The Master's Destruction Staff Doesn't Make The Cut

In Greymoor, all of the Arena weapons got updated, including the old Dragonstar Arena weapons. But are the updated weapons going to be any good?

The new Master's Destruction Staff grants you a 10 percent cost reduction on Destructive Touch and its morphs, and gives you an additional 600 Spell Damage for 4 seconds after you use the ability. The Perfected Master's Destruction staff provides an additional 103 unconditional Spell Damage. The live version of the Master's Destruction staff provides a 30 percent cost reduction and boosts the direct damage portion of Destructive Touch by up to 2000.

Now many people think that the new version is stronger, and in many ways it is. But is it strong enough to be the new front bar staff for magicka DPS?

The short answer is no. The Master's Destruction Staff doesn't seem to cut it compared to your typical 5/5/2 set-up.

The longer answer is that you're giving up too much to use the Master's Destruction Staff and not gaining the equivalent amount. First, you need to be able to run Destructive Reach. Not all classes have a flex spot on their front bar for this. For those that don't, you need to give up one DoT to run the ability, which may end up being a straight DPS loss. Second, related to our first point, you're giving up one GCD in order to use Destructive Reach. This GCD can be used for a spammable or other ability instead, which will almost always result in a DPS gain. So running Destructive Clench is going to drop our DPS because we have fewer GCDs to spend on spammables. Third, while you are gaining a large amount of Spell Damage, you aren't really going to be able to maintain that Spell Damage for very long. In my tests, I could maintain about 50 percent uptime comfortable. I imagine that you might be able to maintain probably about 66 percent uptime if you practice at it. This would translate to an average of 400 Spell Damage. Respectable, yes, but it's not stronger than what you'd be giving up. Which ties into our last point: the additional Spell Damage you gain does not equal what you can get from a 5-piece or a monster set. In order to run the Master's Staff, you need to give up one of the two. Depending on how much DPS your monster set or your 5-piece is providing, it's possible that your Master's staff isn't providing enough DPS to compare to that loss.

Check out my Twitch channel: https://twitch.tv/t3hasiangod

Buy me a coffee or support me on Patreon!
https://ko-fi.com/t3hasiangod
https://www.patreon.com/t3hasiangod