also think that staff earth should offer at least one poison field, and staff air static field should offer damage on pulse to enemies within the field.

i also think that with staff being classified as a support weapon, we should let it be a support weapon, and make a new ranged DPS weapon for elementalist. (Scepter is a mid ranged weapon, not full range)

Edited February 16, 2023 by Forgotten Legend.9281

[Abjurer.9302]

40 minutes ago, Forgotten Legend.9281 said:

i, and others, have asked for an espec favoring the full ranged longbow in response to all the close ranged favoritism of the devs (who are speculated to only listen to the PvP crown and the WvW boon-ball crowd.)

This seems odd to me since range is very important to WvW.  Isn't it PvE that stacks in melee for most of their content?

[the krytan assassin.9235]

1 hour ago, Forgotten Legend.9281 said:

from the beginning, Anet said that Staff is a support weapon. some of us presumed that meant that Anet would eventually give us a true ranged (1200) DPS weapon, but instead we had too many people complaining that fire on staff was DPS enough to count as a ranged DPS weapon, so all 3 e-specs catered toward very close ranged (less than 600 range) combat, which favors PvP modes, but (in my opinion) totally ignores full ranged combat. (tempest overloads are close range, weaver sword is melee, catalyst hammer is a a new version of dagger / dagger)

Wut? Anet never said that staff is a support weapon. This game was even designed without no designated support in mind lol. All ele weapons were built as hybrids and even nowadays they are still hybrids (even though they wanted to focus scepter abit more towards dps). 

In the first 5 years the staff ele/Tempest/Weaver was one of the highest/the highest bench ingame. 

 

Nowadays there are still numerous staff builds out there that deal great damage. There's a 40.2k staff cweaver (41.7k with lesser ele's) 2 month old benchmark (so didn't take into account the buffs to weave self and superior elements, will probably go up to 41k (42.5k) with a proper bench. There's also a 36.5k staff pweaver 4 month old benchmark (so no updated stormsoul, superior elements, Swift revenge, elements of rage and weave self), so probably can bench ~40k with perfect rotation now. Couldnt find an updated log on greaving staff Weaver, but pretty sure it should also be around the 38-40k mark aswell.  

 

Honestly the only other Espec that can provide that amount of ranged dps (especially on 1200 range) is virtuoso. 

 

[Forgotten Legend.9281]

2 hours ago, Abjurer.9302 said:

This seems odd to me since range is very important to WvW.  Isn't it PvE that stacks in melee for most of their content?

range is important for the "cloud" but the boon-ball crowd is more melee / close ranged focused. the INSTANCED PvE crowd (raids, fractals, etc) focuses on melee based boon-balls as well. but the world boss train doesn't need a squad build.

[soulknight.9620]

10 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Im genuinely curious what people define as "decent" dps.

65k dps! GIVE IT BACK ANET! 

[Einlanzer.1627]

20 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Im genuinely curious what people define as "decent" dps. Sure the elementalist has 3 builds running 42k+ dps right now, but this doesn't mean that a build that is able to deal ~35-36k dps output isn't viable. There are enough scourges, reapers, mechanists and dragonhunters etc running around right now. There are only a couple of builds that can deal over 35k dps on ranged anyways, let alone on power. 

Berserker, grieving and viper staff Weaver all have a decent amount of dps, can be easily transformed into LI and deal a crapload of aoe dmge (only downside is you need somewhat stationary targets). 

Staff has gotten quite some buffs over the last couple months aswell (like stormsoul, weave self, superior elements, Swift revenge, elements of rage, added burning on fireball lava font and flame burst, higher dmge modifier on fireball, flame burst, stoning and shock wave).

Staff really isnt as bad as people make it out to be. Sure staff could use some small tweaks but thats it imo (like adding breakbar dmge and make it easier for the skills to connect in WvW). Continuously comparing certain builds to the top tier meta builds (especially when people suddenly seem to forget about the inherent weaknesses of those specific builds) isn't healthy and will simply result in more powercreep in the long run (if anything some of the top tier meta builds deserve to be nerfed instead)

 

Did you actually read the post? This doesn't have much to do with what the specific number is, but what the distribution of damage is across the attunements, which has a really huge impact on actual (as opposed to theoretical) play, and is the main reason why people complain about Staff incessantly and are right to do so.

Fire's DPS is reasonable, maybe even slightly on the high side. Water, Earth, and Air all have atrocious DPS. Like, swap-to-them-and-die DPS unless you are in a full group providing dedicated support. And that's just bad design. It's fine for them to be lower than Fire, but the gap shouldn't be anywhere near as big as it is.

The rhythm of maintaining a healthy baseline DPS needs to be spread across all attunements regardless of the nature of the weapon.

Edited February 17, 2023 by Einlanzer.1627

[the krytan assassin.9235]

2 hours ago, Einlanzer.1627 said:

 

Did you actually read the post? This doesn't have much to do with what the specific number is, but what the distribution of damage is across the attunements, which has a really huge impact on actual (as opposed to theoretical) play, and is the main reason why people complain about Staff incessantly and are right to do so.

Fire's DPS is reasonable, maybe even slightly on the high side. Water, Earth, and Air all have atrocious DPS. Like, swap-to-them-and-die DPS unless you are in a full group providing dedicated support. And that's just bad design. It's fine for them to be lower than Fire, but the gap shouldn't be anywhere near as big as it is.

The rhythm of maintaining a healthy baseline DPS needs to be spread across all attunements regardless of the nature of the weapon.

You started you topic by stating that staff is a support weapon. Staff gets some extra support (which is perfectly fine if its designed to be a support weapon) and then state its a step in the wrong direction lol. Also you mentioned that staff isn't effective in solo & group play atm, I'd argue that the dps output of staff definitely suggests otherwise.

 

Atm staff serves 3 purposes. HAT, dps Weaver and dps cata in WvW. The support updates are very welcome for both the HAT and the WvW dps cata. 

 

WvW Dps cata needs to spend ~10 sec in air, water and earth before he can slot back into fire. There are more then enough relevant skills to press in that timeframe, so there isn't much problem with attunement swapping. 

 

So that leaves us with Weaver. Pyroclastic blast, pile driver, plasma blast and lahar are already pretty powerfull skills. Together with ice spike, lightning surge, and eruption thats already nearly enough to cover the cd on attunement swap. Lightning storm and shockwave are also very powerful skills aswell which can be used to mitigate the dmge loss of lightning/earth AA. So you can swap between the attunements without losing to much dps. 

 

Most of the support skills are also quite hard to change into dmge. Water blast, geyser, healing rain, windborne speed, magnetic aura and unsteady ground would require a complete overhaul if you want to add some dps there. You could add dps on Gust, but it will remain hard to reach due to the requirement of air/air. Ontop of that id rather not have the very little breakbar damage that staff has in its rotation. So realistically the only skills they could improve are frozen ground, static field, chain lightning and stoning. Earth already deals a good amount of dps, so stoning doesn't really need a big buff. A good dps output on water/air will be very hard aswell due to the focus of  utility/healing and long cd on frozen ground & static field. 

 

So air & water will always remain relatively weak elements by design (unless they do a complete overhaul in the skillset, but lets be reasonable, thats not going to happen). Both can be quite easily mitigated by Weaver and dont cause any big problem for WvW cata. 

 

Also the vast majority in the ele forum is arguing that the staff isn't dealing enough damage. There are even multiple people complaining about the dps output in this thread (including you in your OP). On top of that there are continuously threads popping up about the supposed lack of dmge on staff & the wish for a ranged weapon for the ele because apparently staff isnt able to deal damage. 

If anything id argue that the current staff Weaver is offering a solution to the idea that the elementalist lacks any LI build. In its most simplistic form it offers a straightforward low APM rotation with only 2 elements that can easily deal over 30k ranged dps. Making other attunements deal more dps will eventually only result in the downtuning of some of the fire/earth skills. 

Sure there are some ele skills that deserve to get a rework, but there's absolutely no reason to start complaining about an update which can only be interpreted as a buff to staff ele. 

Edited February 17, 2023 by the krytan assassin.9235

[Loke.1429]

I dont actually care at all about your benchmarks. I play wvw, and the damage is bad, staff is clunky as fk and feels worse and worse to play when they add zoom zoom evade invuln daze stealth teleport specs.

A few things I hate about staff: some skills are so bad that it is a misclick, autoattacks are awful mechanically, way too vulnerable to daze and interrupts because of very long attack animations / cast times. Skills are way worse than comparable skills on other classes. Yeah we have many skills, but it doesnt matter if you need to wait 5seconds to use the tool you needed 5 seconds ago.

I want the following
> damage on attunement swap, swapping in itself should have dps
> faster attunement swaps or cast times when holding staff
> fixed auto attacks mechanically
> way more power damage on water and earth auto attacks
> fire 3 to also deal instant power damage
> some unblockable damage baseline / a way to damage thief when they evade spam. It is really attrocious to play against 1v1 on staff. When it is so slow it is fair that a small part is unblockable or a guaranteed hit in some scenarios. Atleast make some skills avoid block or not affected by daze or something like that.

Yeah wont happen because that would mean actual work. In the leak they said it is more work to change traits, and guess what, almost no changes to weak, outdated traits either.

Sorry for the bad mood, but when you have this mood after every time you play... Guess what? You play less and less.

Edited November 3, 2023 by Loke.1429