Best Destruction Staff for a healer?

Zama666 · December 2020

Not sure I am even making sense.

I have a healing staff but I want to toggle (2nd bar) with a destruction staff.
Suggestions on what staff to get (set? stones?)

Tanks,

Z

Vevvev · December 2020

I use an inferno staff as a magDK healer for a little extra sustain. If you're into doing lots of damage yourself I'd still go inferno staff as it boosts all direct damage by 8%, while lightning buffs all AoE damage by 8%.

However, if you want to help the group out go Lightning staff since Wall of Elements with a lightning staff easily procs off balance. When combined with the CP perk you're just buffing group damage at that point. Also helps the poor magDKs using Flame Lash as their spammable since it gets cheaper hitting an off balance foe.

Ice staff could work to proc brittle but it only procs brittle alongside the chilled status effect when it's your active weapon. Lightning staff for a healer is still better support wise.

Taleof2Cities · December 2020

Vevvev wrote: »

I use an inferno staff as a magDK healer for a little extra sustain. If you're into doing lots of damage yourself I'd still go inferno staff as it boosts all direct damage by 8%, while lightning buffs all AoE damage by 8%.

However, if you want to help the group out go Lightning staff since Wall of Elements with a lightning staff easily procs off balance. When combined with the CP perk you're just buffing group damage at that point. Also helps the poor magDKs using Flame Lash as their spammable since it gets cheaper hitting an off balance foe.

Ice staff could work to proc brittle but it only procs brittle alongside the chilled status effect when it's your active weapon. Lightning staff for a healer is still better support wise.

Here's another awesome for you ...

FrancisCrawford · December 2020

I'm wrestling with this now too.

In the past I've gone with a lightning staff. Indeed, I switched to Charged, so as to increase the likelihood of Concussion, both for the the debuff from that and because it leads to Off Balance as well. Spamming a few Crushing Shccks is a big part of that.

On Wardens if I'm just doing Minor Vulnerability/Off-Balance with class skills, the usual reason for lightning is less clear ... but so much of my damage is from AoE skills (Orb, Shalks) that I tend to stick with lightning anyway. (But maybe not Charged for the trait.)

But ice for Brittle also seems pretty desirable, in boss fights, again on a Charged staff with a few Crushing Shocks being spammed.

AcadianPaladin · December 2020

My healplar's destro staff is lightning. Most of her incidental damage is AoE and lightning staves boost AoE damage. If most of her damage was single target we would consider fire.

Her shock staff is enchanted with shock damage and its trait is powered.

I think it is important to consider the type of content you play. My healer does quite a bit of solo and, when grouped, is usually with a pug. That influences both her gear and skill selections in that she tends to run selfish gear and slot skills that enhance survival and damage. If she was running with a very well organized group, she'd run whatever the group needed for best support.

Evil_Rurouni · December 2020

Healers don't equip gear and skills in a vaccuum.
Well, good ones that are in in organised groups don't at least, healing in quick PUG groups is a different game entirely.

They co-ordinate with the rest of the group to make sure all desired buffs and debuffs are accounted for.
This means the group as a whole will want to use some inferno staves, some shock staves, and some frost staves.

DD's will usually want to slot all infernos, all the time, so frost and shock have to be provided by the tanks and healers.
You'll want to have one of each in your healers inventory so you can use whatever the group is short on.

If forced to choose only one however, I'd suggest making shock your healers default destro.
Tanks usually have near zero DPS so personally gain little from shock staves, while frost staves do have passives they can use.
Its more likely that the tank will have frost, so play the odds and take the shock staff they probably don't have.

Additionally, healers can actually do halfway decent DPS if needed.
Unlike tanks, they actually benifit somewhat from shock staff passives while frost passives do almost nothing for them.

WrathOfInnos · December 2020

The best combination is to have one Frost Staff (for Brittle) and one Lightning Staff (for off-balance) on the tank and healer, allowing the DD’s to use Inferno Staves. Typically the Lightning Staff works better on healer (especially for classes with multiple AoE abilities like Templar or Sorcerer healers), and Frost gives defensive passives that are nice for a tank. Depending on classes this can be swapped though, with Warden healers able to give higher brittle uptimes with a Frost Staff than most other classes on tank. Necro is also pretty good at Frost, since Boneyard and Colossus can proc Chilled and brittle.

FrancisCrawford · December 2020

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

The best combination is to have one Frost Staff (for Brittle) and one Lightning Staff (for off-balance) on the tank and healer, allowing the DD’s to use Inferno Staves. Typically the Lightning Staff works better on healer (especially for classes with multiple AoE abilities like Templar or Sorcerer healers), and Frost gives defensive passives that are nice for a tank. Depending on classes this can be swapped though, with Warden healers able to give higher brittle uptimes with a Frost Staff than most other classes on tank. Necro is also pretty good at Frost, since Boneyard and Colossus can proc Chilled and brittle.

Do ground-based AoEs really proc Chilled/Brittle often enough to matter?

WrathOfInnos · December 2020

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

The best combination is to have one Frost Staff (for Brittle) and one Lightning Staff (for off-balance) on the tank and healer, allowing the DD’s to use Inferno Staves. Typically the Lightning Staff works better on healer (especially for classes with multiple AoE abilities like Templar or Sorcerer healers), and Frost gives defensive passives that are nice for a tank. Depending on classes this can be swapped though, with Warden healers able to give higher brittle uptimes with a Frost Staff than most other classes on tank. Necro is also pretty good at Frost, since Boneyard and Colossus can proc Chilled and brittle.

Do ground-based AoEs really proc Chilled/Brittle often enough to matter?

They do with a Charged weapon trait. Especially Winter’s Revenge, which has a much higher chance to proc chilled/brittle than other Frost AoE’s. This is why Warden is the best at providing this debuff.

Necro is less suited for it, but they still have Boneyard ticking 11 times every 10s. With Charged, each tick has a 4.2% chance of proccing Chilled/Brittle. On average this will occur about once every 24s, and be active for 4s, resulting in about 17% Brittle uptime from this one skill.

Colossus is a little different. I believe it is considered direct damage, with 3 hits per cast. This means each of the ticks has a 21% chance to proc Chilled/Brittle. One cast of this ultimate has a 51% chance to proc at least one instance of Chill/Brittle on each enemy hit (with some getting the proc on multiple hits to refresh the duration beyond 4s). The ult cost means it cannot be used frequently, but for large trash packs that may be dead in 5s I think these odds of an extra 10% crit damage are significant. Supplement with an AoE DoT and an AoE spammable like Frost Ring and Brittle uptimes can be good even against multiple enemies when a Frost enchant does very little.

mocap · December 2020

since OP didn't state for what content his question (like 100% other posters do, lol), i suggest it is for dungeons.

For dungeons you can easily go with Resto/Resto setup. Destro stave in dungeons is useless cuz Siphon Spirit can cover all your team needs and tank will apply Penetration anyway.

For hybrid healer/dd setup i assume your best go with Lightning/Resto. Or if you are Templar then Lightning/Lightning or whatever DD build you prefer.