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 March 21, 2025 and is up to date for the March 11, 2025 patch.
Overview
Staffbreaker is a more defensive take on Spellbreaker for WvW roaming, adding extra sustain to the usual formula without sacrificing 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
[&DQIWKzM+PTenAKcAagBqAK0AcQCyALIAfAGcAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADLwBXAFkAAA==]
Specializations
Variants
- could be useful against ranged enemies, as both sets have access to blocking skills.
Variants
- 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
- - better CD recovery and a bit of extra healing. Decent defensive choice even after the nerfs.
- - more consistency on your hard hitting skills.
- - good option for bonus damage if you can't get Relic of the Stormsinger.
Runes
- - 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
- (FC) recharges your Burst skills and . 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 with a weapon swap can get you there.
General
- Settings: disable auto targeting, otherwise it'd be impossible to use skills like 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 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 , including .
- Staff isn't just your defensive set, but also one that can be used to secure a kill. While only and 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.
- and were selected to help you burst targets right after weapon swapping.
- 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 is best used in melee to make it harder to react to.
- CCing a target removes a boon and deals damage/grants adrenaline via .
- All movement skills remove the
Immobilized condition - list of movement skills in the build:
- Staff: and .
- Dagger/Shield: , and .
- Rampage: , , and .
- Utility:
- briefly roots enemies in place after you CC them. This turns skills like and into great setup tools for your hard hitting abilities such as or .
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:
- Weapon swap
From Staff to Dagger:
- for boons and minor damage
- for CC
- Weapon swap
Making full use of Dagger:
- Dodge for
Resistance if you worry about 
Blind or 
Weakness, or to get closer to the target without being hit - to proc the Immobilize from traits
- to reset the CD of BS and to proc another Immob
- into weapon swap, finish the kill with Staff
- Dodge for
Survival
- Almost every single Staff skill has some healing attached to it.
- While 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.
- , , and will be used to manage condition levels before resorting to mass cleanses.
- Burst skills cleanse conditions whenever they strike thanks to .
- 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 which renders Blind ineffective, increasing the chance of a successful Cleansing Ire proc.
- Getting
- isn't just an anti-CC skill, it also mitigates direct damage by giving you immunity to critical hits.
- 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.
- provides a steady stream of healing as long as you're landing those Burst skills (F1-F2).
- (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.
- is great if you want to run away from pressure as it can build quite the gap while providing an evade frame.
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 just before using your elite.
- CC skills barely do any damage anymore, most of the damage in this form comes from autoattacks and .
- is a popular opener, allowing you to CC targets from range and then either follow up with for burst damage or to keep the CC chain rolling.
Related Builds
- Spellbreaker - Duelist Staffbreaker - sPvP version of the build.
Ratings
Probably the best Spellbreaker build in roaming atm. I'm still on the fence about it being a 4 or a 5, but I do consider it to be better than the rest and I've had a lot of success testing it this weekend. It's not broken by any means, you actually have to work hard to get kills against high sustain specs and play well to survive against high burst, but you CAN win those with a bit of practice. Mobility is amazing, damage is decent, CC and boon removal are great.
Comments
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