Currently I have a love-hate relationship with the staff. Some aspects of it are really good some of the time, and others are just awful all-around and make me not want to use it. Here are my thoughts. I’d appreciate feedback.
General
The staff is intended as a support weapon, and I have no quarrel with that. However, it doesn’t support well. The support it offers is almost exclusively offensive in nature, but, the lack of offense of the staff itself, combined with channels on two major abilities greatly detracts from this. The abilities tend to be extremely situational and one-dimensional (they only have one function). To contrast, Flashing Blade on the sword can be used as a gap closer or a blind, which allows it to be used in more situations and presents the player with a choice in some. Lastly, and I feel this is the biggest detractor, only the longer cooldown abilities feel useful, which makes the staff feel like a “cooldown stick” rather than a weapon you’d want to keep out.
#1 Wave of Wrath
I find this ability absolutely useless. And when your weapon’s default attack feels useless, it has a huge negative impact on the weapon as a whole. What makes it bad is the terrible damage combined with the short range. If the staff is intended as offensive support, I would expect slightly higher damage to compensate for the increased danger. Conversely if the range was longer, it could justify the low damage. It seems it was balanced around the fact that it can hit 5 targets in a cone, which is often not the case.
#2 Orb of Light / Flash of Light
Ignoring the terrain collision bugs (including it sometimes not resetting the chain when it doesn’t collide), it’s an okay ability. But with such a short cooldown, it feels awkward – almost like it should be the auto-attack ability. The slow speed makes it impossible to hit anything that moves if you’re at the max range. In comparison, scepter #1 has a much higher attack speed, no cooldown, and faster travel time.
#3 Symbol of Swiftness
Aside from bugs (sometimes doesn’t add duration or doesn’t apply at all), it’s great. Swiftness by itself is offensive and defensive; it gives secondary uses of ranged area damage and a light combo field.
#4 Empowering Might
Seems great in theory, but has issues in practice. You’ll only really care about might when you want to do damage, which is generally an offensive scenario. However, that’s not so bad since 420 power and condition damage is pretty good. The problem is that in an offensive scenario and at medium range (I believe all boon abilities have a 600 range limit), the self-root makes you a sitting duck in PvP and many PvE situations. It’s an okay risk/reward, though I think the risk is a bit much for the reward.
#5 Line of Warding
Works decently in PvE because NPCs are too dumb to go around and will constantly run into it and be knocked down. However, stability, which most champions and some dungeon mobs have innately, renders its primary purpose completely useless. The secondary of a light field is still there at least. The cast time makes it hard to use while advancing or retreating because by the time it actually goes off, your targets have moved 600 range or more. In a retreat, that means you’ll be targeted and nuked down. In an advance, that means you need to be nearly on top of them in the first place.
Summary
I’ve tried staff in zones, dungeons, and WvW. For zones, it’s only useful for swiftness. The damage is too pitiful to do anything else with. For dungeons, again the pitiful damage and no support on short cooldown abilities makes me not want to use it. I’ll pull, throw down the Line of Warding (though only on trash since it doesn’t work on most bosses), empower, then weapon swap while it empower is on cooldown. Swiftness isn’t that great for dungeons and there’s little benefit to using the first two abilities over other weapons. WvW feels the same as dungeons, except swiftness is immensely powerful. The first two abilities still feel useless though.
