Guild Wars 2

I’m curious that has anyone from ANet acknowledged that Staff’s auto-attack is kinda crap and need to be buffed? I just don’t get it; under what circumstance this skill is ever useful, other than hitting structures at 1200 range (and even then its damage is just abysmal)? It would be a miracle to hit player targets in pvp, and misses about 50% in pve. It is insulting that this skill is a 20% projectile combo finisher—same as ranger’s shortbow auto-attack, except Crossfire shoots 3~4 times faster. Being a piercing straight line aoe, it has no synergy with skill #2~#5, which are circular aoe.

If this isn’t a bad joke, I don’t know what is.

Some ideas to make it better: (not asking for all; even implement one of these will be much better)

• Learn from Scepter and make it a chain: 1) fast projectile with no piercing, 2) slower projectile with piercing, and 3) homing slower projectile with piercing.
• Increase attack speed.
• Make combo finisher 80~100%
• Add conditional damage component, or buff dps of this skill in general.

Please, ANet, just because rest of the bar for a staff necro has good skill doesn’t justify a poorly designed autoattack.

Well the staffs skill bar (other than auto attack) is a very strong one, also the auto attack is not that bad, if you hit someone with it you get 3% life force and it pierces. It seems to be designed to shine in a big group fight, where the aoe’s of the staff also are at their best. I have hit 3 people in a group fight with the staff auto attack before getting 9 percent life force in a single attack…. I personally do not think its as bad as you make it out to be.

Skill 2 on Staff is a maintainable health regeneration skill that also aoe bleeds.
Skill 3 + 4 is aoe weakness
Skill 5 Fear
The autoattack is purely a Life Force battery,
The purpose of a staff on a necromancer is to keep people alive.

Or just double the speed and make it a 5 pierce with 100% combo finisher, the nerf of the finisher part was stupid because either way we only have 4 types of fields (4 dark, 2 poison, 1 light and 1 etheral that doesnt work with blast finishers unless specific conditions are met both during the cast and the activation making it essencially useless) and 4 blast finishers (3 minions and staff) and only 1 projectile finisher that is only 20%… we are the worst class right next to warriors in terms of combo fields and worst in finishers… (since unlike on others most of em by us are mutually exclusive).

Torvarren.6295:

The autoattack is purely a Life Force battery,
The purpose of a staff on a necromancer is to keep people alive.

Yay for strongest ranged damage being just a life force battery and no… it actually does have most burst out of all necro weapons… why i dont know but i do know that putrid is the only skill that does over 1k damage (and dont even think of mentioning Axe 2 or Dagger 2, axe actually makes you lose dps for 8% lf and dagger is for survivablity and both are too long channels to be burst skills).

I think on a downhill run with +33% speed I’ve actually kept up with the bolt and anyone I’ve inadvertently hit with it is either mob, unlucky or clumsy. Trying to think of a #1 button 2h attack in the game, ranged or otherwise which is worse, but I can’t as it is just that memorably terrible and only offset by spraying marks all over wide tracts of land.

Thresher.3049 – the guardian staff orb is about as fast (10%~ faster)

Yeah, but I don’t think any guardians I know actually use it for that and tend to use their #1, 3 and 4, sometimes 5, then go cane the pants off someone with a big hammer or sword.

Technically I think the glowy tennis balls also do more damage as well but they don’t pierce.

Just saying there is a projectile about as bad in game… oh wait aint the thief shortbow bomb cluster as fast as the orb?

Haha, but that actually kills people!

Hey dont be so mean to poor necrotic grasp… i mean it at least tries to be useful… kinda… well at least it… no they outrun it too… well it lets you one shot multiple critters!
Yes, thats a positive. Also it… it sometimes lets you shoot off another blind that only applies to the first thing it hits, wait thats not really great either…
At least it gives life force, oh dagger gives twice the amound in the same time with triple the damage… ok its ranged thats it ;_;

it pretty much just slowly charges LF and is a sorry excuse for a kiting tool. I would like it if it applied a 1.5s blind each hit so that in pvp when people close in on us and try to do burst CC/dmg they get interrupted

Sheobix.8796:

it pretty much just slowly charges LF and is a sorry excuse for a kiting tool. I would like it if it applied a 1.5s blind each hit so that in pvp when people close in on us and try to do burst CC/dmg they get interrupted

Pre nerf you used to essencially do that with wells…

Blind on autoattack is pretty OP imo.
If you ask me, yeah staff 1 is pretty bad, but give it 100% chance for combo finisher and it’s an alright move. Doesn’t need much more than that imo.

At least reduce the cast time to 1/4 and make it homing with the 100% finihser thing, then multiple slow flying claws that come for your doom (right now im rather in melee with dark path and dagger aa and use staff just for marks than attack with staff).

I think it’d be nice if they just halved it’s damage, doubled it’s attack speed and raised it’s combo chance.
That way it’d work better with fields and it’s hits wouldn’t be such a huge hit/miss thing.

I do not mind the terrible damage, just make it actually hit people! Seriously it misses at like 75% of the time because they take a single step to the left or right… MOBS can dodge it for crying out loud.

It kinda stinks for killing inanimate objects, but I find for monsters/mobs its pretty sweet. I rarely have trouble surviving solo with big group pulls.

Staff 1 is fine. I use it all the time while AOEing a big group of NPCs I’ve coralled, and it works beautifully. Every fight I have max life force.

Staff 1 isn’t fine so stop trying to ruin the Necro/keep it crap. Seriously the only thing that ruins classes is players being oblivious. Use your staff 1 in a 1v1 against me or anyone else and you will be guaranteed to have 0 life force the entire time. Nobody cares about PvE, it is so easy you can do it with 1 weapon and no off-hand and even no armor.

Staff 1 is way too slow.

Why are you trying to balance an AoE weapon for 1v1?

staff1 is useless how can someone say otherthing? you need not only cast it 33 times but actuallu hit 33 times your target just to complete one LF bar.

go test in a golem in melee range and see how much time you take to hit those 33 staff auto atack than remember im real situation your target move (on tournaments this atack is a complete joke ) and you will not be in melee so the time you see to fill LF on golem will be much long on real situations.

staff auto atack is very slow, easy to avoid (so easy that you just need kite dont even need swiftness) and have a ridiculous dps.
the only good thing was that before nerf was 100% chance projectile but not anymore, now is just some thing you cast when you wait for your weapon swap CD, if didnt exist CD on weapon swap for sure no one will use this ridiculous skill.

put a spectral wall on ground and if you aply 1 confusion of 2s in something is already lucky, wells with 5s duration just forget because you cant do anything.
well of blood and projectile seem a great thing right? is a complete crap with staff auto atack, basically we just have a very limited blast finishers and 0 projectiles finisher (yap in real gaming our staff auyo atack is basically useless as projectile finisher)

auto atack isnt for survivability for sure, isnt for dps, inst for projectiles, so the question is why this exist? why take so much time change something is useless in almost aspect of the game?

ostracize.8316:

Why are you trying to balance an AoE weapon for 1v1?

marks are great in situation with lot of mobs, staff auto atack not, unless they are all in line and for that just make DS trait for pierce and is much better than staff auto atack for damage

Piercing does not an AoE weapon make. If so, then all Rangers would use Piercing Arrows and all bows skills would be AoE!
Necrotic Grasp is terrible.
The only thing that keeps the staffs’ head above water is Putrid Mark; because, it’s one of three finishers Necromancers can utilize, and the only one that can be regularly used (the other two come from the actions skills of Summon Bone Minions and Summon Flesh Wurn ).

Savoth.5721:

The only thing that keeps the staffs’ head above water is Putrid Mark;

Chillblains and MoB are both fantastic abilities.

alanis.6094:

Chillblains and MoB are both fantastic abilities.

Not saying they are terrible abilities.
Chillblains is a great ability except for the cooldown, and I’m not saying the staff has absolutely no good points too it.
But, a Necromancer could be doing so many other things besides spamming MoB during a fight, and the staff doesn’t really lend itself to doing anything else.

I rarely use staff #1 because it does suck. Weapon swapping is probably the most important thing on a conditionmancer. I don’t think it’s an issue because you don’t really want to stay in staff anyways. You are nerfing yourself by staying in staff. Staff #2-#5 are extremely strong for all its abilities. Use it switch to scepter dagger for dots then if you want you can go back to staff and respam #2-#5.

Yes Staff #1 sucks but it’s not that big of an issue.

I would rather see the auto-attack get some form of synergy with the marks. As it is now it just feels tacked on.

Maybe, for example, the skill changes when you use it after a mark.

Mark of Blood > Bleeding + Damage
Chilblains > Remove a boon + Damage
Putrid Mark > AoE damage explosion
Mark of Fear > Not sure about this one, maybe a daze?

Just a rough idea. Would give some more thought to using the marks instead of just plopping them down on CD.

(Increased missile speed is definitely needed, old man hand isn’t all that scary)

Neb forget it, that will never gonna happen.
same happen with DS suggestion where people say skills could be linked with weapon MH selected so DS could be any usefull to condition build, what arenanet do? go with easy option and just add bleed to second DS skills, now conditions build cant say DS is completly useless in offensive perspective…is still very bad for condition builds since you dont want go melee just to put more 3 bleeds (weakening shroud same thing, need to be on melee range but is great as defensive abilitie problem is the huge internal CD).

im pretty sure arenanet will change something (go back to 100% projectile chance?) on staff auto atack so people cant say is completly useless but i serious doubt will be anything you can say, this auto atack is good. DS for example still need lot of work but seem for arenanet is good.

traits that increase damage dont do nothing for condition damage, same for vulnerability beside bleed/poison/burn are damage and i serious hope this will be change in future buit i will be happy if they just correct corrupt boon and plague signet.

btw i love the game, best MMORPG i play but this necro bugs/problem make me a bit disapointed with necro class

I definately wish Staff was viable as a standalone weapon like Thieves’ Shortbow.

They’re both pretty much the same, mandatory as a utility weapon, except Shortbow is incredible, the auto attack dmg is fantastic and bounces, clusterbomb spam is fantastic dmg, and still brings great utility.

Staff auto is just, wimpy. It needs to be alot better. I really wish I could use it in a power build and actually be deadly by auto attacking stuff. Either that or give it a slight boost in dmg or attack speed and add a chunk of direct dmg to Mark of Blood for more consistent direct dmg.

ostracize.8316:

Why are you trying to balance an AoE weapon for 1v1?

Thief Shortbow is an aoe weapon. And is amazing in an 1v1.