Guild Wars 2

So I see some suggestions to use staff for leveling. During dynamic events, do you recommend switching to another weapon? I really like staff, but when I tried to use it for an event today, I couldn’t even get off enough damage in my tagging to get more than bronze medals. That seems… kinda awful.
Any suggestions on how to do this?

Staff is condition focused. Conditions suffer from stacking issues, meaning that only the highest damage stacks stay up when the stack is at max. So if enough players do more bleed/burning damage than you then your conditions never hit.

With that said, I found when leveling that 3x Warlock was very potent for getting gold on the final event bosses, though not all are that way,

Use a Sword or GS as an offhand for tagging in situations where things die too quickly for the staff to tag.

staff is still good if you run a shatter build i hit 800s+ with the auto attack itself really you have so much crit chance and crit damage it makes up for it and aswell from shattered strength you have enough might stacks to make up for alot of condition damage your missing aswell so it kinda works out for events yea i would only use staff for a simple aoe chaos storm other than that ill be using GS with my fire sigil i have 2 just incase one for bloodlust stacks and fire sigil for when i need more aoe i know its a 5 second cooldown but it still does the job i tag mobs fairly well in orr with no problems yet

Sword/Torch
GS
Staff

Choose what you like. S/T and GS is the best for events. Staff is also good, with Chaos Storm if you are Power oriented, but it’s a long cooldown.

Shatter the fastest possible when your phantasms finished their animations. Shatter is NOT the best for tagging events, since it’s a ONE TIME burst. When you want to tag in event, you want to make it a little more ’’durable’’. You need to mix durable and ’’shatter’’.

Chaos Storm or iZerker -> iWarden and Blurred Frenzy (The more important at the moment). Shatter. Repeat.

You need to time it right. We are not like mindless guardian #1 staff spamming.
Edit : Put MAJOR fire sigil. It’s cheap and doing the same damage as the Superior Fire Vigil, it’s just 10 % less chance.

Get the Fire Elemental Powder to help you in events. If necros, warriors, guardian and ele can put insane AoE, then why can’t you abuse as well ? http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fire_Elemental_Powder

Shhhh… keep it quiet

Staff horrible for tagging mobs, at any level. Crap damage aside, the projectile moves extremely slowly.

GS is ok for tagging, especially great for tagging single targets that are spread out because the auto-attack is instant and has no projectile. For aoe shattering is really the only way we have of tagging big groups. When f1 and f2 are on cooldown you can whip out some pom poms and cheer on all the warriors and elementalists that effortlessly keep on tagging everything in sight.

Depends on the event. Staff is awesome in boss events, but not so much in tagging events. GS, in addition to having the only reliable ranged AoE (Mirror Blade), has a fast auto attack that you can use by just target swapping and firing. If the area is small enough, Sword/Torch is a great melee build for tagging.

Edit: Forgot to mention the universal AoE tag – spam clones on different targets and use Mind Wrack.

Hmm okay those are good suggestions. I find even Mind Wrack isn’t fast enough sometimes. I may just carry a greatsword for events, because I love LOVE the staff for everything else. Mesmer staff is the most fun thing I have played in this game.

Agreed. My secondary weapon often changes, but staff will always be my main.