Guild Wars 2

Let’s just take a surface glance at this

Revhammer has:
A slow autoattack that is a 100% physical projectile at 1200 range
A projectile-blocking dark field that follows the character
3 high damage aoe attacks, two of which are blast finishers, one of which is an aoe knockdown

Necrostaff has:
A slow autoattack that is a 20% physical projectile at 1200 range
1 high damage AoE attack that is a blast finisher only if there is an enemy to set it off
3 extremely low damage aoe attacks, one of which is an aoe fear but has a very long cooldown to “balance” this

I feel like significant buffs could be made to staff such as making the autoattack a 100% finisher, increasing the damage of other marks, adding another blast finisher, and making the blast finishers activate on combo fields just to bring it in line with the actually decent design of the hammer.

The weapons have different focuses. Staff is a utility weapon, Hammer is only damage, plus a block. Staff has aoe regen, an aoe chill and poison, an aoe condition transfer, and an aoe cc. In comparison, Hammer has a projectile shield and an aoe cc with an absurd cast time and telegraph.

To be honest, staff has lost apt of its utility over the years. It could use a bit back, frankly. But it’s not quite correct to compare it to Revenant hammer which has its own issues right now, which mostly has to do with being slow has heck.

Staff is bad. I was using it a bit today, and after a while I went back to axe and, much to not my surprise, it was a massive improvement. That’s saying a lot, as axe is in desperate need of help as well. Staff just doesn’t provide much, whenever you swap to it you instantly lose any meaningful pressure, the utility it provides is really weak compared to our other weapons, and on top of that it is boring with very little interplay with our mechanics.

Bhawb.7408:

Staff is bad. I was using it a bit today, and after a while I went back to axe and, much to not my surprise, it was a massive improvement. That’s saying a lot, as axe is in desperate need of help as well. Staff just doesn’t provide much, whenever you swap to it you instantly lose any meaningful pressure, the utility it provides is really weak compared to our other weapons, and on top of that it is boring with very little interplay with our mechanics.

You should just not use the staff for DPS. Honestly, I was very skeptic with the staff in my beginnings as a necro (mostly because of PvE where dagger/warhorn rules). But now I love it and I think this is the best weapon of the necro. It just has everything… but not really damage.

It doesn’t though. It has range, everything else it brings isn’t special, regen is meh at best, and we can get that skill through traiting, the poison field can’t be used by anything but MM which brings its own, condition removal can be had via dagger, and the CC is reproduce-able with WH. It has nothing Necro can’t access in at least one other way, very readily, and it doesn’t bring those things together in a meaningfully strong way, except for condi builds. Outside of condi it offers one thing and one thing only: a weapon at more than 600 range to build LF and influence fights.

Tobias.8632:

3 extremely low damage aoe attacks, one of which is an aoe fear but has a very long cooldown to “balance” this

Im fine with the long cooldown. Not everything should be spammy as kitten. And other #5 abilities have similar cooldowns.

Captain Unusual

The weapons have different focuses. Staff is a utility weapon, Hammer is only damage, plus a block. Staff has aoe regen, an aoe chill and poison, an aoe condition transfer, and an aoe cc. In comparison, Hammer has a projectile shield and an aoe cc with an absurd cast time and telegraph.

So Hammer isnt actually ‘only damage’ then? Looks not that bad when it comes to utility.