Guild Wars 2

Why does the staff often fall flat in PvP?

First off, we need to seperate the staff into S/TPvP and WvW sections in order to compare the two and find weaknesses and strengths in its current form, and potential balancing ideas there might be from the playerbase.

Lets keep the tone civil, and be constructive.

The skills
While a staff elementalist may be fine in certain aspects of WvW due to having the opportunity to hide in greater numbers, thereby avoiding being targeted, it is a different story in S/TPvP, where opponents can close the gap between you and them quickly.

1. What do you think is lacking in WvW?
2. What do you think is lacking in S/TPvP?
3. Keep in mind that options need to work for both scenarios, including PvE.

To me, the problem with staff in S/TPvP is a mixture of things, which you all have to consider.

Low base health and armor. This in combination with lack of defensive skills (except Magnetic Aura, which CD is a tad excessive for the only personal defense you have) forces you into using cantrips for surival, thereby leaving out gravely needed instant damage potential that arcane utility skills could bestow upon you, along with important finishers.

All the above, combined with rather slow animation and cast time makes landing skills harder which also doesn’t occur as often due to the pressure of avoiding damage. 3/4 of a second for an auto attack is quite a lot (Fire: 1 sec, the others: 3/4 sec cast time).

The real problem of the offensive skill set as I see it, is that there are too many single hit damage skills that have an excessive cast time. Most people would likely consider Lava Font and Meteor Shower to be the best of the bunch. Why? Because you cast it once, and it triggers several hits over time, albeit in one place. There is a severe lack of single/AoE target/s damage skills like Grasping Earth and Cone of Cold.

When you inevitably take damage, you will be forced to use ground healing skills. You can manage to dance about in Healing Rain, but you are limiting your movement, which is ESSENTIAL for someone that relies on keeping distance. Rather odd staff lacks mobility this much. In TPvP (protecting a small area) and WvW (behind allies) group fights it might not be as big a problem, admittedly.

My ideas:
Add one more defensive skill. For instance, swap Unsteady Ground out with a skill that allows you to delve underground (range 900 or 1200) and appear at another place, similar to Lightning Flash. If earth attunement is a bad choice, you could replace Burning Retreat with a skill that covers an area in an ash cloud, which would work similarly to Murky Water for instance, but with a ticking damage inside of it.

Or, lower the CD of Magnetic Aura a bit. Perhaps 20 secs instead of 30.

Change a few spells to have progressive damage like Grasping Earth/Cone of Cold. Make one or two single target skills in that fashion (not necessarily the same).

Lower cast time of certain skills and animations, or increase the damage of skills that could benefit from a boost, making the slow cast time worth it.

What bothers you with playing staff in PvP? Any solutions to it? I know balancing isn’t easy, but we can try to pinpoint the underlying problems that takes away from the fun of being a staff elementalist, and add ideas to the already great pool that exists… somewhere.

I honestly don’t know what gear is required for staff to do decent damage. I have an invaders set, and a knights set. Staff is zerkers with a superior fire rune in it. The crits are all under 3k and hit 5 targets. If you are solo, you lose. No clue what to use for untilities. I remember before they nerfed AoEs I was having a blast with just auto-attack in Air attunement. Now I just use it to kill trebs and mortars. That’s it.

I feel that all of the spells are too slow unless you put 30 in arcana to use them all. Ideally you would want to just spam fire forever on siege and aoes. But you have to use all the attunements to set up combo fields.

The staff eles I see doing well are the ones who call out what they’re doing, with blast finishers, and have teammates who know to stand in the heals, and combo off of the, err, combo fields.

Overall I think the staff is a fairly strong weapon, it’s just not well suited for strategic play like in sPvP or smaller scale fights because of the extreme lack of direct damage and all the ground targeted AE’s with long trigger times.

The first thing to do would be to increase the trigger times on things like Earth2 and Water2. There’s no reason for a 2 second delay in damage when these spells cast. 1 second seems like plenty if not too long.

The next problem I have with staff is how it has no real direct damage options other than auto attack. Air2 has such a long cast time it’s not really the kind of burst I’m looking for. And I think that’s the only thing that isn’t ground based or an auto attack that does upfront damage, right? That’s a huge issue for smaller scale battles. I would make Fire2 do instant damage and if it crits, it leaves behind the lava font. I’d like to see Fire3 do up front damage to the target and the AE DOT to people around them.

Now as for defense and such, I agree it’s also very lacking for staff and relies too heavily on cantrips (which are quite powerful, don’t get me wrong). I’d like to see Magnetic Aura have a second use where it knocks everyone around you away and knocked down. I’d like to see earth5 to have a faster travel time so it can actually hit something. Would also be nice if the air5 ability could be collapsed pulling people toward the middle of it kind of like how the mesmer ability works.

Aside from that, I think just increasing the staff projectile speed to match that of bows and rifles will help bring out the damage we’re expecting from staff as right now I’d say 1 in 3 shots probably miss (unless it’s earth where about 4 out of 5 shots miss).

1. Faster projectile speed.

2. Start damage with animation on some abilities instead of after.

All the AE’s can be easily avoided, meteor shower is too unpredictable (but enhancing it will cause people to cry… dunno why), and our projectiles move far too slow and most can be easily avoided.

Oh, and absolutely do not change static field. It is the best ability a staff ele has.

I agree that the staff could use some tweaks to make it more competitive. Additional damage and slightly faster projectiles/attacks would be nice, but I’m not sure they’re necessary. The staff is definitely more oriented for group play, so running around solo in s/tPvP isn’t exactly optimal. I say this because staff provides a lot of fields which other classes simply can’t access. In order to get the most of our fields, it helps to run around with someone who can execute a lot of finishers (thieves, warriors, etc.).

I’m not sure I’d want Unsteady Ground replaced. It’s a very good skill to combine with Arcane Power and the trait Elemental Surge for (base) 5 seconds of immobilize and after, 5 seconds of cripple. The only thing I’d wish is that instead of a line AoE it was a circular AoE.

Burning Retreat is another good defensive skill, imo. I find it invaluable in the field and wouldn’t want it removed. After all, it’s a free dodge that can be used to put distance between you and your target and can even be used while immobilized to avoid major damage.

Staff has a fair amount of CC for keeping enemies in our fields (even without Elemental Surge), though I have the worst time trying to land Gust. I can only get it to land on enemies that are still, moving directly towards or away from me, or are in point blank range.