Making Staves interesting mod

[eliotn]

I think staves could use a boost. Currently they are pretty much only an attack option for alchemists, and a wearable item for other classes. To that end, I propose several talent trees, for different classes to harness the power of the staff.

For stamina related classes -
Technique/Staff Combat (Strength Based)
1. Physical Staff Mastery (Passive) - Increases physical power and damage with staves, same scaling as Staff Mastery. In addition, level 1 makes you use strength instead of magic, for the purpose of determining which staff you can wield and the damage the staff deals. The first level of the talent cannot be unlearned.
3. Staff Spin (Active) (moderately low cooldown) - You spin your staff really fast for X rounds, deflecting melee blows, arrows, and even spells and powers of the same element as the staff's element. Additionally, the staff's element will leak at people who attack you. This talent blocks the first X points of such damage. If the target hits you and you block all of the damage, the target takes X damage and becomes vulnerable to a counterattack. While spinning the staff you deal X% less damage (goes from 50 to a cap at 0). When you stop spinning the staff, you lash out against all targets within range, dealing X% damage and stunning them, and automatically hitting targets vulnerable to a counterattack. Damage that can be blocked, damage dealt as well as the staff's elemental damage, increases with physical power.
3. Rough Channeling (Sustained) (Instant) - You attack the target so forcefully, that it causes the staff to fire a bolt of energy at the target for additional damage. You attack the target for X% damage. Additionally, whether it misses or hits, it causes the staff to fire off a bolt of energy doing X% of the staff's damage, and reducing the target's resistance to that type of attack by X% for X rounds. Damage and resistance reduction increases with physical power.
4. Staff Extension (Sustained)(Instant) - You can use melee talents with your weapon at a range of 2, but the damage is reduced for targets that distance away, scaling from 50% at talent level 1.0 to around 10% at level 5.0. At level 5, you can use melee talents at a range of 3, but the damage penalty is doubled. If the ability is targeted, the melee talents will affect all creatures in a line to the target. Using this talent is exhausting, and drains your stamina by 10 each turn. Only one staff sustained talent can be active.

Spell/Staff Combat (Magic Based)
1. Channel Staff - Same as the mage talent.
2. Elemental Staff Mastery (Passive) - Increases damage done with the staff by the same percentage as the comparable staff, also increases the effective physical power of the staff for the purpose of channeling it.
3. Charge Staff (Sustained) - Charges the staff full of energy, you must pay mana to activate the sustain. If you cast a spell with the same element as the staff the sustain is deactivated and the spell deals X% additional damage. Using a staff combat talent doubles the precentage bonus and causes the attack to affect a radius of 1.
4. Overchannel (Active) - Channels lots of energy to the target, dealing X% damage, and reducing the target's resistance to that element, but puts all staff combat talents on cooldown.

More to come later. I could use suggestions, as I am thinking of coding this.

[SageAcrin]

I rather like the ideas in the physical tree, but...well, none of them are active. This means that for people without weapon-neutral or two-hander skills it is fairly useless. That's still a fair deal of people, but consider who they are-Arcane Blade cares, but Berserker and Wyrmic are very likely to go for Antimagic, which is going to kill their interest in an Arcane equip. Arcane Blade also uses spellpower as well as physical power, so the first skill isn't relevant to them much, which makes the niche for the skills...Cursed? I don't know if a staff can ever really compete well with a twohander that requires no extra effort, for them.

Basically, there's some fundamental issues with staves on the physical end, and while the skills there are a good start, it's hard to really find a niche for staves as a physical weapon right now without making them almost ridiculously powerful. I like the idea of making them ranged/passive oriented, so that they don't have to directly compete, but there's still the issue that they clash directly with antimagic.

Of course, making powerful enough active skills in one, maybe two slots, that you'd have allotted, so that it would be an actual draw for players, is also really hard. But it's more workable, especially with fast CD spammable skills.

For the magical tree, there's a few things I'd suggest. One is that Defensive Posture is a legitimately good defensive skill-while it's on-paper boring, it is universal and usable by mages. Most of those don't get good defensive skills, which makes it an interesting option due to its position. Right now, I would take that over Charge Staff unless the values well over double the next spell's power, and in general I think it's more interesting than "Reserve damage for more damage later".

The other is that Channel Staff would need to provide physical power or have a much higher multiplier. It uses a normal physical multiplier, and physical power is taken into account for all basic attacks, no matter what stat they run off of-and that includes Channel Staff. Removing the physical power multiplier entirely from Staff Combat on the mage side would promptly nerf Channel Staff's damage anywhere from 20 to 50% depending on the point in the game and the build(the former is late game, latter is early game), by my guess. So it would need some compensation, and leaving the physical power in is the easier way to balance it.

[peaceoutside]

I was thinking that staves should come with innate +X Channel Staff skill, where X is the item's tier (artifacts can break this rule). This would be very similar to how shields come with +X block skill.

I'd change the default Channel Staff skill from a spell to a ranged attack so "On hit (ranged):" stuff works. Also, the base channel staff skill shouldn't cost mana, but also would not pass through friendly units by default.

Also, I'd probably completely re-do the Staff tree the alchemist gets. The first skill would change to a sustain where the first point re-enables the "pass through friendly units" feature. Perhaps a low mana (< 50 probably) sustain, but now each channel staff talent usage costs mana again. Having no mana reverts to the default Channel Staff skill. Each additional point adds to damage and at level 5 the attack becomes a beam. Critical hits could affect a radius (increases with talent level) instead of one square.

Another talent in that tree could be a passive or sustain that gives +X% chance to inflict status effects depending on that staff's currently selected damage type (light: blind; fire: burn; etc.). Maybe also give +Y% resistance to whatever that status effect is too.

I guess keeping a defensive sustain / passive skill would be good too. I'd like it to be more interesting than just +X defense / armor.

[SageAcrin]

If I were going to make Defensive Posture more interesting, I'd make it into a Repel-like skill with a chance for an absolute null of attacks, scaling based off Spellpower.

[eliotn]

I rather like the ideas in the physical tree, but...well, none of them are active. This means that for people without weapon-neutral or two-hander skills it is fairly useless.

Yeah. I thought about putting some actives in there. I am going to modify two of the talents to be active.

there's still the issue that they clash directly with antimagic.

That could be fixed by making antimagic oriented staves, that are fixed to be oriented towards physical, or nature/mind oriented damage. Instead of boosting spellpower/spellcrit, they could boost physicalpower/physical crit or mindpower/mindcrit, depending on their element, and use strength or willpower (at least partially) instead of magic.

The other is that Channel Staff would need to provide physical power or have a much higher multiplier. It uses a normal physical multiplier, and physical power is taken into account for all basic attacks, no matter what stat they run off of-and that includes Channel Staff. Removing the physical power multiplier entirely from Staff Combat on the mage side would promptly nerf Channel Staff's damage anywhere from 20 to 50% depending on the point in the game and the build(the former is late game, latter is early game), by my guess. So it would need some compensation, and leaving the physical power in is the easier way to balance it.

Fixed for now, but it seems unintuitive to have channel staff use physical power.

I was thinking that staves should come with innate +X Channel Staff skill, where X is the item's tier (artifacts can break this rule). This would be very similar to how shields come with +X block skill.

I like that idea (and thought of it myself beforehand).

Another talent in that tree could be a passive or sustain that gives +X% chance to inflict status effects depending on that staff's currently selected damage type (light: blind; fire: burn; etc.). Maybe also give +Y% resistance to whatever that status effect is too.

That sounds somewhat interesting, I was thinking of a similar talent, except it was an active.

I guess keeping a defensive sustain / passive skill would be good too. I'd like it to be more interesting than just +X defense / armor.

Does a chance to counter blast with the staff sound more interesting?

"
If I were going to make Defensive Posture more interesting, I'd make it into a Repel-like skill with a chance for an absolute null of attacks, scaling based off Spellpower."

Sounds much more interesting.

[SageAcrin]

That could be fixed by making antimagic oriented staves, that are fixed to be oriented towards physical, or nature/mind oriented damage. Instead of boosting spellpower/spellcrit, they could boost physicalpower/physical crit or mindpower/mindcrit, depending on their element, and use strength or willpower (at least partially) instead of magic.

Watering the staff pool is an iffy idea, though.

Mindstars already provide the non-combat bonuses, so you'd be making an equip dedicated solely to AM Wyrmics/Berserkers/maybe Cursed in a niche build-a niche within a niche, since Antimagic isn't all of those classes either...

That's such a small amount of characters that, most of the time, you're making a useless equip for most characters. There's always a problem with that with any equip, but minimizing it is important, and maybe one character out of 25 would even consider such a staff. That's pretty rough.

[skein]

What you really need to do is just change the arcane blade around a bit. It is kinda weak atm and an easy fix would be to make it a straight str/magic build.

Replace the cunning rogue trees with the berserker strength trees so that stamina becomes a real resource pool for an arcane blade. Then give them access to the base alchemist trees but not the alchemist pet stuff.

Then a staff means something. You could also just increase the base damage of each level of staff a bit so that it scales somewhat better compared to a good 2 hander. The innuendo stick tops out at level 3 but rank 4-5 2 handers eventually do more damage. Just scale it up a bit, have rank 5 staves doing a base of 60-90 damage and with the 30% bump they naturally get it will be in line for what a good 2 hander can do. Then scale up the lower ranks.

rank 1 12-18
rank 2 24-36
rank 3 36-54
rank 4 48-72
rank 5 60-90 with a 3rd more tops out at 120 and that is equivalent to the best 2 handers.

[SageAcrin]

Good grief, Arcane Blade does not need Throw Bomb/related support and Death Dance/Stunning Blow at once.

If it still needs a buff, it is a small one. That is nowhere near a small buff. That is enabling it to be one of the best physical fighters in the game thanks to Stone Skin+Berserker and various other support skills, or the best mage type in the game thanks to a large variety of good spells+Throw Bomb+great set of support skills from Staff Combat and Gem Alchemy, and +2 Life Modifier, and a great Cunning based spellpower booster, to say nothing of combining those two ends effectively. That's nuts.

Also, Channel Staff is one of the stronger raw damage techs, relative to its cooldown-it is full 10 range, instant hits, ignores allies, and does pretty good damage to time on its target audience(Alchemist). Massively pumping staff power would make Alchemist way stronger, which is something it probably does not need.

[peaceoutside]

Oh you know what else would be cool for a magic-based activated staff skill?

Something like turn back the clock. Fire off multiple projectiles at different enemies in one turn. Turn the staff into a machine gun haha. Give like 4 projectiles (with lower damage, 25% dmg @ lvl 1) in one turn.

For the active skill that imparts a status effect, maybe it's a slower moving projectile that acts like a seeker missile.

In general, I think there should be more multi-target / projectile skills like turn back the clock.

My suggestion if staves get innate +X Channel Staff:

Alchemist staff talent tree (maybe don't limit to just alchemists):

1. Augmented channel staff talent (passive or sustain)

• Channel staff does not hit non-hostiles
• +X% damage based on level and spell power
• Critical hits cause AOE damage. Radius increases with level.
• Beam at level 5?

2. Interesting staff defense talent (sustain)

• + elemental resistance based on staff damage type (increase with talent level and spellpower)
• + max elemental resistance based on staff damage type (increase with talent level and spellpower)
• + armor / defense (increase with talent level and spellpower)
• + chance to deflect / reflect / block / etc. attacks (increase with talent level and spellpower)

3. Status effect seeker (active)

• Fires a slower moving projectile that seeks its target
• Chance to inflict status effect based on staff damage type. Chance increases with talent level and spell power.
• Ignores non-hostiles
• AOE damage on crit?
• Passive status effect resistance that increases with talent level. Depends on staff's damage type.

4. Multiple targeted projectiles (active)

• Fire multiple projectiles at different targets
• Number of projectiles and projectile speed increases with level (start with slowest bow / arrow speed)
• Damage per projectile decreases per level, but net damage goes up if all projectiles hit. Damage increase with spellpower as well.
• Ignores non-hostiles

[peaceoutside]

Has anyone started work on this yet?

I have some stuff started. Let me know if you want to collaborate on this.

[eliotn]

1. Augmented channel staff talent (passive or sustain)

Channel staff does not hit non-hostiles
+X% damage based on level and spell power
Critical hits cause AOE damage. Radius increases with level.
Beam at level 5?

I like the idea of a sustained improved channeling that takes 5 mana per hit, and increasing damage. I think the base channel staff talent should be based off of spellpower (having it based off of physical power makes no sense).
Of course, I see nothing wrong with staves giving a channel staff talent that costs mana, because means exist to shore this up, and some staves provide mana regeneration if this is an issue.
Having critical hits cause aoe damage sounds interesting, but is way too powerful to include with this talent.
Having the staff beam is also a bad idea, as spamming a 5 mana cost beam each round that ignored allies (unless staff damage was nerfed) is too powerful.

2. Interesting staff defense talent (sustain)

+ elemental resistance based on staff damage type (increase with talent level and spellpower)
+ max elemental resistance based on staff damage type (increase with talent level and spellpower)
+ armor / defense (increase with talent level and spellpower)
+ chance to deflect / reflect / block / etc. attacks (increase with talent level and spellpower)

Elemental resistance based on staff damage type could be really powerful against enemies that use a single element. Might be interesting but not sufficient on its own.
Increasing max resistance might be good, however its either really good (if the player exceeds the resistance cap) or worthless. Probably much better as an item ego.
Armor/defense is boring.
A chance to deflect/reflect attacks could be interesting.

3. Status effect seeker (active)

Fires a slower moving projectile that seeks its target
Chance to inflict status effect based on staff damage type. Chance increases with talent level and spell power.
Ignores non-hostiles
AOE damage on crit?
Passive status effect resistance that increases with talent level. Depends on staff's damage type.

Having the projectile being homing is not good, why should it home?
I love the inflicting status effect based on damage type.
AOE damage on crit might not be a bad idea for the active talent, but I like the status effect idea more
The passive effect resistance looks better to combine with a defensive sustained talent.

4. Multiple targeted projectiles (active)

Fire multiple projectiles at different targets
Number of projectiles and projectile speed increases with level (start with slowest bow / arrow speed)
Damage per projectile decreases per level, but net damage goes up if all projectiles hit. Damage increase with spellpower as well.
Ignores non-hostiles

Love this idea, except I think projectile speed increasing with level makes it too complex. I think all of the projectiles could be targeted, except perhaps a damage penalty to projectiles after the first one?

Has anyone started work on this yet?

I have some stuff started. Let me know if you want to collaborate on this.

What stuff do you have started and where is it? I might want to help out.

[Strongpoint]

I play quite a lot characters that use staffs as a main melee weapon. I know that it's suboptimal but it's fun for me


Staff problems

1) Staffs are inferior to other kinds of weapon, because you need to find alchemist escort and spend a category point for staff mastery, while dagger\weapon mastery is freely available for any class
2) Staffs have same problem as any two-handed weapons, two weapons are simply better if you have on hit damage sustains
3) Staffs have mostly spellcasting related brands and you need rare\artifact for something useful in melee
4) One of the funnier parts of staff - changing damage type. But there are no real differences what type of damage you use, expect resistances
5) There are quite a few artifact staffs in early game.
______________
proposed fixes
1) new talent tree may be nice, but I'd prefer weapon mastery include staffs, and replace staff mastery with something else
2) I'd prefer such sustains working like brands, 120% multiplier for two handed, 80% multiplier for daggers
3) Well, more brands
4) I really want special effects depending on damage type selected, but I suspect that may make staffs overpowered
5) see #3

[peaceoutside]

What stuff do you have started and where is it? I might want to help out.

Good feedback, thanks.

My plan for suggestions that might sound overpowered is to greatly scale back damage, add cooldowns and increase resource cost.

However, I tend to do balancing last. Seems like a good idea to get stuff working first, and then testing and tweaking it a lot afterwards. Start overpowered, then pull back from that so it's challenging and fun at the same time.

I don't have a whole lot of work done yet, but I was able to figure out how to change all default "on wield / wear" properties for non-artifact staves. Instead of just having +1 Command Staff, now they also come with +X Channel Staff where X is the item tier.

The next step is to remove the Channel Staff talent from the alchemist talent tree and replace it with the proposed Augmented Channel Staff ability.

An interesting thing I found was that items that give +X to a talent in a tree you have unlocked are able to be unlearned giving the player unlimited talent points if you wield > unlearn > wield > repeat. This won't be a problem once I move Channel Staff out of the staff tree and keep it as an item-only talent.

[eliotn]

1) Staffs are inferior to other kinds of weapon, because you need to find alchemist escort and spend a category point for staff mastery, while dagger\weapon mastery is freely available for any class

1) new talent tree may be nice, but I'd prefer weapon mastery include staffs, and replace staff mastery with something else

Interesting idea. The problem is that it forces mages to boost strength in order to get the talent to increase staff damage.

2) Staffs have same problem as any two-handed weapons, two weapons are simply better if you have on hit damage sustains

2) I'd prefer such sustains working like brands, 120% multiplier for two handed, 80% multiplier for daggers

This sort of falls outside the purview of this mod, but I definitely agree that this is a good idea for some abilities, such as arcane blade, in order to make it viable to build them as a twohanded or two individual weapons.

3) Staffs have mostly spellcasting related brands and you need rare\artifact for something useful in melee

3) Well, more brands

Definitely an issue that needs to be fixed.

4) One of the funnier parts of staff - changing damage type. But there are no real differences what type of damage you use, expect resistances

Except it also changes resistance and damage boost. Damage boost can be helpful for a caster, and damage boost always increases the staff damage. But staves could be made more interesting with talents that give different effects based on damage.

Also peaceoutside, where is this mod, I would like to experiment on it and help if I can.

[SageAcrin]

Staffs don't really need more brands.

They may need combat benefits added to the brands that exist, though. Making a ton of combat oriented staffs has the same "Not many people actually care about this" problem that AM/Nature staffs do, however.