Mod & Inscription stack on weapons

I did not find an answer in the threads about this, but here is the question. I have a staff that I use for my Smiter. I have a perfect Adept Staff Head that halves the casting time of Smiting Prayer skills 20%. On the same weapon I have the perfect inscription Aptitude Not Attitude which does exactly the same thing at 20%. Am I getting the effect of both of these, or am I wasting one of them because they cannot be used together?

You get a 32% chance to HCT (basically one third of spells) and a 4% chance to QCT (quarter casting time). You don't get a 40% chance as you would think. Out of 20 spells, about 6-7 would cast in half time and one would cast incredibly fast.

Don't remember the exact math except that (0.2)(0.2)=0.04, which gives you the QCT chance.

The same doesn't applies for HSR bonus, as it has a cap of 50% recharge on any skill. So you get a 36% to HSR.

EDIT: Welcome to Guru. Hope to see you QQ'ing soon about nerfs.

Math infor here: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10040956

So, although I am not getting 40% as someone would think, I am getting more than 20% so it is not a complete waste of my mods. Although, now that I mention it, what would make it better? Keeping it the way it is, or adding a different mod or inscription? It is a Smiting staff.

There isn't much to do with staff head and inscriptions, it's either extra health or extra energy, or the HCT. Most people use it because it allows HCT and a 20% longer enchantments mod, so they use them to cast stuff such as attunements which have somewhat large casting times, and then switch back to their common casting set.

Use what fits you more depending on your skills.

I'd say it depends on what you're doing as a smiter. Would you rather have only a 20% HCT chance and extra armor/health/energy? You can get staff heads that do +5ar, +30hp, or +5 energy. If you use anything besides smiting, would you rather have 10% HCT chance on all spells, not just smiting? You can get both staff heads and inscriptions that each give 10% HCT chance on all spells.

I try to give my heroes' gear extra hp and armor but only because I tend to be too lazy to keep the enemies from focusing on the casters (speaking of PvE, of course.)

Most smiting spells don't have terribly long casting times, particularly as compared to elementalist spells, but many have horribly long recharges. So it might be better to concentrate more on HSR. My smiting monk just sticks with a balanced 20/20 staff.

There are basically 3 ways to do pure smiting.

One is buffing other players, especially melee fighters, with enchantments. Some of these enchants are maintained by a pip of your energy regen, but others have a normal expiration period. If you go this way, a wrap of enchanting can help you get more duration out of the enchants you cast, making more efficient use of your energy.

Another is direct smiting using signets. These have no energy cost, so you might want to set up your 20/20 staff with health and/or armor mods.

The third is direct smiting using regular spells, such as Banish. In this case, you might want to set up your 20/20 staff with an Insightful staff head (energy +5), plus a wrap giving health or armor. Or you might want to consider a 40/40 wand + offhand combination. (A 20/20 wand with a 20/20 offhand. This gives an even bigger boost to HCT and HSR, but at the cost of not being able to add energy/health/armor mods.)

My smiter goes with direct smiting most of the time, so his primary weapon is an Insightful 20/20 staff of Fortitude. Of course, you have 4 weapon slots, so you will eventually carry other weapons that are a better match for other builds that you will use in different situations.