Guild Wars 2

I wanted to become familiar with all of the damage the staff skills
have so I headed over to the Mists and equipped the berserker amulet.
My crit/crit damage is much lower with that than my berserker set, but
I at least wanted to get an idea of damage.

I was shocked that Ice Spike had the highest initial burst of any of my staff abilities.
I had no idea it was that good. The crits on it vs heavy armor was 4000-4400,
which was higher than Meteor Storm crits. Considering the fact that
Ice Spike adds 5 stacks of vulnerabilty, your chain casting continues to do more.

After seeing this, I plan on using this ALLOT more than previously. Thought I would
post in case other staff users were missing the potential of the skill.

That was my favourite when i do 7/24 WvW with glass cannon spec…

It’s a really good skill and even in PvE high end areas it’s one of the skills I always try to use at least twice on an enemy.

In PvP though, it’s like eruption, it’s good—but only if it can hit someone. If it doesn’t hit, which is a large amount of the time (dodging), it’s mostly used as a deterrent to prevent enemies from advancing.

To be honest, I wouldn’t mind a small reduction in the detonation times for Ice Spike and Eruption such as a .25 second reduction. Being able to hit someone (most of the time) with Eruption and Ice Spike in PvP would be nice.

AoEing zergs with eruption, magnetic aura, ice spike, lava font, meteor shower, lava font, followed by fireball spam got me a lot of bags in wvw ^.^

I wouldn’t want to fight a competent person 1v1 on level ground with a staff, but there’s no denying that it is a godly zerg weapon.

Chill them first, or immobilize them, then drop the spike. I absolutely love that skill, if you chain it after eruption, they both go at approx. the same time, really nice damage.

You can aswell cycle through water to drop it when doing dps chains, no reason not to if you´re not being thretened at the moment. But staying in water for cooldown and recast is not efficient, unless your other attunements are on cooldown.

As for actualy hitting with it, rune of earth is rather nice, as is starting with earth skill 5.

Eruption>Ice Spike>Ice Field>Lightning surge then boom!

TwoBit.5903:

Eruption>Ice Spike>Ice Field>Lightning surge then boom!

Eruption>Magnetic wave>icespike>frozen ground>lavafont>signet of earth>lafafont etc.

I Find lightning surge lacking in damage and cast time.

I havnt had a problem hitting people with it, mainly while defending a
keep. When there are 20+ people outside the gate, your bound to hit
5 (since most dont pay attention).

Eruption > Shockwave (Immobilize and bleed) > Meteor Storm > Frozen
Ground > Ice Spike

I like doing Frozen Ground after Meteor Storm since the former is too much
of a warning for them. As soon as the storm starts coming in, the slow is already
up.

Strang.8170:

TwoBit.5903:

Eruption>Ice Spike>Ice Field>Lightning surge then boom!

Eruption>Magnetic wave>icespike>frozen ground>lavafont>signet of earth>lafafont etc.

I Find lightning surge lacking in damage and cast time.

You can cancel out of it via attunement swap or dodgerolling and it’ll still go off. I find it to be great damage that way.

TwoBit.5903:

Strang.8170:

TwoBit.5903:

Eruption>Ice Spike>Ice Field>Lightning surge then boom!

Eruption>Magnetic wave>icespike>frozen ground>lavafont>signet of earth>lafafont etc.

I Find lightning surge lacking in damage and cast time.

You can cancel out of it via attunement swap or dodgerolling and it’ll still go off. I find it to be great damage that way.

Really o_O, well aguess it shoudn´t surprise as many other skills suffer of the same bug…i wouldn´t expect it to stay in too long thouhg.

Wikki states that Ice Spike can be cancelled and it will still go off. This is
not true when you test it out. If you cancel the casting, the spike will show
dropping but do zero damage.

All long cast skills do that… the animation will finish, but no damage will be applied.

I’ve always enjoyed it and hardly cycle through Water Attunement without casting it; it’s quite convenient despite the delay because its actual casting time is rather short.

TwoBit.5903:

Strang.8170:

TwoBit.5903:

Eruption>Ice Spike>Ice Field>Lightning surge then boom!

Eruption>Magnetic wave>icespike>frozen ground>lavafont>signet of earth>lafafont etc.

I Find lightning surge lacking in damage and cast time.

You can cancel out of it via attunement swap or dodgerolling and it’ll still go off. I find it to be great damage that way.

Info of the day. Thanks!
Now I really have no excuse anymore to not read up on every single Ele skill on the Wiki to learn secrets :p

Ice Spike is a very solid attack. Its hard to use it too much as a damage-dealing attack since its in Water attune, which is definately not a damage dealing attunement, but its nice to have Ice Spike around to do some damage while in Water, and I definately make sure to use IS any time I’m cycling through water for stuff like Frozen Ground.

The delay is still a bit annoying, but since its coupled with an attune with a nice AoE Chill and since Ice Spike itself has a pretty good area, its really not THAT bad. And the delay actually makes it a good combat initiator (in PvE), since you can get it ready without aggroing enemies.

I like to do Eruption > Ice Spike > Frozen Ground > Lava Font to start off combat when I’m using staff. Que’s up a nice burst of damage right at the start.