what is the point of staff heal? it's too weak to make any sort of difference...like at all.

[Eddie.9143]

the healing from staff is a joke. it should heal for double, or even triple, when comparing it to specter's barrier application and shadowsquall heal. 

after doubling or tripling the heal value, it should heal your pet for DOUBLE the base value, also maybe it can grant allies 1sec of swiftness per cast?

at least this would make sense, your ally is either running towards you, or away from danger, and you can actually heal them and give them swiftness just while healing. 

 

I am just not seeing how 96 health every 1.25 seconds is saving or helping anyone. 

another idea, double or triple the healing, make the channel 2 seconds 5 pulses, and if you finish the channel 1 condition is removed from you and your target ally. 

 

Edited July 29, 2023 by Eddie.9143
idea

[Gotejjeken.1267]

You can't really isolate staff from Druid kit--it is balanced around all the other heals you can do there.  Even with Weaponmaster Training there is no other healer ranger spec so I don't think they will rebalance it around anything but Druid.

The auto is probably ok, and what they really need to work on is #2.  They could probably scale it up a little more, and I peronally would prefer that then buffing the auto because on both ranger and specter a primary target heal is annoying to use.  Practically everything else useful in the game is AoE, so I think it best to buff the wisp on the staff instead of the beam.  

[Beddo.1907]

The only purpose of Staff right now is panic-button-emergency-heal and a few mechanics, since Druid already has CA that can heal.
When outside of Druid, it would need to be a standalone healing source so it would need to be adjusted when added to core.
Overall the main reason for the numbers is probably CA and the fact that we heal pretty much passively.
I'd buff Healing Power scaling, reduce the base heal a bit if needed, so non support usage doesn't get out of hand and buff utility and boons.
 

11 hours ago, Eddie.9143 said:

I am just not seeing how 96 health every 1.25 seconds is saving or helping anyone. 

Btw it's 3 pulses so it would be 288 healing every 1.25s, saying just in case.

[Levetty.1279]

The same since day 1, to get through the Astral force gate so you can use celestial avatar. The weapon is useless.

[Mic.1897]

Druid healing is already great tbh

[Eddie.9143]

4 hours ago, Beddo.1907 said:

The only purpose of Staff right now is panic-button-emergency-heal and a few mechanics, since Druid already has CA that can heal.
When outside of Druid, it would need to be a standalone healing source so it would need to be adjusted when added to core.
Overall the main reason for the numbers is probably CA and the fact that we heal pretty much passively.
I'd buff Healing Power scaling, reduce the base heal a bit if needed, so non support usage doesn't get out of hand and buff utility and boons.
 

Btw it's 3 pulses so it would be 288 healing every 1.25s, saying just in case.

It's 3 pulses of 32. so 96.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

15 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

You can't really isolate staff from Druid kit--it is balanced around all the other heals you can do there.  Even with Weaponmaster Training there is no other healer ranger spec so I don't think they will rebalance it around anything but Druid.

The auto is probably ok, and what they really need to work on is #2.  They could probably scale it up a little more, and I peronally would prefer that then buffing the auto because on both ranger and specter a primary target heal is annoying to use.  Practically everything else useful in the game is AoE, so I think it best to buff the wisp on the staff instead of the beam.  

It’s the opposite actually. Staff 1 is the lowest healing potential ability on the weapon set, Staff 2 is the strongest healing potential. I did calculations on BIS heal Druid Build for WvW. 

Edited July 29, 2023 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Beddo.1907]

2 hours ago, Eddie.9143 said:

It's 3 pulses of 32. so 96.

No it's not.
Did you write a post about staff, without even knowing how it works?

[Eddie.9143]

59 minutes ago, Beddo.1907 said:

No it's not.
Did you write a post about staff, without even knowing how it works?

Maybe you're thinking wvw, I'm talking SPvP. Healing 32 - 3pulses.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

3 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

It’s the opposite actually. Staff 1 is the lowest healing potential ability on the weapon set, Staff 2 is the strongest healing potential. I did calculations on BIS heal Druid Build for WvW. 

I'd like to see numbers of Staff #2 vs. #3 into #5 for the burst heal.  

Although that's getting away from my entire point that they should just keep buffing Staff #2 and forget about the auto as single target heals are pointless in this game (and yes I know staff can affect multiple if they pass into the beam).  

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

On 7/28/2023 at 7:58 PM, Eddie.9143 said:

the healing from staff is a joke. it should heal for double, or even triple, when comparing it to specter's barrier application and shadowsquall heal. 

after doubling or tripling the heal value, it should heal your pet for DOUBLE the base value, also maybe it can grant allies 1sec of swiftness per cast?

at least this would make sense, your ally is either running towards you, or away from danger, and you can actually heal them and give them swiftness just while healing. 

 

I am just not seeing how 96 health every 1.25 seconds is saving or helping anyone. 

another idea, double or triple the healing, make the channel 2 seconds 5 pulses, and if you finish the channel 1 condition is removed from you and your target ally. 

 

Staff auto and Staff 2 can be quite potent support actually, when you get used to using it during the downtimes of your other CDs.

You have to setup the new keybinds for "target nearest ally" and "Target next ally" and you'll see why it's useful.

Also in wvw, it's quite strong in zergs. You can just keep say the commander targeted at all times and the channel from Staff 1 heals everyone it passes through to get to the commander, as example. When you add it all up, it's a lot of misc healing actually.

Again, they aren't something to spam all the time, just use those autos in the downtime of your other CDs when running Druid Support.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

7 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

I'd like to see numbers of Staff #2 vs. #3 into #5 for the burst heal.  

Although that's getting away from my entire point that they should just keep buffing Staff #2 and forget about the auto as single target heals are pointless in this game (and yes I know staff can affect multiple if they pass into the beam).  

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vD6AufXfWL-CdhLZ7KesZiApd6sU-czq5inqpJkfOPY/edit?usp=sharing

The calculation is called a "potential" and "efficacy" calculation. A potential, is the theoretical maximum amount of output something can do within a given period of time, for a realistic scenarios in a particular environment. It's akin to thinking about physics concepts like "the speed of light" being the maximum possible speed with which matter could ever travel in principle. This potentials calculations act as a reachable ceilings for such skills, and then one uses an "efficacy" calculation to compare how one actually performs in comparison to this ceiling. It's a very useful calculation for figuring out how far skills can be pushed, how skills can compare with one another in a build, and allows one to figure out priority rotations, based on that information. Crude example, is that if you have Skill A that has a potential of doing 1 million damage in 3 minutes, and another Skill B that has a potential of doing 200k damage in 3 minutes, than the potential of Skill A, behooves you to use it before skill B in a priority rotation. Skill A and Skill B might differ in how easy or difficult is to reach the potential...Skill A might be hard to land...Skill B might be easy to land...and so this difficulty in trying to reach the potential, is based on the performance of the player, which is the purpose of the efficacy calculation (a measure of how one performs in relation to the potential). These are far more useful metrics than comparing your performance, to that of other players.

You can click on the document to read the full thing, which goes into details but at a glance, for a WvW BIS Pure-Healing Druid and with a 3 minute engagement time:

Regeneration	760 x 180	136,281 per person 681,408 on 5 people 1,362,810 on 10 people	Note: Calculated with 124% Modifiers due to traits.
Windborne Notes	506 x 630	318,780
S1 – Solar Beam	1314 x 225	295,650
S2 – Astral Wisp	6000 x 27	162,000 per person 810,000 on 5 people	Note: Astral Wisp has no listed Target Cap. Needs Clarification.
S3 – Ancestral Grace	45,000 x 16	720,000
Celestial Form = 25sCD (7 uses per 3 minutes)
CA1 – Cosmic Ray	120000 x 7	840,000
CA3 – Lunar Impact	16,000 x 7	112,000
CA4 – Rejuvenating Tides	20,000 x 7	140,000
GOU – Glyph of Unity	96,000 x 7	672,000
GOA – Glyph of Alignment	65,460 x 7	458,220

It's important to stress that, these values are calculated for WvW using WvW modifiers...and should be treated as such. In PVE for instance, Staff 2 Astral Wisp is a .1 modifier rather than a .2 modifier. So the number in PVE for Staff 2 Astral Wisp is slashed in half (to 405,000) which makes it have slightly better potential than Staff 1 Solar Beam .  Additionally, All of these values were calculated with quickness and alacrity. Alacrity benefits skills with cooldowns, where skills that do not have cooldowns do not benefit... so if you were running around boon-less in PVE Staff 2 Astral Wisp would have even lower potential (25% less of that number) which puts it at almost exactly the same potential as Staff 1 Solar Beam (300,000). 

You asked about Staff 3 Ancestral Grace, coupled with blast finishing. If you are successfully blast finishing a water field on each cooldown, over a 3 minutes engagement using this build, would be 4200 x 5 x 16 = a +336,000 potential, for a total of 720,000+336,000 = 1,056,000 potential healing coming from that combo. In practice, pulling off successful blasts like this in WvW off cooldown is not that practical so such things are excluded from this calculation, but if you could control such mechanics consistently (like you can in a raid environment), you can see that such things have the potential to outclass Staff 1 Solar Beam by a significant margin reliably.

Something interesting to note is that regeneration is going to be your largest source of healing in a setting like WvW, where there is no cap (so in WvW can realistically effect up to what 50 or more players) Back of the envelope puts it somewhere at 7-8 million alone if you are able to place it in a way where it can effect the most players. Additional sources of regeneration (like from Healing Spring, traits and whatever else) would allow you to perma the boon on a reasonable sized number of people (between 10 - 20) so upwards of 10 million is possible from just this boon and making sure it's on your zerg, and typically... your ARCDPS will reflect this (You're highest healing output comes from regeneration). But what such a calculation also tells you is that, it is more important to place this field to effect the most players as possible, then it is to set it up to be blast finished.

Anyway I suppose I was a bit too hasty to say that Staff 2 Astral Wisp is better than Staff 1 Solar Beam, as this is only true for WvW and not for PVE where it's modifier is reduced in half. However, I still stand by the statement that Staff 1 Solar Beam, is very weak. I understand why it's so weak (Anet wants to encourage skillful pushing of buttons, rather than to simply spam one of them) so it might be justified in how weak it is right now over there. I also agree with you again for PVE, that Staff 2 Astral Wisp should be buffed there, at least to the same value as it is in WvW. There's no reason for Staff 2 Astral Wisp to be as weak as Staff 1 Solar Beam in PVE.

Hope this was useful.