Guild Wars 2

Common misconception. I’ve seen people say verbatim, “Fear is useless in PvE because it ruins stacking.”

It’s easy to fix that. After you have the mobs stacked, go outside of the stack and position yourself so that the mobs are between you and the corner/wall, then cast staff 5. The mobs will be feared without scattering. The only reason to do that is if you need the CC or you’re running terror, but it’s a thing you can do.

As for more interesting uses, you can use fear to reposition mobs. In the asura fractal I always use it to stack the cat golems together during the first phase when only one is active at a time. Of course, a guard can just pull them all at the start of the last phase, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is an example of a legitimate use of fear in PvE.

You’re right, fear is not useless in PvE. Just like ranger longbow 4 is not useless in PvE. However they share similar problems in that the typical (bad) pubbie\zerger will use these control effects off cooldown, often scattering trash mobs (causing the encounter to take longer) and initiating defiance on bosses. The latter of which is doubly worse since you not only initiate defiant stacks (eliminating the possibility of hard CC such as icebow5) but also often reposition the boss to a bad spot.

Blue Jinjo.2603:

You’re right, fear is not useless in PvE. Just like ranger longbow 4 is not useless in PvE. However they share similar problems in that the typical (bad) pubbie\zerger will use these control effects off cooldown, often scattering trash mobs (causing the encounter to take longer) and initiating defiance on bosses. The latter of which is doubly worse since you not only initiate defiant stacks (eliminating the possibility of hard CC such as icebow5) but also often reposition the boss to a bad spot.

Yes, there are people who use it poorly and mess things up.

However, this was addressing the complaints about the mechanic supposedly being useless. It’s common to see PvErs claim that they have no use for the mechanic at all.

People are dumb. At the very least they are useful for defiance rips, at best you strategically use them with a purpose.

Necro is pretty nice for defiance rips, if you go with a DS build with warhorn you can Staff fear + DS fear + warhorn stun for 3 rips, it’s nice.

If you’re using a staff or stacking in corners, you’re doing it wrong to begin with.

Zenith.7301:

If you’re using a staff or stacking in corners, you’re doing it wrong to begin with.

What’s wrong with either of those things?

All of the “leet” groups don’t use corner pulling anymore. The corner pull was fast mostly because Fiery Greatsword was OP in corners for a bit. Now, the groups just run up and fight the enemies where they stand, usually relying on mesmer focus pull or guardian greatsword pull to stack enemies.

just time you fear with immobility, and go just fine.

Well (if im doing this wrong someone please tell me lol) I use it to get rid of the defiance stacks to make way for the ice bow deep freeze or whatever, or the pulls when theyre required.

Khristophoros.7194:

What’s wrong with either of those things?

Staff is a horrible weapon to get stuck in. It’s okay for fights where you are forced to range because of either a bad party or a lack of mechanical skill so you get the bonus damage on DS1, but otherwise it’s bad for PvE. You get far better mileage out of D/F + D/W.

For the second, stacking in a corner is an outdated tactic. The fastest way to do things is to just stack on top of wherever the creature spawns and murder him there. Corners were only used for the FGS meta, which is long since dead.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Khristophoros.7194:

What’s wrong with either of those things?

Staff is a horrible weapon to get stuck in. It’s okay for fights where you are forced to range because of either a bad party or a lack of mechanical skill so you get the bonus damage on DS1, but otherwise it’s bad for PvE. You get far better mileage out of D/F + D/W.

For the second, stacking in a corner is an outdated tactic. The fastest way to do things is to just stack on top of wherever the creature spawns and murder him there. Corners were only used for the FGS meta, which is long since dead.

But, Dagger build doesn’t let me get transfusion and then I can’t summon downed people in front of killshots

Jerus.4350:

But, Dagger build doesn’t let me get transfusion and then I can’t summon downed people in front of killshots

Dagger build uses Blood Magic tho. You can just drop Well trait for Transfusion.

Fear is going to be seriously hurt with the coming changes. Fear can’t be applies to a creature with defiance, though it does hit the defiance bar if I’m remembering it correctly. This is an issue for us terror users.

Lily.1935:

Fear is going to be seriously hurt with the coming changes. Fear can’t be applies to a creature with defiance, though it does hit the defiance bar if I’m remembering it correctly. This is an issue for us terror users.

Fear reduces the defiance bar by a rather big amount though.

Brujeria.7536:

Lily.1935:

Fear is going to be seriously hurt with the coming changes. Fear can’t be applies to a creature with defiance, though it does hit the defiance bar if I’m remembering it correctly. This is an issue for us terror users.

Fear reduces the defiance bar by a rather big amount though.

Not as much as stun. Chilled to the bone and Executioner’s Scythe where both huge.

Lily.1935:

Brujeria.7536:

Lily.1935:

Fear is going to be seriously hurt with the coming changes. Fear can’t be applies to a creature with defiance, though it does hit the defiance bar if I’m remembering it correctly. This is an issue for us terror users.

Fear reduces the defiance bar by a rather big amount though.

Not as much as stun. Chilled to the bone and Executioner’s Scythe where both huge.

Traited WH 4 and Doom knocks out a defiance bar pretty well

Rising Dusk.2408:

Khristophoros.7194:

What’s wrong with either of those things?

Staff is a horrible weapon to get stuck in. It’s okay for fights where you are forced to range because of either a bad party or a lack of mechanical skill so you get the bonus damage on DS1, but otherwise it’s bad for PvE. You get far better mileage out of D/F + D/W.

For the second, stacking in a corner is an outdated tactic. The fastest way to do things is to just stack on top of wherever the creature spawns and murder him there. Corners were only used for the FGS meta, which is long since dead.

With staff you can start every fight with AoE weakness and then immediately swap to dagger. That is much better than having two offhands to swap between.

Khristophoros.7194:

With staff you can start every fight with AoE weakness and then immediately swap to dagger. That is much better than having two offhands to swap between.

It definitely is not. Focus 4 and Warhorn 5 are both valuable for dps. You get plenty of Weakness from Weakening Shroud when you flash as well, not that it is needed. Staff is quite useless for PvE.

Aktium.9506:

Jerus.4350:

But, Dagger build doesn’t let me get transfusion and then I can’t summon downed people in front of killshots

Dagger build uses Blood Magic tho. You can just drop Well trait for Transfusion.

Doh, you’re right (noob necro here honestly) for some reason I was thinking you dropped that for curses, but it’s soul reaping for curses. I still like my DS build, if I’m going to do poor damage might as well make it easy

Aktium.9506:

Khristophoros.7194:

With staff you can start every fight with AoE weakness and then immediately swap to dagger. That is much better than having two offhands to swap between.

It definitely is not. Focus 4 and Warhorn 5 are both valuable for dps. You get plenty of Weakness from Weakening Shroud when you flash as well, not that it is needed. Staff is quite useless for PvE.

Staff gives you more damage vs 4-5 targets since dagger only hits 2.

Khristophoros.7194:

Aktium.9506:

Khristophoros.7194:

With staff you can start every fight with AoE weakness and then immediately swap to dagger. That is much better than having two offhands to swap between.

It definitely is not. Focus 4 and Warhorn 5 are both valuable for dps. You get plenty of Weakness from Weakening Shroud when you flash as well, not that it is needed. Staff is quite useless for PvE.

Staff gives you more damage vs 4-5 targets since dagger only hits 2.

Dagger hits 3 I believe because its a cleave or am I mistaken? And I would doubt staff does more damage for 5 because it’s damage coefficients are very low, it’s a utility weapon not to mention of course you’re 5 target attacks are on a cool down if we assume it’s hard to get the #1 projectile to pierce all 5 targets but again that has a low damage coefficient and is very slow so that again would bring the dps value down.

Zetsumei.4975:

Khristophoros.7194:

Aktium.9506:

Khristophoros.7194:

With staff you can start every fight with AoE weakness and then immediately swap to dagger. That is much better than having two offhands to swap between.

It definitely is not. Focus 4 and Warhorn 5 are both valuable for dps. You get plenty of Weakness from Weakening Shroud when you flash as well, not that it is needed. Staff is quite useless for PvE.

Staff gives you more damage vs 4-5 targets since dagger only hits 2.

Dagger hits 3 I believe because its a cleave or am I mistaken? And I would doubt staff does more damage for 5 because it’s damage coefficients are very low, it’s a utility weapon not to mention of course you’re 5 target attacks are on a cool down if we assume it’s hard to get the #1 projectile to pierce all 5 targets but again that has a low damage coefficient and is very slow so that again would bring the dps value down.

Dagger only hits two targets https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Necrotic_Slash

Zetsumei.4975:

Khristophoros.7194:

Aktium.9506:

Khristophoros.7194:

With staff you can start every fight with AoE weakness and then immediately swap to dagger. That is much better than having two offhands to swap between.

It definitely is not. Focus 4 and Warhorn 5 are both valuable for dps. You get plenty of Weakness from Weakening Shroud when you flash as well, not that it is needed. Staff is quite useless for PvE.

Staff gives you more damage vs 4-5 targets since dagger only hits 2.

Dagger hits 3 I believe because its a cleave or am I mistaken? And I would doubt staff does more damage for 5 because it’s damage coefficients are very low, it’s a utility weapon not to mention of course you’re 5 target attacks are on a cool down if we assume it’s hard to get the #1 projectile to pierce all 5 targets but again that has a low damage coefficient and is very slow so that again would bring the dps value down.

The staff autoattack pierces up to 5 targets as well, and yes dagger really is 2 target.

Khristophoros.7194:

Zetsumei.4975:

Khristophoros.7194:

Aktium.9506:

Khristophoros.7194:

With staff you can start every fight with AoE weakness and then immediately swap to dagger. That is much better than having two offhands to swap between.

It definitely is not. Focus 4 and Warhorn 5 are both valuable for dps. You get plenty of Weakness from Weakening Shroud when you flash as well, not that it is needed. Staff is quite useless for PvE.

Staff gives you more damage vs 4-5 targets since dagger only hits 2.

Dagger hits 3 I believe because its a cleave or am I mistaken? And I would doubt staff does more damage for 5 because it’s damage coefficients are very low, it’s a utility weapon not to mention of course you’re 5 target attacks are on a cool down if we assume it’s hard to get the #1 projectile to pierce all 5 targets but again that has a low damage coefficient and is very slow so that again would bring the dps value down.

The staff autoattack pierces up to 5 targets as well, and yes dagger really is 2 target.

using staff is horrendously dumb. for multitarget damage you got your well of suffering and corruption+ piercing life blast on death shroud.

Now with reaper staff becomes even more useless as you got either reaper shroud or greatsword for aoe.

Zenith.7301:

Khristophoros.7194:

Zetsumei.4975:

Khristophoros.7194:

Aktium.9506:

Khristophoros.7194:

With staff you can start every fight with AoE weakness and then immediately swap to dagger. That is much better than having two offhands to swap between.

It definitely is not. Focus 4 and Warhorn 5 are both valuable for dps. You get plenty of Weakness from Weakening Shroud when you flash as well, not that it is needed. Staff is quite useless for PvE.

Staff gives you more damage vs 4-5 targets since dagger only hits 2.

Dagger hits 3 I believe because its a cleave or am I mistaken? And I would doubt staff does more damage for 5 because it’s damage coefficients are very low, it’s a utility weapon not to mention of course you’re 5 target attacks are on a cool down if we assume it’s hard to get the #1 projectile to pierce all 5 targets but again that has a low damage coefficient and is very slow so that again would bring the dps value down.

The staff autoattack pierces up to 5 targets as well, and yes dagger really is 2 target.

using staff is horrendously dumb. for multitarget damage you got your well of suffering and corruption+ piercing life blast on death shroud.

Now with reaper staff becomes even more useless as you got either reaper shroud or greatsword for aoe.

Staff has better base damage for wells + shroud.

Sure. GS does the same job better since it also has good base damage. There is one problem. It’s not out yet.

Khristophoros.7194:

Zenith.7301:

Khristophoros.7194:

Zetsumei.4975:

Khristophoros.7194:

Aktium.9506:

Khristophoros.7194:

With staff you can start every fight with AoE weakness and then immediately swap to dagger. That is much better than having two offhands to swap between.

It definitely is not. Focus 4 and Warhorn 5 are both valuable for dps. You get plenty of Weakness from Weakening Shroud when you flash as well, not that it is needed. Staff is quite useless for PvE.

Staff gives you more damage vs 4-5 targets since dagger only hits 2.

Dagger hits 3 I believe because its a cleave or am I mistaken? And I would doubt staff does more damage for 5 because it’s damage coefficients are very low, it’s a utility weapon not to mention of course you’re 5 target attacks are on a cool down if we assume it’s hard to get the #1 projectile to pierce all 5 targets but again that has a low damage coefficient and is very slow so that again would bring the dps value down.

The staff autoattack pierces up to 5 targets as well, and yes dagger really is 2 target.

using staff is horrendously dumb. for multitarget damage you got your well of suffering and corruption+ piercing life blast on death shroud.

Now with reaper staff becomes even more useless as you got either reaper shroud or greatsword for aoe.

Staff has better base damage for wells + shroud.

Sure. GS does the same job better since it also has good base damage. There is one problem. It’s not out yet.

Shroud builds is a DPS loss against dagger build.

And the tiny extra damage on wells does not override having to use staff skills over a d/wh+d/f rotation.

The whole point about greatsword is academic. It’s gonna come out, so there’s no point in discussing this.

Staff is a hybrid condi/power/support weapon, it’s simply mediocre at all 3 and excels at none. Much like scepter and our traitlines trying to mix conditions with power.

Khristophoros.7194:

Aktium.9506:

Khristophoros.7194:

With staff you can start every fight with AoE weakness and then immediately swap to dagger. That is much better than having two offhands to swap between.

It definitely is not. Focus 4 and Warhorn 5 are both valuable for dps. You get plenty of Weakness from Weakening Shroud when you flash as well, not that it is needed. Staff is quite useless for PvE.

Staff gives you more damage vs 4-5 targets since dagger only hits 2.

Cleaving 5 targets with staff auto is still slower and weaker then just dropping Wells and using Life Transfer and doing dagger rotations to kill. The only times you fight 2+ mobs are when they’re trash mobs and die within seconds anyway. If they’re damagesponge trash your Ele should be dropping an Ice Bow for you anyway.

Drop wells in staff, go into shroud and use LT, drop shroud and switch to dagger.

And it’s flawed to bring utilities or shroud skills into this. You can cast them in staff or dagger. Therefore staff is better against 5 targets, period.

You’re trying to justify taking focus for the tiny bit of extra damage every 15 seconds and you totally forget that putrid mark has a 1.2 damage coefficient and hits 5 targets so staff starts off with good damage before you swap to dagger and stay in dagger the whole fight. By the time you’d have made overall gains by working focus into your rotation the fight should be long done.

Khristophoros.7194:

Drop wells in staff, go into shroud and use LT, drop shroud and switch to dagger.

And it’s flawed to bring utilities or shroud skills into this. You can cast them in staff or dagger. Therefore staff is better against 5 targets, period.

You’re trying to justify taking focus for the tiny bit of extra damage every 15 seconds and you totally forget that putrid mark has a 1.2 damage coefficient and hits 5 targets so staff starts off with good damage before you swap to dagger and stay in dagger the whole fight. By the time you’d have made overall gains by working focus into your rotation the fight should be long done.

Putrid Mark doesn’t do anything even close to the amount of damage Reaper’s Touch does when all bounces connect.

And no, it’s not flawed to bring utilities into it. Every part of a build serves a purpose. Bringing a staff when wells+shroud/icebow is enough to deal with pretty much any group of trash means you have a weapon on your build that is obsolete in its purpose because the only redeeming thing about it is a single skill that has no valid use outside of hitting 5 targets. Much like bringing BiP when you have a Phalanx Warr and Eles willing to prestack with S/D. The skill is good, but it will serve no purpose. By the time you’re within staff range you should be casting locusts, wells, vamp sig before you reach daggering range. Setting up Chillblains and Putrid Mark will end up costing you dps for minimal gain while also kittening up your rotation.