Guild Wars 2

The staff auto attack speed of the projectile is still really unreliable. It would make sense for a class such as necromancer who apparently by design are based around long cast timed skills would have reliable auto attacks to at least provide a counter to blinds and such.

Staff autos are still really annoying to land because of the undesirable velocity of the projectile.

After seeing the druid staff it really makes me wish we had something of that nature on our staff autos.

When you think of auto attacks in pvp you think about things you generally can’t face tank that force you to line of sight, or avoid with counter pressure such as ranger longbow, mesmer greatsword, ele scepter, warrior anything, etc. But with necro staff autos you can face tank them and still be fine.

From a PVE perspective I feel so useless switching to staff on necro even though it has great utility, a more reliable auto attack would even a tiny bit help the current necro PvE crisis I’m always reading about.

Base changes are coming, wait it out.

The first time you rely on Staff AA, you either won the fight by a landslide or completely gave up the fight.

Siva Mira.3546:

The first time you rely on Staff AA, you either won the fight by a landslide or completely gave up the fight.

Thats why we need this update. The staff is a good weapon for necro, but it can be GREAT if the auto attacks were more reliable. If it were to channel an attack like the druid staff or mesmer greatsword or ele scepter I would be happy. That way it could “steal the life force of your enemy”.

Staff is a horrible boring weapon to begin with, thats way to overrated. AA is really really bad, while i dont like being AA to be too strong this one is so so lackluster, given the way staff currently workss this AA should do something more reliable, even more damaging and exciting. Rest of the skills are also rather niche, the #2 is nice, low cooldown, its really fun to use, #3 is rather bad too, given how many condition cleans are thrown out and how much conditions cam be spammed this seems way to lackluster. #4 is okay, condi transfer is always good in this meta. #5 is so overrated, its a simplee AOE CC, with no damage unlike other AOE CC skills, with a terrible uptime. Probably the weakest weapon skill a necromancer has currently considering the effect and the recharge.

i wish staff was cooler. it looks like a grim reaper weapon but plays like a kitten kitten

Brujeria.7536:

Staff is a horrible boring weapon to begin with, thats way to overrated. AA is really really bad, while i dont like being AA to be too strong this one is so so lackluster, given the way staff currently workss this AA should do something more reliable, even more damaging and exciting. Rest of the skills are also rather niche, the #2 is nice, low cooldown, its really fun to use, #3 is rather bad too, given how many condition cleans are thrown out and how much conditions cam be spammed this seems way to lackluster. #4 is okay, condi transfer is always good in this meta. #5 is so overrated, its a simplee AOE CC, with no damage unlike other AOE CC skills, with a terrible uptime. Probably the weakest weapon skill a necromancer has currently considering the effect and the recharge.

You lost me at staff #3 is bad. That is a very good mark.

The staff is a good weapon but its auto attack reliability is terrible, and thats why it seems bad. If our auto attacks were a channeled beam like mes-greatsword, ele-scepter or druid staff our auto attacks will actually be worth line of sighting, whereas right now all you need to do is strafe and the attacks won’t go through. mes-greatsword, ele-scepter and now im assuming druid staff all require you to line of sight them or good luck fighting them at 50% hp when they close in on you.

Even though the projectile speed could’ve been 10-15% faster, I always enjoyed Staff AA. It greatly rewards good positioning with more Life Force.

Interesting change could’ve been making it 100% Projectile Finisher instead of 20%. Revenant’s hammer has that on AA which does way more damage and is faster projectile, why can’t we? With amount of Poison/Dark Fields it could always be more interesting. Not mentioning Combo Fields of other profs.

I think the design of the autoattack is fine since the marks are quickly placed.. It just deals terrible damage and has almost no utility in pvp(for example) bc it’s such a long cast time. landing AA should be more rewarding. this needs to be adressed. for example like this:

-add 5s of poison to AA, utility condition for power builds and at least some AA-damage for condimancers
-100% projectile finisher on AA, self explanatory bc of slow attack speed
-5% lifeforce gain instead of 4% so landing AA twice allows you to enter DS and cast DS#3 for example

maybe a better power scaling on AA and restore mark of blood to 3 bleedstacks would be nice too.

^ The damage is pretty good, especially with power build. The projectile speed is terrible.

mazut.4296:

^ The damage is pretty good, especially with power build. The projectile speed is terrible.

the AA-damage is in the middle of nowhere compared to rangers Longbow or revenants hammer. both have similar cast times, faster projectiles and about 40% more base damage on a power-skilled build

The damage is pretty mediocre. It deals just slightly higher damage than AAs with much better utility; Stoning is only 0.1 coefficients per second weaker, while being a 100% finisher and 3s of weakness. It also deals less damage than actual damage ranged AAs, like Fireball or Long Range Shot.

So it sits in this weird middle area where it doesn’t do enough damage to be a good damage skill, but doesn’t have any utility to justify this lack of damage.

I just wish we would also get a deathray AA like Druid, but with dealing damage to enemies between you and the targeted enemy.

Get rid of the projectile, make it summon claws out of the ground like Sceptre 2. That’d be sexy.

Rhyse.8179:

Get rid of the projectile, make it summon claws out of the ground like Sceptre 2. That’d be sexy.

I had similar idea, yet different animation. It should be aoe pulse around the target(or in your case up to 5 claws/or maybe up to 3 targets), to replace the piercing mechanic and the LF gain will probably need balancing

100% projectile finisher or at least a finisher on crit would be reasonable, as would a boost to projectile speed or making the projectile homing (though dodge-able).

Increase bleeds on Mark of Blood, again, please. Necromancer’s main condition damage is bleeding, not burning or confusion like just about every other profession.

Mark of blood to apply regen even if you are not in its radius. Also increase the damage of Reapers mark and Chilblains. And/or increase the fear to at least 1.5s. I still cant figure out how warrior can have 3sec fear when necro only have 1s. The master of fear…

Warrior’s Fear Me! is more of an escape mechanism and fits better with its high mobility design.

I don’t really want longer Fears. Necro is low on mobility so Fear just makes me waste time chasing targets. More frequent Fears and more potent Terror damage is my own preference.

Anchoku.8142:

Warrior’s Fear Me! is more of an escape mechanism and fits better with its high mobility design.

I don’t really want longer Fears. Necro is low on mobility so Fear just makes me waste time chasing targets. More frequent Fears and more potent Terror damage is my own preference.

Fair point, I agree.

Changes I’d like to see implemented on staff (since people are talking about marks as well):

- Auto-attack speed increased so the total time is 1 second (now it’s 1.4 seconds according to the wiki).
- Auto-attack made 100% projectile finisher.
- Mark of Blood regeneration duration increased to 8 from 6 seconds.
- Mark of Blood bleeding stacks increased to 3 or 4 from 2 stacks.
- Reverted the support nerf on Putrid Mark: make it again transfer conditions from allies to enemies.

With these changes we will get reliability on auto-attack, a bit more of the condition love we seriously need and a more supportive weapon.

Ithir Darkleaf.7923:

Changes I’d like to see implemented on staff (since people are talking about marks as well):

- Auto-attack speed increased so the total time is 1 second (now it’s 1.4 seconds according to the wiki).
- Auto-attack made 100% projectile finisher.
- Mark of Blood regeneration duration increased to 8 from 6 seconds.
- Mark of Blood bleeding stacks increased to 3 or 4 from 2 stacks.
- Reverted the support nerf on Putrid Mark: make it again transfer conditions from allies to enemies.

With these changes we will get reliability on auto-attack, a bit more of the condition love we seriously need and a more supportive weapon.

The problem is more so the projectile speed than it is the cast time of the auto attack. The projectile allows it to easily be avoided by terrain or strafing, which makes it really hard to use offensively or even defensively for its life force generation.

I would have preferred scepter and axe (and focus) get buffed to the point where I had choices of what weapons to use instead of dagger/Warhorn & staff in every build.

… But it looks like that’s not going to happen.

I think a 100% projectile finisher for staff 1 is definitely warranted. I also think it could attack a little faster, but I personally think it’s okay that it can be strafed. It builds into itself where you can chill a foe to secure hits, etc.

I would love to see staff auto attack changed to a channeled/no projectile attack, or have the projectile speed increased by 50%.

Jelzouki.4128:

The staff auto attack speed of the projectile is still really unreliable. It would make sense for a class such as necromancer who apparently by design are based around long cast timed skills would have reliable auto attacks to at least provide a counter to blinds and such.

Staff autos are still really annoying to land because of the undesirable velocity of the projectile.

After seeing the druid staff it really makes me wish we had something of that nature on our staff autos.

When you think of auto attacks in pvp you think about things you generally can’t face tank that force you to line of sight, or avoid with counter pressure such as ranger longbow, mesmer greatsword, ele scepter, warrior anything, etc. But with necro staff autos you can face tank them and still be fine.

From a PVE perspective I feel so useless switching to staff on necro even though it has great utility, a more reliable auto attack would even a tiny bit help the current necro PvE crisis I’m always reading about.

Go ahead and give this post up man its not changing any time soon. You cant compare druid and necro staff auto attack to each other. Staff casting on all professions are slow Druid is not any faster either it just looks like it because its a mulit hit beam based attack.

The only reason to use staff auto is to pearce multiple targets to gain life force beause you have no other options of gaining it. Or as someone else said you won by a land slide.

The marks could use some buffing but the auto attack is the way it is for a reason.

ZDragon.3046:

Jelzouki.4128:

The staff auto attack speed of the projectile is still really unreliable. It would make sense for a class such as necromancer who apparently by design are based around long cast timed skills would have reliable auto attacks to at least provide a counter to blinds and such.

Staff autos are still really annoying to land because of the undesirable velocity of the projectile.

After seeing the druid staff it really makes me wish we had something of that nature on our staff autos.

When you think of auto attacks in pvp you think about things you generally can’t face tank that force you to line of sight, or avoid with counter pressure such as ranger longbow, mesmer greatsword, ele scepter, warrior anything, etc. But with necro staff autos you can face tank them and still be fine.

From a PVE perspective I feel so useless switching to staff on necro even though it has great utility, a more reliable auto attack would even a tiny bit help the current necro PvE crisis I’m always reading about.

Go ahead and give this post up man its not changing any time soon. You cant compare druid and necro staff auto attack to each other. Staff casting on all professions are slow Druid is not any faster either it just looks like it because its a mulit hit beam based attack.

The only reason to use staff auto is to pearce multiple targets to gain life force beause you have no other options of gaining it. Or as someone else said you won by a land slide.

The marks could use some buffing but the auto attack is the way it is for a reason.

The only reason to staff auto is to get life force? Why is that? Because the damage is unreliable, and I guarantee you would use it a lot more if it was better because then you wouldn’t have to waste important marks like chillblains to force dodges. I most certainly can compare them. I simply said one is more reliable than the other.

You might as well take the damage off of the auto attack if thats the only reason to use it I guess, and since theres no other way of gaining lifeforce on staff. OH WAIT! I’m not a bad necro and I take greater marks.

In the rare event that I happen to line up multiple targets I will use my staff thanks for the tip.

I like staff actually.
Would prefer buffs in other areas than AA speed.

if the speed is going to stay that slow they need to change it like life blast so it follow the target

Brokensunday.4098:

if the speed is going to stay that slow they need to change it like life blast so it follow the target

I wouldn’t mind this either, in that case it may actually prove useful because of its piercing lifeforce gain capabilities.