Guild Wars 2

So, after much agonizing, I went with Necromancer for my main. I liked the Charr with a staff and was looking forward to it since everyone says staff is essential, but I am wondering why.
Sceptre/dagger has lots of AOE as well (and it’s larger and recharges faster), and better debuffing, with the ability to weaken in addition to poison and cripple. Additionally, the staff seems to do less damage. Is it the fear or condition cleanse that makes it essential? Should I only pull it out when I am in a dungeon party or something?

Its not essential. I rarely use a staff. You could argue it is essential in WvW due to the range. But thats only in zerg v zerg.

Staff on every class is a support weapon. They have their uses but are rarely the best choice unless you are actually trying to support.

It’s not 100% needed and generally a terrible main-weapon.
Most use it as a secondary set because it’s a 1200 range weapon with a nice bag of tricks.

If you are on very low health in a dungeon you can hang way back at 1200 range and still assist in the fight.
Also in WvW it’s great for suppressing the walls.
Putrid Mark is very useful as well.

By initiating a fight with the Staff you can land a fast 3 stacks of Bleed and a Chill on your target before switching to Scepter… then follow up with Grasping Dead for 3 more stacks.

I like staff because of the regen, the freeze, the condition transfer, and the fear.
Basically the weapon for surviving.
Oh, and for tagging in event farming.

The whole “staff is essential” thing is a holdover from when condition necromancers were the only viable ones in PVP. The problem with the other weapons is that they didn’t contribute anything to conditions while the Staff did.

The staff itself isn’t essential, unless running a pure condition spec. Then, there really isn’t an alternative weapon set to go with. The biggest problem with the staff is that it requires quite a bit of traits to make it good, but it is quite good once it gets there. It adds some pretty useful utility.

Ramiah.5648:

So, after much agonizing, I went with Necromancer for my main. I liked the Charr with a staff and was looking forward to it since everyone says staff is essential, but I am wondering why.

Wise choice, charrs do indeed look good with a staff
But is it essential for every build? No.

Ramiah.5648:

Sceptre/dagger has lots of AOE as well (and it’s larger and recharges faster), and better debuffing, with the ability to weaken in addition to poison and cripple.

The only debuffing weapon skill a necro has would be Spinal Shivers (focus 5).

On the staff you have chill which is more powerful than cripple. Chillblains also creates a poison field, drop Putrid Mark on top of that and you’ll have the same aoe weakness you’d get from Enfeebling Blood.

The rest of the Scepter/Dagger AOE is bleeding:
Grasping Dead: 3 stacks for 7 sec / cooldown: 10 sec
Enfeebling Blood: 2 stacks for 10 sec / cooldown: 25 sec

Mark of Blood: 3 stacks for 8 sec / cooldown: 6 sec

Considering the cooldowns, without any duration buffs:
Scepter/Dagger: 3x(7/10) + 2x(10/25) = 2,9 stacks,
Mark: 3x (8/6) = 4 stacks of bleeding per second on avarage.

Bottom Line: Mark of Blood inflicts more bleeding than the other 2 skills combined.

Ramiah.5648:

Additionally, the staff seems to do less damage.

Depends on the build.
Also there are other factors to be considered: single target damage or aoe, does your opponent cleanse conditions, what utilities do you use to support it…

Ramiah.5648:

Is it the fear or condition cleanse that makes it essential?

Again, not essential, just awesome.
Reaper’s Mark: Aoe interrupt, that does a serious amount of damage with the terror trait.
Putrid Mark: it’s not just the cleanse, but throwing a huge stack of conditions
back to your opponent can be a game changer. And it cleanses all your allys who stand on the Mark as well. That’s a million times better and more reliable than Deathly Swarm.

Ramiah.5648:

Should I only pull it out when I am in a dungeon party or something?

Are you setting us up for a naughty joke? xD
No seriously, it again depends on the build.

Here’s a build for staff as a main weapon, plus other people discussing trait and gear variations for it:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Build-Staff-Corruption/

Make no mistake, the staff is essential but it doesn’t mean you have to keep it equipped.

When you’re doing dungeons, WvW or even open world pve, people will expect you to have a staff in your inventory and I think that’s quite a reasonable expectation. The 1200+ range is critical as are its control and support options. Just keep a decent – yellow – staff on you at all times.

I dunno, I main a staff with my Necro because of the range…start out with marks then switch to scepter while my minions swarm whatever I’m attacking.

Ramiah.5648:

Sceptre/dagger has lots of AOE as well (and it’s larger and recharges faster), and better debuffing, with the ability to weaken in addition to poison and cripple.

The Staff actually has AoE weakness as well. Cast 4 on top of 3 for Weakness from your self-combo.

The Staff is great because it drops good effects instantly in a wide AoE at high range, and it’s unblockable with one 10-point trait. Furthermore, missing your targets is much less punishing than most weapon skills since it still leaves a trap on the ground.

And actually, the ability to pre-cast your spells is extremely useful if you know the enemy’s coming through a choke point or if you’re fighting someone with stealth.

To go through the skills one at a time:

1: Pretty bad autoattack overall, but firing it through big groups helps generate Life Force very quickly. The other skills come off cooldown quickly enough that you won’t have to use it much.

2: Can provide almost permanent AoE Regeneration while still providing good DPS. This is always strong but it’s especially good for Minion Masters (helps keep your minions alive longer).

3: Chill is really good CC and the Poison field is quite strong area denial.

4: Great condition-removal for you, great support for your friends, decent direct-damage, and it’s a ranged Blast finisher, all for a decent cooldown.

5: Very strong CC, and deals crazyhigh damage if you trait for it. Because it drops instantly, you can use it to reliably break stomps or interrupt heals.

The Staff is also very user-friendly. It certainly has important nuances but you get a very high effectiveness floor just spamming marks at the enemy when they come off cooldown. (I’m not suggesting you do that, just that you won’t fall all over yourself if you do.)

Blaine Tog.8304:

And actually, the ability to pre-cast your spells is extremely useful if you know the enemy’s coming through a choke point or if you’re fighting someone with stealth.

Yes, that is crazy good! Not only because of the mechanic itself, but also because the mark cooldown starts when it’s cast rather than triggered. So a mark that is triggered later will be reusable much sooner than the actual cd-duration suggests.

I mostly run Minions because that’s why I chose Necromancer (I would have been an easier-to-play guardian otherwise) so that sounds good. I had totally forgotten about 3→4 to do AOE weakness on top of chill AND poison so that’s much better than I had thought. I am not very good at targeting yet, but I think with some practice that will improve. Normally try to drop right in front of the enemy to make sure it hits if it’s running, but sometimes still miss.

Putrid Mark and Reapers Mark + weapon that gives most damage to Life blast. You really dont need to think past that to see the devs pretty much set up necro skills with staff in mind (and 100% LF with 30 in SR).

Its an awesome complement in condition or power build, its a great way to keep chill, poison and weakness up as needed and its THE only weapon that allows for FEAR!

1. allows for the rolling of regeneration, I have Focus as the other weapon so Regeneration is pretty much always up!

Thief goes stealth..NP this weapon WILL hit him!

Did I mention its Area attacks except auto attack??

Looks, its look freaking AWESOME and if you get the fire skin or a number of other skins its all about da looks mon!

Even the auto-attack is AoE, just piercing instead of circular.

flow.6043:

Chillblains also creates a poison field, drop Putrid Mark on top of that and you’ll have the same aoe weakness you’d get from Enfeebling Blood.

Though this is true, using staff#4 just for it’s blast finisher is a waste. You will want to save it for when it matters (aoe condition transfer), and the odds of a poison field being down at that exact time is low.

I usually spam staff#2&3 on cooldown, and keep #4&5 for the right moment.

yroeht.5843:

flow.6043:

Chillblains also creates a poison field, drop Putrid Mark on top of that and you’ll have the same aoe weakness you’d get from Enfeebling Blood.

Though this is true, using staff#4 just for it’s blast finisher is a waste. You will want to save it for when it matters (aoe condition transfer), and the odds of a poison field being down at that exact time is low.

I usually spam staff#2&3 on cooldown, and keep #4&5 for the right moment.

Yeah sure, it would be a waste.
I (and some others as well) just wanted to point out that weakness isn’t exclusive to the dagger.
In fact you can have access to it with Weakening Shroud and Corrosive Poison Cloud as well. Plus it’s not even that good of a condition considering that the damage reduction only works on non-critical hits.

It is my offset to my d/d if I need to disengage for a bit.

Its DPS is meh and its conditions likewise can be a bit underwhelming, more of a utility weapon at best.

Where it does shine is tagging lots of enemies with its piercing attack and AoE marks. You can tag a large amount of bodies to loot later in short order using staff. Mostly why I have it.

Flow’s build is perhaps the best current example of using the staff as a primary weapon.

As LastDay says, it’s more normally a secondary weapon: use it to pull mobs, drop marks before battle, while backing away from a boss to heal up, or manning ramparts or defending chokepoints in WvW. It has range and utility, and improves with both power and condition damage.

Its auto-attack, while weak, is a 20% chance projectile finisher. That’s something, given all the fields you’re putting down.

Staff is amazing in WvW Condi build. Basically you pick a target drop 2-5 in middle of him and group. Then switch to scepter/dagger and hit him with Signet of spite then epidemic, everyone gets condi’s!

Remember, you can switch weapons in combat. So you can start with staff, then go dual daggers until your staff cool downs are up, then back to staff to drop marks, then back to daggers. In fact, it’s almost always good strategy to switch weapons regularly during a fight. (I’m thinking in particular of weapon upgrades that have effects when a weapon is equipped.)

Also, while the Staff #1 is not incredible, it does have two very nice traits. First, it pierces, so if you get used to lining targets up you can hit two, three, or four with one shot. EDIT: As rizzo points out, my second point was that it could hit at farther than the stated 1200 range, but it appears that this was a bug that has now been fixed — at least from some quick testing I just did. (You used to be able to hit at 1500, even though the button was red indicating out of range.)

If you trait for it, the marks are quite large and can’t be blocked, making it hard to miss and even if you do miss at least there’s a trap on the ground. You can also trait so that fear does damage, which is also quite nice, though you’d have to see if it would frustrate teammates’ strategies. Not to mention that marks can be cast behind you.

Staff #4 is also a blast finisher and you can go with Staff #3 as your field, or use a utility skill (spectral wall, etc).

Eh the projectile doesn’t go over 1200…I can’t hit the ice wall in front of Jormag with it, while I can with Mesmer GS#1.

rizzo.1079:

Eh the projectile doesn’t go over 1200…I can’t hit the ice wall in front of Jormag with it, while I can with Mesmer GS#1.

That ice wall is not a good indicator since the targetting on it is janky. The staff 1 has a max range of about 1400, but anything beyond 1200 range won’t trigger the auto-attack chain, so you would have to mash 1. It is, however, quite useful in the harpy fractal.

Blaine Tog.8304:

2: Can provide almost permanent AoE Regeneration while still providing good DPS. This is always strong but it’s especially good for Minion Masters (helps keep your minions alive longer).

Even if it’s just the red rat from Reanimator that degenerates, I can keep it up nearly indefinitely with the regen. Hmmm… now that I think of it, if I timed the 5-rat mark from Liche Form for just before Liche ends, I wonder if I could keep all five up on a target since it’s AoE regen?

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

rizzo.1079:

Eh the projectile doesn’t go over 1200…I can’t hit the ice wall in front of Jormag with it, while I can with Mesmer GS#1.

That ice wall is not a good indicator since the targetting on it is janky. The staff 1 has a max range of about 1400, but anything beyond 1200 range won’t trigger the auto-attack chain, so you would have to mash 1. It is, however, quite useful in the harpy fractal.

Actually this has been fixed like two or three patches ago, Necrotic Grasp now really only has the indicated range.

i can’t speak for pve since i only pvp on my necro, but for me the staff is just such a useful weapon

it has a condition transfer, a fear, and aoe chill

Mark of Blood is probably the most consistent AoE damage skill in the game. That’s why it is wildly used in WvW.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

rizzo.1079:

Eh the projectile doesn’t go over 1200…I can’t hit the ice wall in front of Jormag with it, while I can with Mesmer GS#1.

That ice wall is not a good indicator since the targetting on it is janky. The staff 1 has a max range of about 1400, but anything beyond 1200 range won’t trigger the auto-attack chain, so you would have to mash 1. It is, however, quite useful in the harpy fractal.

That was sadly fixed, claw self-destructs on 1200.