Guild Wars 2

Staff is a fantastic team weapon. Never look at any thing in a vacuum. Staff 4, is a AoE healing ability with a blast finisher built in, so throw it down on a water field, and that’s quite a bit of bonus healing.

Staff 2 is clumsy however.

I pretty much only use staff 2 to bonk someone on the head who tries to Rez a drunken downed teammate, and follow it up with 5 so my team can cleave him out of existence.

Staff 2 could use a way longer time to do the second hit. Right now you need to spam the skill twice to work, without even knowing if the first hit will proc.

Staff 4 only needs to be bugfixed, IMHO.

Staff #2 is an ability you simply cannot use on all the mobile and dodgy classes.

The absolute perfect class to utilize staff #2 against is necromancer. Nearly every time I’m on a necromancer staff #2 is my go to if I’m not in sword. So with necromancers in mind as the best class to use it against (no dodges tanks all your damage kinda thing) you can begin to realize which other classes it can be used against more often. Engineers and druids don’t dodge a whole lot. Thieves and mesmers will never let you hit them for more than a second so hoping to hit them with a 3/4s cast time staff #2 and the follow up is hopeful thinking.

My biggest gripe with this ability is the 15 energy cost on the second portion. It feels just a tad high.

Staff #4 just needs bug fixed and it’ll be quite nice.

Making #2 just a simple daze would work better.

Interesting factor of this skill is that people have learnt to count most popular power rev build’s cooldowns already and once warding rift and surge are used, some see it as opportunity window to burst. It’s fun suddenly bashing them with #2 and interrupting that burst. You can even catch unaware Thief players in such situation.

I am ok with staff #4, but I agree that skill 2 needs some work. Like you I hardly ever use staff #2. Not that I mind too much though, as the other skills more than make up for the shortfalls of skill 2, but it would be nice if all skills had a use somewhere. I see no point in using skill 2 when we have skill 5, so maybe skill two could be some kind of single target shadow step gap closer or retreat skill?

I think staff #4 cast time needs to be reduced by at least 50%. If you have 10 burning stacks on you, you need a skill that instantly clears the condi, because that extra one tick can be the difference between life and death. A cast time of 1 second for staff 4 allows that extra one tick to happen and potentially kill you.

Staff 2 is currently useless. I can’t remember the last time I used it. You only have a decent chance of landing it on an enemy trying to revive an ally. However, by the time you can actually land the second, dazing blow, the ally is completely revived. If the first blow itself is the dazing/stunning blow, the skill would actually be useful.