Guild Wars 2

Am I really the only one who is extremely annoyed by the way mesmer staff auto-attack was designed?
I mean, every cast (of you AND your clones) bounces twice. This means if you are fighting an enemy alone you can bounce the attack between your target, yourself, and then your target again, basically hitting them twice for every cast. If you run a condi dmg build, this way staff can actually do decent dmg (not crazy high but not too bad either).
HOWEVER if just 1 ally is present, all your attacks will bounce to that ally instead of back to your opponent, basically HALVING your auto-attack dps.
On top of that the ally affected will not gain much from absorbing half your dmg (a party has perma fury and high might upkeep anyway)
If half our attacks going to waste wasn’t enough, every cast has only 1/3 chance of actually dealing good dmg (the bleed will deal significantly more dmg than the burn and the vuln is just a wasted attack).

I don’t know who thougt it was a good idea to make a weapon that does half dmg around allies. I think this is really unfortunate as i love playing with staff for solo content (despite its many other flaws), but I just can’t use it for any real content (dungeons/fractals/raids/even group events…) because the dmg just drops instantly when another player or npc is near.

Please tell me I am not the only one who wants to see this changed so staff may actually become viable in pve, and not be crippled just by bad design.

Oh I agree it’s annoying when the orbs decide to float off to different allies/team members, effectively tickling your enemy.

Enemy & ally bounces have been an issue since release.

All the attacks that can attack both of them, like the iMage, iDisenchanter, staff auto attack should get the iAvenger treatment and just affect 3 or 5 allies and foes in a 240 radius.

The problem with bounces is that they are balanced around the optimal situation (like bouncing back to the enemy for damage), but the truth is that’s not the case and the more enemies and / or allies there are, the worse these skills become.