Lets get something out of the way first. For a power based build, GS and sword do considerably more damage then any other weapons we can use, with sword slightly ahead of GS depending on your offhand (i.e. not torch, which is for utility and not DPS) at the cost of being close to the enemy.
What staff offers, is defence. As such, if you want to be optimal, you should only use staff as one of your weapons when you’re having trouble surviving with only your utilities, dodges, interrupts and distortion.
I myself used the staff as a secondary to sword/pistol all the way through beta (staff actually did out DPS GS then due to slower animations on spatial surge) and up to when I was about lvl 60 on live but now I run almost exclusively with both sword and GS.
For condition damage, things get more interesting. There are two big problem with mesmers and conditions in PvE. The first is that, between kiting and the naturally slow attack speed on mobs, confusion isn’t that great. The second is that we ourselves have no real ability to maintain large stacks of conditions like sceptre necros, sword warriors, grenade engineers ect. Staff 1 is our only non-confusion spamable condition attack and its both slow and doesn’t do condition damage 1/3 of the time. This means that the only real way to apply conditions is through the Sharper images trait and clones.
This is when it gets interesting. The staff clones already apply a condition but the attack rate in very slow, while GS clones attack very fast and hit multiple times per attack. This means that GS clones will proc sharper images much more then staff clones, so after a certain amount of precision (which is easily achievable with lvl80 exotics) GS clones will do more condition damage then staff clones. The GS phantasm also hits more times then the staff one. As such, while I haven’t run the numbers myself I’d guess that GS also does more damage then staff in a condition build.
I really love the Staff. I use the passive that your Illusions inflict bleeding on their crits and the staff can set up some illusions pretty fast. Also you are able to escape often, so you are able to solo even harder bosses. It brings a lot of utility with it. Also the damage of the GS doesn’t look better for me to be honest.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spatial_Surge
201-348 dmg every 1.5 sec
= DpS of 134-232
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Winds_of_Chaos
111 basic dmg + 33% of 328 burning + 33% of 298 bleeding = 320 dmg every 0.75 sec
= DpS of 426
The problem with this calculation is, i made it without Power / Con. Dmg.. I sadly do not know how it affects everything. But since Winds of Chaos also may bounce to another enemy or to you to increase your power even more, i really think it deals more damage.
I’m not that expirienced, ready to get teached.
Unfortunately there are a few problems with this. Firstly both the wiki and the in game tooltips are often incorrect, with many of them accounting for some factors but not others. Secondly, power, precision, crit, and malice is unfortunately vital as different abilities/conditions use different percentages of your power/condition damage. Power based attacks can also crit, which means that both your precision and crit damage also increase the attack damage.
For example, your calculations gave the GS an average of 183 DPS, but when you factor in a 40% crit chance and 70% crit damage (easily achievable in exotics) it now has 183*(10.4*2.3)=351.36 DPS.
Finally, a good chunk of the GS’s damage comes from mirror blade, mind stab and its phantasm while the staff also gets a large portion of its damage from its phantasm. If you want to accurately compare DPS for the weapons you need to account for all its abilities, and hence the cast times, rotations traits ect.
This is not an easy game to theorycraft in but If you’re keen to do so I’d highly recommend doing tests in the mists instead of relying on the wiki. Anyway, good luck.
