Force staff: Surge or Purgatus? From non-psyker perspectives

[Black Hammer]

Surge is the lightning staff, Purgatus is the flamethrower.

Right now it seems these two beat out the other staves in terms of utility and performance. I know how it feels to use them (have a decent collection of them with different blessing on my lvl 30 psyker), but I'm curious how people feel about their performance as teammates.

A few things I've heard mentioned so far:
Surge staff is less visually occluding than Purgatus (AKA vet can't see through fire)
The CC from the Surge staff is better
If you don't have a flamer zealot, a purgatus staff clears hordes easily provided the team defends the psyker
Surge doesn't really kill anything, despite the CC

Any thoughts on them are welcome, from psyker mains or not.

[Moffin Bovin]

surge is better

[Mosey]

There are two real choices if you want to play past easy mode.

Void staff, and flame staff.

TL;DR:

Flame staff builds up warp charges like crazy without ever touching BB assuming you actually build your character to use a flame staff. If you didn't, stop using it because otherwise it's crap tier. If you want the achievement for holding charges for 300 seconds, use it for sure.

Downside for the flame staff is it's super short range. This leaves you with only BB as a real ranged option. You're basically packing a shotgun style of play with this, and yes it is very good inside it's threat range. Possibly the easiest way to beat a map assuming someone can actually take out the ranged enemies that will endlessly plague you.

Void staff doesn't build up warp charges outside the 4% chance to proc you can pick in your talents, but if you manage your stacks with an occasional BB that 4% carries the staff with how many enemies you face in T4/T5 maps.

Ultimately Void staff is superior at any engagement range. The fact the projectile has no target cap is a big deal, and so is the fact it penetrates everything except large armored targets makes it hands down the best horde clear weapon at medium-to-long range. Pay attention to which one you buy, since you want wide AoE otherwise it's probably not worth your time. Also keep in mind that spamming short charges is so effective I'd honestly expect a nerf on this weapon.

If you choose the other staves, you are basically choosing to under perform. Fun, perhaps, but wasted potential if that matters to you.

Surge staff has a target cap that is frankly pathetic outside of killing things other team mates handle better. If it hit significantly more targets than it does then it might be worthwhile. It can get the job done if you spam it, but why when I could just annihilate them. Void does easily 200 more damage per shot.

Trauma staff builds peril way too fast and hits way too few targets with actual damage that it's just not viable without being carried through most of the map.

Amazing at killing one thing, but the downsides are legion and it's just not worth it. Also, yes, the knockback is a way bigger AoE than the damage. Can see this readily in the meatgrinder. Think pinpoint damage with a big boom that's all for show. And, again, why just knock them around when you could just kill them all instead.

[Silverquick]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Diakoptes:

the flame thrower one is trash dont use it
the fireball one is good
the lightning one does cc but no dmg

In a nutshell I suppose that is close enough.

The flamethrower staff does pretty good damage on the DoT, but has very little CC so some things will run right through it and be on top of you, but can be fanned in multiple directions on the same use to catch everything.

The Voidball is a line attack with knockback on all enemies, also known as the ball spammer. This one catches all enemies in the Ball area and continues through all of them until it hits either a wall or the ground around them and explodes knocking those in the Explosion to the ground. Great for tunnels. Its also highly damaging.

Surge or Lightning doesn't do much damage... but literally stuns everything the lightning hits freezing it and dropping their guard for 2-3 seconds allowing melee's and ranged to annihilate them. however its limited in the number of targets it hits and does low damage. Its the king of CC though, this one freezes them in their tracks.

I rate the Voidball and Surge to be on par with each other. Void takes a little more skill to use and kills lot faster, but you have to align your targets for maximum effect, where Surge does all the aiming for you but does little damage and is king of CC stun lock. That said, Purgius (the Flamethrower Staff) works great if you've got a good front line to keep the non staggered stuff off you.

[Eagle_I_am | .tv/eagle_i_am]

Lightning staff makes psyker support control machine, spam one button, requre teammates to actually get kills.
Too bad when there is full team of supports, hammer zealot, shield ogryn, lasgun veteran and lighnting psyker. Regular map goes 1,5 hours

Flamer staff makes psyker invallid person, who cant defend himself. The guy, who needs to be carried a lot for some light up on mobs during horde.

[Anaryl, Emperor of Sol. GEH]

You guys sound like you've been listening to toxic players who are intentionally encouraging you to play badly.

Purgatus with its whopping 11 damage on a 340 base roll staff? "Hurr everyone should be running PUrgatus"

How gullible are you kids? Figure it out for yourself. Lasguns are better than the staves.

[Doomvora]

Personally prefer the voidstrike staff, feel it's more useful than the others (although CC psyker with surge staff is pretty good if your team isn't braindead)

[robert.s_a]

Replies on threads like this make me so happy Veteran is probably going to be nerfed into irrelevance soon.

From what I can tell, the flame staff can be good on higher difficulties by virtue of being the only one that really synergises with most of the psyker's perks. You will need a teammate with a longer ranged weapon to back you up, true, but its not like the game is lacking those at the minute.

[m99noble]

I play vet. I like it when psykers use the flames and void thingy.
Bert if im being honest, Ogryns are my favorite random team mates.
they take all the attention and i can just lazily shoot things in the head.

[Silverquick]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Taemien:

One thing that annoys me is the Trauma staff. If you look at its stats, literally on paper.. this thing should wreck face. But it serves as a poster child for things that look good on paper not working in reality.

That's because I don't think Fat Shark ever really undestood this staff or why people used the Conflag staff in Verm 2.

It all has to do with the Charge Speed. It's always been a staff that overcharges you quickly... BUT... in Verm 2, the only class of Sienna that could make proper use out of it due to the speed of the game was the Battle Mage Sienna.

Why?

Because the skill tree for Battle Mage had two abillities that made it worthwhile. One was a Skill selection you could take which reduced the Charge Speed on Staves by 10-15%. The other... was that Charge Speed was reduced for each category of Overcharge (read as Peril in this game) by 10% per level of Overcharge. So when Battle Mage used the Conflag Staff Their first charge was fast, then it would keep increasing in speed.

So it was a dangerous game, but you could spam 3 quick Conflags with Battlemage then switch back to your sword and hack away while your overcharge cleared.

But... it was already a Staff that required a great deal of precision to use in the first place, Because you had to place the circle. Throw in a very slow charge time that it has in this game... and it becomes completely worthless despite the high damage.

They'd have to knock that charge time down to about half of what it is currently or this staff will always remain on the bench in this game. This is coming from a former Conflag Staff Battle Mage player who loved this staff in Verm 2.

[seaotters]

When not playing Psyker it is nice to have the crowd control of the lightning staff in a group.

[Bastila Shan]

Recon lasgun - with the right feats it can clean house.

Think 10% chance on hit of a head pop with rapid fire rate of lasgun

[Thoka]

i like lighting staff the stun/stagger is super nice.

[m99noble]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Hoboslayer:

Recon lasgun - with the right feats it can clean house.

Think 10% chance on hit of a head pop with rapid fire rate of lasgun

Whats your roll and on what type of Recon? I like that it clears horde and lasers specials. I dont like that doesnt damage carapace at all on hit, only crits & crit weak spot.

[Bastila Shan]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von m99noble:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Hoboslayer:

Recon lasgun - with the right feats it can clean house.

Think 10% chance on hit of a head pop with rapid fire rate of lasgun

Whats your roll and on what type of Recon? I like that it clears horde and lasers specials. I dont like that doesnt damage carapace at all on hit, only crits & crit weak spot.

You want the 4% chance to get warp charge on your or ally kill in cohesiveness feat and the 10% chance of head pop every 15 seconds, the rest of the feats can be whatever you want but doing all the head pop support ones is good.

Then when you barrage an elite it will get a head pop for sure then keep an eye on count down icon and target another elite to maximise damage.

Ps. The highest rate of fire recon is best for more hits

[Orums]

surge staff users are OK, but people don't realize that the stunned enemies are easy targets-causing the psyker to make additional casts and risk warp overheat. I vouch for it's power and effectiveness but tbh I've seen so many weak surge staff users that I've lost all respect for the weapon. Bonus round! the surge staff's utility is not only stunning enemies but also getting a good visual of enemies hiding in the dark when the lightning arcs.

Purgatus is B-ROKEN af but lacks range (duh) but when you're getting warp charges based on kills, when excess warp charges cause enemies to burst in flames, and when flaming enemy deaths have a 10% chance to generate warp charges the game becomes a vietnam simulator real fast.

My personal favorite is the voidstrike (gandalf) staff. Not simply bc I'm a LOTR nerd, but because it can turn those big, meaty, GPU slowing crowds into piles of bodies and it's great for attacking enemies behind cover.

but Nothing is going to beat a gun psyker with a recon lasrifle. get a decent power boost or crit damage roll and that 10% chance of headpopping comes around way more often. Plus the power boost from warp charges is nothing to sneeze at when you're spraying 100 lasers into a crown.