Guild Wars 2

It has like 33% chance to proc and is useless below 10 stacks(ok, maybe 5 at least). If this is done, mesmers will have 50% chance to bleed or burn which can somehow compensate for slow projectile/attack speed.

Honestly I believe vulnerability is just broken. You need to stack it a lot to make use of it. Probably maybe just give it a single stack like burning but 10-15% more damage on target, just fixed debuff.

I agree 100%. This is something I’ve wished for, all it does is completely kill the dps on Staff auto’s.

It would be so much better w/o it. Or even replace vuln with a short duration confusion. =p

I’ve always wished for it to be a couple seconds of poison instead of vulnerability. A short confusion could work as well. Could be over the top with 3 clones out spamming, though. Would have to see.

Using your clones with the staff will stack a lot of conditions fairly quickly, at the same time as stacking boons on you and a very nice rate. Staff2 + mirror image = 3 insta clones. 5 stacks of bleed plus invuln. isn’t too difficult to obtain this way.

I don’t even care if all it did was Burn/Bleed. Just removing the Vuln would be a buff lol.

Removal of Vulnerability from Winds of Chaos would be a boon by itself for Condition Mesmers, after giving it some thought. Especially as Vulnerability doesn’t affect Condition Damage.

Giving it Confusion in place of Vulnerability (3s) would be really nice though.

I would absolutely LOVE this.

Vulnerability as a condition is fine the way it is since so many professions stack it with ease. But I do think winds of chaos should either not have it at all or only have it (in stacks of 5.) Who are they kidding with this weapon? On the surface it looks to be geared towards a condition dmg build, however it forced me into a power/prec/crit dmg build. And now that I’m geared as a glass cannon I actually prefer these vuln stacks as the I.warlock scales better with it. 10% from all conditions then add another 1% per stack, so honestly it’s like staff was made for high crit dmg warlock builds.

Lol this is more than fine the way it is. Removing this or adding another DPS item to it would actually make it OP. Illusionary Elas pushes this a ton, and doing this would really make people start calling it OP.

While I would love Winds of Chaos to not kitten 33% of the time (Vulnerability does nothing for condition builds), removing it would make the Staff far too powerful. 3 Staff Clones and yourself with Illusionary Elasticity would utterly saturate a target with Burning and Bleeding: they wouldn’t have a chance no matter how much condition removal they bring.

The only thing I want from Winds of Chaos is for its many bugs to be fixed. Firstly, Staff Clones only inflict 5s Bleeding instead of 7s (making the bursty Burning better than the DoT Bleeding), and the WoC they use (also the WoC from Illusionary Elasticity) is an old version that travels along the shape of the ground and is utterly useless if your opponent is on higher or even lower ground.

I’m sorry, but staff auto isn’t nearly as strong as you guys say.

In beta it used to be alot better, the clones attacked alot faster, having 4 of you spamming it would do some decent bleed/burn dmg, but it’s really not that good now, Greatsword Clones with a crit/condition build do SO much better.

Clones also aren’t affected by the “additional bounce” trait, nor affected by our condition/boon duration %. If they allowed that trait and duration %‘s to affect our clones I’d settle for keeping vulnerability.

Or at the very least they could increase the duration of that vulnerability so having 3 clones out could MAYBE maintain 10 stacks or so. It’s pitiful as it is now.

If Illusionary Elasticity affected Clones it would be incredibly OP. It is already very powerful as it is, doubling your personal DPS.

Staff Clones can inflict comparable amounts of Bleeding as GS Clones can, plus they also inflicting a significant amount of Burning damage. They also give you lots of Might and permanent Fury, which in turn empowers them further.

+Condition/Boon duration having no effect is not a Staff Clone problem, it is common to all Clones and Phantasms.

The plain dps of the staff is not high at all. You cannot do reliable vulnerability stacking with the autoattack. Even if with the storm spell I do not see good vulnerability stacks.

A 50/50 bleed/burn may not be so OP after all, due to the attack speed and projectile speed. Other professions can stack those more reliably anyway. Or it could be 40/60 in favor of the bleeding..or confusion or something ELSE.
Or just increase attack speed.

But as it is now, the vulnerability chance is not helping, it is messing with condition stacking for the other two.

P.s. As a side note, for this class vulnerability just does not seem to fit…it is master of illusion not of armor breaking..

Remove vulnerability or make vulnerability 20 secs. I don’t get why many of the vulnerability traits/ skills only give 3-5 secs duration. It’s doomed to fail (give no bonus at all).

I don’t agree with the fact that vulnerability is not logical for a mesmer to inflict, it quite suits, especially with a GS.
However, I do think it does not suit at all the way the staff was conceived and does not synergyse well with a condition build, while staff is crap in full power build.
So yeah, I would agree : either remove it completely, or change it to poison, either of those choices would be more logical.
I don’t think it would be OP this way as, inflicting weakness/dots with staff, then switch to S/something stacking even more vulnerability and press the frenzy is also very effective.
You have to keep in mind that staff is very slow to attack + it takes time to reach targets + its damage is VERY weak. Currently, necros are better and faster at stacking conditions.

I would not miss vulnerability if it went away. I don’t expect it will though. The staff is already my go to weapon 90% of the time in PvE encounters. The other weapons aren’t at all bad for the most part, staff is just that good. Single target it’s a bit slow, but it kills packs at virtually the same speed so it’s quite good for solo.

It’s primarily a support weapon, which is where vulnerability makes sense. If it were to be replaced by a non damage condition, more blindness or weakness wouldn’t hurt. But again, we are hardly lacking in the survivability department, so it’s not likely to happen.

I think the Vulnerability problem is larger than Staff #1.

Some attacks apply 10 stacks of it. Others 1. Others 3. The problem is, Vulnerability, being 1%/stack, is a nonlinear debuff.

Going from 100% to 101% is +1% damage.
Going from 124% to 125% is +0,8% damage. That’s 20% less damage gained for that stack.

Vulnerability needs some re-thinking. It’s stacksize, stacklimit, power and skills applying it all need a game-wide review I think. Just like Confusion might need.

From a selfish point of view it would be sweet. Then I remember this is geared toward team play and layering vulnerability with my teammates can create a nice advantage for us , even if im not the direct benefactor of it.

A stack of vulnerability is always worth the same. 10 stacks are 10 times as good as 1. I hits are dealing 100 damage, each stack adds 1 damage. Nothing non linear about it.

Here’s this….. if the developers knew how to balance the mesmer’s staff, instead of just hitting them with a “critical hit nerfing bat” so hard and leave it like that. They should have compensate it with giving the staff higher attack speed in exchange of removing 2 bounces and leaving it from 3 bounces to 1 or they can fix the trait “Illusionary Elasticity” so it applies to your clones as well now that you and your clones are currently relying in 1 bounce and a super SLOW attack compare to other options. Illusionary Elasticity works with underwater clones and those clones already do 2 bounces naturally without the trait so i don’t see why they made Winds of Chaos 1 bounce only when the attack is currently one of the slowest attacks in the game…. That’s whats not fair!!! make WoC faster attack faster or give 1 bounce back or like mesmer players are saying “remove the vulnerability”, any of those IS what’s call balancing NOT nerfing. If the trait is working with the clones then leave it as i is… but it is not working and maybe it wont so fix the staff don’t leave it as a waste. And by the way I still use the staff as my main weapon so I know what I’m saying.

+1 for removal.

I dont care much about vulnerability, it all adds up so not that useless imo

What I dislike is the slow motion of staff and scepter attacks. Faster projectiles would make these 2 weapons a lot more enjoyable.

I’d rather see the vulnerability condition replaced by the weakness condition, which stacks in duration rather than intensity.

Please please make this happen Anet, remove it or replace it with poison/confusion.

Staff is clearly about condition damage, why put that silly condition on a staff that doesn’t help us at all?

The vulnerability is not for you, it’s for your warlock.

“I’d rather see the vulnerability condition replaced by the weakness condition, which stacks in duration rather than intensity.”
Quite an interesting idea as well, would make more sense for staff as being a defensive weapon. Still think nothing or poison would be better though.

Chaos Storm gives poison why not Winds of Chaos? it doesn’t have to last long but just like 3-4sec and it would be waaaaaay more useful especially for pvp. Of course Confusion would be much better but you and 3 clones spamming it makes it lolz like a mes with 3 clones under water using a trident.

Increasing the attack speed and the projectile travel speed should be high on the list for staff fixes (same for scepter really). That aside, replacing the vulnerability with poison is the most useful suggestion here I think. With 3 random conditions, each should be considered useful on its own merit. The damaging conditions do that, snaring conditions would be very useful too. Vuln(1) just doesnt amount to much, so if they want to keep it increasing the duration *and" making it vuln(2) would go a long way towards making it seem less insignificant.

Throw my vote in the hat for fixing the misc bugs and oversights like ground traveling projectiles, different bounce counts and condition durations of course, but even with that I think the suggested changed would be needed. There is a following that says we have versatility and must have downsides, but imo other classes have plenty versatility too and arent forced to deal with so much inconsistency and lack of polish.

Yeah I would like to go for Poison as well, they could replace the poison on Chaos Storm with Confuse which I think is more fitting.