Guild Wars 2

I’m still a little unclear about what power affects, versus condition damage. I know I need CD as a staff user, but does power still matter?

I ask because I’m wondering if I should get a staff with power and CD, or precision and CD. Or does precision not matter? Can conditions crit?

What’s best for a staff?

Thanks!

If you intend for Staff to be your primary source of DPS then you definitely want condition damage. Precision is also extremely helpful if you take the Sharper Images trait (which you should since you need Deceptive Evasion anyway), allowing your Staff Clones (which are approximately 33 – 50% of your DPS as a condition Mesmer) to inflict extra Bleeding.

The Staff doesn’t benefit from Power very much, only the iWarlock scales well with Power and if you’re going for full condition damage you would only conjure iWarlock for Shattering anyway as your Staff Clones will do more damage.

And no, conditions cannot crit.

The best stat combination for a Mesmer Staff build in terms of DPS is Rabid, i.e. CondDmg-Toughness-Precision. Unfortunately it is a rather elusive stat combination to get in PvE/WvW.

The only thing I think power from staff would benefit is shatters.

Shatters benefit from power so if you shatter then power is important.

Drunken Mad King.8193:

The only thing I think power from staff would benefit is shatters.

Shatters benefit from power so if you shatter then power is important.

Correction, Mind Wrack benefits from Power. Cry of Frustration benefits from condition damage, and while it isn’t in the same league as Mind Wrack (mainly because of its long CD) it can be quite powerful with a condition build (about 2000 damage per skill activation at level 80 with Illusionary Retribution).

On the other hand with Illusionary Retribution all your Shatters inflict Confusion, so Mind Wrack will also scale reasonably well with condition damage. And Staff Mesmers should always have Illusionary Retribution as Illusionary Elasticity is a must.

Embolism.8106:

Drunken Mad King.8193:

The only thing I think power from staff would benefit is shatters.

Shatters benefit from power so if you shatter then power is important.

Correction, Mind Wrack benefits from Power. Cry of Frustration benefits from condition damage, and while it isn’t in the same league as Mind Wrack (mainly because of its long CD) it can be quite powerful with a condition build (about 2000 damage per skill activation at level 80 with Illusionary Retribution).

On the other hand with Illusionary Retribution all your Shatters inflict Confusion, so Mind Wrack will also scale reasonably well with condition damage. And Staff Mesmers should always have Illusionary Retribution as Illusionary Elasticity is a must.

My bad I did mean Mind Wrack but was being lazy. Thank you for pointing that out.

Just to further explain I try to go with a staff that has Power/Prec/Condition in my shatter build as I am applying Mind Wrack and Cry of Frustration.

Nice thing with the shatter confusion setup Drunk mad king play and ofc any shatter build with deep illusion is that the confusion dmg on shatters snowball, not only do they stack up but also the might stacking up so when enmy going to counter attack he have 10-13 stacks of confusion and powered by 8 stacks of might.

Just a question, you sure the 1 st initial hit by cry of frustration only scale with condition dmg? I have no exta condition dmg but with 100% + crit dmg and some power it hit kinda hard. Atleast its benefiting by crit chanse and crit dmg as it can crit.

/osicat

This thread’s replies are so clueless.

Staff needs power, even to a higher extend than Condition damage. The latter being nonviable in PvE and iWarlock having most of his damage scaling with power. Indungeons 3 warlocks with maxed power + autoattack/Storm support > any crappy confusion/conditon damage there can be (on mesmer ofc).

Staff is primarily a condition damage weapon, so it makes sense to go for condition damage with it. It does however deal a bit of direct damage as well, but if you want to go for direct damage, you are better of with a weapon like the greatsword as a primary weapon.

I don’t think we are talking about PvE.

Kasma is accualy spot on about the set discussion even if I prefere it the totaly opposite way Let me explain what I mean. If you like me go full power crit and crit dmg build ( with a little vitality for conditions and toughtness for camp capping) you depend alot on the skills of utility etc to survive. For this on side of my sword / pistol staff offer everything I want. Mobility for chase ppl down or retreat, high clone production, chaosarmour and field. It also give me ranged clones that i can place between me and a target and if target get close i shater em. Ilock crit for ~ 6-7 k in a fight aswell.

So yes as a power mesmer I use staff with great sucess, tbh I get ownd wihout it.

Question is not only " do staff use power" but do power scale well with a build using staff. Almost all shatter specc use staff, especialy the burst ones, and these specces is based on power.

Also I kinda doubt GS atm as primary wep, sure slmone might think its still a fantastic wep and nothing would make me happier than somone prowe me wrong by find a effective way to wvwvw with GS at its current state that outshine s/p for shatter spec. It already lack defensive set, it depends on range witch is against illusionary presona shatter setup. Pls dont take offense if anyone loving gs read this, I am wrong aswell from time to time and just say my oppinion not the truth by god.

/osicat

So what I’m hearing is condition damage is important, of course, but neither power nor precision is that useful for a staff. Is that correct? I figured toughness was more for melee types, but I guess if I don’t need any other stats, maybe it will be helpful. Or perhaps vitality would be better?

P. S. Yes I’m talking about PvE. I know worrying about stats is probably not necessary simply for leveling, but I still want to know the best practice.

Also, does power affect condition damage at all, or are they completely different stats?

JohnJSal.8634:

So what I’m hearing is condition damage is important, of course, but neither power nor precision is that useful for a staff. Is that correct? I figured toughness was more for melee types, but I guess if I don’t need any other stats, maybe it will be helpful. Or perhaps vitality would be better?

P. S. Yes I’m talking about PvE. I know worrying about stats is probably not necessary simply for leveling, but I still want to know the best practice.

Also, does power affect condition damage at all, or are they completely different stats?

Precision is very useful for the Staff because of Sharper Images, which allows your Illusions to inflict Bleeding on criticals; and the critical chance of your Illusuons is the same as yours.

Power and condition damage are completely separate stats. The former affects direct damage, the latter affects the damage dealt by damaging conditions.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

This thread’s replies are so clueless.

Staff needs power, even to a higher extend than Condition damage. The latter being nonviable in PvE and iWarlock having most of his damage scaling with power. Indungeons 3 warlocks with maxed power + autoattack/Storm support > any crappy confusion/conditon damage there can be (on mesmer ofc).

A Power Staff build that relies on iWarlock only can work, but is unreliable: iWarlock is on a CD, you need about ~30s to conjure three (assuming none gets destroyed and your target survives for that long, which pretty much prevents you from achieving your maximum DPS against anything but very tough mobs), and while your iWarlocks will hit pretty hard with Power your own WoC will not.

With a condition Staff build on the other hand a lot of your damage comes from your Clones (which attack more than 3 times faster than iWarlock and can deal similar amounts of damage through Burning/Bleeding), and you can conjure three Clones within a second and reconjure them instantly if lost. Also, investing in condition damage greatly improves your WoC, and Staff Clones can give boons or hit two mobs at once.

Overall, a Staff condition build has similar maximum DPS to a Staff Power build, can achieve its maximum DPS in 1 second instead of 30+, doesn’t care if it loses an Illusion or two and has better AoE and support capability.

Power staff users do not rely on iwarlock only. They rely on warlock, blurred fenzy, and MW. They all hit like trucks in a power build and they can hit at about the same time when in melee range.

Personally, I’m a new fan of power/cond hybrid builds. I find the extra damage from MW and CoF and BF is outperforming anything I ever got from sharper images, though I do miss the extra vigor from my precision build.

Gaiawolf.8261:

Power staff users do not rely on iwarlock only. They rely on warlock, blurred fenzy, and MW. They all hit like trucks in a power build and they can hit at about the same time when in melee range.

Personally, I’m a new fan of power/cond hybrid builds. I find the extra damage from MW and CoF and BF is outperforming anything I ever got from sharper images, though I do miss the extra vigor from my precision build.

That isn’t a Staff Power build, that is a Sword Power build (or rather a Mind Wrack build) since you rely on your Sword for your primary DPS and use the Staff for defense/support. The OP is asking for what’s best for the Staff specifically.

I’m also against hybrid builds, IMO they bring nothing to the table that a pure Power or condition build doesn’t; and pure builds are more optimal. Because of the way stat combinations work it is previously impossible to create condition build that isn’t a hybrid, but with new equipment from the Lost Shores update a pure condition build is becoming a possibility.

“has better AoE and support capability. "

En-light me, I can’t see the better support ability of a staff over a staff.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

“has better AoE and support capability. "

En-light me, I can’t see the better support ability of a staff over a staff.

The key is in what Illusions you use. If you are keeping three iWarlocks out you don’t have any Staff Clones to provide extra multi-target damage or boon support.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Staff needs power, even to a higher extend than Condition damage. The latter being nonviable in PvE…

How is Condition nonviable in PvE? My DPS as a staff Mesmer went up quite a bit when I swapped out some of my power gear for condition.

Foosnark.1784:

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Staff needs power, even to a higher extend than Condition damage. The latter being nonviable in PvE…

How is Condition nonviable in PvE? My DPS as a staff Mesmer went up quite a bit when I swapped out some of my power gear for condition.

I think he’s talking about how bleeding stacks in particular have a 25 stack limit. So you won’t be optimising your damage for zergs, and you can sometimes be affected by this in dungeon parties.

I wouldn’t say that staff relies on power even more than condition damage, though. WoC has less auto-attack damage than other weapons, and applies a condition on every hit you and your clones do with it. So having said that, it obviously has more potential for damage in this way rather than raw power.

Of course, getting 3 iWarlocks on the go is some pretty strong damage on a single target. However, having all 3 up at the same time without them dying within the ~30 seconds it takes to summon all of them… well, it’s rare to say the least. especially if there are AoEs around….

I’m now going to have to say the dreaded line ‘it all depends on the build you are using’.

The thing is, if you’re a Power build you’re not going to be on the Staff most of the time, as you’d get far more damage out of Sword or GS. A Power Staff build (not a Power build that includes a Staff, there’s a difference) is suboptimal.

And IMO zerging bosses is irrelevant because the only important thing in this situation is whether you get credit or not, as any contribution you can provide to a huge zerg is quite minimal regardless of your build.

Embolism.8106:

JohnJSal.8634:

So what I’m hearing is condition damage is important, of course, but neither power nor precision is that useful for a staff. Is that correct? I figured toughness was more for melee types, but I guess if I don’t need any other stats, maybe it will be helpful. Or perhaps vitality would be better?

P. S. Yes I’m talking about PvE. I know worrying about stats is probably not necessary simply for leveling, but I still want to know the best practice.

Also, does power affect condition damage at all, or are they completely different stats?

Precision is very useful for the Staff because of Sharper Images, which allows your Illusions to inflict Bleeding on criticals; and the critical chance of your Illusuons is the same as yours.

Power and condition damage are completely separate stats. The former affects direct damage, the latter affects the damage dealt by damaging conditions.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

This thread’s replies are so clueless.

Staff needs power, even to a higher extend than Condition damage. The latter being nonviable in PvE and iWarlock having most of his damage scaling with power. Indungeons 3 warlocks with maxed power + autoattack/Storm support > any crappy confusion/conditon damage there can be (on mesmer ofc).

A Power Staff build that relies on iWarlock only can work, but is unreliable: iWarlock is on a CD, you need about ~30s to conjure three (assuming none gets destroyed and your target survives for that long, which pretty much prevents you from achieving your maximum DPS against anything but very tough mobs), and while your iWarlocks will hit pretty hard with Power your own WoC will not.

With a condition Staff build on the other hand a lot of your damage comes from your Clones (which attack more than 3 times faster than iWarlock and can deal similar amounts of damage through Burning/Bleeding), and you can conjure three Clones within a second and reconjure them instantly if lost. Also, investing in condition damage greatly improves your WoC, and Staff Clones can give boons or hit two mobs at once.

Overall, a Staff condition build has similar maximum DPS to a Staff Power build, can achieve its maximum DPS in 1 second instead of 30+, doesn’t care if it loses an Illusion or two and has better AoE and support capability.

How do you conjure three clones in one second? Mirror Images?

The only downside seems to be that if I go condition damage but no power, I can’t switch weapons without losing a lot of dps. All my gear would be for the staff only.

Is this normally how it is for other professions, or do they tend to use the same stats for all weapons?

JohnJSal.8634:

The only downside seems to be that if I go condition damage but no power, I can’t switch weapons without losing a lot of dps. All my gear would be for the staff only.

Is this normally how it is for other professions, or do they tend to use the same stats for all weapons?

They have to change gear based on their builds… and then their builds usually decide which weapons they’ll be using as well.

JohnJSal.8634:

How do you conjure three clones in one second? Mirror Images?

Yepp, I tend to use it on ppl with <50% hp. Blink to them, do a dodge ower em hit mirror same time and shatter 1, if you pro it up extra you swap to staff in the roll and hit 2 and you not only downed him but got some range, have 100% energy. After that its depend on situation what you do.

/Osicat.

I’m running a staff/sword+torch build currently. I’ve traited for condition damage and condition duration. As power and condition duration increase in the same trait line it only seemed logical that I took advantage of that power too by complimenting it with my weapons. So my staff and my sword+torch all focus on condition damage and power. Also my iwarden damage increased significantly when I focused a bit more on power.

JohnJSal.8634:

How do you conjure three clones in one second? Mirror Images?

I find Mirror Images to be on too long a CD to be particularly effective, especially if you’re losing Clones or if you’re fighting multiple weaker enemies. Plus it takes up a Utility slot. Deceptive Evasion, create a Clone on dodge, is the best for constant, rapid conjuration of Clones.

This brings in another benefit of high Precision for these builds: it allows you to proc Critical Infusion (Vigour on Crit) more frequently, giving you plenty of Endurance to dodge.

Getting Illusionist’s Celerity and Chaotic Dampening shortens your Phase Retreat CD to about 5 – 6s, which also helps greatly to spam Clones.

Simonoly.4352:

I’m running a staff/sword+torch build currently. I’ve traited for condition damage and condition duration. As power and condition duration increase in the same trait line it only seemed logical that I took advantage of that power too by complimenting it with my weapons. So my staff and my sword+torch all focus on condition damage and power. Also my iwarden damage increased significantly when I focused a bit more on power.

+Condition duration is not as useful as +condition damage to a condition Mesmer because it doesn’t affect conditions dealt by Illusions.

Also, remember that condition damage is not as obvious as direct damage as you don’t see one big number showing how much damage it did. iWarden’s damage actually scales equally well with Power and condition damage if you have high Precision with Sharper Images.

Embolism.8106:

JohnJSal.8634:

How do you conjure three clones in one second? Mirror Images?

I find Mirror Images to be on too long a CD to be particularly effective, especially if you’re losing Clones or if you’re fighting multiple weaker enemies. Plus it takes up a Utility slot. Deceptive Evasion, create a Clone on dodge, is the best for constant, rapid conjuration of Clones.

This brings in another benefit of high Precision for these builds: it allows you to proc Critical Infusion (Vigour on Crit) more frequently, giving you plenty of Endurance to dodge.

Getting Illusionist’s Celerity and Chaotic Dampening shortens your Phase Retreat CD to about 5 – 6s, which also helps greatly to spam Clones.

Simonoly.4352:

I’m running a staff/sword+torch build currently. I’ve traited for condition damage and condition duration. As power and condition duration increase in the same trait line it only seemed logical that I took advantage of that power too by complimenting it with my weapons. So my staff and my sword+torch all focus on condition damage and power. Also my iwarden damage increased significantly when I focused a bit more on power.

+Condition duration is not as useful as +condition damage to a condition Mesmer because it doesn’t affect conditions dealt by Illusions.

Also, remember that condition damage is not as obvious as direct damage as you don’t see one big number showing how much damage it did. iWarden’s damage actually scales equally well with Power and condition damage if you have high Precision with Sharper Images.

Condition duration doesn’t affect illusions, but condition damage does?

So if I focus on condition damage and precision, would the Dueling trait line be better than Domination?

How can I tell which attributes affect illusions and which don’t?

On my staff mesmer i like gear that grants precision, power, and condition damage. Gets me the best of both worlds.

JohnJSal.8634:

Condition duration doesn’t affect illusions, but condition damage does?

So if I focus on condition damage and precision, would the Dueling trait line be better than Domination?

How can I tell which attributes affect illusions and which don’t?

+Condition duration and possibly +boon duration do not, everything else does. On-the-fly changes to your stats also affect Illusions immediately: this means that getting Might or Fury on yourself will immediately increase your Illusions’ damage and crit chance respectively (another reason why Staff Clones are good). Some claim that health doesn’t affect Illusion survivability while armour does, though I’ve never tested this myself.

As a condition damage Staff build investing 20 points in Dueling for Deceptive Evasion is essential anyway (the other essential trait is 20 points in Illusions for Illusionary Elasticity). People generally then invest another 20 points in Chaos for Chaotic Dampening, leaving you with 10 points to play with.

I personally run a Condition Bunker build with Staff + Whatever offhands I feel are appropriate for the situation ( I run mostly PvE Dungeons, and I have a Staff/GS/Sword/Sword/Pistol).

If you want a staff-focused build, condition damage is your best bet. Rampager’s is good, and easy to acquire due to being craftable (prec, +cond, +power). I personally went with full Rabid (cond, +tough, +prec) with Runes of the Undead. With level 80 food I can hit 1,985 condition damage, it’s pretty fun. I would break 2k if I had ascended rings…but alas.

At least the rarer stat combinations are slowly becoming available. With Dungeon jewelry and ascended rings/back, there’s Rabid and a few other previously no-jewelry stat combinations out there. Course, there’s still no Exotic version of Crests, so upgrade slots are sort of what would you like to amplify your build with (or go with the rare Crests),

IMO Carrion is a good complement to Rabid as it provides some much-needed Vitality while still maximising your condition damage. Rampager’s may provide a lot of Precision but it has no defensive stats and doesn’t give as much condition damage.

I still prefer to go full Rabid if possible however.

Agreed there. I have Carrion Jewels in my upgrade slots on my Rabid Jewelry + 2 Carrion Rings while I wait on Ascended. It’s pretty nice.

Thanks guys! Very helpful responses! I’ve switched to condition/precision gear and despite a 100 point drop in Mind Wrack damage (as listed in the tooltip), I still seem to be just as strong as before, probably thanks to all the crits. I use a mix of condition/power/toughness/vitality gems and runes.

I’ll check into Illusionary Elasticity because I have 20 points in Illusion, but I have the Mind Wrack crit and confusion duration traits right now (unless one of those IS IE).

I’d replace Precise Wrack with Illusionary Elasticity. A 10% increase in Crit chance, especially when your Crit chance is already 40 – 50%, is not that significant; plus without Power your Mind Wrack damage is quite low even when it crits: and since all your Shatter skills inflict Confusion (due to Illusions 15) it probably does more condition damage than direct damage anyway.

Illusionary Elasticity on the other hand doubles the damage your Winds of Chaos do while in medium to close range. That’s far more significant than a small crit chance increase to a skill on a 10s+ CD.

I might also add that using a condition damage build myself, I almost never use Mind Wrack: the only Shatters I use are Cry of Frustration and Distortion. Unless you reconjure three Illusions immediately the paltry damage your Mind Wrack does will be less than the damage your Staff Clones would’ve done, and while it is perfectly possible to reconjure three Staff Clones every 10s or so; it will tax your Clone generation rate and may leave you temporarily unable to recover if say an AoE wipes out all Clones at once.

Cry of Frustration on the other hand has potential to do a lot of damage, and using it every 20 – 30 seconds or so is just about right to augment your AoE damage without compromising your Clone generation.

For a staff, this depends totally on your playstyle. Rampager’s is probably very powerful considering it will affect all your damage, but lategame Cond Damage is comparatively weak due to gear scaling. This is really a tough one to answer, since sometimes bleeds stack so high, it wouldn’t matter if you had any condition damage at all as they won’t be applied. It’s really easy to lose DPS on proc’d burns, even when it’s from another clone or yourself. If you plan on using shatters, power is probably best. However Staff probably isn’t the ideal weapon for that either, unless it’s only for a swap off.

Interesting how you can use staff as a wep and shatter as a build, be extremy effective and still play totlay different and spec totaly different. I looking at embolism here who obious go for condition dmg build, dont bother with mirror immage or mindwrack and as I understand feel sucessfull. Me on other hand see condition as a bonus, mirror immage as a essensal part of utilitys and burst and think a extra bounce on staff is nowere near as important as 50% hp= reset shatters or 3% dmg /clone.

We both seem to agree that 10% crit is a minor improvment compared to the string alernatives we have in illusion.

I do thu even on well geared players see serious mindwrack dmg on top of al other. Confusion have a spot in any shatter build, Personaly I use it to controll the enemy more than accualy deal dmg, but ofc if he stupid enought to try strike back with 10+ stacks I bow and ty for the badge.

/ Osicat.

Embolism.8106:

I’d replace Precise Wrack with Illusionary Elasticity. A 10% increase in Crit chance, especially when your Crit chance is already 40 – 50%, is not that significant; plus without Power your Mind Wrack damage is quite low even when it crits: and since all your Shatter skills inflict Confusion (due to Illusions 15) it probably does more condition damage than direct damage anyway.

Illusionary Elasticity on the other hand doubles the damage your Winds of Chaos do while in medium to close range. That’s far more significant than a small crit chance increase to a skill on a 10s+ CD.

I might also add that using a condition damage build myself, I almost never use Mind Wrack: the only Shatters I use are Cry of Frustration and Distortion. Unless you reconjure three Illusions immediately the paltry damage your Mind Wrack does will be less than the damage your Staff Clones would’ve done, and while it is perfectly possible to reconjure three Staff Clones every 10s or so; it will tax your Clone generation rate and may leave you temporarily unable to recover if say an AoE wipes out all Clones at once.

Cry of Frustration on the other hand has potential to do a lot of damage, and using it every 20 – 30 seconds or so is just about right to augment your AoE damage without compromising your Clone generation.

How is CoF better than MW, once you have the confusion trait from Illusion?

JohnJSal.8634:

How is CoF better than MW, once you have the confusion trait from Illusion?

CoF does 2 stacks of Confusion per shatter.

Also, I didn’t see it pointed out here, but you can use a Tuning Crystal and a Pizza at the same time, which not only gives a boat load more condition damage, but also helps make confusion much more useful.

Someone said that confusion doesn’t help against basic mobs because they don’t use skills. Is that true? I thought everything in the game was a skill, or does the #1 skill not trigger confusion, for example?

Every ability, including autoattacks, are skills. AoE Confusion is quite good at clearing out trash mobs.

Every time a mob does anyting at all, including auto attack, it counts as a skill use and procs confusion damage.

The problem with confusion in PVE isn’t that mobs don’t use skills, it’s that they tend to attack quite infrequently, i.e. about once every 2 seconds or so on average, and melee mobs often only reliably use skills in melee range. That means that duration becomes very important, because without condition duration you can easily end up applying a ton of stacks of confuse that will proc only once or maybe not at all.

You really need the +33% confusion duration and/or 40% longer food to make confusion useful in pve.

Thanks, that makes sense! I already switched the +crit for Mind Wrack trait back to the confusion duration trait, which I had before.

Some notes on illusions that not everyone takes the time to look up:
illusions benefit from condition damage, power, precision, crit damage, healing and armor (since armor is a combination of your defense and your toughness, they do benefit from toughness as well). They do not benefit from boon or condition duration and do not benefit from vitality.

The WoC that a staff clone casts is not the WoC that the player casts. It does not benefit from Illusionary Elasticity…which has made me question how essential it really is. If I’m a condition heavy build then my clones and I are dealing about the same amount of damage, about 1/4 each (a bit more to me cause my base hit actually deals some damage and theirs doesnt). If I take IE then I’ll be hitting for one more condition every attack, which is only about 25% damage increase. That’s not to say that 25% isn’t significant, but not nearly as critical as it would be if the clones got an extra bounce too.

The confusion applied by illusionary Mage (torch offhand) does NOT benefit from increased confusion duration.

Here’s a fun one that I haven’t been able to verify yet: If you’ve taken Sharper Images (which condition specs really should) using a staff synergizes wonderfully with Phantasmal Fury on the rapid attacking phantasms. The staff will give you a high up-time for fury on yourself; the crit chance bonus from fury will translate to all your illusions, and Phantasms will have their own fury up at the same time from Phantasmal Fury, effectively giving them +40% crit rate.

Phantasms will not be overwritten by clones unless you have 3 phantasms already active. In that case the next clone you create will overwrite the oldest phantasm you have up. This means for boss fights (when you generally want to maximize iWarlocks because other players have already achieved max burning uptime and you’ve already hit the bleed cap) you need to be careful about dodging. If your dodge generates a clone then it’ll overwrite one of your warlocks each time.

Your illusions are not affected by your weapon’s base damage.

Your illusions no longer count against your max illusions from the moment you activate a shatter. Even when the bubbles are still filled in and they’re still running towards the enemy, from the moment you click a shatter you have 0 illusions. You can replace them immediately while they’re running to shatter.

The Trident clone applies confusion when it attacks. Not noted in the description.

Osicat.4139:

Interesting how you can use staff as a wep and shatter as a build, be extremy effective and still play totlay different and spec totaly different. I looking at embolism here who obious go for condition dmg build, dont bother with mirror immage or mindwrack and as I understand feel sucessfull. Me on other hand see condition as a bonus, mirror immage as a essensal part of utilitys and burst and think a extra bounce on staff is nowere near as important as 50% hp= reset shatters or 3% dmg /clone.

We both seem to agree that 10% crit is a minor improvment compared to the string alernatives we have in illusion.

I do thu even on well geared players see serious mindwrack dmg on top of al other. Confusion have a spot in any shatter build, Personaly I use it to controll the enemy more than accualy deal dmg, but ofc if he stupid enought to try strike back with 10+ stacks I bow and ty for the badge.

/ Osicat.

Yeah staff is a very versatile weapon, and it pairs well with several builds and other weapon sets. I have another slight variation of those skills/traits for you that makes for completely different gameplay: I have had great success recently playing a defensive sword-torch (or pistol)/staff shatter build with a hybrid condition/power setup (well mostly rabid with some knights and carrion gear too). Like Embolism I use CoF and Diversion with IP, but like you I shatter instead of letting clones live, and I also use MW and the 50% HP shatter recharge quite often too. CoF condition builds are soo much fun in melee range! Even makes PVE bearable.

I find MW does great damage with the combo of some power and the 4 stacks of confusion. At any given time, I have 6-15 stacks of confusion up and most of it is AOE. On top of that I can CoF+MI -> iLeap/Swap -> MW+BF for a nice confusion burst. If I hit it, it creates a great conundrum for my foes. Do they eat the 12-15 stacks of confusion by using a skill to escape or eat my full MW+BF+condition procs? To be quite honest, many players end up taking a fair part of both (and most mobs usually eat it all).

I do like Power with staff. iWarlock + haste + Power might do more damage than stacking condition damage with Winds of Chaos. My general problem with condition damage and staff is how slow the winds of chaos attacks are.

I feel Winds of Chaos and Chaos Storm plus boon duration is a much better idea. If there was a + boon duration stat on items, that’s how I would go if I was playing Staff. In general, I find condition damage stacking on a Mesmer to be less useful than in other classes.

Power + Crit is best way to go even with Staff. Warlock hits that hard in groups.

technosatyr.3784:

The WoC that a staff clone casts is not the WoC that the player casts. It does not benefit from Illusionary Elasticity…which has made me question how essential it really is. If I’m a condition heavy build then my clones and I are dealing about the same amount of damage, about 1/4 each (a bit more to me cause my base hit actually deals some damage and theirs doesnt). If I take IE then I’ll be hitting for one more condition every attack, which is only about 25% damage increase. That’s not to say that 25% isn’t significant, but not nearly as critical as it would be if the clones got an extra bounce too.

A Staff Clone is not equal to a player, because their WoC has a cast time of 2 seconds (compared to you 0.75 seconds) and their Bleeding is significantly weaker than yours (possibly a bug/oversight). Overall three Staff Clones is roughly equal to one player, so Illusionary Elasticity increases your maximum DPS by 50%. That is very significant.

etiolate.9185:

Power + Crit is best way to go even with Staff. Warlock hits that hard in groups.

There was a discussion about this in this thread (where I argued that condition damage > Power for Staff).

The gist of it is that a Staff Clone in a condition build is competitive with an iWarlock in a Power Phantasm build, and you can conjure three Staff Clones in 1 second while conjuring three iWarlocks takes at least 30 seconds. Overall Staff Clones are superior because you can achieve your maximum DPS faster, it doesn’t matter if you lose Illusions, and it has better AoE damage and support capability.

The only situation where iWarlocks are preferable is against boss zergfests, but really; any three-legged build can participate in a boss zergfest and get a gold participation medal (the only thing that matters in these events), so it is irrelevant.