Guild Wars 2

So, judging by ANet’s recent CDI trends, player input might play a larger role in design and balance decisions for future patches. The Ranger class will be the first to be discussed, with the Elementalist coming in second and Necro in third on the voting, this might actually turn out to be a good thing.

The first profession CDI will probably be the most experimental one, mistakes will be made and we’ll be able to learn what does and doesn’t work as player input for ANet, so even if the player doesn’t play Ranger, it will probably be useful to observe how this plays out.

As for Necromancers, if nothing else, presenting a united front on our desires will probably be a very convincing argument when our time to make suggestions comes around, so while our CDI doesn’t happen we could take the time to work out what exactly we want changed. Balefire has done an exceptional job collecting feedback on our traitlines and similar discussions should be made about different parts of the Necro, utility types (well, minion,corruption,sigil), weapons (dagger,axe,staff…), Healing and Elite skills, each one should have a separate discussion thread so we can try to reach a consensus or at least shoot down the more improbably suggestions before we clog up the singular CDI discussion we’ll get.

This is the logic I followed and why I decided to post this Staff discussion thread.
Here we should try to present arguments to uphold our desired changes for this weapon.

Currently the Staff is in my opinion a very subpar weapon. I don’t mean that it’s weak, it just works in a very bad way. The most effective way to use the Staff is to use all the marks in the shortest possible amount of time, spamming 2-3-4-5 as fast as possible and swapping to anything else so you don’t waste time and lose DPS. Besides spam being the most rewarding play style, all the marks have very similar animations, making counter play almost impossible. Since the marks require enemies to trigger they also have many problems in PvE due to not working on building type enemies. All said, I believe Staff is our weapon that needs the most work done on its skills.

My suggestion for Staff marks is to change how they trigger, instead of triggering when an enemy steps on them I believe that if Marks required manual detonation they could be a much more interesting and useful weapon skill.

My proposal is to keep all the marks current casting times but after they are cast the skill swaps to a detonate. This detonate skill always begins on a 1 second cooldown, this means that after casting a mark it’ll require 1 second before it can be detonated. The purpose of this 1 second is to introduce a window for counterplay into the skill’s usage. I also believe that this 1 second timer reduces the spamminess of the marks enough so that the mark’s effects could be buffed to achieve balance, meaning that marks could become more powerful and useful than their current iterations. Needing to manually detonate marks also fixes problems such as; dodging through a set mark negating all it’s effects, being able to lay down marks as traps and terrain deterrents and marks being actually viable against building-type enemies.

You have to consider many things:

• The casting for aoes is uncomfortable, it’s not optimal, so this yet represent a delay on the casting and the use of the spell.
  For instance, if you have to cast a target spell, you don’t have any other requirement than having your target targeted and press the related key.
  With aoes this thing is slightly different, because you have to check with your own eyes where the target is and point it with your cursor, implying visual cohordination (remember GW2 is a mess for the eyes, too many effects, messy zergs everywhere..); after that you have to land the skill. Here, comes in the difficulty brought in by the Aoe system you are using: the standard system requires you to press once the key to “lit” the aoe marker, and another time to cast it after you aimed it, a really slow process; anyway the most convenient system for pvp is the one which allows you to cast the mark when releasing the key, after that there’s the spell’s casting time and then the effect becomes active.
  In all this really fast action you potentially waste MORE time than a direct target spell and lose time to aim properly, so depending on the distance of your camera and your potential target you have more or less chances on hitting it.
  This justifies them as SKILLSHOTS.

• The counterplay involved yet exhists, and it’s the Dodgeroll (over Immunity, Evades, Aegis & Co.).

• The real problem of Marks hitting environmental objects is a hierarchy problem, because probably they scripted it to prefer hitting standard-sized, moving and alive targets.

So essentially with this excuse of “counterplay” “you”(because I saw yet this idea on other threads) are proposing to destroy the only strenght of Necromancer’s Marks.

Imho the balance on the staff should rely on Mark’s cooldowns, and working on auto attacks #1.
Maybe the work needed is making the projectiles more fast and giving them an higher percentage of proccing the projectile finisher effect or maybe scaling better with power.
Again, the penetrating effects of projectiles its something isn’t working fine with spreading conditions (projectile finisher) or damage dealing; it becomes slightly useful if your targets are static or stand in a line and are too much close to you to dodge the projectile allowing you to get some Life Force.
Too many requirements.

PS: In your post you talk about putting a tarrible delay on the activation of the spell, potentially making it useless in fights; this change should be taken in consideration ONLY if the damage from marks would be enhanced by a large amount, because elseway the staff in PVP would become totally useless.
Remember that like Signet of Vampirism and Tainted Shackles, a skill in PVP becomes USELESS when you give the TOTAL control of the action and the effect to your opponent. Counterplay is necessary, but it exhist yet in form of Dodgeroll.

I think staff 2-5 are ok. 235 could do a bit more direct dmg to help power builds if they use staff.

The AA needs help. its slow moving projectile, 3/4s cast time, and did I mention slow!
make the travel time to the target instant and give it a small aoe when it hits the target.

The Staff as a whole is a very lackluster and boring weapon, but I don’t know if making the marks player activated fixes this.
Personally, I think the best thing would be to add some utility to staff 1 and make it travel faster. If it applied torment for a 2 seconds it could be used as a main weapon more easily. Making it travel faster seems almost required considering it can be sidestepped without a dodge right now.

The marks themselves need an overhall of some sort. However, if you make them player triggered with a one second icd after cast and don’t change anything else then you just nerfed marks significantly. If you implemented this ^ I would want to see an area buff to the skills and a buff. 1 and 3/4 seconds is easily enough time to run out of a mark, and standing in them would mean you deserve a lot of damage. The problem with that idea is conquest mode because suddenly no one can step on a point with out taking a lot of necromancer mark damage. I’d prefer if they changed marks another way, but I don’t know how exactly they would do that.

@Luke

The casting of AoEs on staff is the casting of any ground targeted AoE. They are not skillshots, they are AoE, pretty big ones at that. With their area and casting time, marks are pretty much 100% hits which brings me to the next point:

There is no counterplay to current marks. You can hardly tell which one the Necro is casting and they require lucky dodges to avoid, similar to current Pin Down or a Thief’s stealth opener. Every other example you stated is actually the Necro using his skill on the wrong time, so it’s a mistake on the Necro’s part, not an active counter by the opponent.

There is no hierarchy problem with marks, they don’t trigger on objects, period. Unfortunately objects in this game includes, bosses, monster spawning structures and even downed players. Manual detonations fixes all these issues at once, keeping marks as they are does nothing for it.

Yes, introducing the 1 second timer is a big nerf that’s why I said it’d allow the marks to be buffed with more interesting or intricate effects, like zapv said, marks are BORING right now. Boring and pure spam.

Kiriakulos.1690:

@Luke

The casting of AoEs on staff is the casting of any ground targeted AoE. They are not skillshots, they are AoE, pretty big ones at that. With their area and casting time, marks are pretty much 100% hits which brings me to the next point:

There is no counterplay to current marks. You can hardly tell which one the Necro is casting and they require lucky dodges to avoid, similar to current Pin Down or a Thief’s stealth opener. Every other example you stated is actually the Necro using his skill on the wrong time, so it’s a mistake on the Necro’s part, not an active counter by the opponent.

There is no hierarchy problem with marks, they don’t trigger on objects, period. Unfortunately objects in this game includes, bosses, monster spawning structures and even downed players. Manual detonations fixes all these issues at once, keeping marks as they are does nothing for it.

Yes, introducing the 1 second timer is a big nerf that’s why I said it’d allow the marks to be buffed with more interesting or intricate effects, like zapv said, marks are BORING right now. Boring and pure spam.

I guess this raises the question of what kind of buffs would everyone want to see. Personally I’m all for lower cooldowns first and foremost. If what is suggested was implemented chillblains could be at 15, putrid mark 20, and reaper’s mark at 30. With 20% reduction that would put the skills at 12, 16, and 24. That would be awesome. One could potentially change the skills to do something else though while keeping the cooldowns the same. For instance chillblains could give swiftness, putrid mark could steal life, and reaper’s mark could give retaliation.

zapv.8051:

Kiriakulos.1690:

@Luke

The casting of AoEs on staff is the casting of any ground targeted AoE. They are not skillshots, they are AoE, pretty big ones at that. With their area and casting time, marks are pretty much 100% hits which brings me to the next point:

There is no counterplay to current marks. You can hardly tell which one the Necro is casting and they require lucky dodges to avoid, similar to current Pin Down or a Thief’s stealth opener. Every other example you stated is actually the Necro using his skill on the wrong time, so it’s a mistake on the Necro’s part, not an active counter by the opponent.

There is no hierarchy problem with marks, they don’t trigger on objects, period. Unfortunately objects in this game includes, bosses, monster spawning structures and even downed players. Manual detonations fixes all these issues at once, keeping marks as they are does nothing for it.

Yes, introducing the 1 second timer is a big nerf that’s why I said it’d allow the marks to be buffed with more interesting or intricate effects, like zapv said, marks are BORING right now. Boring and pure spam.

I guess this raises the question of what kind of buffs would everyone want to see. Personally I’m all for lower cooldowns first and foremost. If what is suggested was implemented chillblains could be at 15, putrid mark 20, and reaper’s mark at 30. With 20% reduction that would put the skills at 12, 16, and 24. That would be awesome. One could potentially change the skills to do something else though while keeping the cooldowns the same. For instance chillblains could give swiftness, putrid mark could steal life, and reaper’s mark could give retaliation.

I would prefer lower cooldowns to anything, but adding books to chillblains and reaper’s mark is an interesting idea, the same way mark of blood gives regen.

@Kiriakulous:
you’re misrepresentig what I told, but whatever..

First of all you’re talking about marks as if they are totally OP and gamebreaker.
By declaring Marks need to be nerfed because they can’t be detected on casting you’re saying a whole lot of skills from every class need to be balanced because they aren’t detectable on their casting.
It’s a matter of equalization and priority.

I can’t guess how you forsee such an imaginative spell to magically proc on buildings, bosses and downed player by just you claiming that “manual detonations will solve the problem”.
It’s not a matter of “if it should work like this then it would work”, probably ANET just decided to not making it work (we’re talking about “scripting”) on the above and voilà, menstruation.

Actually, going 2-3-4-5 is a really bad idea in PvP with a Staff. It may work against players who don’t really know what they’re doing, but wasting 5 to just try to fear at the end of a predictable chain of marks instead of when you need it (like anticipating a heal or controlling an area/providing space to buy time) is silly, and using Putrid Mark for the Weakness burst inside Chilblains is just completely sacrificing the ability to drop all of your conditions onto someone else, even through blind.

If you’re going to make a thread to discuss Staff, please don’t immediately give false information about ideal use cases. I actually really like the weapon, and use it for my Power build because of the utility it provides. Plus, faking someone out on a bridge in EotM with a Mark of Blood that they dodge through confidently, only to hit them with an actual Reaper’s Mark at the end of their dodge to fear them off is priceless.

I understand that it’s an immobile weapon and isn’t the most excitingly flashy thing around, but I actually really like it.

Completely agree with Cogbyrn’s observations. The staff doesn’t look flashy, nor is it an exciting weapon, but I have found that it can provide a nice, sustainable AOE pressure, and not many classes can boast with that (without having to spec into it). The combo field on Mark #3 and Mark #4 is priceless and provides decent damage. Regeneration on Mark #2 is a nice, gentle “top-me-up” which I thoroughly enjoy, and my team mates appreciate as well.

Sadly, the staff, in my opinion, seems to be a bit schizo since it can work in both condi-builds and power-builds, but sadly does not excel in either. A real “Jack of all trades, Master of none” weapon.

The AA is terribly slow, in my opinion, but the fact that it pierces makes up for that, slightly, with a decent range. What would make me happy is if the AA was a bit faster, and perhaps collected more LF along the way!

Does anybody have some nice, not over the top, suggestions on how the staff could perhaps bring in just a bit more utility in the form of boons, without obviously having to blast stuff with Mark #4 and careful coordination of the enemy/target’s position?

Luke.4562:

@Kiriakulous:
you’re misrepresentig what I told, but whatever..

First of all you’re talking about marks as if they are totally OP and gamebreaker.
By declaring Marks need to be nerfed because they can’t be detected on casting you’re saying a whole lot of skills from every class need to be balanced because they aren’t detectable on their casting.
It’s a matter of equalization and priority.

I can’t guess how you forsee such an imaginative spell to magically proc on buildings, bosses and downed player by just you claiming that “manual detonations will solve the problem”.
It’s not a matter of “if it should work like this then it would work”, probably ANET just decided to not making it work (we’re talking about “scripting”) on the above and voilà, menstruation.

How exactly am I misrepresenting what you said? I’m stating exactly why I think your arguments are incorrect, one by one. Did I change your arguments somehow, because I thought they were pretty clear.

I didn’t say marks in their effects need to be nerfed, I said that marks are held back because they are too hard to avoid and that their current functionality is bad. I proposed a change to said functionality this change would make them harder to hit so they should get a buff to compensate that.

Manual detonation would solve the problem of them working on buildings because you can cast and detonate that marks, is that not obvious?

Menstruation???

Cogbyrn, putrid mark now only transfers 3 conditions and only from the user and the regen trigger would even be usable without an enemy if you could blow the mark at will. Spamming the marks isn’t the ideal use, as you stated, but it is the most widespread play style by far and a good part of the reason why marks have been nerfed recently is the nature of a mark cast on an enemy being too hard to avoid.

What false ideal use cases? I didn’t even mention one ideal mix if we could detonate them, just how they become more avoidable and at least are actually usable against buildings. Your fake out example would actually be a lot more viable with my suggestion since dodging through a mark would not completely deny it’s use.

Honestly, I think staff is at a very good place as it is now. It’s a well-rounded weapon with some support, some control, some direct damage, some condition damage, pretty decent life force generation, pretty decent aoe, pretty aweful single target (which also leads to the whole “there’s no counter play” not being that much of an issue). Thismakes it awesome as a second weapon (which is also how it’s mostly used) in a lot of specs, as it will almost always cover some of the areas that you main set lacks. In the end, it think it’s really good to have such a type of weapon and staff is really good at that role…

Our weapons that really need the most work are, imo, the weapons we don’t have: some kind very offensive melee weapon with cleave (like sword and greatsword on most classes) is really lacking in our repertoire.

I don’t know what you’re talking about with Putrid Mark only transferring 3 conditions. Is that from the latest patch? Because I didn’t see it, and the last time I used Putrid Mark last week-ish, it transferred every condition on me. And last I tested, it even transfers Blind, as opposed to Plague Signet which will Miss and not transfer anything if you’re blinded.

I use Putrid Mark all the time to do a full condi drop in WvW, so I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. At least, all of the condis drop from me, maybe I haven’t looked closely enough to see if they all transfer? A full condi drop as a weapon ability, even if they didn’t transfer any, would often be more worth it to me in PvP than trying to combo Weakness, though the Weakness combo is also quite good.

I’m very used to people telling me mechanics are a different way then I describe, even after I’ve extensively tested it. I don’t know where you are getting your information, but I really don’t think you’re correct about Putrid Mark unless they made this change incredibly recently.

Cogbyrn.7283:

I don’t know what you’re talking about with Putrid Mark only transferring 3 conditions. Is that from the latest patch? Because I didn’t see it, and the last time I used Putrid Mark last week-ish, it transferred every condition on me. And last I tested, it even transfers Blind, as opposed to Plague Signet which will Miss and not transfer anything if you’re blinded.

I use Putrid Mark all the time to do a full condi drop in WvW, so I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. At least, all of the condis drop from me, maybe I haven’t looked closely enough to see if they all transfer? A full condi drop as a weapon ability, even if they didn’t transfer any, would often be more worth it to me in PvP than trying to combo Weakness, though the Weakness combo is also quite good.

I’m very used to people telling me mechanics are a different way then I describe, even after I’ve extensively tested it. I don’t know where you are getting your information, but I really don’t think you’re correct about Putrid Mark unless they made this change incredibly recently.

This made me do a double-take as well, because it was an all-transfer for as long as I can remember – though I’ve come back after taking a break some time after the Zephyr release. So I went and looked it up. According to the wiki, it is now 3 conditions, only from the caster:

On digging through the edit history, this appears to have been added during the Fractured! update on 11/26/2013. The text for the Putrid Mark change only says that it changed the description to match the actual functionality of the skill … which implies that it was nerfed sometime beforehand.

It kinda floors me, given my already-poor opinion of the weapon, though I use it by necessity being a condimancer. OK, I can live with it not being an all-transfer. That was pretty dang strong. But making the transfer caster-only? If it’s true, the staff’s utility somehow managed to get even worse.

Perhaps you’re still getting a full condi drop because you’re hitting multiple targets with the mark?

The change dates back to the summer somewhere. It is/was 3 from the caster per target. So if you hit more than one guy, it can still act as a full condi clear.

I believe it was around the Fractured release that a dev confirmed that the change was intended, before we pretty much all thought it was a bug…

I haven’t tested it recently btw, so it may have changed again.

Manual detonation on marks would introduce another playstyle which we are kinda in desperate need,but i am afraid all the tinkering they will do will be on numbers.
And thats where it gets complicated with the staff
If you add power (which it should had considering its our only 2 handed option) kids will start qqing and we will get nowhere.
Reduceing cooldowns would be quite nice so we wont have that silly down time of waiting 3 to 6 to come out of cd (which lets be blunt even traited the cooldowns feel kitten) but then we will end up putting too much pressure to the average 8 year old brain and they will qq again that necro is op.
If i could come with a simple idea to make the staff viable all around,i would say make marks similar to traps.
Make them invisible to enemy and increase theyr stay time to something like 30 mins instead of the silly 30 seconds.
That way we will be able to have a trapper role in wvw and we can put some use on our recall skills that we have no real use for them as things are now.
I just feel that this was what the necro staff was meant for.

I was gonna say—the uproar about the bug-turned-nerf-turned-working-as-intended lasted on the Necro subforum for several months.

It’s kind of a running joke now, so I’m not sure how y’all missed that.

Aaaaaanyway…

The Staff is purely a utility/support weapon and needs to be traited heavily. Even then it has the worst DPS of any option the Necro has. The easiest way to fix it would be either 1) increasing the speed/damage on the AA (which needs a total revamp to be honest), or 2) greatly reducing the CD on Marks.

As it stands, the Staff excels as a second utility bar that is powerful when treated as such. But if it’s going to be a viable weapon it needs some rework.

If it’s an issue of balance between PvE and PvP, then by all means the skills should be split. The disparity between the two gamemodes is destroying the Necro (and other professions) left and right.

The problem with Staff is that all Necromancer’s are pretty much pigeonholed into taking staff.

1. Necromancers need their condition removal traits to work better
2. Necromancers need a second power weapon, especially a ranged one
3. Necomancers need more blast finishers other than staff 4
4. Only staff (and traited axe) do max damage in Death Shroud

Until these are fixed we all have to take staff.

No other class is as pigeonholed into one weapon lie Necomancers are.

I am not at all interested in manual detonation. Staff marks are already very slow to fire and clunky.

I like the staff utilities just increase attack speed lower the damage and LF gain.

Staff is fine as long as the bugs they call “intended” get fixed (aka 4 being full condi clear of caster and 3 from allies and a charged blast finisher instead of on trigger and DS weapon swapping returns).

Still levelling my necro, but as far as staff goes my complaint is that it is an extremely boring weapon or… lack of variety. I mean, I like the marks. But couldn’t those effects be on 2-3 marks leaving room for something else as well?

Amethyst Lure.5624:

Still levelling my necro, but as far as staff goes my complaint is that it is an extremely boring weapon or… lack of variety. I mean, I like the marks. But couldn’t those effects be on 2-3 marks leaving room for something else as well?

Yes. Hence it’s position as a utility weapon. It’s not a weapon per-se. It’s another set of utilities.

Not saying that’s how it should be, though.

If we want to simulate a CDI, we first need a CDI to discuss the how the CDI will work. Of course, before that, we’ll need a CDI to discuss that CDI.

The biggest problem we have is Death shroud. Now I’m not say we don’t have other big problems. But when it comes time for the necromancer to be looked at it is reasonable to say we may need to be redesigned in a lot of areas from the ground up.

Lord Kuru.3685:

If we want to simulate a CDI, we first need a CDI to discuss the how the CDI will work. Of course, before that, we’ll need a CDI to discuss that CDI.

Was checking the balance forum and came upon a link to this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Format-Proposal/first

So I think I’m actually wrong about Putrid Mark, which is a total bummer. In sPvP, I ran a test against a mob with 3 corruption skills, and when receiving a 4th condition, it only dropped 3 on that one target.

I’ll submit to the fact that it’s possible I’ve consistently been hitting multiple targets with it in WvW. In fact, that seems to be the only answer. Or I’ve just assumed that they’ve re-applied the conditions immediately after clearing.

Super sorry about going hard about that point before. I’m definitely in the wrong, and Putrid Mark does only transfer 3 conditions per target hit.

Cogbyrn.7283:

So I think I’m actually wrong about Putrid Mark, which is a total bummer. In sPvP, I ran a test against a mob with 3 corruption skills, and when receiving a 4th condition, it only dropped 3 on that one target.

I’ll submit to the fact that it’s possible I’ve consistently been hitting multiple targets with it in WvW. In fact, that seems to be the only answer. Or I’ve just assumed that they’ve re-applied the conditions immediately after clearing.

Super sorry about going hard about that point before. I’m definitely in the wrong, and Putrid Mark does only transfer 3 conditions per target hit.

No worries. I’m just surprised you missed the months-long clusterkitten in the forums when people noticed that and there was nothing about it in the patch notes. It took ANet months to confirm the change and only recently update the tooltip and fix the interrupt leading to full cooldown issue.

I tend to take forum complaints with a grain of salt, since people like to blow things out of proportion. I’ve also taken multiple breaks from the game, so it’s possible that it just hit during a time I didn’t notice.

I’m mostly glad I know so I can use it accordingly. I don’t even mind the balance implications, to be honest.

Staff #1 (auto attack) must bounce on targets or deal 1 stack of torment on hit. It’s currently one of the most underpowered(and slow) auto attacks in the game.

Also with the removal of dhuumfire from normal attacks, we need our greater marks trait at the adept tier again. It was moved to master because of dhuumfire balances.
Without 240 radius, marks are useless imo.

Also staff #4 needs to apply its blast finisher just when it’s casted, but the mark mustn’t be triggered without an enemy on it.

The thing about Staff #1 is that the fact that it pierces and provides 4% LF per hit means you could basically earn 20% LF every time you throw it into a group of mobs. In fact, there’s a Powermancer WvW vid where the guy does just that. He keeps the Staff out and mostly spams 1 into the zergs he’s chasing, and it gives him insane survivability.

It can feel extremely lackluster, but I think it’s another issue of scaling, because it can also have really strong potential.

Umut.5471:

Staff #1 (auto attack) must bounce on targets or deal 1 stack of torment on hit. It’s currently one of the most underpowered(and slow) auto attacks in the game.

Also with the removal of dhuumfire from normal attacks, we need our greater marks trait at the adept tier again. It was moved to master because of dhuumfire balances.
Without 240 radius, marks are useless imo.

Also staff #4 needs to apply its blast finisher just when it’s casted, but the mark mustn’t be triggered without an enemy on it.

No bounce, piercing is good enough, rest of staff needs to be bug fixed.

Cogbyrn.7283:

The thing about Staff #1 is that the fact that it pierces and provides 4% LF per hit means you could basically earn 20% LF every time you throw it into a group of mobs. In fact, there’s a Powermancer WvW vid where the guy does just that. He keeps the Staff out and mostly spams 1 into the zergs he’s chasing, and it gives him insane survivability.

It can feel extremely lackluster, but I think it’s another issue of scaling, because it can also have really strong potential.

12% only, piercing has a 3 target cap.

Dalanor.5387:

Cogbyrn.7283:

The thing about Staff #1 is that the fact that it pierces and provides 4% LF per hit means you could basically earn 20% LF every time you throw it into a group of mobs. In fact, there’s a Powermancer WvW vid where the guy does just that. He keeps the Staff out and mostly spams 1 into the zergs he’s chasing, and it gives him insane survivability.

It can feel extremely lackluster, but I think it’s another issue of scaling, because it can also have really strong potential.

12% only, piercing has a 3 target cap.

No, Necrotic Grasp hits up to 5 targets.

flow.6043:

Dalanor.5387:

Cogbyrn.7283:

The thing about Staff #1 is that the fact that it pierces and provides 4% LF per hit means you could basically earn 20% LF every time you throw it into a group of mobs. In fact, there’s a Powermancer WvW vid where the guy does just that. He keeps the Staff out and mostly spams 1 into the zergs he’s chasing, and it gives him insane survivability.

It can feel extremely lackluster, but I think it’s another issue of scaling, because it can also have really strong potential.

12% only, piercing has a 3 target cap.

No, Necrotic Grasp hits up to 5 targets.

My bad, that was new to me. Thanks!

If nothing else, making a thread to discuss Staff is helping everyone clarify some stuff about this weapon. Talk about incongruous views and counterintuitive skills.

Looks like there’s bad news about greater marks with the next balance patch. That’s from speculated patch notes :

Death Magic VII—Greater Marks: This trait no longer increases the radius of marks.

I think staff marks need to be 240-radius as default without even requiring a trait. They are already limited to 5 targets only, and have easily curable condition damage without enough base direct-damage.
With the latest necro nerfs, that kind of slight buff would be good for necro’s main aoe role.

Take those with an entire shaker of salt; Anet has said those are fake notes which means they are not entirely correct. (parts could be but Anet of course is not going to confirm which parts before they are ready so don’t bother asking.)

Re: counterplay complaints and Marks. Marks require a greater skill investment to land compared to regular ranged attacks since one has to manually place the reticule in a place you predict the enemy will still occupy once the animation completes; and un-traited are still subject to normal mitigation methods like dodge, aegis, evade, etc. One can tell a Necro is casting a Mark via a simple observation: Do they have a big stick out and are they waving their hand around? If so, get ready do something if you don’t want to get hit.

Damage wise Staff is nothing write home about; outside of moderate AE pressure/area denial the only place it excels is countering glass Thieves and Mesmers. I find the main reason to take it is the 1200 range (on a class with very few on demand escape options max range is important) and the utility it can provide.

It’s in a good but not great place overall; so I urge caution when suggesting things to a development team that has an established record of stealth nerfing one of the few team support options the weapon and by extension the entire Necro class as a whole has and trying to pass it off as a bug for months before fessing up.

There are really only two things I would do to staff:

1. Merge some of the traits together. No other weapon in the game has more than 2 traits relating to it, and some of the Staff traits are rather lackluster. Spiteful Marks could be merged with Staff Mastery and it honestly wouldn’t be a big deal. Soul Marks could be merged with Greater Marks as well and likely still remain balanced.

2. Improve auto-attack. Make it move faster, bare minimum. I’d like to see something like gaining 1 second of retaliation as well with it, but the primary issue is the slow projectile speed.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

1. Merge some of the traits together. No other weapon in the game has more than 2 traits relating to it, and some of the Staff traits are rather lackluster. Spiteful Marks could be merged with Staff Mastery and it honestly wouldn’t be a big deal. Soul Marks could be merged with Greater Marks as well and likely still remain balanced.

This should be done across the board for every class.

No skill should need more than 2 traits to max out. All of the skills (not just necro in the game) that have more than 2 traits, they are all terrible. This isn’t an accident. Fixing this would be great for build variety in all classes.

I wouldn’t say minion skills are terrible. Traiting makes them better, but even at baseline, they’re decent. The traits for them are also all good (save Corruption).

nekretaal.6485:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

1. Merge some of the traits together. No other weapon in the game has more than 2 traits relating to it, and some of the Staff traits are rather lackluster. Spiteful Marks could be merged with Staff Mastery and it honestly wouldn’t be a big deal. Soul Marks could be merged with Greater Marks as well and likely still remain balanced.

This should be done across the board for every class.

No skill should need more than 2 traits to max out. All of the skills (not just necro in the game) that have more than 2 traits, they are all terrible. This isn’t an accident. Fixing this would be great for build variety in all classes.

Weapon skills, its fine for utilities (like having one reduce CD, other make them ranged, third give a ally/healing benefit) as long as its 4 or less total traits for that type.

I think condensing all of the staff traits into the two in Death Magic would be a fine enough idea. Spiteful Marks on its own is godawfully weak, and Soul Marks, while alright, pales in comparison to other traits in its same slot (Near to Death, Master of Terror).

Of course, merging traits requires making new traits. A lot of lackluster traits are already just filler; how would you replace them? More useless filler traits?

The auto attack doesn’t fit with the rest of the theme.

I think the staff needs to leave marks behind and create a whole new set. i dont like the idea of laying down marks on the ground and either waiting for ppl to step in them or laying them on the player. not only is it not that great for dmg it gets repetitive and boring. I think staff for a necro should include alot of life siphoning to team members and fields like darkness or frost fields.

Staff is a great utility weapon but it would be interesting to see a build more focused around it. Some of the problems I see with it:

1. As mentioned before, auto-attack is useless in most situations.
2. Since Necro is a bit lacking in combo finishers, perhaps the staff could be traited to add reliable finishers to its skills (eg. #1 becomes 100% chance projectile finisher, #2 becomes a whirl finisher).

Agree with Drarnor, better autoattack (at the very least faster projectile speed!) and merging the 5 (FIVE!!!!!) traits associated with marks into 2 would be a good place to start.

However, I would add one thing: RESTORE THE AREA CLEANSE ON PUTRID MARK! This was one of the very few sources of team support the necromancer had and it was not merely nerfed but entirely eradicated! I know it was too powerful in its original form but I’ve listed a large number of ways in which the area cleanse could be restored in a balanced way over here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Putrid-Mark-and-teamplay-suggestions/first#post3382145
The fact that insult was added to injury by the fact that ANet refused to even acknowledge the stealth-nerf for months, letting us think it was a bug, and when it addressed the issue they had the nerve to say that the full cooldown on interrupt bug was also by design was something I found personally very hurtful, and destroyed a lot of the goodwill I felt towards the company.

To be fair, Jon Chapman quickly came in to say the cooldown thing was not intended and, true to his word, it was fixed in the next patch.

I like it when Chapman tells us something is going to happen. I can’t recall a time when it wasn’t true.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

To be fair, Jon Chapman quickly came in to say the cooldown thing was not intended and, true to his word, it was fixed in the next patch.

I like it when Chapman tells us something is going to happen. I can’t recall a time when it wasn’t true.

That was great of Jon, but it makes me wonder if there are some severe communication problems between teams and members at ANet. I think part of the reason we see so few dev posts here is because they would often seem disjointed and send mixed messages to the community.

Kiriakulos.1690:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

To be fair, Jon Chapman quickly came in to say the cooldown thing was not intended and, true to his word, it was fixed in the next patch.

I like it when Chapman tells us something is going to happen. I can’t recall a time when it wasn’t true.

That was great of Jon, but it makes me wonder if there are some severe communication problems between teams and members at ANet. I think part of the reason we see so few dev posts here is because they would often seem disjointed and send mixed messages to the community.

Honestly, that’s the impression a lot of people have gotten. There seems to be a fair bit of miscommunication going on.

It was the “of course it’s intentional cause it’s one of the best skills in the game” tone that angered me.