ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

So, I've been playing around with a dual-staff reaver concept that refuses to waste points (ie, no investment in str, and no generics into any masteries other than staff mastery). It's been interesting.

- It is, in fact, exactly what you want it to be. This character generates the most single-target damage at level of any I've ever played, and I've run mindlash abusers. Two staves means you get the damagemod, the spellpower, and the spellcrit from two different places, and that your default melee attack now does blight damage. Staff bol and mana regen from equipment (which is easy to get) means that you have a nice little plinky ranged attack for wearing down melee enemies as they walk towards you, and a nice little spell to trigger your autoattack on spell for the damage boost. It's pretty shiny all around.

- It takes a while to set up. 500 gp for the first hit of the tree, 1250 for total investment there. Protip: don't wait for it. Spend money on the stuff that will get you up and running early. Buy yourself a teleport rune and a better regen/heal infusion if one shows up. You're going to be understrength for a while.

- short staves are *rare* in the beginning game. As a level 23 charcter, I have one of tier 2, and one of tier 3. Those are the only short staves that have ever been generated for this character, and none have shown up in shops. If one does show up in a shop, and you can afford it, and you don't have two yet, buy it.

- escort rewards are even more of a thing. The Light tree is huge for reavers - not only does it plug a bunch of their holes pretty decisively, it synergizes *amazingly* well with their nifty autoattack power. Remember, if you get it early enough, Bathe in Light is really quite useful for healing your other escorts. Also, you'll want to save at least one alchemist before you buy your tree, if you can - doing it in that order will net you an extra +0.100 mod for free (another good reason to be willing to delay entry int the tree for a bit). Also, you're maxxing your magic stat, which means that a bunch of these abilities are more appealing. Even more to the point, you're a melee-primary character who's maxxing your magic stat, which means that that first point of chant is *also* quite handy.

- avoid dwarves. The money thing will suddenly become far more painful. Also, you don't actually need the easy start, even if you will be gimping yourself for the first bunch of levels.

Sirrocco wrote:This character generates the most single-target damage at level of any I've ever played, and I've run mindlash abusers.

I just ran a dual staff reaver (here), and, while it wasn't quite as optimized as your post sounds, I would do 1k damage on a bump, or 2-2.5k with talent use and a bit of luck. Were Mindslayers nerfed that much from when I last ran a good one (b40, apparently)? I was doing 2-3k damage consistently with that one, and it was before prodigies and some other boosts to them.

Well, at the moment I'm running around at lvl 20-some-odd, and when I was running mindslayers, I didn't engage in staff abuse. Also... you only have 1 point in Corrupted Strength? Why?

Trying a dual-staff reaver right now. I lucked out and found a magewarrior's short staff in Elvala, and it's looking pretty good so far. Staff Combat is great on a Reaver: You can pretty much stop bump attacking altogether and use point-blank Channel Staff instead; by the time you can afford the tree, your Corrupted Strength attacks are stronger than regular attacks.

I also lucked out and found a lost alchemist right when I was wondering what to do with my level 20 category point.

I don't suppose there's some way to change the default bump attack talent (from "Attack" to "Channel Staff"), is there?

Sirrocco wrote:Also... you only have 1 point in Corrupted Strength? Why?

I wasn't doing a pure optimized build, and I didn't find the small increase in damage worth the loss in other areas. A good part of the damage was from on-hit effects anyways, so the %damage wasn't as relevant.

Mewtarthio wrote:I don't suppose there's some way to change the default bump attack talent (from "Attack" to "Channel Staff"), is there?

I'm sure an addon could do it fairly easily. Look at line 37 of mod/class/Combat.lua for where to start.

If you play using the mouse, you can set clicking on enemies to default to channel staff, but dunno if you can do anything if you're a pure keyboard player.

Mewtarthio wrote: I don't suppose there's some way to change the default bump attack talent (from "Attack" to "Channel Staff"), is there?

A substitute can be to set the channel staff to auto on "enemy visible and close"

For the 1st time I found 2 shortstaff but I cannot equip any of them in the offhand. Is it a Class specific talent, or should I unlock the staff tree to be able to dual staves?

What version are you playing? (You can only do it after 1.05.)

comrade raoul wrote:What version are you playing? (You can only do it after 1.05.)

The last one. 1.1.3

this character: http://te4.org/characters/107887/tome/7 ... 9d253777be , 1 short staff in main hand, and no way to equip the ither one in the offhand (it just replace the main hand)

ooli wrote:

comrade raoul wrote:What version are you playing? (You can only do it after 1.05.)

The last one. 1.1.3

this character: http://te4.org/characters/107887/tome/7 ... 9d253777be , 1 short staff in main hand, and no way to equip the ither one in the offhand (it just replace the main hand)

This is a shadowblade, not a reaver. A short staff is a main-hand one-hand weapon in the same way that a long sword is a main-hand one-hand weapon. Reavers have a class ability that lets them dual-wield main-hand one-hand weapons, but non-reavers can only put things like daggers, mindstars, whips, shields, and the bottom half of the Telos staff in their offhand.

Where do you people find 1 handed staves? I don't think I've ever seen more than one in one game, if that.

one-handedness is an affix ("short") that shows up very rarely in the early game. later it becomes somewhat more frequent, and sometimes you luck out int he stores.

malboro_urchin wrote:Where do you people find 1 handed staves? I don't think I've ever seen more than one in one game, if that.

They were added recently, after 1.0.5 IIRC.

Indeed, and 1.10 was the first release that actually let you dual-wield them (due to a bug in 1.05).

Sirrocco wrote:one-handedness is an affix ("short") that shows up very rarely in the early game. later it becomes somewhat more frequent, and sometimes you luck out int he stores.

Ah, thanks much. I've done most of my playing since 1.0.5 and 1.10, so it's nice to know that I'm not just incredibly unlucky! I've made it to the East a few times, but I've never been able to make it back to the West.