Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone. Currently I’m running 10/20/0/30/10 phantasm build with full zerk, GS/Sw/F. My goal is to do DPS while offering support in PvE with glamours and reflective focus trait.

I’m working towards getting bifrost and I want to switch out my GS with Staff, but I’m worried that my range dps will take a hit. So I’m thinking of going 10/20/0/20/20 to keep reflective focus trait and to pick up illusionary elasticity. My illusions will take a 15% dmg loss but my staff will get an extra bounce on hits…doubling it’s dmg.

I know staff applies conditions, but if I switch to staff would it be ok to keep full zerk or should I switch to something else to optimize my dps with new weapon/traits? I’m assuming power/prec/crit dmg applies to conditions too? Just seeing if I can make this work without getting a second set of gear.

Full zerk staff is all about the phantasm. The warlock can do incredible damage under the right conditions, literally. It scales 10% damage per unique condition on the target. This also means that in a situation with less conditions, the warlocks will do rather low damage. You’ll want to have a staff with you to swap on when you know the condition load will be high, but not necessarily use it always.

Think I should keep my spec the same then and not worry about the extra bounce with illusionary elasticity?

Mek.2947:

Think I should keep my spec the same then and not worry about the extra bounce with illusionary elasticity?

That’s correct. Double of an ignorable amount of damage is still ignorable.

power/prec/crit dam do not apply to conditions, only condition damage does.

Against trash mobs/open world, GS usually offers better AOE damage, although staff is better for support. Decide what you want to focus on and what your team needs. For damage in general content while using a power build, the staff pretty much relies on shatters, so you may want to consider a build with 30 in Illusion for Illusionary Persona.

When you get to bosses or champs, the staff is generally better. Once 3 warlocks get going on a boss, nothing will out-damage you, and you can continue to provide support with your other staff skills.

Nice. I dont’ think condition up time will be too bad. Usually grouped with warrior, condi ranger, guardian, and ele. Thanks for the advice.

There are good reasons to go all the way in the Illusions line for a shatter build, but I doubt going to 20 is worth it just for the extra bounce, the extra bounce is just an extra treat that’s possible for shatter builds.

Power/prec/crit doesn’t affect condition damage, except indirectly if you have Sharper Images (your prec copies to your illusions, so they have more chance of landing bleeds) for that you need Condition damage gear (Ravager, Rabid, Carrion, Apothecary). To make fullest use of iWarlock, you don’t necessarily need extra condition damage, but rather condition duration, which you can get from runes or sigils I think (as iWarlock maximises on the number of unique conditions up on the target, not their strength), however obviously more condition damage is good too if it’s affordable.

Generally, speccing for Staff is different from speccing for GS, since Staff is more defensive, and more oriented around condition damage and Toughness (although iWarlock obviously would benefit from Power and Prec, but iWarlock is more like the damage dealing side of a mainly defensive weapon), and not so much Power, so with Bifrost you’d be better off with a 0/20/20/0/30 (shattercat) or a 20/20/30/0/0 (blackwater) type of build, but then you’d be losing out on the phantasm orientation and Focus thing, so I dunno, it’s a bit of a conundrum.

You might be better off sticking to your playstyle and aiming for the GS legendary instead! Otherwise, if you’re determined to go for Bifrost, you might have to change your playstyle around. You should try Staff play with an Exotic and see how it suits you, you might find you even prefer it to GS!

Well I mainly use S/F when I’m in dungeons. I only switch to GS when range is needed or to start off a fight with the berserker and to get some might up with sword 2. After reading pyroatheist’s posts, I think the staff might actually be a good supplement to the phantasm build with the Warlock. Plus, it will probably offer more support with winds of chaos, chaos storm, chaos armor, etc. I’m also a heavy staff user in WvW where I play a shatter variant with 0/20/20/0/30, so that’s why I wanted to go with bifrost.

I was thinking about switching to shatter build, but I really do love playing with a focus in dungsons, and there isn’t room for 20 pts in inspiration with a shatter build.

Anyway, thanks so much for offering your thoughts. It really helped.

Yes, I’m using pretty much full zerk with staff works, the conditions are just to AMP I-Warlock damage. Gs is still more DPS. But I’m using staff cause of defensive abilities.

For DPS and support in PVE, just run 10/30/0/30/0, sword/pistol and sword/focus. With mainhand sword you have full melee uptime, 30 in dueling gives you phantasmal fury and sword + pistol cooldowns, 30 in inspiration gives you -20% glamour cooldown, focus reflects and more phantasm health or longer glamours. If you prefer GS, just take 10 out of dueling and stick 10 more in to domination for -20% GS cooldowns. That’s dungeons though, in open PVE just do whatever the hell you want.