Guild Wars 2

Since the buff to staff in the recent patch I’ve been playing with it more in dungeons. With the few tweaks, it has become so much more viable. I’m finding that it is replacing my scepter + focus/shield more and more in dungeons.

It works amazing when skipping trash. Speed buff AND line of warding while running? Yes please! Its uses have extended beyond running really fast to spending significant amount of time on my bar in battle. In fights where 1200 range is not required, I have been using it as filler between melee sessions on my AH hammer build. The stacks of might on everybody works amazing in almost any situation, it heals everybody AND it will bring your health up from half without any healing power. Its perfect when you need to leave melee to heal up + give ridiculous buffs for your next round of smashing not to mention to give a little more escaping power using the speed buff and line of warding to avoid being hit.

The only problem is that it is still very kitten beyond the 600 range auto-attack. The 2 skill and the 3 skill can be used at 1200 range but you just lose too much damage for it to be a viable range weapon. You also lose the defensive utility that is offered by the shield and focus 5 skills that are such important staples in guardian survivability.

These are just my feelings on the staff while in my dungeon runs (I’ve run staff in all dungeons including arah exp and fotm 30-35) and I am in no way suggesting what I said are the absolute truth. I want to know what other people are thinking about these changes and whether they believe that staves have a more prominent role in dungeons (and not just to skip trash). I also want to know because I’m working towards my second legendary (juggernaut was my first) and now I’m on the fence between flameseeker’s and bifrost because I’m beginning to love my staff more.

Staff is definitely great for skipping trash. The swiftness and line of warding are great, but that’s about it IMO. So many people worship the staff because of the #4 by itself or combined with AH, but I don’t consider it to be all that great since I take advantage of a lot of combo fields.

Instead of using the staff now I use a hammer and the stability consecration. By using hammer #2 combined with my traits, I can get off 9 stacks of might with field effects. On top of that, hammer has immobilize, an aoe effect similar to line of warding, and a knockback making it better at control than the staff.

Since I started doing this, the staff has been pretty useless to me. The absolutely pathetic DPS of this weapon makes it useless. There’s a better way to accomplish what the staff has to offer.

I agree that the staff by itself is a useless weapon. And i would never suggest using a staff by itself or as a main weapon. What I want to understand is the way that it can work with other weapons. Too many people forget that weapon swap is an active and important aspect of the game.

For example, yes I do what you do as well, I put up fire fields (or get an ele to do that for me in an organized group) and so I get 9-12 stacks of might with traits. But if I had started out with staff, hit empower (with the shortened cast time this is looking more promising) switched over to hammer and then did that combo and empowering might, my entire group now sits at 25 stacks of might for a good 8-10 seconds which is perfect now for a time warp to burn everything down. Now that sounds so much better than relying on hammer alone.

Edit: I can’t think of any other class that can stack so much might in such a small period of time by himself. It takes 4 warriors spamming for great justice and a Mesmer with the signet that transfers boons to do compete against that.

I would suggest the last and only tweak staff needs now is to increase Staff 1 range to 800 and increase the damage to the primary target by 50%, leaving the splash damage as is.

Or something along those lines to allow a somewhat better single target DPS and smoothing the ranged functionality.

The staff has 600 range because it can splash 5 targets. The Scepter has 1200 range and can only hit 1 for example.

It’s definitely a secondary weapon at heart and considering what else we have to play with, it’s a good weapon.

Staff is an amazing weapon, and IMO probably the best guardian weapon (after Hammer)

Skill 1 is excellent for triggering VoJ quickly and mowing paths.
Skill 2 is good damage at range with both a pass-thru heal and burst heal, and it’s on a nice cooldown. Great for pulling in conjunction with skill 5.
Skill 3 is your basic Guardian symbol. Nothing too special unless you trait into them, but the speed boost is nice. Also useful for damage stacking with skill 5.
Skill 4 is amazing. So much Might stacked AoE, and if you have a Mes in your party with Sig of Inspiration thats a full party max, quickly, and often. No one should ever be without max might. With AH trait and boosted healing power, this out performs some of our normal healing skills.
Skill 5 is awesome. Line ward is perfect crowd control and sets up tons of combo opportunity with everyone else.

I’ve always seen the staff as the grease weapon of choice to make any group more efficient. You won’t be slaying any dragons by yourself with it, but take it with a team and you can steamroll mountains.