Guild Wars 2

Greetings everyone.

I guess we’ve all noticed that ANet has plans about chaning the GS a bit for making it more viable. However I feel the staff needs that kind of buff MUCH more.

I really love the staff gameplay, but let’s face it: As much as I enjoy the staff, except for zerg champions and evasion, it’s pretty useless.

Lets talk about the skills:

Winds of Chaos

• extremly low power damage
• ok conditions
• bounce
• slow attack speed
• weak buffs

I think winds of chaos either needs a power increase to be viable or simply increase the duration of buffs and give him an additional bounce. This can escale quickly due the clones, so I suggest a power buff. As a condition weapon the aa is great.

Phase Retread

• perfect!

nothing to change!

iWarlock

• great damage
• may hit like a train with conditions applied
• misses like allways …

Awesome phantasm in theory, crappy in practice. I like the idea and in PvE its even viable against bosses. However the projectile is too low, cannot fly over cliffs and misses like 99% against moving targets. He aims where one is walking to, if a player then changes the direction he misses completly.

I really recommend either a very fast projectile or a homing slow projectile. It’s easy to dodge in pvp / wvw, same as iSwordsman or iZerker. I do not think that’s “op”.

Chaos Armor

• weak buffs and conditions
• ultra long cd for what it offers
• icd ruins it

Once upon a time, it was a good skill. Granted protection upon activation and had no icd. You didn’t want to hit anyone with a CA. Now days it feels like “look at my aura! looks great … yea that’s it”. Noone likes chaos fields cuz of this, not in pve and not in wvw.

I recomment to change the skill and let it work like standing in a chaos storm. You gain over it’s duration permanently random boons, protection, vigor, regen and upon activation you shall be blesses by swiftness. Mesmers really need it. The swiftness only appears with this skill, the other changes also with combo field CA. And remove the icd again … really …

Chaos Storm

• awesome animation
• best sound of all skills
• almost no damage
• tiny conditions
• good daze
• good boons

I really like the chaos storm. But it has lost a lot of its glory since the aegis has been randomized. Once the chaos storm ALLWAYS granted aegis upon activation to anyone inside. You were able to time it and counter attacks. The last boon also allways was aegis. The conditions applied by CS are just decoration right ANet? I mean … really … like 1 sec poison or chill would disturb you even a tiny little bit …

I recommend to give it back it’s aegis upon activation and as the last buff. However REMOVE the chance of aegis being optained between. It would be op. If it feels too strong even remove the aegis as last buff too. However being able to grant timed aegis is pretty decent and would greatly buff the staff again.
I also recommend to buff the power damage if hit by CS multiple times. It would buff the damage in PvE mainly, since ppl can leave the field in WvW or PvP, however granting you some combos with roots etc.
The daze is strong enough imo. However I would let the CS apply all conditions at the same time for 1 sec. You should not feel much if you leave the CS, however one should not like to fight in a CS.
Maybe even increase its CD a bit.

I may have overreacted a bit at some points but that’s probably just because I really love the playstyle of the staff however I think it’s an exremly weak weapon right now. *I do not wish for all the buffs ofc!" Means if you would change the CS like this, I agree with a low dmg defensive weapon, requiring no buffs on auto. Vice versa.

I just think I’m not the only one here who KNOWS that the staff is in a bad position right now. Since release it has only been nerfed and never buffed. However it needs buffs, it needs love again, it needs to become …

VIABLE again.

Greez

I agree staff needs some.. wait no.. quite a lot rework too. But mostly small things to be changed.
1. The auto attack.
No more extra bounces needed imo. The problem mainly with this is the (still) bugged I-elaticity. If that gets fixed #1 should be more than fine. Also if it wont be fixed then I prefer to see a 25-50% increase in the duration of boons.

2. As said no changes needed, great skill.

3. I-warlock is like, so super bad designed. It hits quite hard, yes woho, and then what? Why even let it hit so hard if it’s so unreliable? Decrease the damage by 10% and increase the velocity by 100%. Should fix most problems with the phantasm.

4. This is like the wierdest thing of the weapon. Kinda my issues summed up:
1. The cooldown is way too high
2. Chaos armor is no aura
3. It replaces a skill that could be a 2nd aoe or interrupt, but instead it’s an armor that can be applied with the combo 5+2 already.
4. It’s really weak, especially after the BB nerf.

5. Chaos armor is way too much RNG. They should remove the rng and apply every time on a tick the same effect. With this I don’t mean every tick has to be the same effect. For example: 1st tick- aegis, 2nd tick- swiftness, 3rd tick- retal, etc etc.
Same would go for Chaos storm. Let the 1st, 3rd and 5th tick do a daze and for every tick it should do 1 condition. Not like it’s now, whereas it’s a daze or a condition.

Thx for your feedback. Also would like to hear other voices, especially Pyro and Chaos. Oh yea, and maybe a statement from ANet? :S

I wished the number of applied conditions by WoC would scale with the number of active staff clones (not warlock), like

no clone: Burning (30%), Chill (70%)
one clone: Burning (50%), Bleeding (30%), Chill (20%)
two clones: Burning (30%), Bleeding (30%), Vulnerability (20%), Chill (20%)
three clones: Burning (20%), Bleeding (20%), Vulnerability (20%), Chill (20%), Confusion (20%)

to make non-shatter builds more viable, to put in more tactical options and to allow a staff Mesmer with no clones to run away by slowing an opponent down.
Or to mix different clones/phantasms. Eg. I summon the iBerserker but to push its damage I need two more staff clones for Vulnerability. In a party with eg. another phantasm Mesmer I can decide to support his iWarlocks with three clones and 5 conditions or rely on conditions applied by other party members and summon phantasms myself.

I don’t feel the need to push the direct damage output of WoC, as it’s primarily a condi attack with possibly three clones spamming it too.

Meh. I kinda like what the staff does. I think it needs larger-than-this changes to the game to become better, I wouldn’t work on the staff directly. Specifically:

• Conditions need to be viable. Then the whole AA-issue disappears, too.
• The scaling-extremely need to be brought down. This would automatically improve Staff AA for Power-builds, too. Significantly so.
• Conditions / Boons as a whole should be less frequent but more powerful. If applied game-wide, this would give a lot of juice to Staff 4 and 5, due to the potential for random and quite potent conditions/boons.
• I’m not sure I’m happy with Clones doing more than look like use. I’d rather merge that power into the base weapons.

In my opinion the auto attack needs to be changed. It is too slow and unreliable to justify the long cast time and very slow projectile speed. Staff auto attacks should be more like the trident auto attacks, which ironically is probably the coolest mesmer weapon.

Warlock needs to be changed. It does nothing for condition mesmers, never worth casting it unless you plan on shattering it immediately. A staff clone will do much more damage than this phantasm. In power builds it can hit very hard, but the projectile is a complete joke that most people will evade without even knowing it or trying. If Anet wants power builds to still have some synergy with the staff they should make the auto attack scale better with power, and can the warlock in its current state.

Yeah Chaos Armor needs to be reverted back to what it used to be or the skill needs changing all together.

Two simple fixes would make staff viable:

- increase projectile speed (autoattack and iWarlock projectile, no more misses on moving targets please)

- fix Illusionary Elasticity (as promised already, it should work for staff clones too)

That’s all.

Plz take in mind that we talk about PvE aswell PvP.

Staff is pretty much my favorite weapon, and while I agree it needs a couple buffs, I don’t think they need to be very drastic.

- WINDS OF CHAOS
WoC has essentially 0 pressure. There’s almost no situation where you’d spam the auto like you would for any other weapon (even scepter auto gets more play). The boons are often forgettable, and the damage is lackluster for a single-target ability

• Increase projectile speed by 30-50%
• Increase damage by 50-75%
• Increase boon duration by 2 seconds.
• Remove Vulnerability proc.
• Potential rework: Instead of bouncing, Winds of Chaos hits in an AoE similar to Elementalist’s Fire Staff autoattack.

- PHASE RETREAT
This skill is awesome

- iWARLOCK
iWarlock’s damage is good, attack rate is good, but it’s accuracy is attrocious

• Give it similar aiming mechanics as iDisenchanter.

- CHAOS ARMOR
Chaos Armor as a combo field is almost excellent, but as a standalone weapon skill it’s extremely lackluster.

• Make Staff 4 Chaos Armor offers instant 5s Protection.
• Reduce cooldown to 30s
• Increase random Protection duration by 2 seconds

- CHAOS STORM
Chaos Storm kinda rocks, but omg dat cooldown.

• Reduce cooldown to 30s

One thing I wanna comment on, Chaos Storm does pretty good damage when all six pulses hit. Not including the potential to proc Halting Strike or Fire/Air sigils, Chaos Storm hits for about more or less 700 per pulse in a zerk build, and it’s not uncommon to land 3k-4k damage.

The boons/conditions in chaos storm aren’t meant to last longer than the field’s duration. C-Storm’s Poison/Weakness/Chill/Aegis/Retaliation are meant to make it very difficult for opponents to harm you/defend themselves while you and they are inside the field, especially combined with Chaos Armor’s Protection/Swiftness/Blind/Cripple.

1) Too slow and need to be in range to not lose the boon. The winds of chaos is completely lost in any group fight. Damage is terrible in comparison to Ele and Nec. Damage is even worse in comparison to Guardian loot stick which AA do more damage in a huge AoE. (I know, apples and oranges, but still)

2) It’s ok.

3) Slow targeting and terrible aim, same problem as iMage and iDesenchanter.

4) Redundant and in long cooldown.

5) Too RGN and long cooldown. Daze is random, then Stun is also random. In order to interrupt, you need someone to cast something, in the Chaos Storm, which is in the domain of random, again.

And now you – ANet !

I’m sorry but is there a link to where they talked about GS changes? I would like to read what they’re saying.

+1 For staff.

Staff is by far my favorite Mesmer weapon to play, PVE DPS on it though is not so great..

Snoxx.7943:

- increase projectile speed (autoattack and iWarlock projectile, no more misses on moving targets please)

I sense a new Grandmaster trait in Inspiration coming.

Kirito.9207:

I’m sorry but is there a link to where they talked about GS changes? I would like to read what they’re saying.

+1 For staff.

Staff is by far my favorite Mesmer weapon to play, PVE DPS on it though is not so great..

Would also like to know where this is. Could someone in the know please give a link?

Warlock is Crap, maybe change its attack to AoE to grant random conditions.

CS is a love of mine but CD is too high.

Chaos Armor high cd also, revert it back to it was before or make it an aura.

Phase retreat is very good and its on a low CD

I think this is the post the OP was talking about.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Discussion-Mind-Stab-Rework

Yeah, I agree with Chaos Armor needing to be buffed.

Overall, it’s still a fine weapon, but the projectile speed of everything needs to be buffed slightly so it’s not so ridiculously slow.

Kirito.9207:

I think this is the post the OP was talking about.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Discussion-Mind-Stab-Rework

Ah ok thanks Kirito…never would have found that.

Perhaps exchange Chaos Armor with another small field that buffs protection+aegis and can be comboed to give the Chaos Armor effect.
It would give a good option for support mesmer to have a real support skill without RNG.

And shorten the CD of chaos storm please… they could even shorten the storm by one tick or something. Don’t let me only #1 all the time…

Anyone else have this wish that Illusory Elasticity should be baseline for staff, somehow? Whenever I use it, i feel like #1 works -so- much better, but that it sits where it does is such a huge build limiter. And I like the idea of increasing its speed, although I think mesmer staff is more of a melee/medium range weapon than range as it is… it works best there anyway.

I really don’t have any other issues with staff, I think it’s a great weapon otherwise.

Staff is the go to Condition weapon and nearly the go to AoE weapon. Power damage isn’t it’s purpose, however the condition damage(mainly their durations) isn’t enough. I like it how it is though I agree Warlock’s Aim needs to be fixed, the Chaos Armor cast should give initial protection and I believe they should add Torment to Chaos Armors conditions. I like Vuln because it works well with Warlock.

Dracatis.1908:

Staff is the go to Condition weapon and nearly the go to AoE weapon. Power damage isn’t it’s purpose, however the condition damage(mainly their durations) isn’t enough.

I don’t believe Staff is only a Condition weapon. If you gear in power, get runes of rage and use IE, well your Winds of Chaos can do some pretty nice damage. iLock get buffs from number of conditions, but it’s still a power oriented phantasm. Chaos Storm is more a CC/Support spell that goes well with power traits (ex : Halting Strike).

IMO, Staff is the most ’’mesmerish’’ weapon we have. It’s annoying, it uses CC, it uses movement/mobility/confusion, but it doesn’t do much damage. Like mesmers were in GW1.

Staff is fine as a weapon. Its completely viable in certain builds. I use staff for Shatter and that baby has saved my kitten too many times to count. Sure, like all weapons, it has its glitches/quirks/underpowered stuff. But its 100% viable.

Let’s break down why:

1. Auto attack. Adds boons, applies conditions. A bit underwhelming but it has to be since your clones will apply the same conditions/boons. Its fine as is, just fix I-elasticity.

2. Perfection. Nothing else to say. It does what it does exceptionally well.

3. A great phantasm, aside from its wonky pathing on its attack. To buff it would be insane considering the strong damage potential it already has.

4. A good skill. Yes, it has been nerfed. Yes it only procs 1 per second. I’d prefer it to be 1 per 1/2 but whatever. It could ditch swiftness/confusion I guess. The cripple and blind are very, very good.

5. A control skill. All of its harmful effects affect the way the enemy can play. Chill reduces movement and impairs skill usage. Cripple hinders movement. Daze stops skill usage. Poison reduces any healing going on. All of these effects are great. Its a combo field for chaos armor! Could ditch the swiftness.

The staff is a control weapon. It allows you to place yourself where you want to be and helps you to hinder the movements and abilities of your enemies. Of course the damage is going to be lower than that of other weapons. That doesn’t mean it isn’t viable.

spearchuka.5972:

Staff is fine as a weapon. Its completely viable in certain builds. I use staff for Shatter and that baby has saved my kitten too many times to count. Sure, like all weapons, it has its glitches/quirks/underpowered stuff. But its 100% viable.

Let’s break down why:

1. Auto attack. Adds boons, applies conditions. A bit underwhelming but it has to be since your clones will apply the same conditions/boons. Its fine as is, just fix I-elasticity.

2. Perfection. Nothing else to say. It does what it does exceptionally well.

3. A great phantasm, aside from its wonky pathing on its attack. To buff it would be insane considering the strong damage potential it already has.

4. A good skill. Yes, it has been nerfed. Yes it only procs 1 per second. I’d prefer it to be 1 per 1/2 but whatever. It could ditch swiftness/confusion I guess. The cripple and blind are very, very good.

5. A control skill. All of its harmful effects affect the way the enemy can play. Chill reduces movement and impairs skill usage. Cripple hinders movement. Daze stops skill usage. Poison reduces any healing going on. All of these effects are great. Its a combo field for chaos armor! Could ditch the swiftness.

The staff is a control weapon. It allows you to place yourself where you want to be and helps you to hinder the movements and abilities of your enemies. Of course the damage is going to be lower than that of other weapons. That doesn’t mean it isn’t viable.

Just cause it’s viable doesnt mean it’s well designed. The weapons is good only when used in small scale area’s such as tpvp and when you are lucky. There’s too much RNG involved with staff, theres a skill that absolutely makes no sense to be even a weapon skill as it can be obtained from combo’s and there’s a warlock that only hits when you’re lucky. Almost every skill besides #2 is based on luck (and a little bit placement of yourself vs the enemy). It’s a really bad designed weapon with 1 super good designed skill on it. That 1 skill is the only thing that makes it viable.

Unlike the other 2h weapon we have, where at least 3 skills are well designed. (#2, 4 and 5). Can say something about #1, though for an AA I guess it’s design is decent.

I agree with 1 and 2 as you look at it spearchuka.

However iWarlock requires a QoL buff. His bolts can’t travel over the abyss and are falling straight down. Also look at other phantasms. iSwordsman does more dps and he even evades attacks and never misses it’s target. Yet he is balanced due the single damage that can be evaded by dodging. So should the warlock work. Range for the price of less dps and no evade / combo finisher.

And 4 and 5 are simply fanboy comments. The conditions dont last long enough to be noticable. Condition wise you can ignore CS, only the daze is dangerious. Both need buffs, 4 needs a huge buff or CDR or aegis/distortion on activation.

BlackDevil.9268:

Just cause it’s viable doesnt mean it’s well designed. The weapons is good only when used in small scale area’s such as tpvp and when you are lucky. There’s too much RNG involved with staff, theres a skill that absolutely makes no sense to be even a weapon skill as it can be obtained from combo’s and there’s a warlock that only hits when you’re lucky. Almost every skill besides #2 is based on luck (and a little bit placement of yourself vs the enemy). It’s a really bad designed weapon with 1 super good designed skill on it. That 1 skill is the only thing that makes it viable.

Unlike the other 2h weapon we have, where at least 3 skills are well designed. (#2, 4 and 5). Can say something about #1, though for an AA I guess it’s design is decent.

I use Staff extensively when fighting against zergs. In fact I prefer it over greatsword and I prefer GS over staff in sPvP. GS #2 is an incredibly clunky skill so I’d argue that only well designed skills are 1,4,5 on the GS.

Really the only problem with Staff is #4 which could see a slight buff. Its a control weapon that controls the battle very well. Its my fallback weapon when things start get hairy and it does that job very well. And its not all because of #2, not even close. Chaos Armor is very important to upkeep on a squishy build. Chaos Storm can cover you and your allies’ retreat and interfere with your opponents. Yes, both of these skills are RnG dependent but, aside from swiftness/confusion, all of the condis/boons they apply are always welcome.

@Xyonon: Fanboy comments? Really? 3.5 seconds of cripple, 1s of chill, and 2s of poison are tangible. They give you an edge that you can exploit. Cripple and Chill matter, period. In a shatter build those scant few seconds may be all you need to ready another burst or have another survival skill come off of cd. Is a 1 second ICD a bit much? Yes. And is swiftness a less than desirable boon? Yes. But those make it slightly less powerful, not this kitten skill some think it is.

didnt read all the comments but, staff does NOT need buffs, its fine as it is, only thing it needs is that phace retreat doesnt get u into walls etc, rly annoying if it happens in pvp, thats all.

spearchuka.5972:

BlackDevil.9268:

Just cause it’s viable doesnt mean it’s well designed. The weapons is good only when used in small scale area’s such as tpvp and when you are lucky. There’s too much RNG involved with staff, theres a skill that absolutely makes no sense to be even a weapon skill as it can be obtained from combo’s and there’s a warlock that only hits when you’re lucky. Almost every skill besides #2 is based on luck (and a little bit placement of yourself vs the enemy). It’s a really bad designed weapon with 1 super good designed skill on it. That 1 skill is the only thing that makes it viable.

Unlike the other 2h weapon we have, where at least 3 skills are well designed. (#2, 4 and 5). Can say something about #1, though for an AA I guess it’s design is decent.

I use Staff extensively when fighting against zergs. In fact I prefer it over greatsword and I prefer GS over staff in sPvP. GS #2 is an incredibly clunky skill so I’d argue that only well designed skills are 1,4,5 on the GS.

Really the only problem with Staff is #4 which could see a slight buff. Its a control weapon that controls the battle very well. Its my fallback weapon when things start get hairy and it does that job very well. And its not all because of #2, not even close. Chaos Armor is very important to upkeep on a squishy build. Chaos Storm can cover you and your allies’ retreat and interfere with your opponents. Yes, both of these skills are RnG dependent but, aside from swiftness/confusion, all of the condis/boons they apply are always welcome.

@Xyonon: Fanboy comments? Really? 3.5 seconds of cripple, 1s of chill, and 2s of poison are tangible. They give you an edge that you can exploit. Cripple and Chill matter, period. In a shatter build those scant few seconds may be all you need to ready another burst or have another survival skill come off of cd. Is a 1 second ICD a bit much? Yes. And is swiftness a less than desirable boon? Yes. But those make it slightly less powerful, not this kitten skill some think it is.

You’re only describing how it is usefull for yourself, yet you havent proven me wrong. #2 GS is more reliable than #1 of staff. As you said #2 is clunky, you must find #1 staff clunky too. However, I don’t see how #2 is clunky, especially in zergs. You stand on a side, you cast it and press F1/2 the moment it hits someone. It bounces between the closest target when hit. The only problem with mirror blade would be that it hits the first target which is on your path, but I guess that’s how projectiles work, they can’t just beam through an enemy to hit your target. That’s just an issue of the design in your eyes, rather than the skill itself.

Yes staff may be good for you due those effects, because you get hit more often with lower numbers in zergs. Most people are specced more tanky, resulting in lower damage, resulting in being able to get hit more often. The moment you start getting a lot hits, the RNG on chaos armor doesn’t matter that much anymore since you will most likely get all effects anyway. This doesn’t mean the RNG isn’t bad, neither does this mean that having chaos storm on #4 makes sense. It’s not even an aura. It’s more like arenanet went like
‘’Oh idk what to put on #4 so lets just throw them a skill that can be obtained through 2 skills on your weapon set already, but wait! they can’t stack because that would come out even more depressing than it already is’’.

Chaos storm can help yes, but which aoe can’t? It’s a specific role of aoe’s, not of chaos storm itself. Still doesn’t take away that it’s RNG is horrible and very unreliable.

Even if everything is welcome, you don’t expect it to come, or maybe even worse, you expect it, but it wont occur.
for example; You drop a chaos storm on a player finishing a downed person. You expect to at least do 1 daze every 2 ticks, but it wont happen and you might even lose a fight because of the RNG.
This is just 1 example out of many. People can’t rely on the skill, they will just have to ’’hope’’ it will go in their favor.

Wyrden.4713:

didnt read all the comments but, staff does NOT need buffs, its fine as it is, only thing it needs is that phace retreat doesnt get u into walls etc, rly annoying if it happens in pvp, thats all.

Well yeah you can clearly see that. No one ( at least those who know how2balance) is asking for buffs. Most people just want to see staff reworked so its not so RNG dependend.

Wyrden.4713:

didnt read all the comments but, staff does NOT need buffs, its fine as it is, only thing it needs is that phace retreat doesnt get u into walls etc, rly annoying if it happens in pvp, thats all.

I would be on the same page. As I said above, Staff would benefit significantly from some greater-than-this game changes / fixes, but it doesn’t need any specific changes, IMO.

The problem with a less RNGesus’d Staff is in the naming of multiple of its abilities. As we already know (from the Chaos Traitline’s general feel), anything “Chaos” named is going to be heavy on the RNG. As such, there’s probably always going to be a gambler’s feel on Staff.

Now, as for the abilities of the weapon:

• Winds of Chaos: I’m generally a fan of swapping Vuln for Chill, or another “Soft CC” Condition. But, that’s just me.
• Phase Retreat: Considering ANet’s record of “fixing” Mesmer weapon skills, I’m going to plant a ginormous glowing sign here that says *"Do NOT Touch!"
• P. Warlock: Pathing and/or speed. His damage and the conditions for maxing it are
  fine.
• Chaos Armor: Revert to pre-nerf behavior
• Chaos Storm: Also revert to pre-nerf behavior (IIRC, it used to be lower C/D)

And, the general Staffie QoL Fix:

• IE. Working with clones. Yesterday. >_<

Winds of Chaos

The AA really needs a higher projectile speed. I’m not sure what kind of increase would be balanced but as it is right now, it is way too easy to outrun the projectile. Especially when affected by Swiftness.

I personally don’t mind the Vulnerability. I think it is rather useless but it might be needed to balance the condition damage. Otherwise the access to burning might be too easy.

Phase Retrat

Nothing to change.

iWarlock

It really has to become more reliable outside of PvE. The projectile tends to miss a lot. A faster projectile could help. Even if the damage would have to be reduced in return.

Chaos Armor

While Chaos Armor isn’t useless this skill is pretty irrelevant when considering how easy it is to access the same effect through combos. I would like to see it get the guaranteed Protection back or becoming a blast finisher to open more supportive builds for Mesmers. The cooldown could also need a slight reduction.

Chaos Storm

I love this skill but the cooldown is a bit too high and it is a bit too random. I would love it if the initial hit always caused a Daze. This way it could be used to reliably interrupt someone if timed right.

The AA actually makes a lot of sense. All three of it’s effects deal damage, one stacks in intensity, one stacks in duration, one improves party DPS. They’re AFAIK the only three “pure damage” conditions in that regard, everything else has a conditional effect or a side effect.

Amethyst Lure.5624:

Anyone else have this wish that Illusory Elasticity should be baseline for staff, somehow? Whenever I use it, i feel like #1 works -so- much better, but that it sits where it does is such a huge build limiter.

Illusionary Elasticity shouldn’t be baseline for staff, but I agree it would help if it was in a different trait line or being moved down to adept in the Illusions trait line.

Wind of Chaos:
Instead of making this all about RNG, why not make a chain-attack?

Wind of Blood
Damage: 111 (1.000)?
Bleeding: 7 s (298 damage)
Might: 5 s
Number of bounces: 1
Range: 1,200

To match this weapon a bit with power builds I’ve also increased the power scaling from 0.3 to 1.0.

Wind of Vurnability
Eventhough I’m no big fan for vurnability on the AA, I don’t see how this skill can’t become op the moment you take it away and put something else on it. To match it for power builds I’ve increased the amount of vurnability to 3 stacks up from 1.
Damage: 111 (1.000)?
Vulnerability 3 : 5 s
Number of bounces: 1
Range: 1,200

Wind of Fire:
I personally think the fury is really nice, but kinda useless due the duration of it, so I increased it to 3 seconds up from 2. This shouldn’t affect it too much. Since every 3rd skill in weapon chains do more damage, I’ve also increased the damage of this skill by 50%.

Damage: 167 (1.000)?
Burning: 1 s (328 damage)
Fury: 3s
Number of bounces: 1
Range: 1,200

Remain the rest of how the skill is else it will be way too strong. If the velocity will go up then something has to go down.

Phase Retreat
No changes required

iWarlock
At the moment:
Summon an illusion that deals extra damage for each unique condition on the target foe.
Damage: 438 (1.65)?
Extra damage per condition: 10%
Range: 1,200

The projectile really needs an increase in it’s speed. Doing that, the skill can’t remain so hard hitting. To compensate, damage has been decreased by 10%;

Damage: 394 (1.65)
Extra damage per condition: 10%
Range: 1,200
Velocity increase: 50%

Chaos Armor
Problem I have with Chaos armor is the fact that it doesnt belong to the aura’s. We got frost, fire and shocking aura but yet no chaos ’’aura’’. So that would be change #1→ make it aura so it stacks in duration.
I guess it’s pretty impossible to make this skill ‘’non-RNG’’ so guess we just gotta live with that. Reduce it’s cooldown to 30 though.

Chaos Storm
Too much RNG going on here which can easily be changed:
The skill does 6 pulses in 5 seconds.
It has a chance to apply 1 of the following effects: 1 Second daze, 1 second chill, 2 seconds poison or 2 seconds weakness. Each of these effects have an equal chance of applying, coming down to a 25% chance.
As for the boons I didn’t test it, but I suppose they all have an equal chance of applying to coming down to 33% chance for each of the following effects: Aegis 3 seconds, Retaliation 3 seconds or Swiftness 3 seconds.

A lot people use this skill for the daze. Since this is so random and purely based on luck I thought of, why not let it proceed twice every chaos storm on a specific tick? This would come down to 1/3rd being daze. This is a slight buff, but then again it is needed since chaos storm is quite… weak on the interrupt part. However, since my aim is to not buff the weapon, I thought of removing 1 pulse, resulting in a 5 tick pulse of 1 second each, instead of a 6 tick pulse of 0.83 seconds each.
Gonna list the pulses and their effects now, Boon + Condition:
1. Swiftness 3 seconds & Chill 1 second
2. Aegis 3 seconds & Daze 1 second
3. Retaliation 3 seconds & Weakness 2 seconds
4. Swiftness 3 seconds & Daze 1 second
5. Aegis 3 seconds & Poison 2 seconds

Like this you wont have too much of an already spammed boon (especially on mesmer part); retaliation.
You will know almost exactly when the daze will come.
Same goes for the aegis
And you also don’t have the problem when you try to apply swiftness on the first or 2nd hit.

This all in compensation to 1 tick. Seems fair to me.

BlackDevil.9268:

Wind of Vurnability
Eventhough I’m no big fan for vurnability on the AA, I don’t see how this skill can’t become op the moment you take it away and put something else on it. To match it for power builds I’ve increased the amount of vurnability to 3 stacks up from 1.
Damage: 111 (1.000)?
Vulnerability 3 : 5 s
Number of bounces: 1
Range: 1,200

The only thing I would say is that this one is a little too much. Vulnerability actually matters a lot in high stacks, and this would allow people to stack insane amounts of it with ranged clones. Even sword clones can’t stack vulnerability this quickly and they’re supposed to be the best clones for it. With ranged clones, you would have to go out of your way to kill them or else you’ll get 15+stacks of vulnerability put on you in 5 seconds.

Other then that I like these ideas a lot.

BlackDevil.9268:

Gonna list the pulses and their effects now, Boon + Condition:
1. Swiftness 3 seconds & Chill 1 second
2. Aegis 3 seconds & Daze 1 second
3. Retaliation 3 seconds & Weakness 2 seconds
4. Swiftness 3 seconds & Daze 1 second
5. Aegis 3 seconds & Poison 2 seconds

I’ll just say that chaos storm is definitely not weak on the interrupt part – daze seems to always proc at least once every time I use it. Not saying they couldn’t improve it to remove a lot of the RnG, but in it’s current state I would say chaos storm is decent. If nothing else was done I think a slight CD reduction would be in order.

That said, I like the suggestion to remove the RnG, though I do wonder if what you have there would be viewed as more powerful. It kinda feels that way just looking at it. And more powerful means longer CD, etc. If we’re removing RnG and keeping the same CD, I almost think you have to strip it down even more to not make it OP. Two AE dazes guaranteed in the span of 2 seconds? I mean, that’s more powerful almost than Imbued Diversion. Juicy yeah but not sure it would fly. I think the boon part is fine though.

Not really.
The chance at the moment is 25% over 6 ticks. That would mean 1.5 tick per chaos storm.
With this it would come down to 40% chance over 5 ticks. This comes down to 2 ticks per chaos storm.
That in return for 1 tick of conditions, boons and damage. The daze gets buffed, the conditions, damage and boons get around 17% nerf.

@ Raunchy
Yeah.. looking another time at it I agree. Maybe 2 stacks though? I really feel depressed when i get 1 stack of vurnability.. :<

BlackDevil.9268:

@ Raunchy
Yeah.. looking another time at it I agree. Maybe 2 stacks though? I really feel depressed when i get 1 stack of vurnability.. :<

I think one stack is enough, because I don’t like gameplay centered around the #1 ability doing most of the work. Though I could see two stacks being fine. I agree though that one stack seems lackluster, but to me it’s supposed to be like that.

The staff #1 skill is supposed to keep pressure, not apply it (which I think all weapons should do, but that’s now how Anet made it). Of course you can apply pressure with it if you have multiple clones out with IE (or at least that’s the idea :/), but you would have to trait for that which is how it should be.

I don’t think buffing the Staff’s power fits the weapon Staff is meant to be (a defensive one).

Given iWarlock, I’m okay with the Staff’s low power damage. I think of the staff as more of a weapon to disorientate and confuse the opponent with positioning.

My biggest concern is with the Staff #4. I like Chaos’s suggestion with the Protection buff.

Currently, I’m treating it as:
Have I already done Staff 5 + 2? Yes.
Has the chaos armor expired? Yes.
Is it off CD? Yes.
Spam.

The cooldown for Staff 5 is huge, but I think it’s reasonable given how powerful this skill is.

To me the weapon is pretty ridiculous for condition builds. An 8-10 second teleport. Flying winds of chaos everywhere bouncing off of everything inflicting bleeds and burns. This is made 10x worse with 3 clones out all using winds of chaos.

I don’t agree with making the projectiles any faster, however I do agree with upping the power scaling on the auto-attack and chaos storm. A build invested in a lot of power should be able to hit hard with auto-attacks regardless of the weapon. And I do agree with tweaking #4, maybe lesser cooldown? Maybe like 25 seconds?

BlackDevil.9268:

You’re only describing how it is usefull for yourself, yet you havent proven me wrong. #2 GS is more reliable than #1 of staff. As you said #2 is clunky, you must find #1 staff clunky too. However, I don’t see how #2 is clunky, especially in zergs. You stand on a side, you cast it and press F1/2 the moment it hits someone. It bounces between the closest target when hit. The only problem with mirror blade would be that it hits the first target which is on your path, but I guess that’s how projectiles work, they can’t just beam through an enemy to hit your target. That’s just an issue of the design in your eyes, rather than the skill itself.

Yes staff may be good for you due those effects, because you get hit more often with lower numbers in zergs. Most people are specced more tanky, resulting in lower damage, resulting in being able to get hit more often. The moment you start getting a lot hits, the RNG on chaos armor doesn’t matter that much anymore since you will most likely get all effects anyway. This doesn’t mean the RNG isn’t bad, neither does this mean that having chaos storm on #4 makes sense. It’s not even an aura. It’s more like arenanet went like
‘’Oh idk what to put on #4 so lets just throw them a skill that can be obtained through 2 skills on your weapon set already, but wait! they can’t stack because that would come out even more depressing than it already is’’.

Chaos storm can help yes, but which aoe can’t? It’s a specific role of aoe’s, not of chaos storm itself. Still doesn’t take away that it’s RNG is horrible and very unreliable.

Even if everything is welcome, you don’t expect it to come, or maybe even worse, you expect it, but it wont occur.
for example; You drop a chaos storm on a player finishing a downed person. You expect to at least do 1 daze every 2 ticks, but it wont happen and you might even lose a fight because of the RNG.
This is just 1 example out of many. People can’t rely on the skill, they will just have to ’’hope’’ it will go in their favor.

I agree RNG can sometimes be very frustrating but, to me, that keeps the power level of the skill basically fine. Could you tweak it to lose the RnG and make it slightly better? Sure. But staff as it stands is still a very good weapon.

Also, I use staff while i’m roaming as well and chaos storm/armor are also very useful there. Yes, this all hearsay and blahdidy blah blah blah, but that’s all I got.

Mirror Images is clunky because of the cast time, nothing else. Its very prone to getting blinded and interrupted. Its still a fine skill, just clunky.

Also your power coefficent for staff AA is absolutely insane. 1.0 scaling is very, very high. The sword auto has a scaling of .6 and its melee. I play a full glkittenter and get ~700 crits with staff, which is inline for what the weapon ought to do given my stats. That’s ~900 total if its the bleed, 1k if burn. Given that it bounces and gives boons that seems fine to me.

The problem with staff 1 isn’t staff 1. It’s the clones using staff 1. They have crappy direct damage but apply the conditions, so with bounce it would be the most amazing melee(or ranged, the double bounce lets you hit up to 3 people…) auto-attack. Combine this with the mesmer’s potential for summoning clones and you might as well them spirit ranger redux. Press 1, have tons of adds, apply boons and conditions non-stop…

@Spearchuka
It’s only a good weapon because of #2. If #2 wasn’t that good designed and on a much higher cooldown this weapon would be 100% useless.

I can asure you, staff is far from being meta in roaming.

I think you mean Mirror blade and not mirror images. For if you didn’t know, the ‘’casting time’’ is only 0.75 seconds. That’s the same as wind of chaos. I don’t see how you could potentially interrupt that. Its velocity is even higher than WoC and the blind would only be described as ’’outplayed’’ or ‘’poor play’’. If you get blinded before the cast then its your own fault of casting it. If you use it at max range, then yes you can expect to get blinded somehow (eventhough the traveling time of it is only about 0.5 seconds max.).

Again you’re only bringing up personal experiences. Let’s match numbers:
Mind slash → 202 (0.6)
Mind gash → 202 (0.6)
Mind spike: 403 (1.1) (on target without boons)
302 (0.9) (ripping 1 boon if target has boons)

This would come down to about 1.8 times more base damage than WoC and a -0.1 to 0.1 scaling on the 3rd chain. Even with 3000 power you would come down to around 10% more damage on sword AA which has a faster casting time too.

700 crit, 900 if bleeds? Wait what? 200 bleeding? Since when? In a power build? Sorry, but power builds do around 60 bleeding, not even close to 100. Same goes for burning, it only scales to roughly 400 and seeing the duration on it sometimes doesnt even apply to those who run -condi duration food. The scaling doesnt affect condition builds, only power ones and I’m quite sure that the AA of sword and GS both easily out dps staff AA in power builds even with 1.00 scaling.

I don’t say this often to people, but can you please stop bringing up personal stuff to the forums and bring up some comparisons with actual math in it. As long as theres no prove to any of your points, I don’t see the reason in further discussion.

BlackDevil.9268:

@Spearchuka
It’s only a good weapon because of #2. If #2 wasn’t that good designed and on a much higher cooldown this weapon would be 100% useless.

I can asure you, staff is far from being meta in roaming.

I think you mean Mirror blade and not mirror images. For if you didn’t know, the ‘’casting time’’ is only 0.75 seconds. That’s the same as wind of chaos. I don’t see how you could potentially interrupt that. Its velocity is even higher than WoC and the blind would only be described as ’’outplayed’’ or ‘’poor play’’. If you get blinded before the cast then its your own fault of casting it. If you use it at max range, then yes you can expect to get blinded somehow (eventhough the traveling time of it is only about 0.5 seconds max.).

Again you’re only bringing up personal experiences. Let’s match numbers:
Mind slash -> 202 (0.6)
Mind gash -> 202 (0.6)
Mind spike: 403 (1.1) (on target without boons)
302 (0.9) (ripping 1 boon if target has boons)

This would come down to about 1.8 times more base damage than WoC and a -0.1 to 0.1 scaling on the 3rd chain. Even with 3000 power you would come down to around 10% more damage on sword AA which has a faster casting time too.

700 crit, 900 if bleeds? Wait what? 200 bleeding? Since when? In a power build? Sorry, but power builds do around 60 bleeding, not even close to 100. Same goes for burning, it only scales to roughly 400 and seeing the duration on it sometimes doesnt even apply to those who run -condi duration food. The scaling doesnt affect condition builds, only power ones and I’m quite sure that the AA of sword and GS both easily out dps staff AA in power builds even with 1.00 scaling.

I don’t say this often to people, but can you please stop bringing up personal stuff to the forums and bring up some comparisons with actual math in it. As long as theres no prove to any of your points, I don’t see the reason in further discussion.

My my, you bring up numbers. Let’s see. Hm. Bleeds on staff, base of 7 seconds on AA. 42.5 dps per stack of bleed baseline. 7*42.5. Oh look, 297.5. Neat. Burning. 1 second base on AA. 328 per second baseline. How wonderful! Numbers are fun when you actually take the time to look at them instead of blithely vomiting words on your keyboard.

10% more damage on a melee weapon, requiring you to be in melee range. That sounds balanced to me. GS is a single line beam attack meaning, functionally, you’ll likely hit mostly one target. So yes, it will outdps a bouncing attack that also applies conditions/boons.

Roaming meta uses builds that don’t want Staff because they’re already so very durable and have lots of control. They don’t need more.

Mirror Blades, .75 seconds is enough for any decent thief to get their grimy little hands on your sweet bottom. .75 on an auto is different, you don’t mind if its interrupted/blinded/whatever. Its probably because I play total glass but .75 cast time can be quite some time.

spearchuka.5972:

My my, you bring up numbers. Let’s see. Hm. Bleeds on staff, base of 7 seconds on AA. 42.5 dps per stack of bleed baseline. 7*42.5. Oh look, 297.5. Neat. Burning. 1 second base on AA. 328 per second baseline. How wonderful! Numbers are fun when you actually take the time to look at them instead of blithely vomiting words on your keyboard.

10% more damage on a melee weapon, requiring you to be in melee range. That sounds balanced to me. GS is a single line beam attack meaning, functionally, you’ll likely hit mostly one target. So yes, it will outdps a bouncing attack that also applies conditions/boons.

Roaming meta uses builds that don’t want Staff because they’re already so very durable and have lots of control. They don’t need more.

Mirror Blades, .75 seconds is enough for any decent thief to get their grimy little hands on your sweet bottom. .75 on an auto is different, you don’t mind if its interrupted/blinded/whatever. Its probably because I play total glass but .75 cast time can be quite some time.

Actually yes it is.
1. The bleeding would come out as 1/3 of the chain. Asuming the whole chain takes you around 3.15 seconds. (From start of #1 till end of #3 in ’’chain’’*)
That would mean every 3.5 seconds you would apply 1 bleeding of 7 seconds (so 7 ticks)
The other one in chain would be vurnabiltity. As ppl didnt agree on more stacks, 1 stack will remain. Sword is by far better on stacking vurnability, so I’m just gonna let that to the side.
3rd in chain would be burning. Again for this would be 1 second of burning every 3.5 seconds. That would mean 328 damage extra damage after 3.5 seconds. (Well actually after 4.5+ seconds since it also has to apply to the target and do the tick which costs minimal of 1 second and max around 2 seconds)
Asuming the player doesnt use any -condition duration food and no cleansing at all.. (hah) you would come down to 626 (298+328) extra damage every 3.5 seconds.
Let’s say sword is a factor 1.1 to the damage of staff.
Sword total chain takes 2.47 seconds. That’s 1.42 times faster than staff. Normal damage without conditions would be 10% higher in a 47% faster chain.
To come down to a bit realistic numbers;
Let’s say staff deals 2000 damage in that 3.5 seconds. DPS: 571,43
Sword deals 2200 damage in 2.47 seconds. DPS: 890,69
Now add the conditions: Since the chain is 3.5 seconds you can have an upkeep of 2 bleedings. That’s 596 damage.
596/7= 85.14
The burning has an upkeep of 1/3.5, coming down to an extra dps of 93.71
571,43 + 85.14 + 93.71 = 750,28
That’s around 19% lower dps.

Sword: 130 range, hits up to 3 enemies
Staff: 1200 range, hits maximum non traited up to 2 people, can be reflected or destroyed.

Not to mention that the staff dps is nowhere near accurate since people will use condi removal and -condition food. In a case where someoen already runs -5/10% condi reduction more than your + condi duration, the burning dps is already gone and the bleeding will be much lower.

Staff doesn’t need a buff its already really strong and in a good spot.

Can people start reading? No one is asking for a buff, no one is trying to make staff stronger, everyone with a normal mindset is trying to get staff more reliable instead of Yolo RNG.
Maybe op has to put that in his post cause this is getting more frustrating than playing flappy birds upside-down.

BlackDevil.9268:

Wind of Chaos:
Instead of making this all about RNG, why not make a chain-attack?

I just wonder if this would change anything. Statistically, your suggestion won’t make any difference at all. While it would become somewhat less RNG because you can predict the effect of the next attack it doesn’t improve the gameplay itself.

On a different note, your suggested power coefficient is way too high…

skcamow.3527:

I’ll just say that chaos storm is definitely not weak on the interrupt part – daze seems to always proc at least once every time I use it. Not saying they couldn’t improve it to remove a lot of the RnG, but in it’s current state I would say chaos storm is decent. If nothing else was done I think a slight CD reduction would be in order.

That said, I like the suggestion to remove the RnG, though I do wonder if what you have there would be viewed as more powerful. It kinda feels that way just looking at it. And more powerful means longer CD, etc. If we’re removing RnG and keeping the same CD, I almost think you have to strip it down even more to not make it OP. Two AE dazes guaranteed in the span of 2 seconds? I mean, that’s more powerful almost than Imbued Diversion. Juicy yeah but not sure it would fly. I think the boon part is fine though.

You are right the Daze on Chaos Storm is quite reliable because it got enough ticks to occur. However, as I said earlier, it is literally impossible to use Chaos Storm in a smart way and interrupt a specific skill or shut down an opponent at a specific time.

I do agree that two guaranteed Dazes per skill use might be too much. But I’m all for a Daze on the initial cast. Even if it meant losing the chance to daze anyone later on. I don’t think that the CD would have to be increased in this case.

BlackDevil.9268:

Can people start reading? No one is asking for a buff, no one is trying to make staff stronger, everyone with a normal mindset is trying to get staff more reliable instead of Yolo RNG.
Maybe op has to put that in his post cause this is getting more frustrating than playing flappy birds upside-down.

Did you even read the op posts? He is clearly asking for buffs and he also thinks staff is weak which is not true.