Staff ideas
I’ve wanted staff to be the Revenant dps weapon since I heard they were making it a melee weapon. Any damage buffs are an automatic yes from me.
Ps: I hate sword auto, worst animation in game.
I like actually the survability aspect of staff but i have to agree on #2 with you.
They should improve Sword AA and sword #2.
9 Sylvari, 9 unique Builds.
I’d actually like to see Staff 2 changed a bit. Make it so that the first hit dazes for 1 second by default, and if you interrupted something, the second hit knocks down.
I’ve been interested in staff since before Rev was released and I’ve spent lots of time trying to make it work (primarily WvW / PvP). Unfortunately, it’s not a competitive weapon right now, though it’s fine to switch into for 10 seconds and use a few skills before switching back to sword.
Since both staff and sword are direct damage weapons, they inherently compete with each other. The problem is that sword is generally better than staff in most areas:
single-target damage: sword wins, and it should (as a dueling-oriented weapon)
-sustain: staff should win…but it really doesn’t. Staff is easily kited and sword #3 provides great sustain
-healing: again, staff should win…but autoattack orbs are hard to pick up when you need to be mobile. And staff #4 heals less than shield #4. Shield, which will be paired with sword, is far better for healing than staff.
range / anti-kiting: sword wins here, but it probably should.
CC: this is where staff could win, but it needs a few tweaks.
I don’t think staff needs more damage, but it has some poor-performing skills that prevent it from being great for CC or sustain.
auto-attack – the heal could be removed and replaced with a defensive condition, like weakness or blind
skill #2 – the first attack is too slow. It might be OP to make the first skill apply daze directly, but I would recommend decreasing the cast time on the first strike to 0.25 or 0.5 seconds.
skill #3 – is fine, IMO
skill #4 – is too slow. When you need to clean condis, you need to do it now. It should be 0.5 second cast.
skill #5 – is good, but the cooldown is long. I would like to see it revised to be more of a CC / evade than a damage skill. The cooldown could be reduced to 15 seconds and the damage reduced by 20%.
Astaxanthas (Revenant), Hepaticus (Engineer), Eosinophus (Thief)
I would like to see some changes in sword too. I mean they could put sword 5 on the place of 2 and make a new skill that leaches some life or somethibg like that to give it an offensive sustain abbility.
9 Sylvari, 9 unique Builds.
skill 1 buff damage and healing
skill 2 swap the skills first daze second deal double damage to nearby enemies or just make punishing sweep fast attack like other interrupt skills.
Skills 3, 4 and 5 are good they way they are.
AA, remove the heal/orbs and buff damage. The healing is useless. Even if buffed will remain useless in sPvP and WvW. More damage would be far more viable in every game mode.
Skill 2, remove the 2 skills. Make it one skill with either .25 daze or the weakness and reduce the cost to 5 energy.
I would like to see some changes in sword too. I mean they could put sword 5 on the place of 2 and make a new skill that leaches some life or somethibg like that to give it an offensive sustain abbility.
I would pay A.net more money for this change for sword to happen. I would pay them more if they gave us an elite specialization which doesn’t revolve around upkeep mechanic and gives dagger as a oh weapon with both a block type skill and a gap closing skill.
Edit:I don’t like proposed changes for staff btw.
(edited by Jack Skywalker.5674)
I agree with the first 2 posts, and disagree with all who think that staff doesn´t need equal dmg to sword.
Without same dmg it will never be an viable (non niche) weapon.
I agree with the first 2 posts, and disagree with all who think that staff doesn´t need equal dmg to sword.
Without same dmg it will never be an viable (non niche) weapon.
Under what conditions should staff damage equal sword damage?
Without any traits and using a berserker build, sword auto-attack currently does around 8% more damage than staff auto-attack.
However, sword also gets more damage from Devastation traits. It gets a 10% buff (Vicious Lacerations), it applies vuln by default (around 9 stacks maintainable without extra condition duration) which adds more damage, and it attacks faster than staff so it will trigger more life siphoning (Focused Siphoning). So with traits, sword auto-attack damage is atleast 27% higher than staff.
I’m not even going to attempt to estimate the situational dps differences between weapon skill cooldowns (sword 2 & 3, staff 2 & 5).
So do we buff staff by 8% so they’re equal without traits? Do we buff it by 27% so that a fully traited sword-user is equal to an untraited staff user? Do we buff the staff trait in Salvation to increase damage, even though Salvation is thematically opposed to dps?
Astaxanthas (Revenant), Hepaticus (Engineer), Eosinophus (Thief)
I think the AA is fine aside from the 3rd chain skill. I say get rid of the pitiful healing, and increase the damage by 30-50%.
Staff #2. Get rid of Punishing Sweep altogether and make Debilitating Slam the baseline skill. Add the Weakness from Punishing Sweep to it. Reduce damage by 20%.
Staff #4. Increase the baseline healing by 50% and reduce casting time to 3/4s. (I think it should be a stronger heal than shield 4 but not as strong as shield 5) Maybe increase energy cost from 15 to 20.
Staff #3 and #5 are fine as they are.
Sonya for females. (necro,rev,ranger,mes,engi)
All classes lvl 80.
Personally i would only change the AA and #4 on staff
AA i think should have 15 to 20% buff in dmg or decrease in intervals between attacks and 10 to 15% faster casting
4 should either get a healing buf or again lower casting time