Okey.. So, i’ve been trying to play staff thief for a month now (Along with watching others). AA is strong and powerful, so is Vault. Here lies the problem, u cant AA for long with thief as we are so squishy. And spamming vault gets us nowhere either. It is too clunky.. Staff needs more defensive options. Sure, we have the blind on skill 4, and a so called evade on skill 3. But its so easy for other classes to outplay these skills.
What I suggest is that u rethink / recreate skill 2-3-4. Skill 3 could have an evade as withdraw (the heal). And ooor, make one of the skills that makes us go stealth. Just.. something! I wanna play staff thief so bad in WvW, but its just too clunky to use alone.
Staff is good in WvW. You just have to know how to abuse each of the skills in certain situations. 1v1 wise, 3 and 4 are great. In group fights, 2 and 5 are your best friends. It all depends on the situations, and learning what to do in each.
Okey.. So, i’ve been trying to play staff thief for a month now (Along with watching others). AA is strong and powerful, so is Vault. Here lies the problem, u cant AA for long with thief as we are so squishy. And spamming vault gets us nowhere either. It is too clunky.. Staff needs more defensive options. Sure, we have the blind on skill 4, and a so called evade on skill 3. But its so easy for other classes to outplay these skills.
What I suggest is that u rethink / recreate skill 2-3-4. Skill 3 could have an evade as withdraw (the heal). And ooor, make one of the skills that makes us go stealth. Just.. something! I wanna play staff thief so bad in WvW, but its just too clunky to use alone.
Oh, and buff Cloak and Dagger.
lol staff is more than fine, it counters D/P roamers handily.
Staff is a very good weapon if played well. Try not to vault spam, anyone who is avg will be able to either dodge 2 vaults and tank the 3rd or just interupt them. #2/3/4 are the main skills to use and yes, staff is great vs dp but not so good vs s/d though you hardly see many of them anyway
Fat Disgrace (banned) Man Flu Survivor – war/The Cabbage -Thief (gunners hold / [TaG])
staff is good for ganking group fight, not very good for solo 1 v 1.
#2 and #4 are useless #3 only useful when u try to live extra 2 sec.
#4 should be stealth like CND, #2 should be 600 range, #3 should be like withdraw with heal.
Staff is good in pretty much every situation. The only thing it sucks at is disengaging. Which is why a lot of people use it with x/pistol in the other set. I don’t think the skills are a problem, its a pretty loaded kit:
Staff auto is good dps. Hook strike(from stealth skill) is a wonderful knock down, that lets you set up vault or weakening charge and a full auto combo. Great for making picks in group play.
Weakening charge is amazing burst and weakness. Pairs with steal to spin in place.
Debilitating arc is an instant cast evade and cripple. Which you can use ignore after casts on things like vault.
Dust strike is a 3 impact blind, that can hit up to 3 targets. Wonderful for stomps and screwing up other peoples combo’s.
Vault is great aoe damage and mobility for chasing people.
Most people only ever understand and use auto attack and vault. Which sounds about where OP currently is understanding wise. I have absolutely no problem roaming with staff in wvw. I’ve even run frontline tank builds for zerg play in the past. OP honestly if you want to improve using staff and are on NA I have no problem giving pointers in game. Send me a mail.
[Cya] TC Roamer/Scout
I Play WvW to have fun. I don’t find it fun anymore. Therefore I don’t play.
only buff i would like to see staff is skill 4 become a 1 second smoke field. the way you spam vault is if they start a dodge you just start a vault frame trap them lol.
Staff can be used instead of SB in WvW. It doesn’t move as well but it is fairly close. I have been running a P/P and Staff power build with bound and Acro with a good bit of success.
Sarcasm For Hire [SFH]
“Youre lips are movin and youre complaining about something thats wingeing.”
Staff can be used instead of SB in WvW. It doesn’t move as well but it is fairly close. I have been running a P/P and Staff power build with bound and Acro with a good bit of success.
Is that still working out for you? I switched Acro back to DA for both staff and sword/dagger. I liked Upper Hand and Staff Master together but 1v1 or small encounters dragged on.
Staff can be used instead of SB in WvW. It doesn’t move as well but it is fairly close. I have been running a P/P and Staff power build with bound and Acro with a good bit of success.
you should just toggle weapons. my thief carry i think 12 weapons on me at all times do different stuff.
Is that still working out for you? I switched Acro back to DA for both staff and sword/dagger. I liked Upper Hand and Staff Master together but 1v1 or small encounters dragged on.
The “trick” to the build is ABE (always be evading). Using Bound and Black Powder to setup either a free Unload and the might stacking, a staff knockdown or straight up escape. Bound is also a damage booster. It isn’t difficult to be sitting on a dozen or more stacks of might throughout a fight with this build along with the Bound 10% boost.
This build also performs well and arguably better with D/P. I use P/P because it makes fighting tough melee classes easier (warrior, DH, necro, etc). D/P backstabs from this build hit very hard and are easy to setup.
Sarcasm For Hire [SFH]
“Youre lips are movin and youre complaining about something thats wingeing.”
The “trick” to the build is ABE (always be evading). Using Bound and Black Powder to setup either a free Unload and the might stacking, a staff knockdown or straight up escape. Bound is also a damage booster. It isn’t difficult to be sitting on a dozen or more stacks of might throughout a fight with this build along with the Bound 10% boost.
This build also performs well and arguably better with D/P. I use P/P because it makes fighting tough melee classes easier (warrior, DH, necro, etc). D/P backstabs from this build hit very hard and are easy to setup.
Ya that’s basically the same build aside from a few choices, even gear nearly, I use with staff and s/d sometimes. Hard to explain but there’s an audio/animation combo I have a response to and DA/Trick/DD feels the best to me right now, even if it’s not exactly a better build in some ways. That Acro build really is sturdy and it feeds itself it’s own resources as long as you’re active .
Ya that’s basically the same build aside from a few choices, even gear nearly, I use with staff and s/d sometimes. Hard to explain but there’s an audio/animation combo I have a response to and DA/Trick/DD feels the best to me right now, even if it’s not exactly a better build in some ways. That Acro build really is sturdy and it feeds itself it’s own resources as long as you’re active .
DA over Acro is more lethal up front but IMO doesn’t help win fights a thief would likely win anyway. Acro on the other hand keeps a thief in fights they wouldn’t normally win.
To me DA is better for strafe and +1. Acro is for thieves that want to hang in on their targets longer.
Sarcasm For Hire [SFH]
“Youre lips are movin and youre complaining about something thats wingeing.”
My Build almost identical to Straegens and it works very well. I went a different route with the gear but our end attributes almost identical with mine having a bit more toughness, his precision. Note the sigil of cruelty brings the ferocity to same level once stacked.
I always have might stacks so always get that 5 percent off the runes and they last close to 16 seconds if I time my swaps right. It pretty easy to get 20+ stacks then spend decent amount of time in staff without them burning off. This makes the Bound hit especailly hard.
The might kickin with lead attacks and the 10 percent bonus off bound hits hard. The added boon duration helps nicely on the swiftness off expeditious espeicaaly if I switch to P/P and get that kickin off that sigil. Swapping to p/p then doing the steal for thrill of the crime keeps high uptime on fury as well.
The two cleanses off the staff helps with conditions. This allows me to stick in battle a bit longer on staff if closeup and dealing with AOE.
I prefer weakening strikes over the Havoc though both good.
I really like the armor and rune choice. Also Concentration is a great adjustment. Surprised you don’t with Trickster as that is more condi removal and gives you RfI and Withdraw back faster.
I love Impact Strike on my condi build especially now that I use it for control more than stomp. I love it when I time it right so the spike hits as they go down (course that quick invuln they get when they go down sucks). However BV on a power build in the current defensive sustain environment feels necessary to me.
Sarcasm For Hire [SFH]
“Youre lips are movin and youre complaining about something thats wingeing.”
I really like the armor and rune choice. Also Concentration is a great adjustment. Surprised you don’t with Trickster as that is more condi removal and gives you RfI and Withdraw back faster.
I love Impact Strike on my condi build especially now that I use it for control more than stomp. I love it when I time it right so the spike hits as they go down (course that quick invuln they get when they go down sucks). However BV on a power build in the current defensive sustain environment feels necessary to me.
Actually my bad as the build started with BT when first made but I have since taken trickster. Impact strike can be harder to pull off but when you got those might stacks on it can really hit hard. I try and use it after a knockdown with staff one or set it up with the immob from body shot. That said BV would be fine.
I am also considering, but have not yet committed to , Wanderers as the armor. This will squeeze a little over 13 percent more boon duration giving 25+13 base or just over 70 if i couple with Concentration. With your flanking strikes that would give over 10 seconds quickness and a dodge generates over 10 seconds swiftness , right in line with what you get with Unhindered Combat.
This would also kick regen to all but fulltime if PR cleanses one of those conditions and while the extra INI off the upperhand always nice , don’t stop can then be slotted in which even more closely emulates having UC and bounding dodger at the same time.
Obviously this all happens only after switching to the P/P set for those first seven seconds but P/P is where you need those extra advantages given staff has evades .
Like P/P, Staff does usually descend into using the same skill over and over again. In a 1v1 it’s fine for some more skill exploration, but in a group fight Vault and then Vault again. This can work and Vault does enormous damage, especially in WvW (11k Vaults are recurrent on a full zerk build) but as soon as someone knows the interrupt window for Vault (like myself) killing a staff Thief begins to get trivial.
Like P/P, Staff does usually descend into using the same skill over and over again. In a 1v1 it’s fine for some more skill exploration, but in a group fight Vault and then Vault again. This can work and Vault does enormous damage, especially in WvW (11k Vaults are recurrent on a full zerk build) but as soon as someone knows the interrupt window for Vault (like myself) killing a staff Thief begins to get trivial.
I disagree. That some people resort to unload over and over again on P/P or vault on the staff does not mean it has to be that way. Nothing forces that type of behaviour in the set. Indeed I tend to use dustrike more than vault as I find the blind in conjunction with vuln stacks very effective and more useful for my team as a whole in a group fight.
Where I would “spam” vault is when multiple enemies downed in a small area with an enemy trying to Rez.
Staff staying power in the build I use tends to come from the dodges and bounding along with blinds and weapon evades. Spamming the same skill allows for predictability which is counterproductive to any thief build.
I disagree. That some people resort to unload over and over again on P/P or vault on the staff does not mean it has to be that way. Nothing forces that type of behaviour in the set.
This is worth considering.
P/P, especially since Daredevil, has many different potential build options. With Bounding Dodger, you could revolve around Sneak Attack instead of Unload, and either build that Power, Condi, or hybrid. Or you could revolve around Unload, or even interrupts with Head Shot.
Staff might not be quite as varied as that, but you can definitely play the set differently. Any thief build wants to revolve around one or two aspects of a weapon set. The staff offers a lot in its skills that you can build around, but not all of it has to be Vault spam. You could build around evades, general defense, Weakening Charge, or other ideas.
My particular build is built around self-healing to aid its defense, so all I really need to do is auto-attack and I can use the other skills as needed. There’s more about WvW staff that can be explored.
Like P/P, Staff does usually descend into using the same skill over and over again. In a 1v1 it’s fine for some more skill exploration, but in a group fight Vault and then Vault again. This can work and Vault does enormous damage, especially in WvW (11k Vaults are recurrent on a full zerk build) but as soon as someone knows the interrupt window for Vault (like myself) killing a staff Thief begins to get trivial.
If a player cranks up the build above and spams Unload and Vault they will kill crappy players but melt to good ones. If a player masters the utility of each weapon, the build becomes very deadly with high utility (immob spam, immob removal, cheap stealth, blind spam, easy weakness, hard hitting AA, interrupt spam, knockdown, etc).
The build is a might and evasion generating engine that is ridiculously hard to hit and with Bound becomes incredibly dangerous just being around it. Bound does about 60% the damage of a full on Vault and tacks on a 10% damage bonus.
Many players won’t progress beyond just hitting 5 until they or their target dies but that is why those players opt for the pure DPS of other lines outside of Acro. Players looking beyond simple button smash play can find surprising depth in this build.
Sarcasm For Hire [SFH]
“Youre lips are movin and youre complaining about something thats wingeing.”
