Guild Wars 2

I tried some HOT meta events and found out that its quite easy to stack up condi on boss/small boss, and thus the iwarlock deals very good dmg in range

I know in meta like DS I can run whatever build but my question is

when thinking to have a range weapon is staff better than gs assuming there are enough condi on target, and is staff can be the off-set in raid too for chrono: in that case i’ll main with my sw/sh then switch staff-iwarlock

p.s. im running power chrono build, quite standard, with phantasmal haste

Greetings!

Use staff and replace the aa with MoP, then you hit like a truck. In solo / open world go for duelling and not illusions, so your MoP will be an awesome skill!

In a zerg, there are so many conditions that iWarlock will make you top dps a Mesmer can do. No other Mesmer will outdamage 3 iWL.

You can even use the staff for solos, altough I recommend sword shield / sword offhand OR gs for trash. The staff is awesome for harder fights, for champions you better won’t melee. You can even solo the harder champions alone this way.

Greez!
- Madame Le Blanc

The staff is good, is a hybrid weapon, is a balance between direct DPS (iwarlock) and damage conditions, and as comments Xyonon, in WvW with the raid zerg, the enemies have usually always more conditions, iwarlock is very usable on this situations combat.

Staff isn’t a great off-set in a raid purely because you either want temporal curtain on that swap, or a high dps phantasm (without bricking your own dps), namely sword. Yeah, warlocks are great with enough conditions up, but that’s a widely fluctuating target and leaves you stuck in a weapon doing zero dps for 10 seconds.

Xyonon is technically right that 3 warlocks on a high condie load is the highest dps a Mesmer has, but that’s ignoring the reality of the situation. Every time you shatter those warlocks, or overwrite with the shield block, or overwrite with iLeap, you have to spend another 10 seconds doing no dps just to produce one more. MoP isn’t a viable option in a non-open world encounter because you don’t have the utility slots to sacrifice. Going to give up action? Recall? SoI? Any of those easily eclipses the mediocre dps of MoP in lost party dps because of the buffs they’re now missing.

One more thing, since you’re comparing staff and gs directly. In many open world events, especially ones in the new zones, you’re attacking either rapidly dying waves of monsters, or something with a funky hitbox. Gs is great at tagging rapidly dying monsters, staff can’t do that at all. Funky hit boxes are worse though. Staff autos won’t work. The iWarlock won’t work. Tbh gs autos sometimes won’t work either, but the iZerker cleaving spin will always work.

Fay.2357:

Staff isn’t a great off-set in a raid purely because you either want temporal curtain on that swap, or a high dps phantasm (without bricking your own dps), namely sword. Yeah, warlocks are great with enough conditions up, but that’s a widely fluctuating target and leaves you stuck in a weapon doing zero dps for 10 seconds.

Xyonon is technically right that 3 warlocks on a high condie load is the highest dps a Mesmer has, but that’s ignoring the reality of the situation. Every time you shatter those warlocks, or overwrite with the shield block, or overwrite with iLeap, you have to spend another 10 seconds doing no dps just to produce one more. MoP isn’t a viable option in a non-open world encounter because you don’t have the utility slots to sacrifice. Going to give up action? Recall? SoI? Any of those easily eclipses the mediocre dps of MoP in lost party dps because of the buffs they’re now missing.

est.9210 is asking about an open world PvE HoT maps ranged option, not a raid / fotm option.

The “reality” is that you want a ranged option because you want to go ranged. It’s not as simple as a rotation in raids. There is no “need to go back on staff and do 0 dmg for 10s”. He has to go on staff because he requires range – then he spams MoP since it’s open world and not 3 wells are required – there is space for MoP. MoP works wonders with any weapon, it used to be even a dps increase for the sword in melee (aslong as you do not interrupt your aa chain).

Btw, you can block with your shield without summoning a phantasm. If you just attack right before the channel ends, no phantasm will spawn.

Fay.2357:

One more thing, since you’re comparing staff and gs directly. In many open world events, especially ones in the new zones, you’re attacking either rapidly dying waves of monsters, or something with a funky hitbox. Gs is great at tagging rapidly dying monsters, staff can’t do that at all. Funky hit boxes are worse though. Staff autos won’t work. The iWarlock won’t work. Tbh gs autos sometimes won’t work either, but the iZerker cleaving spin will always work.

Yea staff is rather a survival and single target weapon and GS the ranged cleaver. Even tough both aa’s stink → Mantra of Pain makes both weapons great ranged cleavers. I still agree that during the unload time of MoP the GS will deal better with AoE’s, but there’s also Chaos Storm, Well of Calamity, Gravity Well and ofc F1 for AoE.

Greez!
- Madame Le Blanc

thx guys for the nice inputs, i was asking indeed for both situation: open world/ and raid,
but i see that i cant use staff for both of them

est.9210:

thx guys for the nice inputs, i was asking indeed for both situation: open world/ and raid,
but i see that i cant use staff for both of them

Well in theory at least you can.

Nontheless, I highly recommend GS for open world and sword main hand in raids.

If you want, you can try my open world build (click the link in my signature). Tell me if you like it. ^^

You can use staff in raids for the very first second of the fight, summon i warlock and then swap the staff for a sword offhand So you have a minor bost when you start ^^ Requires some quick hands tough

I wouldn’t be astonished when you see staff as a real weapon in raids soon. It has high damage potential. You can swap to staff and summon a phantasm, signet, phantasm, chaos storm, use F5, cast all wells, swap to shield cast shield 5 and end CS and continue your rotation without having attacked once with the staffs poor aa, still having the best dps phantasm in the game (single target).

Xyonon.3987:

You can use staff in raids for the very first second of the fight, summon i warlock and then swap the staff for a sword offhand So you have a minor bost when you start ^^ Requires some quick hands tough

I wouldn’t be astonished when you see staff as a real weapon in raids soon. It has high damage potential. You can swap to staff and summon a phantasm, signet, phantasm, chaos storm, use F5, cast all wells, swap to shield cast shield 5 and end CS and continue your rotation without having attacked once with the staffs poor aa, still having the best dps phantasm in the game (single target).

Hmm this seems to be worth trying, I was on Sabetha for the 1st time yesterday and I wondered which weapon to use as an offset to the sw/sh. On 1st try I took sw/sw but then realized that u have to cleave at some point in that fight, thus swapping to focus made sense. But the single target dps of iWarlock (if it could be much better than sword offhand in raid circumstances) would make it for loosing the cleave iWarden provides.

But I think that raid is not able to provide enough conditions to make the iWarlock worth it. In open world it another story coz there are dozens of ppl applying random conditions, boosting those iWarlocks up.

At 6 conditions, iWL will outdamage the iSwordy, at 13 conditions he deals even double dps. In raids I’d say you have between 6 and 8 conditions, depending mostly on your engineer – if you have one.

But at the moment, against Sabby (or boss fights with 9 allies in general) the shield phantasm is superior anyway. Pick sword/shield and /focus for Sabby. So you can pull and unharm the thugs who may kick ppl into her FT.

Xyonon.3987:

But at the moment, against Sabby (or boss fights with 9 allies in general) the shield phantasm is superior anyway.

why is shield phantasm superior?
I acutlly don’t really know how this phantasm work,

1.does dmg (how is the dmg compared to other such as isword)
2, give alacrity (3 sec for the entire life of the phantasm?)
——does it give another 3 sec after shatter with traits “chronophantasma”?

its damage is bad, but ur not there for dmg right, ur there for raid support →
3 sec alacrity with each attack, thus u can keep perma alacrity on some raid ppl

Since players thend to use illusions over duelling, phantasms may lack of fury if the whole team stay together. The other reason is that the shield phantasm grants 2 sec alacrity for 5 people in 240 radius around the target (like wells) every 8 sec. This x3 is already 75% alacrity uptime. Together with wells you can even do “hopping”, means swap groups to share quickness with Signet of Inspiration and alacrity with 3 iavengers and wells for both teams. They also slow the target and thus you can get much more personal damage aswell.

But don’t change your playstyle / gear just now, we don’t know yet how the next patch will affect this playstyle due alacrity nerf.