Guild Wars 2

Why did they nerf it? Seemed very random. It would make sense if its damage was upped.

What an awful change to an already wacky weapon design… I shake my head every time I read profession update notes.

Yeah this is bad. I guess I’ll be using something else for Lake Doric.

Hopefully this will prevent most guards from just 1,1,1ing.

Gotta say, this was my biggest WTF in the patch notes by far.

“Wave of Wrath is overpowered and needs its range decreased” Said absolutely no-one that I’ve seen ever. Most people wanted it buffed or replaced entirely with a long-range attack (the second option being one I strenuously disagreed with). Furthermore, they’ve given absolutely no justification for it.

Even if there was, I could understand 450 or so, on the order of other cone attacks, but nerfing it down to 300 just seems overly extreme.

I was actually looking forward to trying a staff + axe/torch build I’d been theorycrafting for PoF. Not any more, I guess…

Let us never forget our faithful Staff Guardians, may they live on forever in our hearts.

I agree, this change was unwarranted.

Don’t worry everyone, spirit weapons will save us!

I endorse this thread, a change that no-one asked for and wasn’t OP at all.

Yeah, everything else what great. Dunno what they were thinking when they touched Staff 1.

But hey, even if it stays I haven’t used staff seriously in almost a year now.

They should increase the damage a bit to compensate at least.

RIP staff of looting.

LOL at all the Guards in here lamenting the demise of their “loot stick”. :-D

The staff nerf is awful. I just spent 250 gold to create a Guardian for WvW and now I don’t see myself playing it anymore.

I mainly pug so I don’t care about squad composition. Why would I waste time trying to tag enemies with a weak 300 range weapon when I can just play a Necromancer or Revenant instead?

Yah, this change is baffling.

The skill’s one and only advantage was hitting such a wide area that it let you hit enemies who were spread out at mid-range. That’s literally all it was good at.

Now, don’t get me wrong, that wasn’t a particularly good advantage in terms of combat. It got you good tagging, but that’s not really a positive for combat effectiveness, that’s a utility advantage at best. I’m not saying it was GOOD and that it shouldn’t have been changed at all.

But to change practically nothing about it except halving its range… that’s just removing the only thing it had going for it and giving it nothing in return. The wider arc is not helpful at all.

No one thought it was broken before. It was just stupidly designed, and still is, now even moreso.

Hexalot.8194:

LOL at all the Guards in here lamenting the demise of their “loot stick”. :-D

By your post history, you’re a WvW player and apart from the WvW forum, you appear to be most interested in thief and revenant…

So, from a WvW perspective… was there anything about staff in WvW that actually warranted this change? Because it’s been virtually unseen in PvE or sPvP for a while now. I’d genuinely like to know if there was an actual call that this was OP by anyone, anywhere, that justifies this, or whether it was purely a dartboard nerf.

Because this change has pretty much guaranteed it will never be used in any other mode, and even for WvW, mightstacking can be done by other means.

Now, if the damage had been raised to something like Lightning Whip levels, I could kind of understand it. But at the moment, it feels like ‘demise’ is an appropriate term. They’ve basically boonsmited it, but in all game modes, and as far as I could see, with no indication that it was causing a problem beforehand.

Think this is a very poor change too the staff is basically useless now and the nerf is completely unnecessary on such a weak attack. Either the size nerf needs to be revoked or damage needs to be buffed or we can just add the guardian’s staff to the pile of useless weapons.

Thustlewhumber.7416:

Hopefully this will prevent most guards from just 1,1,1ing.

Translated: “Oh no, most guardians aren’t doing what I want them to do!”

Logged on just to agree with OP, I ain’t even done readin’ patch notes; please undo the Guardian lootstick nerf. This change was completely “WTF” unwarranted on a seismic scale and a royal kick in the teeth for zero reason.

They only revert changes when the Ele community cries. Don’t even try. Abandon the game if you want to continue maining Guard or switch classes. I will abandon.

In the same boat as Zephyra, honestly I think this is such a terrible decision? Even if it did need reworking, this nerf is way too much!!! Please undo or rethink it!!! In my opinion if such a nerf is required then a less extremely drastic range decrease, perhaps 400/500 with a slight damage buff would make much more sense!

Adrenalin.5719:

They only revert changes when the Ele community cries. Don’t even try. Abandon the game if you want to continue maining Guard or switch classes. I will abandon.

And nothing of value was lost.

And for people who think this is good: No, you’re going to see even deadlier Guardians now. Staff kitten our DPS and generally was just used to farm kills. Since many Guardians are moving to hybrid DPS or full burn build….get ready for some hurt in WvW. Haha.

As for PvE, guard will finally be able to keep up with the zerg thanks to mounts. Axe will also have forward cleave making farming Halloween just as easy as before.

It’s time to leave staff behind. It was a good five years, but christ did it get boring.

If they didn’t like the old funcionally, then they should have rework this skill. This makes no sense to nerf like this way considering how low the damage is.

wtf anet… seriously? don’t fix whats broken kitten .

Hard to imagine any use at all for staff after this. I suppose it wasn’t quite bad enough so they had to come up with a fix for that.

Syktek.7912:

It’s time to leave staff behind. It was a good five years, but christ did it get boring.

Speak for yourself.

I can actually understand this nerf even though i think they should have reworked the skills instead, giving us a ranged option as a vanilla guard.

The combination of permeathing wrath, loot stick and passive VoJ is powerful and just imagine when you add in tome of justice and mantras.

The amount of medium ranged aoe burns would be silly. we are talking about like 15 stacks of ranged burning here.

But it was a very lazy move destroying one of the upsides of an already weak weapon.

Endless Soul.5178:

Syktek.7912:

It’s time to leave staff behind. It was a good five years, but christ did it get boring.

Speak for yourself.

It was a boring weapon. All it had was #1 and #3. The other three skills had absolutely no use in recent times because #2 loves going off in random directions to ‘compensate’ for the direction a player is heading. #4 has always been a joke since there’s a thousand sources of might during fights in WvW and even more in PvE. #5 is meant for PvP and WvW, except in PvP people will just walk around it and in WvW everyone has kitten near perma stab.

So yeah, it’s a boring weapon in need of a complete rework, not nerfs. Instead, now it’s just going to sit in people’s banks.

What I originally had to say about this earlier probably would have gotten me permabanned from the forums. Don’t let my careless attitude here make you think I support this change.

-

Point. If Anet was worried about us hitting things through gates they would have changed the skill completely. You can still hit siege through gates and you can still proc justice on said siege which will hit people further out. This change did nothing to stop burn guardians from deleting people on and near siege.

Endless Soul.5178:

Thustlewhumber.7416:

Hopefully this will prevent most guards from just 1,1,1ing.

Translated: “Oh no, most guardians aren’t doing what I want them to do!”

Nah, the actual translation is: " Wew, I hope people stop being kittened and actually play guardian like it was meant to be and not just spam 1 like mindless bots."

Hicci.8761:

Endless Soul.5178:

Thustlewhumber.7416:

Hopefully this will prevent most guards from just 1,1,1ing.

Translated: “Oh no, most guardians aren’t doing what I want them to do!”

Nah, the actual translation is: " Wew, I hope people stop being kittened and actually play guardian like it was meant to be and not just spam 1 like mindless bots."

So basically you think we should play guardian a certain way. So you want us to play how you think we should play.

Brutaly.6257:

I can actually understand this nerf even though i think they should have reworked the skills instead, giving us a ranged option as a vanilla guard.

The combination of permeathing wrath, loot stick and passive VoJ is powerful and just imagine when you add in tome of justice and mantras.

The amount of medium ranged aoe burns would be silly. we are talking about like 15 stacks of ranged burning here.

But it was a very lazy move destroying one of the upsides of an already weak weapon.

I agree with you, also Zealous Scepter now stacks might on non scepter weapons, a 600 range cone could be stacking mights pretty darn fast too….granted once Anet gets permeathing wrath and zealous scepter working together correctly lol

>all the other staff skills got a buff.

zealex.9410:

>all the other staff skills got a buff.

All the other staff skills are useless in the mode’s they’re intended for outside of #3.

Roller.9327:

I agree with you, also Zealous Scepter now stacks might on non scepter weapons, a 600 range cone could be stacking mights pretty darn fast too….granted once Anet gets permeathing wrath and zealous scepter working together correctly lol

Not sure about this one.

Permeating Wrath might be bugged with Zealous Sceptre, or maybe an oversight.

Not tried it with Staff yet, but when attempting to use Permeating Wrath and Zealous Sceptre on Greatsword in PvE, I got zero stacks of might from the usual Symbol + Whirling Wrath combo.

When I untraited Permeating Wrath and picked a different trait, Symbol + Whirling Wrath stacked a good number of might with the Zealous Sceptre Trait as you might expect.

It could just be an outlier, but I think it’s probably the way it’s coded and as a result Zealous Sceptre might not stack Might when you have Permeating Wrath trait with any weapon but Sceptre (which it still did before so I assume maybe it still does?).

Other people will have to test and verify if it’s just a Greatsword + Permeating Wrath + Zealous Sceptre thing, or if the bug/oversight affects more weapons with the trait combo (or rather, fails to affect).

Might be different from Dragonhunter also, only tried on core Guardian so far.

TLDR; Zealous Sceptre only seems to stack Might on Justice procs if you don’t take Permeating Wrath for whatever other weapon you are using,

so staff now is a “melee range” front wall skill? lmao

Note: there are some good changes on guard but the ones that make no sense, makes this patch doubtfull.

I find it humorous that people lost their loot stick, but personally I always thought it was completely useless and didn’t care about the farming aspect. I always wanted it to do something supportive at range, but 0 divided by 2 is still 0 to me, so I’m indifferent.

Unskilled-Lazy-Suck Guards = How dare you touch my LOOT STICK!

Fivona.5061:

Unskilled-Lazy-Suck Guards = How dare you touch my LOOT STICK!

Perhaps, but the staff did not offer much else as a selling point apart from the quickness symbol. It would be nice if the Guardian Staff actually had a more defined playstyle like the druid staff.

Fashion Mage.3712:

I find it humorous that people lost their loot stick, but personally I always thought it was completely useless and didn’t care about the farming aspect. I always wanted it to do something supportive at range, but 0 divided by 2 is still 0 to me, so I’m indifferent.

Well i do agree but making what is useless more useless, sounds like a typical change for guardian class.

Fivona.5061:

Unskilled-Lazy-Suck Guards = How dare you touch my LOOT STICK!

More like people who love their class don’t want a completely useless weapon and less viable variability. I don’t mind removing the “lootstick” nature of the staff but to leave it in this sorry state is such a waste. If it’s supposed to be a full support weapon then it needs a complete revamp, I personally would love a better option to support as Guardian. If it’s not going to receive that which lets be honest it most likely won’t, then this nerf was too heavy handed and the weapon will barely be used for anything that isn’t speed buff. I think even just a completely new long range auto attack would be great if the aoe is such an overpowered broken mess which it never was.

Fivona.5061:

Unskilled-Lazy-Suck Guards = How dare you touch my LOOT STICK!

pve guimmicker spoted

If it is meant to be frontline support weapon, then why not make it a melee-wielded staff (e.g., Daredevil, Revenant) that also provides some minor heals in its 1 skill, possibly giving skill 1 a skill-chain?

But as it is, I’m not entirely sure how this new guardian staff is meant to be used.

Genesis.8572:

If it is meant to be frontline support weapon, then why not make it a melee-wielded staff (e.g., Daredevil, Revenant) that also provides some minor heals in its 1 skill, possibly giving skill 1 a skill-chain?

But as it is, I’m not entirely sure how this new guardian staff is meant to be used.

I don’t know how it’s meant to be used either : / and tbh I don’t know if whoever “balanced” it does, they can’t seem to decide if they want it melee or ranged. Not meaning to insult anyone or their work I still just find this change to be so shockingly bad and unwarranted. Still my personal preference would be range with a bit of flash to the animations but well, anything would be better than this. Though I still admit a toned down version of this nerf with a bit of damage compensation wouldn’t be the end of the world lol, just 300 range is so drastic and pretty much melee anyway.

i never used staff cause it was bad and now its more worse. They should nerf tagging from 5 ppl to 3 and not the range. but again we are guardians we get nerf every patch so why not this.

I literally couldn’t care less about the staff #1 nerf. It’s a boring weapon and it’s other mechanics remain the same, better even. People are quick to whine whenever their favorite class is nerfed even so slightly. So quick in fact that they don’t even realise how big the buffs were to the whole class in comparison. Frankly, I’m enjoying watching you people get kitten over this.

This balance team… good lawdy. What other genius ideas will they think of next?

Hicci.8761:

I literally couldn’t care less about the staff #1 nerf. It’s a boring weapon and it’s other mechanics remain the same, better even. People are quick to whine whenever their favorite class is nerfed even so slightly. So quick in fact that they don’t even realise how big the buffs were to the whole class in comparison. Frankly, I’m enjoying watching you people get kitten over this.

The problem with this particular nerf is that it removed an entire build option from wvw.

I couldnt care less about loot and stuff but effectively killing the best/only competitive condition build the vanilla guard has in zergs is a step in the wrong direction.

Sure we got buffs but to be honest none of them actually brought signets or SW back into the game, at least not for pvp and wvw.

There is no reason to use radiance or zeal in any form of competitive build in wvw or pvp so buffing stuff in those lines is useless. The irony is that nerfing wave of wrath actually even more reduced the usage of radiance.

20% of 0 is still 0

Hicci.8761:

I literally couldn’t care less about the staff #1 nerf. It’s a boring weapon and it’s other mechanics remain the same, better even. People are quick to whine whenever their favorite class is nerfed even so slightly. So quick in fact that they don’t even realise how big the buffs were to the whole class in comparison. Frankly, I’m enjoying watching you people get kitten over this.

Nice to know constructive criticism = whining or did you not just not read any of the posts in your amusement? The other buffs don’t change this nerf being misguided or the staff itself being useless in pve, anyway I hope that something gets changed if not a return/more sensible nerf a new 1 skill or a rework entirely to make the staff more interesting on Guardian or at the very least a little bit useful : ) Also my favourite class is Mesmer

I don’t understand the purpose of the change…..totally baffled. Please revert it back.