Guild Wars 2

Yes, this is yet another post on mesmer staff suggestions. I’m not even sure this is supposed to stay here, as opposed to the suggestion subforum, but anyway. This post was elicited particularly by the last skill update, which turned Chaos Armor into Fancy Useless Purple Bubble of Awesome, as other people already pointed out.

I really like staff (as opposed to GS). Before the recent update, I thought staff’s 2,4,5 to be great skills. Now Chaos Armor has approached uselessness, so I’m pretty much left with 2 skills I like on the weapon.

The problem with staff is I think it tries to convey too many things at once, while not excelling in anything in particular. It applies conditions, but not as consistently as a real condition build would require, it applies boons, but not as reliably as a full support weapon, it deals damage, but not as your standard damage dealing weapon.

So here’s my take on staff skill:

1. Winds of Chaos: Remove Bleeding, Burning and Vulnerability, slightly adjust damage to compensate. Might and Fury are ok.

2. Phase Retreat: this is a terrific skill, just change it according to Winds of Chaos change.

3. Phantasmal Warlock: make this phantasm deal 10% more damage for every different boon you have. Substitute the bouncing attack feature, it is far to easy to avoid the bolt, and this is the damage dealing skill of the weapon.

4. Chaos Armor: Ele Frost Aura says hello – make this skill apply an ARMOR (duh) which reduces incoming damage by 10%. If you’re struck by melée or ranged projectiles (not spells) you get 5s of protection and enemy is inflicted with 2 stacks of vulnerability for each hit (1s internal cooldown).

5. Chaos Storm: remove poison and chilled (poison and chilled on a mesmer? For real?) and swiftness. I suggest keeping the way this skill work, only conditions applied are now daze and blindness, whereas boons are aegis and 1s quickness (yes I said it, and yes I know this is not a boon).

As you might have noticed, the underlying idea I’d go for Chaos Armor and Chaos Storm is having them apply boons and conditions one the opposite of the other: Protection VS Vulnerability, Daze VS Quickness, Blind VS Aegis.

Quickness sounds OP, but you have to consider it does not stack. I think it’d be fairly easy to make Chaos Storm grant 1s plus an unnoticeable amount of quickness duration, so that, should it reapply right on the next pulse of Chaos Storm, it wouldn’t actually trigger. The wasted pulse is worth having the effect in the first place I think. Also, you can hardly capitalize on 1s of random quickness hoping to land a burst. One viable alternative, borrowing from GW1 where this skill dealt damage and removed energy from foes, would be to grant, say, 5% endurance per pulse to allies within it, while removing 5% endurance per pulse to foes caught inside.

Now about the condition removed, specifically bleeding and burning, I suggest they be moved to scepter and torch respectively. I’m not going to digress about those weapons in detail because this is already far longer than needed, but for the sake of completion:

Move bleeding to scepter AA and remove clone generation from chain 3. Devote a skill to a surefire clone generation ability conjuring confusion-inflicting clones, and fuse confuse images with illusionary counter so that you block and deal damage, or can activte a 5 stack AoE confusion.

Move Burning to Illusionary Mage (which sucks so blatantly it even hurts to think about). Scrap confusion and retaliation, and make this phantasm deal three pulses of increasing PBAoE damage. Last wave inflicts burning.

These are of course suggestions based solely on very own opinions. Critiques are appreciated that are possibily more elaborated than kitten NOOB or OMGMESMERISOP. Thanks for hopefully having borne with me thus far.

Personally i disagree. I see the Greatsword and Staff as the opposites. Greatsword for outright damage, Staff for conditions. With that in mind I would change a few things.

1. Winds of Chaos needs a few tweaks, a slight tweak to increase damage because at the moment its less then pitiful. the “orbs” needs a speed boost, they are just to slow. I personally think the conditions need to be tweaked but not removed.

I would say have it apply a random condition out of ALL of them other then the likes of Chill, Fear and Immobilize. and have it add a random boon out of them ALL we have little/no access to some of them so i would say have them ALL on the list.

Phase Retreat – I like this, pretty much dont change it

Chaos Armor – well this just plain sucks. My changes would be add a 10% damage reduction, it being an ARMOR means that it should really have this. Just like Winds of Chaos using a attack causes a random condition of the same ones as WoC, the boons are the same as WoC as well. I think remove the 1second internal cooldown as well

Chaos Storm – Again have so it can inflict the same conditions and boons as WoC and Chaos Armor

Overall i think the only condition she shouldnt have access to is Fear and Chill they dont feel very “Mesmer”

Capitan Mancino.7915:

1. Winds of Chaos: Remove Bleeding, Burning and Vulnerability, slightly adjust damage to compensate. Might and Fury are ok.

This is a bad idea. The staff is our condition damage 2handed weapon. This would make it useless.

Capitan Mancino.7915:

3. Phantasmal Warlock: make this phantasm deal 10% more damage for every different boon you have. Substitute the bouncing attack feature, it is far to easy to avoid the bolt, and this is the damage dealing skill of the weapon.

This is a horrific idea. The power of the warlock comes from the fact that massive numbers of conditions will be stacked on mobs with the proper team comp. This would also be impossible to code.

Capitan Mancino.7915:

4. Chaos Armor: Ele Frost Aura says hello – make this skill apply an ARMOR (duh) which reduces incoming damage by 10%. If you’re struck by melée or ranged projectiles (not spells) you get 5s of protection and enemy is inflicted with 2 stacks of vulnerability for each hit (1s internal cooldown).

This would be sort of odd, though at least not as abysmal as our other suggestions.

Capitan Mancino.7915:

5. Chaos Storm: remove poison and chilled (poison and chilled on a mesmer? For real?) and swiftness. I suggest keeping the way this skill work, only conditions applied are now daze and blindness, whereas boons are aegis and 1s quickness (yes I said it, and yes I know this is not a boon).

Yes, chilled and poison on a mesmer. Poison is an extremely strong condition that cripples healing effects, and chilled is an extremely strong offensive and defensive condition. Chaos storm is the only way we inherently have of applying those conditions.

Er.. So what exactly are we using for conditions? The scepter? Bouncing attack from the iWarlock? Wut?

What the Staff needs has been exhaustively talked about. Removing Vulnerability and bouncing trait working on clones. With that it’s pretty much set.

Though a condition weapon with a clone that ramps on power/crit is dumb, but it fits a Rampager set, except it does no conditions, so why have condition damage, and clones don’t do direct damage so why have Power?

Something like the pistol phantasms can crank up a lot of bleeds, so it fits the staff more.

Yeah but the iDuelist needs the trait for it to do the conditions, i think the Staff clones dont need a trait for conditions – though it needs to have more conditions added and more boons added as well

The iLock does more damage based on your conditions on target but i think this should be taken furter, the damage should be based off condition damage rather then power which i think its based on now.

This weapon could be SO much more useful if it was mad into a PROPER Condition weapon, it just seems like it has the same problem as Scepter its good at both, amazing at neither.

Thanks for your replies. In no precise order, some things I wish to answer to.

I pretty well know poison and chill are extremely strong conditions. Then again, I don’t see why every existing condition should be necessarily made available to mesmers, nor to any other class for the matter. For instance, a guardian is thematically well suited to blind, vulnerability and burning. Not as much can be said of poison, which I’d consider a signature condition of necromancers and rangers, whereas chill of necromancers and elementalists. There already is a class able to deal with – I think – every condition in the game, that is the engineer, who’s supposed to be a jack of all trades in the first place. So again: poison and chill, despite being very strong, don’t seem to fit – to me at least – with mesmers. As has been said, they’re only attainable randomly via a single skill out of our entire skillset (I’m not contemplating sigils or runes), and thus seems to me like an afterthought rather than a strategical choice.

On phantasmal mage: why would it be impossible for them to code the damage increase with respect to every single boon you have? That’s something already being implementd, except it’s on conditions. Is there anything I miss? Also, while it’s true that a proper team composition can stack up all different conditions available in the game, the very same goes for boons. Pick up an ele and a guardian and you’re pretty much done.

Chaos Armor the way I suggested it to be doesn’t actually sets itself apart from the already mentioned Frost Aura. You get a base damage redution, then chill when you’re hit. With the way I envision the staff, you get a base damage reduction and a damage damping boon when you’re struck. See the parallel, forgive my lack of fantasy

And here’s a couple more questions (I hope I’m not coming on as snotty, I’d just like to make my point clearer).

1. Provided the scepter was consistently given the opportunity of being our MH of choice for condition damage, would a second weapon set really be needed in that respect? I thought the whole idea behind weapon swap was to allow people to vary combat style depending on situations… I’m suggesting scepter be revamped to provide easy accessibility to bleeding – the bread and butter condition of the game – and confusion, our signature condition, and torch be consistently made into a burning dealing weapon. And quite honestly, giving the staff access to every existing conditions and boons in the game seems a way into creating the most unrealiable and gimmicky weapon ever designed. Though I must confess I thoroughly hate randomness, so my opinion is definitely skewed for that matter.

With that said, question number 1 leads me directly into:

2. What’s our support weapon supposed to be? Focus in itself is nice, plainly awesome when traited, but it’s just those two skills. And I know we have some of the best supporting utilities out there, but we’re talking about weapons. The way staff is currently implemented is to have it offer support, dealing conditions and flat out damage. I honestly think it does look quite the mess. That’s why I suggested the above stuff. Scrap conditions, or better, scrap at least DoT conditions, and focus on boons, throwing in some CC as a complement. Might raises condition damage as well, as I am sure you know.

So, some have said staff is our only go-to 2H weapon for condition damage, and as such it should stay this way. What if I asked you about a MH ranged damage dealing weapon? Well, we don’t have any. We have to cope with a somewhat medium sized weapon arsenal, so I suggest weapon be more clear cut in what they do, instead of each doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that. We lack a true CD weapon: make scepter and torch into it. We lack a full fledged support defensive weapon: make staff into it.

And last but not least. Bouncing skills are a bit iffy, so to speak, but that’s another story entirely.

Again thanks.

Chaos armor was nerfed for dps builds but buffed in general and especially buffed for support builds.

Staff is great in it’s current version. I know most of your better and experienced mesmers have no problem with it currently.

If anything I’ve grown to love the changes to chaos armor even though at first I was bummed. I thought it was a nerf like everyone else. The difference is that I’ve played tons since and know that it’s actually a good balancing in the long run of the class.

It’s much easier to get extended durations or protection now. The only thing I would change on staff is the vulnerability, but I don’t know what you’d change it to that wouldn’t make the staff too strong.

Your suggests effectively make the Staff a confused weapon. Is it power/crit or is it condition. Middle of the road hardly ever works well in this game.

The only thing staff needs is to apply the extra bounce for clones.

Making Chaos Armor like frost aura that gives a solid 10% reduction AND granting random protection procs is simply OP. We can apply almost a constant chaos armor on ourselves and not sacrifice much to do it. My longest was a solid 1.5min of constant chaos armor.

The staff is simply an amazing weapon probably one of the best in the game for any class.

Other people have covered most of the points. However, as to why it would be impossible to code, skills work with a source and a target. Conditions are on the target, and so it can scale based on the conditions on the target. However, boons on the Mesmer are neither target nor source. Phantasms have their own skills that they use. This would be like using a spell that did more damage based on how many boons were on the person next to you.

The staff is amazing as it is. Its the most versatile weapon our class has. It can fit both powercrit and condition builds.
If you want to use staff in power builds, just use it in mid- to melee- range and enjoy the might-stacking. If you up the dmg from autoattack to par with sword’s then with might-stacking, it would be OP.

Capitan Mancino.7915:

1. Winds of Chaos: Remove Bleeding, Burning and Vulnerability, slightly adjust damage to compensate. Might and Fury are ok.

2. Phase Retreat: this is a terrific skill, just change it according to Winds of Chaos change.

3. Phantasmal Warlock: make this phantasm deal 10% more damage for every different boon you have. Substitute the bouncing attack feature, it is far to easy to avoid the bolt, and this is the damage dealing skill of the weapon.

4. Chaos Armor: Ele Frost Aura says hello – make this skill apply an ARMOR (duh) which reduces incoming damage by 10%. If you’re struck by melée or ranged projectiles (not spells) you get 5s of protection and enemy is inflicted with 2 stacks of vulnerability for each hit (1s internal cooldown).

5. Chaos Storm: remove poison and chilled (poison and chilled on a mesmer? For real?) and swiftness. I suggest keeping the way this skill work, only conditions applied are now daze and blindness, whereas boons are aegis and 1s quickness (yes I said it, and yes I know this is not a boon).

1) Absolutely no. You might want a staff that fits power builds better but removing those from staff 1 would be a genocide of staff condi builds and what condi build can there be without a staff. I get 1500 burning damage from staff 1 skill (2 sec of burning 1500 damage) and 12-14 sec of bleeding with 1700ish damage, this also stacks so easily with my clones (bleed trait). Staff 1 means huge damage in my build.

2) Phase retreat is the best skill ever, with this skill it is really hard to die, this skill alone carries the burden of survival. So, no.

3) No, I land more conditions on my opponents than the boons I got most of the time. In a condi build this is only logical. Again this argument of yours is related to your biased modification suggestion of staff 1, so no.

4) Vulnerability, so awesome, no. Chaos armor needs some reworking but not like this. They can even leave it as it currently is, no problem for me. It still discourages the attackers.

5) No, what a way to slam the staff in the ground all these things you say. You absolutely have no idea.

I am thinking, your only purpose with this suggestion is to suggest nerfing of staff.

There are already more power weapons than condi weapons available to the mesmer. I don’t think anyone would want to lose another, a most effective, condi weapon as well. I would rather have them be as they are now, without a single change instead of a change that is actually a nerf.

Serhend.6382:

Capitan Mancino.7915:

1. Winds of Chaos: Remove Bleeding, Burning and Vulnerability, slightly adjust damage to compensate. Might and Fury are ok.

2. Phase Retreat: this is a terrific skill, just change it according to Winds of Chaos change.

3. Phantasmal Warlock: make this phantasm deal 10% more damage for every different boon you have. Substitute the bouncing attack feature, it is far to easy to avoid the bolt, and this is the damage dealing skill of the weapon.

4. Chaos Armor: Ele Frost Aura says hello – make this skill apply an ARMOR (duh) which reduces incoming damage by 10%. If you’re struck by melée or ranged projectiles (not spells) you get 5s of protection and enemy is inflicted with 2 stacks of vulnerability for each hit (1s internal cooldown).

5. Chaos Storm: remove poison and chilled (poison and chilled on a mesmer? For real?) and swiftness. I suggest keeping the way this skill work, only conditions applied are now daze and blindness, whereas boons are aegis and 1s quickness (yes I said it, and yes I know this is not a boon).

1) Absolutely no. You might want a staff that fits power builds better but removing those from staff 1 would be a genocide of staff condi builds and what condi build can there be without a staff. I get 1500 burning damage from staff 1 skill (2 sec of burning 1500 damage) and 12-14 sec of bleeding with 1700ish damage, this also stacks so easily with my clones (bleed trait). Staff 1 means huge damage in my build.

2) Phase retreat is the best skill ever, with this skill it is really hard to die, this skill alone carries the burden of survival. So, no.

3) No, I land more conditions on my opponents than the boons I got most of the time. In a condi build this is only logical. Again this argument of yours is related to your biased modification suggestion of staff 1, so no.

4) Vulnerability, so awesome, no. Chaos armor needs some reworking but not like this. They can even leave it as it currently is, no problem for me. It still discourages the attackers.

5) No, what a way to slam the staff in the ground all these things you say. You absolutely have no idea.

I am thinking, your only purpose with this suggestion is to suggest nerfing of staff.

There are already more power weapons than condi weapons available to the mesmer. I don’t think anyone would want to lose another, a most effective, condi weapon as well. I would rather have them be as they are now, without a single change instead of a change that is actually a nerf.

Very well said Serhend. I wish I was as articulate as someone like yourself.

The thing that it took me forever to learn was let my staff clones work for a little while before shattering. Even in a full power/crit build the staff clones do great damage with burning/bleeding. This isn’t obvious though in your first 500 hours or so of playing mesmer. At least not for people as obtuse as myself.

These complaints about staff are really disheartening considering staff is our single best weapon for almost any spec of mesmer. Staff literally works with almost any build.

The only thing i dislike is that a clone is more useful than warlock with a condition build.
The autoattack is not only about damage, your clones also use it. This is why staff autoattack is great and this is way scepter autoattack would suck even with more damage.

I like the staff as a very random weapon. I think that’s its identity, it should keep that.

What I’d do:

1. Remove Vulnerability from #1, add Poison instead.
2. Remove the debuffs from the clones, but this is a class-wide change I’d do in return for rebalancing Shatter to be much more lethal than it is right now and removing the shatterable clones from DE together with a host of other changes to make Clones proper defensive tools which we need, able to be shattered for the brunt of our offence (but this would require a separate post :P ).
3. Warlock stays as-is.
4. Chaos Armour is ok, I’d rename it Chaos Aura since it’s effectively that. I’d slightly increase the duration by 1~2 seconds.
5. Chaos Storm I’d double in duration, but also double the tick-interval. Then reduce CD by 5s. This would give us an extremely strong combo field with a solid debuff/buff support.

Carighan.6758:

I like the staff as a very random weapon. I think that’s its identity, it should keep that.

What I’d do:

1. Remove Vulnerability from #1, add Poison instead.
2. Remove the debuffs from the clones, but this is a class-wide change I’d do in return for rebalancing Shatter to be much more lethal than it is right now and removing the shatterable clones from DE together with a host of other changes to make Clones proper defensive tools which we need, able to be shattered for the brunt of our offence (but this would require a separate post :P ).
3. Warlock stays as-is.
4. Chaos Armour is ok, I’d rename it Chaos Aura since it’s effectively that. I’d slightly increase the duration by 1~2 seconds.
5. Chaos Storm I’d double in duration, but also double the tick-interval. Then reduce CD by 5s. This would give us an extremely strong combo field with a solid debuff/buff support.

Chaos Storm would be way OP that way considering adding poison and removing vulnerability from staff 1 as well. I agree with all other things and Staff 1 would suffice for damage with poison added and vuln out.

Well it would still cause the same # of boons / conditions total, in fact it’d cause them half as fast. That’s what I meant, double the duration, but same total number of things applied. But it’d substantially power up the use as a combo field so yeah, you might be right there.

Meh! In that case, maybe -5s CD and +1s Duration.

I honestly think I do have some idea, having played the class for quite some time now. What I also think is some of you didn’t bother to read my posts in their entirety, or else I wouldn’t quite explain why some things were said that I never implied myself in the first place.

Might as well be my fault for not coming on in a forum-friendly manner though

I’ll be back in my dusty corner.

The talk of removing and/or improving conditions on the staff (or any weapon) is a design matter that breeches far beyond the staff. As the game goes right now, your builds is either a condition builds, and you gear/eat straight condition damage/duration, equip what you call a condition weapon and suck at everything else, or you avoid condition damage and cry to ArenaNet to remove conditions from your weapon of choice. You’re one or the other, and ne’er the two shall meet. This is less true for Mesmers, who get more conditions from spec than weapons and have managed to live their day-jobs with hybrids, but it’s still a problem, and not one that band-aiding the staff is going to address.

Clockwork Bard.3105:

or you avoid condition damage and cry to ArenaNet to remove conditions from your weapon of choice

Which I didn’t. Suggesting the complete removal of conditions from staff. Implying that it’s my weapon of choice and asking for it to be tuned according to my tastes. Suggesting it be turned into a power/crit weapon (???). And especially crying. I might have filled a thread with loads of crap, opinions are opinions, but I don’t think I ever cried.

Clockwork Bard.3105:

but it’s still a problem, and not one that band-aiding the staff is going to address.

I most certainly agree. Yet I made a thread specifically about mesmer staff, not about game mechanics.

Seeing this is hardly being read – for real – please close it whoever can.

Capitan Mancino.7915:

I honestly think I do have some idea, having played the class for quite some time now. What I also think is some of you didn’t bother to read my posts in their entirety, or else I wouldn’t quite explain why some things were said that I never implied myself in the first place.

Might as well be my fault for not coming on in a forum-friendly manner though

I’ll be back in my dusty corner.

We read your posts in their entirety. Your posts simply detailed a plan for absolutely destroying a fun and popular playstyle, hence everyone, including myself, passing judgement that your ideas were abysmal.

Capitan Mancino.7915:

Clockwork Bard.3105:

or you avoid condition damage and cry to ArenaNet to remove conditions from your weapon of choice

Which I didn’t. Suggesting the complete removal of conditions from staff. Implying that it’s my weapon of choice and asking for it to be tuned according to my tastes. Suggesting it be turned into a power/crit weapon (???). And especially crying. I might have filled a thread with loads of crap, opinions are opinions, but I don’t think I ever cried.

Clockwork Bard.3105:

but it’s still a problem, and not one that band-aiding the staff is going to address.

I most certainly agree. Yet I made a thread specifically about mesmer staff, not about game mechanics.

Seeing this is hardly being read – for real – please close it whoever can.

My apologies. I didn’t mean that quite as abrasively as it came out. “Cry to ArenaNet” was directed at the much larger outcry against just about any weapon that scales poorly due to the inclusion of damaging conditions. Thief pistols and daggers, mesmer staff, warrior sword, and so on. Players often find themselves either building around nothing but conditions or avoiding these abilities if they can. Neither is optimal, compared to simply stacking power/crit on non-condition attacks.

Your post addresses matters outside of that as well, which I wasn’t intending to address at all. In the case of the condition abilities, I’d just rather see the conditions on this and the many other weapons under scrutiny stay and the larger issue addressed instead.