The Restoration Staff for DPS!

It is late so I would be brief first, might add more later. Figured this might be useful considering I don't even know.

I personally find that Resto Staff is superior for ranged staff DPS compared to Destruction Staff. I was researching on my Sorc class builds, and I came upon some builds that use Restoration Staff. I found out some interesting information that I didn't know about. Later on Denny's Deshaan Smash and Grab, Denny confirmed it and provided even more usage of Resto Staff. Thanks for the confirmation.

Resto Staff has a *hidden* bonus - It restores 10% magicka on every heavy attack. 

Now I don't know of what hidden bonuses destro staff has, but I read that it *might* have slightly higher dps. But don't quote me on that. As a Sorc and heavy magicka usage, I find that the Resto Staff is superior! I have been using Destro Staff so far, but actually I don't really need it except for casting occasional Elemental Wall. My class spells are generally more useful. Not sure about other classes though.

Resto Staff also has very strong synergy with passives that will benefit your overall character.

1. Essence Drain - 2/2 - Final attack heals 30% of damage done
2. Cycle of Life - 2/2 - Deals 1% damage for every 10% life you have for total bonus 10% dmg bonus
3. Absorb - 2/2 - Blocking spells restores magicka. Esp good for tank

If you are healing, the other passives are great. But the passives are very useful both in soloing and group. So always try to cast your Resto Staff heavy attack. You can still cast other spells in between and it will always supersede your heavy attack.

Hope this is useful information. Does anyone knows the benefits of destro staff? (Outside of specific preference for certain desto staff skills or simply would like the tri-elemental dmg)

TL;DR While doing "auto attack", you are healing your group, increasing your base DPS, restoring your own magicka and at the same time casting your other class spells.

Excellent post! Thanks, I didn't know about the Absorb ability and I suspected the attacks restored MP, but I was unsure of the amount

yeah, after using the resto staff, I almost always use the heavy hit. It might not do as much damage as I run around and kite things, but I do love that it gives me back mana, and has a chance to heal once you have put points into the passive.  I don't rely on the heal at all, I see that just as an extra bonus.  I do rely on the magicka return though, and its a big chunk back.   

After healing my first dungeon with it after launch I can't see being a group healer without the staff, simply because it allows me to focus on the target the tank is on, assisting the tank, contributing dps, keeping magicka up for the healing in between heavy hit channels, and it also keeps the tank top off slightly since it heals the nearest target to the target you are attacking.  Its a win win, for grouping and for soloing.  

I used double resto-staff up to lvl 43 or so and it worked great. Have switched over to destro because I ended up as dps in a lot of dungeon runs. My experience is that the resto for dps thing is great for single target fighting - you can keep spamming spells with that mana regen. The destro staff Impulse ability shines in dungeons where you need more aoe. I tend to dedicate one bar to healing/cc so I will probably keep 2 restos on hand and one destro, switching out depending on circumstances.

Do any of you use the Resto staff in AvA and how do you find it?

The reason I ask is that I shy away from things that draw attention to me in AvA - in PvE it doesn't seem to matter.  But the resto and shock staff both have these "tethers" on heavy attacks that lead the enemy right back to me.   I mean I hear our leaders in AvA yelling "Take down the Sorcs first" and they aren't just talking about the NPC ones.  I know that a Sorc can lay down a lot of damage with AE's and they need to die first as well as any healers so Resto staff heavy attack is just such a sure give-a-way I tend to shy away from it.

Morigana,

The very audacity and affront to melee of wearing a staff in AvA is attention grabbing enough. 

On a more serious note,  being melee and upfront in AvA,  if the enemy is using a staff,  they die first.  it does not matter to me if they are in the back of the pack.  I will charge through a throng of dps and tanks to get to them.  There is nothing differentiating what staff versus what priority save for if that staff is glowing yellow.  The best thing you have to protect you in AvA is depending on your spec,  heals or glass cannon dps.

In theory if the melee dps is attacking those casters and healers,  the enemy melee will be going to the defense of their casters in an attempt to peel the melee dps off them.  Therefore leaving the casters and healers the time to lay waste at their pace.  That is also my experience in other games such as organized pvp and arenas against organized teams.  Pug teams of course just melt due to lack of command and control as well as teamwork. 

I haven't yet, but I plan to on my healer, because well, I will be gaining a bonus to heals while using a restoration staff.   Also later on at endgame I will have a 5pc set bonus that will give me 3% more spell cost reduction by wielding a resto staff, so to me this is another bonus that makes the resto staff a much better choice than the destro staff.    

As far as in AvA, well being a healer, wielding a staff, and being in light armor is going to get me a focus fire from the opposing side, however, if I treat it like any normal mobs in PvE, I will run around in circles within range of the group, kiting the target that is after me, healing the entire time as well.   If others on my side are paying attention, than the guy who peeled away to target me will probably get mowed down themselves.  Also this is Gaiscioch, we don't often work alone but in large pacts, so if they are focusing on me, then they ignored the rest of the pack that will probably eat them alive, even if they do manage to take me out.  

To be honest that 5 piece bonus that reduces spell costs by 3% when using a Resto staff is somewhat eclipsed by the Seducer set (3% reduced costs regardless of equipped weapon) and the Magnus set (5% chance when casting a spell for it to be free).

yes mystborn you are right, that magnus set is nice too, but its a 5% chance when casting a spell, which is honestly a rather slim chance.   

Essentially you can have a 5pc and one 3pc bonus, plus a 3pc drop bonus if you manage to find two rings and a necklace with the drop set piece.    So essentially you are correct, the seducer gives you 3% already, but if you really want to compare apples to oranges, its either a 6% total magicaka cost reduction plus spell resistance ( one 3pc set bonus and a 5pc sets, 3pc and 5pc bonus, or you can get 3% magicak reduction, 5% chance to cast a spell for free (two 3 pc set bonuses).

as you said, it is a hard choice, but the question then becomes...do  you opt for a reliability by having further reduced magicka costs, or a slim chance to cast a spell for free.    If the chance was higher, at least 10% chance, then it would be a no brainer for sure.   But nothing says you can't have both on your gear, and swap some pieces out to get the different bonues' as the need arises, since as a healer with a resto staff, you will have 8 pieces of gear in total.  One of those gear choices could easily be your staff, but you still have to be out of combat to swap the other two items.    

Also, if you look at the % to magicka cost reduction, you can easily get 14% from light armor 7 pieces, 3% from the seducer set, 3% more if you opted for the 5pc set bonus, and if you rolled a breton then an extra 3% from racial for a total possible 23% magicka reduction to spells.   That is pretty hefty, but you are correct, the extra 3% wouldn't make that big of a difference if you are already at 20% magicka cost reduction. 

Grouped with a dedicated healer I am destruction. Do not have mana issues.

Solo however i have found the only way I can not die constantly to the three packs.

Is to run resto with the number two skill on my bar and both pets.

I am not using it for mana but the number two heal is really effective. Having no problem soloing vet content. 

On the PTS they added a 5 piece set bonus to the sets that only have a 3 piece bonus.

Seducer got + Magicka Regen, Magnus got +Max Magicka - amount of each depends upon the level of the gear.

oh now that is gonna make it really hard to choose now.  I mean seriously....magicka reduction and bonus magicka regen, and then a chance for a free spell along with bonus magicka....man.  

I'll take seducer for the magicka regen and just eat real food instead of drinking brew to cap i guess :P

I think Light Armour caps my MR by itself.

Going 5 Magnus/3Seducer/3Warlock seems like the best of all worlds tbh.  Unless you have something fancy like Worm Cult or Magicka Furnace.

Then eat Magicka/Health dual stat food.

I run with both a resto and dest staff. It depends on the situation we are in what I use.  I tend to switch to the dest staff when I am fighting vamps and werewolfs, the resto staff for most other encouters.  Since fire is so effective against vamps and wolves, as well as undead and deadra it is my favorite attacking weapon type be it resto or dest. I like to run the resto staff when leading and in groups since it helps me heal my fellow players.  I also have fighters guild silver bolt crossbow on both weapon bars.

As for armor I run light with max magika in most cases.  I do not run med or heavy armor.

I also do not use pets at all as they are more of a destraction than an assist. 

Caytlynne of Skye VR3 Sorceress

Recent research has shown that not only is the Resto Staff viable in AvA it is the preferred weapon for sorcers and Dragon Knights in AvA.  Other threads here in the forum show the build that Alacrity is using for their sorcerer build.  In that thread  they provide solid background data to back up this assumption.  The Resto Staff when used in conjunction with Light high level light armor sets, and specific skill sets do tremendous damage.  I encourage everyone to give this set up a try if you are in AvA much.  Not only is the build viable in AvA they have "theory crafted" specifics for Veteran level time trials. I have pretty much abandoned my Destro Staff at this point although I do carry one just in case.

Caytlynne of Skye VR12 Sorceress

This would be the drum that I've been banging the crap out of, lately.  Its so good, that a player is a fool for not adopting it, if they want to be equally competitive with the rest of the class.  The numbers are almost double that of any other possibility of armor/weapon/class skill combinations... sustained numbers, not just burst (which seems to be more class specific).

I've been running resto staff since day one,  true I also have a bow but barely use it now....  ok I am a Templar healer, but I find the passives from the resto staff help a lot, as a heavy magika build been able to restore some of it by simply blocking makes it awesome when pushing a keep. Im a a frontline player and tend to follow the tanks up close, tried running my play style with a board and I find I do just better going in with my resto staff

Resto Staff has always been (well, since we joined the PTS in January anyway) super strong and the "best" single target DPS weapon, mostly due to the Cycle of Life Passive that gives +1% damage per 10% of your health total (+10% at full health).

Destro only gets used when you need/want to use an active.  Any time you're AoEing you'll be using Destro for Elemental Ring/Pulsar, DK's love Destro staff on almost anything for the extra ticks giving extra Ultimate.  There is actually a really strong single target Sorcerer build revolving around Destro Staff that basically just spams Crushing Shock (weaved with light attacks).  A lot of people are saying it's actually better than the old Resto Staff/Crustal Fragments build.

In the words of one of the Sorcs in my Trial group last night "Finally I can play a Sorcerer and actually use a *Destruction* staff!".

I'm not sure if I'd put the DPS numbers of the staffs at double the DPS of non staffs but I'd say they are definitely a DPS increase.  Partly due (in Resto's case) to Cycle of Life, but also partly due to the "light attack weaving".  Staff attacks take longer to perform than say a Dual Wield attack and do more damage as a result.  This works fine if you're spamming light attacks because the DPS works out to be the same, but when you cancel the animation by weaving you're getting the higher Staff light attack damage with each "weave".

But... as imbalanced as it is right now I can say for sure that they are working really hard on rebalancing a ton of stuff.  Class skill wise, weapon skill wise, stamina vs magicka wise, itemisation wise - it's a really complex and interlocking puzzle that they need to be careful with.

The DPS numbers that I've seen reported in various posts are at least double or more.  That's sustained, not burst.  I wish I was exaggerating, although its possible that the players posting are.

As I've said, I am not a theorycrafter, I am just not one to care about having the perfect numbers on my character.  When my characters feel right to me while playing and do what I expect of them, is when I consider them to be "perfect".

So for me to be bringing this to attention as a serious balance issue, is actually a big deal, even if folks don't know me or realize it.

Great ideas!

I started using my Restoration Staff when questing and started to suspect extra benefits, including DPS.

So I'm curious, just how do we find out the effects of light and heavy attacks of the various weapons?  I was looking at my toons tonight, trying to adjust my builds and I wasn't able to find anything that gave me any specifics about the light and heavy attacks for each weapon.  Seems like that would be useful information to know.

I can assure you if you take most (all?) resto staff dps builds and just replace the weapon with a destro staff (or bow) you'd only lose about 10% damage (or less) from the circle of life passive.  You could replace them with melee weapons also but you would need to be in melee range to weave light attacks and your light attack weaving would give a little less damage.

It is nothing like double damage.

I think what you're seeing is that the best builds right now (other than crushingshock.build) rely almost exclusively on class skills so you can use any weapon with them - with that freedom peopel who post builds go with resto staff because it's ~10% better than everything else.

The only builds you'll see posted that are using DW or 2H are builds that need to use DW/2H because they actually use DW and 2H abilities - those builds will do a much smaller percentage of the dps an optimised resto staff build will do.  The majority of the reason there is the stamina/magicka inequality.

But yeah, even a 10% bonus on damage makes resto staff OP at the moment, maybe things will change when they make the actives on the other 5 weapons better so that they even out the flat 10% passive damage increase from resto.

Can heavy resto staff attacks be clipped like heavy melee attacks?

Kind of, but they are a channel so you won't get the 10% Magicka return unless you complete the channel.

Yep, that's what I was looking for.

Actually, Myst, you may not realize it, but you're arguing for my point, since you're not understanding what I've been posting.  I never said that Resto staff was two times better than the other weapons.  What I was saying, is what you said in the rest of your last post.  

Its the total sum of the parts of the builds that comprises the difference in DPS... due exactly to the stamina/magicka imbalance issues.  Resto staff just has the bonus of doing a bit more DPS + additional magicka regen for more sustainable, and slightly higher, DPS when tossed into those magicka builds.  Whether they're using Destro or Resto is moot to my point.

Well if I'm arguing for your point you didn't do a very good job of clearly stating your point!  You said:

The numbers are almost double that of any other possibility of armor/weapon/class skill combinations

To which I said, replace the resto staff in a dps build with any other weapon and you lose *at maximum* 10% DPS.  So clearly 110% of light/restostaff/sorc is not almost double the 100% of light/anythingelse/sorc.

If you want to talk imbalance of Magicka/Stamina then that's a whole different conversation and one we probably mostly agree on (although I'd argue that it's probably not as bad as you think it is).

I was referring to comparing a light/staff build against a medium/dw build.  I didn't realize I was going to have a generalized statement get nitpicked to pieces, because my assumption was that it would be recognized for what it was... a generalized statement.  My mistake.

Ok, sorry for taking what you said at face value, I didn't realise you were going to get all passive aggressive about it.  My mistake.

  Yep last week i chated in guild chat about the imbalance between  staff light armor vs   dw/2h/bow and mix of light and med or hvy and was  jumped on by like 5 people explaining to me there was no imbalance  between the 2 .

 And that most people do not use staff builds with light armor cause they aren`t better and basicly i  needed to L2P .

  What is wrong is they desgined all the class ablities  req magik , thus  of course anything that boost magik will be better as all your abliuties will perform, work better .  

ohwell not gona worry about it sub goes out on the 8th i`ll check back in a few months and see if they fixed anything .