Guild Wars 2

Greatsword is great for tagging mobs in open world PVE due to the auto attack hitting multiple targets and 3/4/5 having AOE aspects. Sword is good due to cleaving and 2 hitting frequently. Scepter is hopeless, but that won’t change until the auto attack is change. The big letdown though is the staff.

The problem is, the auto attack is just… so… slow. The actual projectile. By the time you hit something at 1000 range, in open world PVE with others around the mob is normally dead. Skill 2/4 are more defensive orientated. While the phantasm on 3 hits for a lot of damage, he is only single taret. Chaos storm is nice AOE, but it has a long cooldown so isn’t reliable for tagging.

Suggestions:

- Make the projectile speed faster. Not the attack rate, just the projectile speed. Make it as faster as the projectile from sword 4 (the daze). Then it will actually hit something.

- Make the projectile from Winds Of Chaos hit targets its passes through. Similar to the greatsword auto attack (max 3/4 hits). This way it can tag mobs a little easier and give the staff more of a use in open world PVE. I do not think this would have a major effect in pvp, maybe make it a little better at hitting pet classes. In WVW it would be a buff for group fights, which is good as the staff is lacking in it’s ability to hit multiple targets. This would also suit the ‘chaotic’ winds theme of the staff. This would not be OP combined with the bounces as the total range of the initial attack + bounce seems capped at 1200, also it’s unreliable exactly what it would bounce to (this is balanced with the GS hitting 3 times near instantly).

These are simple changes which would open up the weapon more for open world pve and bring it up to scratch with greatsword/sword. While staff is brilliant for pvp, it is lacking outside of this, and outside of situations where the additional defense is required or getting large numbers with the phantasm, there is little reason to use staff over greatsword in pve. Plese fix this Anet.

Having the staff hit people it goes through on top of the fact that it bounces would make it OP wither you think so or not. Group fights have everyone piled around together extremely close thus you would get full effect of the bounces and then the passing through people. That would be crazy strong.

I’d rather just have a new weapon (like a whip!) that is designed from the ground up to be tagging friendly.

Have you considered that the staff was designed for something else than “just tagging mobs” and ArenaNet want to keep it that way?

Hexxen.7216:

Having the staff hit people it goes through on top of the fact that it bounces would make it OP wither you think so or not. Group fights have everyone piled around together extremely close thus you would get full effect of the bounces and then the passing through people. That would be crazy strong.

Not necessarily. The attack does a small amount of damage with a 33% chance to proc vun and a 66% chance to proc a condition (which both do the same amount of damage). The overall damage is only equal to the straight damage given by the greatsword with full condi spec. At that point, skill 2/3/4 on GS are still better for team fights, staff 5 is generally better but GS 5 is also decent.

It would have the same limit 3/4 of hits it can target as GS 1/Scepter 3. The bounce is less relevant as it bounces to the nearest target – so it would not pass through anything. The change does not make it fundamentally stronger for team fights compared to our other weapons, but it does offer a balance to bring potential variety to the class and weapon.

Chrhal.4983:

Have you considered that the staff was designed for something else than “just tagging mobs” and ArenaNet want to keep it that way?

I don’t think any weapon in the game is designed to be for tagging, though guardian staff auto attack is questionable. The fact is, it is a weakness of mesmers in open field compared to other classes, the weakness is not a result of ‘designing the weapon to not be for ’tagging’ but in the base design of the weapon. Requesting a basic change to the projectile speed, to make it balanced with other classes for open world pve, is not game breaking. The second request potentially is, but that’s for anet to decide based on their own metrics and our feedback, all I am doing is stating a problem and presenting solutions.

I’d like a buff like:
Winds of Chaos no longer bounces to allies but applys a random boon when you hit a foe. Just to have it hitting more than one enemy in Zergfights or PvP-Teamfights.

I say that not because I’m not happy with the staff (it’s my favorite weapon after torch) but it’d still be nice