Every build I read, every guide says that staff is a low DPS defensive weapon, and going MH Sword is best, and for range greatsword is best DPS. I can’t really bring myself to understand that when I look at the math.
Preface: I recognize the problems with condition stacking limits in groups. Small groups haven’t been a problem, and zergs I just tag with chaos storm.
In basic exotics you can get when you just hit 80, Winds of Chaos shows 167 direct dmg on the tooltip, with 1053 dmg from bleeds. In practice from looking at the logs it actually does about 230 Direct damage against a random mob in orr, plus the bleed. With Illusionary Elasticity it hits 3 targets, one likely being myself. That means it hits the mob 2x, dealing a total of ~450 direct damage and 2100 bleed damage from 3/4 of a second of casting. So 2500 damage per cast. The game claims that happens every 3/4 of a second, and I’ve read elsewhere that it actually happens every 1.35 seconds. Either way that DPSC (dmg per second casting) is pretty decent, and could get better…. And that is all ignoring the extra bleeds from crits.
Not to mention I get fury or might when it bounces to me, which is almost always up in practice, which procs additional bleeds from crits.
On top of that very decent DPSC from just my own casting, staff clones cast winds of chaos and DO benefit from Illusionary Elasticity. They do no upfront damage, but DO generate bleed stacks both from the normal spell and extras from crits. They cast slower, but 3 clones up adds a significant amount of extra dps and is very easy to maintain. Throw in a iWarlock for good measure and all the conditions cause it to hit really hard – though clones may hit harder.
Against a random non-veteran mob in orr I can regularly get above 2000 dmg per bleed tick, and the target is burning for more than half the time as well (another 600ish dmg)
Compare this greatsword (the tooltip on spatial surge is the total for all 3 hits, not per hit) and I think it is obvious that staff is better.
Compare to MH sword, which requires you to stay in melee range (not always ideal for continued living) and it still seems to come out on top, even if you assume the sword is cleaving 3 enemies at all times.
The biggest issue with it is that the playstyle is so easy that you can almost literally AFK through fights
So despite everyone dumping on the staff, it seems to be the mesmer’s highest DPS weapon?