Guild Wars 2

It seems like Druid’s staff autoattack timings have changed in the last patch. It’s now a long pause followed by 3 rapid ticks of damage, rather than the regularly spaced ticks of damage we had before.

This is particularly annoying at KC, as it feels a lot harder to push the orb reliably. There’s a small gap after the third channel which allows the projections to catch up.

Guessing it’s in response to the “15k lazor beam” complaints from pvp, as it should be easier to evade now.

Video comparison of before and after the patch.

I always had the gut feeling the damage numbers were off from the attack. It didn’t match the sound. Is the combat log any help?

Fluffball.8307:

I always had the gut feeling the damage numbers were off from the attack. It didn’t match the sound. Is the combat log any help?

It’s difficult to say since I have no pre-patch golem footage to compare it to. It definitely feels slower at KC though. Not sure if the overall damage went up, down or stayed the same.

AnariiUK.7409:

It seems like Druid’s staff autoattack timings have changed in the last patch. It’s now a long pause followed by 3 rapid ticks of damage, rather than the regularly spaced ticks of damage we had before.

This is particularly annoying at KC, as it feels a lot harder to push the orb reliably. There’s a small gap after the third channel which allows the projections to catch up.

Guessing it’s in response to the “15k lazor beam” complaints from pvp, as it should be easier to evade now.

Video comparison of before and after the patch.

Had to delete my last reply because it was inaccurate.

The second video shows you doing around 11k less damage in the same time frame… Wish I had my own videos to compare, but yeah, that’s not good.

Swagger.1459:

Had to delete my last reply because it was inaccurate.

The second video shows you doing around 11k less damage in the same time frame… Wish I had my own videos to compare, but yeah, that’s not good.

I wouldn’t look too much into the damage numbers themselves, I had some spill over boons in the pre-patch video that I don’t have on the golem one.

After doing some golem testing the damage seems to be the same as before, with staff autoattack being about 10k DPS realistic (12.5k all buffs). So thankfully it’s only the timing that changed.

So, if I evade the beam directly after the “small gap” I will evade all the 3 hits?

AnariiUK.7409:

It’s difficult to say since I have no pre-patch golem footage to compare it to. It definitely feels slower at KC though. Not sure if the overall damage went up, down or stayed the same.

Same feeling here, always thought it had to do with the quickness uptime after the patch. But it is pretty annoying now to push it if you are used to how it was before :P Still doable though even without help with pulls or pushes, just a bit harder.

I think so, Ranger staff as a whole was fairly poor before. Would be much better if rather than just going to a target it penetrated and continued for the duration of it’s range.

Longbow auto attack was better but now there are so many reflects/dodges/blocks that it’s also got problems.

It did change indeed.
This was another nerv that may have been pvp focused. Much harder for druids to keep a cap now :/

Functions similar to Spatial Surge now. That said, you can stow/cancel to speed up the damage by a hair. Worth doing? Nah. Mildly entertaining though.