Staff feels weak in later stages

[TrickTimer]

From my group experiences with physical dealers (Ripers, bow, boomrang), I feel like Staff doesn't scale much. Even in the run where I had the item allowed me to stack 1% spell damage when killing enemies with spells, I arrived at the last boss in normal run with 600+% spell, which is insane already but the damage doesn't feel that good compared to autos from physical dealers.
Going to Endless and arrived on the last boss with 850+%, I feel like weaker and weaker. Well one can say, I wasn't able to kill that much during the endless because the group was killing way too fast.

Was wondering why staff normals could not scale with spell power instead of basic damage.

[Patented Skinner Burgers]

Skill damage staff is incredibly strong, but primarily because of Ballista. A perfect base Ballista does 15 attacks at 12 damage each, for 180 base damage. To put that into perspective - Chakram's base is 75 (if it can cleave an enemy each bounce), and bomb is 70; all other skills have a base (perfect) damage of 40 or less, which is why they feel bad even with lots of skill power.

At just 300% skill power, each Ballista you drop can put 540 damage out. They also come with the added utility of drawing aggro, being easy to just drop without needing to find an opening, and with how quickly staff recharges skills, the 20 refresh comes quick. Plus the base 2 charges prevents any wastage.

In my MP games, I'm always top damage for the first 3 worlds - almost doubling anyone else in the first 2 - then end up around the same as any other character in the last 2 so long as I get Ballista and Chakram (even though I'm also passing on every crit and damage orb).

It also fills the skill power niche, which other weapons builds don't care about, enabling a team to better allocate orbs. You can boost another character by giving up on every crit and damage orb, and in turn getting every skill power orb. And aside from just getting Ballista, building it doesn't require any specific relics to be potent, making defensive relics - like Guard Sceptre - easier to pick up, and skipping on shop purchases or reroll drops for other characters.

[awanderingswordsman]

I feel like 180 damage over 10+ seconds isn't all that strong. It and chakram are great supplemental damage but I'm surprised you aren't being outdamaged sooner. I feel like balista was better before the freeze nerf where a perfect cast balista with freeze on perfect cast would infinitely freeze a unit. I mean poison stacks outdamage balista until what like 180 spell power? Balista also benefits less from surge ash/relic and have zero burst and staff has zero utility compared to the debuffs of bow and razor wind. I think I'd always rather take arcane bolts over it. You can just dump all it's damage out super fast and burst anything you want down and has better uptime for proccing freeze on multiple targets. Stacks guard staff/convergence faster as well.

[Patented Skinner Burgers]

Unless the room is ending in 10 seconds or less, you're getting the full damage output, and you can have an unlimited amount of ballistas out - it being over time generally doesn't matter.

To put it all into perspective, I'm usually coming to the last stage with 500% skill power, which is 900 damage a cast. Even if I have no refresh relics, I get back 5 refreshes every three hits on a single target (because of the 2 additional with the orbs). Every 12 staff hits I get back a ballista - so I'm effectively doing an additional 75 damage per staff attack on the Ballista alone + another ~40 on the chakram. That's about 30-40 less a hit than what our boosted sword does - but I've also given up on every attack and crit orb, and I'm hitting from ranged.

[Patented Skinner Burgers]

Postat inițial de awanderingswordsman:

Balista also benefits less from surge ash/relic

That's incorrect - its damage is based on your skill power at the time of casting. So if you cast your other skill, then drop Ballista, it'll benefit from surge for it's entire duration. It also has the utility of occasionally taking aggro, which ends up being the best boss utility you can get from a skill.

[awanderingswordsman]

Burst matters for threat management. Being able to instantly burst down one of the more annoying enemies or really any enemy at all makes everyones lives easier immediately. Burst also helps phase skip bosses but only if you have enough. Arcane bolts also has more effective range than balista letting you use it when further away. It also charges nearly instantly reducing the amount of down time you have not attacking slightly. It's affected the most positively by the reduce refresh by 2 relic that is common taking it from 10 to 8.

Balista is also borderline useless against some of the bosses that spend too much time moving out of range or being invulnerable.

[awanderingswordsman]

Postat inițial de Patented Skinner Burgers:

That's incorrect - its damage is based on your skill power at the time of casting. So if you cast your other skill, then drop Ballista, it'll benefit from surge for it's entire duration. It also has the utility of occasionally taking aggro, which ends up being the best boss utility you can get from a skill.

You cast it less often so it charges it up more slowly. With arcane bolts you can very quickly apply 3 stacks but at 20 charge balistas cast that much less often and thus charges up on spell effects like surge less at a time.

[Patented Skinner Burgers]

Bolts is a decent skill - but it's still only 40 base damage, which is just little over 3 ballista shots, or about 3 seconds. Even if you get two casts off for every 1 Ballista dropped, it's still only half the damage potential.

Certainly burst will do things that a DoT cannot, but when the DoT is doing double the damage of a burst skill, there's going to be a place for the DoT too.

And Bolts brings no utility, not Ballista. Ballista can block non-piercing projectiles, and will aggro adds.

[Mana]

Arcane Bolts + Barrier pendant + Steward's toolbox = Full time protection.

Plus the skill has by default 3 charges, the lowest refresh (10), it is pretty fast to perfect cast and they can easily destroy distant traps on world 4 (if you ask me that's the definition of utility).

Arcane Bolts have been a great asset during my endless run on doom difficulty.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3009249324

I wouldn't say the same about Ballista, that skill (in my opinion) has always been a waste of skill slot.

[awanderingswordsman]

Arcane bolts shoots 5 balls for 10 base damage each on perfect cast so it's 50 damage. Although testing this did make me realize one thing. Storm ash is freaking worthless. I can't believe I've wasted a slot on that for so long. It increases WEAPON DAMAGE on skill cast up to 5 times. The spells damage isn't effected at all.

It's utility is the burst but also if you get freeze on perfect cast it lets you freeze a wider group of targets.

Additionally, it seems balista only hits 14 times, not 15. So it's 168 damage per 20 refresh vs the 100 burst from 20 refresh worth of arcane bolts. Chakram hits a single target 6 times dealing 18-16-14-13-12-11 = 84 damage, which is exactly half of balista's. It's a little worst per refresh but the damage comes out faster and is more easily focused.

The numbers favor the shorter ones a bit more when using staff assuming you use orb on cast as that refreshes 1 per cast for both spells so the more often you cast, the more refresh the orb gives.

Also, I don't know if this is a training room bug or something, but both balista and chakram crit occasionally on the training dummy without general's saber. That is a point in balista's favor if you can get crit refresh but not crit skills. Of course, then you need to take the crit gems.

[Patented Skinner Burgers]

If you're including the 20% bonus damage from the staff, then it's 10 a bolt for 50 for damage, but then it also becomes 15 a hit from Ballista (it must round up) for 210; still quadruple the damage, or double the damage per refresh cost. That's hard to argue against.

But bolt's base damage is 8 a piece. Chakram also has less base than what you put - it looks like its 15, 14, 13, 11, 10, 9 for 70.

[Toxi The Vagrant]

Imo, Balista has a use in early game, but it falls off the hardest and fastest of all skills. While it's full damage output is high, it can't move and it doesn't scale in health at all, being at 20 health or so vs whisps having around 30, resulting in it being able to get one shot as soon as area 2 by the lancers, with all areas after featuring at least two enemies able to, and most bosses, especially the ghosts, completely noselling it due to their constant maneuvering away from what they aim at. It also can't target the volt lines in area 4 on it's own and doesn't have a "parting gift" utility like the whisps at least have.

Basically: as high as it's total value is, this is also one of the few spells that can not only be denied it's full value, but can have this done to it with consistency, resulting in the opportunity cost born of it's enormous refresh requirement to be considerably larger than with most other spells.

I'm also not sure if the devs would give it many buffs which would change the general consensus on it given that their balance method generally favors aggressive plays over defensive ones, and balista is one of the most passive and defensive spells in the game almost entirely due to it's immobility and spawn position being where the player's standing.

[Patented Skinner Burgers]

Postat inițial de Toxi The Vagrant:

it doesn't scale in health at all, being at 20 health or so vs whisps having around 30,

This is a hilarious take. It naturally expires after around 10 seconds, which is probably why you think it has 20 health. I don't know how much health it does have - but I just ran a quick game, and it took somewhere around 7 hits from a gold Vanguard before it naturally expired; that's around 140 damage. It's certainly a hell of a lot higher than 20. It also appears to get some invincibility post-hit, so it can't be nuked that quickly.

I haven't actually noticed it dying naturally from damage before - presumably it can, as it indicates when it gets hit - but not before getting most the value out.

As for being denied it's full value - refresh against refresh, it only needs to get half its shots off before breaking even with the next highest damage spell. If it gets all, it's doubling. That ends up being a hell of a lot damage at 500% skill power.

Edit: I turned damage up to 300%, and it took 5 hits from a Rakkid without dying, which is 225 damage.

[BadMedium]

Anyone have a vid of their crazy runs with staff? I'm just trying to get up and running with an idea of how to play it optimally. (and how to play well in general)

[awanderingswordsman]

I was not using the staff 20% skill damage but I found out why our numbers were different and it's very strange. I had the ember upgrade "Slayer" on which does 20% more damage to non bosses (the training dummy is considered a non boss). This does effect both chakram and arcane bolts but NOT balista. Meanwhile, confidence (increase damage when above 75% health) doesn't effect any of the 3 spells.

With slayer active, my numbers were correct. Presumably you run giant slayer instead and are thus having the same issue against bosses. This is bizarre and really helps me realize we need a lot more transparency on "bonus damage" from effects. Confidence DOES increase weapon damage by the correct amount but both slayer and confidence specify "bonus damage" exactly the same way even though they work differently.

Adding in the 20% skill damage does correctly scale all 3 spells and it stacks multiplicatively for the slayer bonus.

Considering how weak balista is against some bosses, I feel like running regular slayer is the play. Still though, I need to do a crit refresh run with both chakram and balista and NOT take general saber since I've seen them both crit in without it.

[awanderingswordsman]

Doing some testing reveals some more strange and unfortunate things for balista.

It does crit at the same rate as your critical BUT it does not proc on crit effects at all. This means crit refresh isn't procced, crit healing isn't procced, presumably volt claw as well although I don't have that one this run yet. I've also frustratingly not been able to find chakram this run. Will probably have to loop.

Balista DOES benefit from harvest scythe doing roughly double damage. Balista kills DO stack supreme ambition.

Already known but balista DOES proc on spell effects like freeze on perfect skill and poison.

The balista also appears to be invincible. I've seen it take many hits. It CAN be bound by green or purple spell orbs in world 3 which will cause it to not attack for about 5 seconds.

This run has been pure pain. Phantom took like 6 minutes. It just did not want to get hit by the balista.

Other useful information but the "20% skill damage" staff skill is just a flat 20, it's not multiplicative at all making that option basically worthless. For me now staff clearly wants extra charge on first skill, orb on skill, and 15% faster perfect charge. MAYBE take the melee and melee orb ones if you don't plan to get extra refresh.

EDIT: Actually I think it may proc volt claw. My guess is that it functions as a player with a clone of your items. So it might be proccing on crit effects, but it's proccing them for itself. Crit healing and refresh would be healing itself by 1 and refreshing it's own skills (which it doesn't have). That would mean volt claw would proc. It doesn't inherit the players ember upgrades either. The only real surprise is that it still stacks your supreme ambition instead of stacking it's own supreme ambition but maybe thats a hardcoded exception.