Spellbreaker - Staffbreaker Roamer

The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great

Focused on: Strike damage, Control, Sustain and Mobility

Designed for: WvW Roaming

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

Easy

This build was last updated on February 23, 2025 and is up to date for the February 11, 2025 patch.

Overview

Staffbreaker is a more defensive take on Spellbreaker for WvW roaming, adding extra sustain to the usual formula without sacrificng too much damage. Staff itself is a rather versatile weapon that's good for more than just healing, as it has plenty of mobility and even some CC. While the build's main focus is dueling, if you end up roaming in a group Staff can also provide support for others.

In terms of damage Dagger does the heavy lifting here, bringing solid pressure to the table not just in form of damage, but also unblockable attacks, CC and boon removal.

Skill Bar

Dagger/Shield

Staff

Utility

Template Code

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Specializations

Variants

• Shield Master could be useful against ranged enemies, as both sets have access to blocking skills.

Variants

• Destruction of the Empowered could be a significant damage increase if you can afford to play with fewer cleanses.

Equipment

Head
Berserker

Shoulders
Berserker

Chest
Berserker

Hands
Berserker

Legs
Berserker

Feet
Berserker

Backpiece
Dragon

Accessory
Dragon

Accessory
Dragon

Amulet
Demolisher

Ring
Demolisher

Ring
Demolisher

Dagger
Berserker

Shield
Berserker

Sigil

Sigil

Staff
Berserker

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x18

Relic

Equipment Variants

Stats

• Replace the Dragon pieces with Marauder if you're NOT playing with a Precision rune, or if you're willing to trade some burst potential for higher consistency.

Relics

• Relic of Rivers - better CD recovery and a bit of extra healing. Decent defensive choice even after the nerfs.

• Relic of the Daredevil - more consistency on your hard hitting skills.

• Relic of Isgarren - good option for bonus damage if you can't get Relic of the Stormsinger.

Runes

• Rune of Superior Rune of the Scholar - higher burst damage but with lower consistency.

Consumables

Food options

• - a very strong defensive option which improves your endurance regen and adds a bit more damage. Highly recommended due to relic and trait synergy.
  • Budget version:

• - passive damage mitigation and great stats.

Utility

• or .

Usage

Elite specialization basics

• Full Counter (FC) recharges your Burst skills Path to Victory and Breaching Strike. Always try to use it when you can refresh their duration, except if you're under heavy pressure in which case you can use FC purely for defensive means.

• Always try to make sure Full Counter goes off: briefly move into hostile AoE spells, tank Mesmer clones or Ranger pets, cast it in the middle of an enemy's attack animation, etc.

• FC is both one of the best defensive and offensive skill in the build as it blocks, evades, grants Stability, and performs an unblockable AoE CC attack when triggered.

• Both burst skills and Full Counter cost adrenaline. If you only need a little more until you can use them then Versatile Rage with a weapon swap can get you there.

General

• Settings: disable auto targeting, otherwise it'd be impossible to use skills like Bull's Charge for disengaging. For more tips check out our settings guide.

• Playstyle: this build is all about weaving hard hitting skills into chains of block and evade frames while tethering yourself to the target with Magebane Tether as often as possible. The combos aren't set in stone, rather you'll need to adapt based on what CDs are available. Minimize melee contact whenever you can't outdamage your opponent, dodge/block/evade as many things as possible, and spike targets when an opening shows.

• Any burst skill can proc Magebane Tether, including Full Counter.

• Staff isn't just your defensive set, but also one that can be used to secure a kill. While only Path to Victory and Valiant Leap are real threats here, sometimes this is all you need to get a kill once you've got a target down to low HP with your Dagger.
  • Sigil of Superior Sigil of Vision and Sigil of Superior Sigil of Hydromancy were selected to help you burst targets right after weapon swapping.

• Fast Hands reduces the CD of weapon swapping to 5 seconds, which keeps gameplay rather fast paced with minimal downtime. As a result you won't be auto attacking much unless you're cleaving a downed enemy.

• Despite its range Bull's Charge is best used in melee to make it harder to react to.

• CCing a target removes a boon and deals damage/grants adrenaline via Loss Aversion.

• All movement skills remove the Immobilized condition - list of movement skills in the build:
  • Staff: Valiant Leap and Line Breaker.
  • Dagger/Shield: Breaching Strike, Aura Slicer and Shield Bash.
  • Rampage: Kick (Rampage), Dash, and Seismic Leap.
  • Utility: Bull's Charge
• No Escape briefly roots enemies in place after you CC them. This turns skills like Full Counter and Disrupting Stab into great setup tools for your hard hitting abilities such as Breaching Strike or Impale (warrior sword).

Burst combo examples

You don't have to follow these all the time, WvW builds don't really use rotations. How you use your skills always depends on the given situation. These are just a few ideas for sequencing that minimize your window of vulnerability while maximizing damage and your chance to land hits.

From Dagger to Staff:

1. Shield Bash
2. Breaching Strike
3. Weapon swap
4. Path to Victory
5. Valiant Leap

From Staff to Dagger:

1. Valiant Leap for boons and minor damage
2. Snap Pull for CC
3. Weapon swap
4. Breaching Strike
5. Aura Slicer

Making full use of Dagger:

1. Dodge for Resistance if you worry about Blind or Weakness, or to get closer to the target without being hit
2. Disrupting Stab to proc the Immobilize from traits
3. Breaching Strike
4. Full Counter to reset the CD of BS and to proc another Immob
5. Breaching Strike
6. Shield Bash
7. Aura Slicer into weapon swap, finish the kill with Staff

Survival

• Almost every single Staff skill has some healing attached to it.

• While Line Breaker can cover quite the distance, you don't always want to aim it far even when running away. The healing and boons are only applied upon reaching the destination - on low HP you might even get killed by a ranged build or conditions before the skill could end. The closer you aim it to your feet, the sooner you'll get healed and protected by boons.

• Brawler's Recovery, Sigil of Superior Sigil of Cleansing, Cleansing Ire and Warrior's Sprint will be used to manage condition levels before resorting to mass cleanses.

• Burst skills cleanse conditions whenever they strike thanks to Cleansing Ire.
  • Getting Blinded could make your Burst skill miss and thus the condition cleansing won't happen which is rather awkward. Dodge rolling however grants Resistance via Resilient Roll which renders Blind ineffective, increasing the chance of a successful Cleansing Ire proc.

• Balanced Stance isn't just an anti-CC skill, it also mitigates direct damage by giving you immunity to critical hits.

• Mending cleanses 5 conditions and should be used pretty much on CD, assuming you're missing a large chunk of health or need to deal with conditions.

• Adrenal Health provides a steady stream of healing as long as you're landing those Burst skills (F1-F2).

• "Shake It Off!" (SIO) is both a stunbreak and a source of condition removal for you and your team.

• Kite, a LOT. You want to run out of harm's way using mobility skills as much as possible before resorting to major defensive CDs.

• Bull's Charge is great if you want to run away from pressure as it can build quite the gap while providing an evade frame.

Rampage

• Rampage is what you use when you quickly want to burst/CC a target, or desperately need mobility to either chase down someone or run away from a fight. Bonus points if you manage to attach Magebane Tether just before using your elite.

• CC skills barely do any damage anymore, most of the damage in this form comes from autoattacks and Dash.

• Throw Boulder is a popular opener, allowing you to CC targets from range and then either follow up with Dash for burst damage or Seismic Leap to keep the CC chain rolling.

Related Builds

• Spellbreaker - Duelist Staffbreaker - sPvP version of the build.