Guild Wars 2

So I’ve been away from GW2 for a bit and recently came back and see many people saying that "the direct damage of staff is bad "

Now, I understand that Staff doesn’t have the same burst potential as Greatsword’s [Mirror Blade] + [Mind Stab] combo, this is common knowledge.

I’m more specifically talking about the auto-attacks … sustained damage … though you should, of course, factor in non-AA attacks as they’ll be part of your “rotation”.

With Illusionary Elasticity, Staff has the potential to hit [target]—>[something_else] —>[target]. So, especially in a 1v1, you get two hits on your target per auto-attack. If you look at the cast/channel time for Greatsword #1 versus Staff #1, Greatsword is 1.5s while Staff is 0.75. So you can get 2 Staff auto-attacks per 1 Greatsword auto-attack.

Now, if you look, Staff #1 does a little less than 1/2 the power damage of Greatsword #1 when Greatsword is at >900 range. However, it does more than 1/3 the power damage. So if you are getting 2 hits per AA and attacking twice with Staff per one attack with Greatsword, you are getting in 4 hits per 1 full greatsword channel.

All that is said to say … why are people still saying that Staff is not good power damage?

Is it just the lack of burst on a short cooldown or just the lack of anything like Mirror Blade which is an obvious boost to damage?

Is it because Greatsword can’t be stopped by anti-projectile mechanics?

Is it because people are canceling the Greatsword animation to speed up their attack rate with it?

Is it because you have to be closer than 1,200 range with staff in order to get the “double-tap” from each attack?

I’m just curious and figured I’d start a discussion :-)

Staff can’t cleave (though having 3 targets lined up and actually aiming at the one furthest away is rare), the projectiles are painfully slow and to get the double-tap you’re almost close enough to use MH sword anyway.

Additionally iZerker is AoE and much harder to miss against PvE mobs compared to iWarlock, Chaos Armor is complete trash and most of what Chaos Storm does doesn’t help all that much in PvE either.

Traiting Staff also requires investment in the Condition Damage/Shatter line (and defensive condi for the CDR), GS doesn’t take 4 trait points in a non-Power line to gain half its damage.

For PvP Staff’s defensive utility actually matters, so it’s a viable pick regardless of damage potential. And Phase Retreat spams clones for shatter builds either way.

MB 1 of reason.
WoC 1-attack cycle = 1.3s (cause some aftercast), damage coeff = 0.3, dc per sec ~0.23.
SS 1-attack cycle = 1.4s, damage coef = 0.540 (<300) dc/s ~0.386; 0.675(300-600), dc/s~0.48; 0.810(600-900), dc/s~0.579; 0.945(>900), dc/s~0.675.
Bounces work at distance ~300-450 (can’t recall right now), so u should be pretty close for double tap.
WoC double hit coeff = 0.23*2 = 0.46. I.e. traited WoC better or same then SS at bounce distance (<450). Though traited GS Mirror Blade ability to burst grows at this distance too.
If u need good ranged power damage with burst potential – u tied to gs

@Photoloss: Good points. So if ArenaNet ever figured out how to make condition damage not suck in groups when you have more than one person applying them, do you think this would be less than an issue?

@Mak
The aftercast for Staff #1 is bumping it up from 0.75s to 1.3s ? That’s a whopping +73% to the cast time. Are you sure?
<edit>Bah, the wiki says the sameThat changes quite a bit … also another one of those “Why?” moments I have for ArenaNet.</edit>

Greatsword #1, when canceled, is 1.4? This sounds right, but I like confirmation :-)
<edit>Wiki says the same.</edit>

@You both: Thank you.

Anyone have a good suggestion for timing the animations? I’ve seen some people before just use whatever recording software but then some timer. I’ve always assumed the timer part was a manual process but figured I’d ask.

If conditions from different players didn’t interfere at all I’d be mashing Phase Retreat 24-7, because it’s simply more fun than Phantasms or the “Noobstick”. The raw condition pressure from 3 Staff clones actually produces competitive damage numbers against single targets until you’re with a proper organised group and all those +%dmg modifiers start stacking up.

Do you want the aftercast timing or just the general attack rate? The actual aftercast you can probably only get by recording and then going through the animation frame-by-frame.
For the attack rate there’s a much simpler option not involving any 3rd-party software: grab any watch that shows seconds (stopwatch is even better) and simply measure the total time it takes to complete, say, 100 attacks. Then just divide by 100 to get the duration of a single attack cycle. The start/stop inaccuracy gets downweighted by the number of consecutive attacks you total up, so as long as you don’t miscount you can reduce the error indefinitely.

Does this take into account air/fire procs? Because GS1 is an intercontinental ballistic air/fire proc delivery system.

@Photoloss: Thanks, I’ll have to do that. I’m sure you’re all right, but I almost always prefer to also double-check things.

As far as procs go, with Illusionary Elasticity “double-tapping” you get 2 hits per cast.

If what others are saying here (and what the wiki pages currently say) is true about staff being ~1.3s and Greatsword being ~1.4 then you have:

• Staff = 2 / 1.3 = 1.54 hits per second
• Greatsword = 3 / 1.4 = 2.14 hits per second
  So, yes, Greatsword would be better at proccing too.

Now, if Staff would only take the 0.75 that is on its tooltip, you’d have a different story because it would be:

• 2 / 0.75 = 2.66 hits per second

I’m currently a big peeved to be learning about this 1.3. I see no logical reason for it … seems like another such illogical thing to have to swallow on my Mesmer :-/

Aftercasts are a general “feature” not limited to annoying mesmers. We’re more spoiled with instant-casts than most other classes though, so it’s easier to notice the difference.

Greatsword is better for procs regardless of the exact attack rate, simply because it’s easier to judge where the proc will land and pretty much nothing can stop you from hitting your intended target short of active defenses on them (and even then GS is 100% reflect-proof, so still better)

In an ideal afk-autoattack situation you can pretty much maintain perma-Fury on yourself though, which already is a massive boost to most sigil procs, and you also get some might stacks to boost those bleeds+burns. Plus the spammy application of those conditions makes them more robust against cleanses (in the rare case that a PvE mob has cleanse at all…)
Currently only relevant for soloing cleaving champions though, many other champs will never kill your 3 iSwordsmen/Zerkers and players aren’t dumb enough to sit there eating autoattacks while you dance within 400 range of them. Well, if they are you probably still would’ve won using Torch phantasms.