Why is Arcane Staff the only good magic weapon?

[lordmilier]

There is a lack of good magic weapons in the game like this thing in a leauge of it´s own and all the other options are 10-20 times worse than it is at minimum.

[Torinux]

It is obvious they rushed the magic/warlock classes. There was probably no real testing or else, they wouldn't have released a low tier weapon that deals more damage than a legendary weapon.

[Morkonan]

The game does "feel like" it has some work yet to do, or coming, regarding unique weapons and gear sets. It took Terraria a long time to get a good fit with the same sort of thing, too, so I have hope that's coming for this game.

At least Warlocks got their original 30 second summon window increased to a minute. Wearing out the spellbook on resummoning wasn't very entertaining...

[Martial Autist]

Like cthulhu said it's really rushed so both summoner and mage are very weak, while magelock hybrid with one specific combination of skills and items is more than a little overtuned. And because they were rushed they also lack their own identity. Magic weapons are just standard ranged weapons but shiny, with no mechanics or functionality to set them apart from your garden variety bows. And summons basically combine to equal a single combat pet or be a little better (depending on where you are on the 4-7 summon cap range).

I suspect they will take it back to the drawing board soon and rework both concepts, or rather I hope they will.

[AquaX]

The issue is that mage and summon build were stitched on at the last moment because you know the devs didn’t test either classes extensively.

It looked like the devs were trying to make mage similar to the throwing melee weps where it has higher crit than but low crit dmg. But that was not the case.

Currently magic can take certain perks from both range and the summon tree making it super broken once you add in the food buffs.

Summon class likely took inspiration from the pets but because lack of diverse gear and variety of tomes, It became a joke. It also has the risk of being heavily abused if they make the summons a lot more aggressive leading to its current state.

[DoEFotGS]

They simply should remove mana recharge delay.

Recharge delay on magic barrier make sense due how natural it feel - you regain barrier if not take damage. But for mana recharge delay is: 'you should stop attacking to be able attack again'.

Also, currently you has no cast speed, only range attack speed which is shared for ranged weapons.

[AquaX]

Originally posted by DoEFotGS:

They simply should remove mana recharge delay.

Recharge delay on magic barrier make sense due how natural it feel - you regain barrier if not take damage. But for mana recharge delay is: 'you should stop attacking to be able attack again'.

Also, currently you has no cast speed, only range attack speed which is shared for ranged weapons.

Not even that. The reason the arcane staff is broken is because of the magic perk that lets you recharge mana based on getting a crit. With the amt of crits the arcane staff can produce with buffs, it can literally fully recharge your entire mana pool with just a small amt of mana.

[lordmilier]

Originally posted by AquaX:

The issue is that mage and summon build were stitched on at the last moment because you know the devs didn’t test either classes extensively.

It looked like the devs were trying to make mage similar to the throwing melee weps where it has higher crit than but low crit dmg. But that was not the case.

Currently magic can take certain perks from both range and the summon tree making it super broken once you add in the food buffs.

Summon class likely took inspiration from the pets but because lack of diverse gear and variety of tomes, It became a joke. It also has the risk of being heavily abused if they make the summons a lot more aggressive leading to its current state.

Summons have 0 aggresion they only react if you attack and hit something or if something attacks you and is close enough to you and your summons. I personally have no issues with summons as I view them as a means to buff your damage as once you level up summoning each pet is 10% magic dmg and attack speed. This ultimately means running x2 puppet rings is best option for you as a mage and as a ranger.

Originally posted by DoEFotGS:

They simply should remove mana recharge delay.

Recharge delay on magic barrier make sense due how natural it feel - you regain barrier if not take damage. But for mana recharge delay is: 'you should stop attacking to be able attack again'.

Also, currently you has no cast speed, only range attack speed which is shared for ranged weapons.

The issue with magic that apart from Arcane Staff all of the magic weapons have low amount of attacks per second on top of insane cost at most they should cost 15-17 mana instead of the 20+ they currently do.

The thing that makes Arcane Staff the best magic weapon is the low cost even when upgraded it you will recupe the cost with the talent that gives you mana back on crit while the other options cost more than you can regain from cirting making them all worse. Not to mention due to Arcane Staffs high attacks per second it procs the soul powers and the bird pet passive for chance to deal tripple dmg non stop.

The last 2 bosses I did Ra-Akar and Igneous took me 20-35 seconds per kill with my current setup to kill no other magic weapon I have tried comes remotely close to this kill speed.

Originally posted by Martial Autist:

Like cthulhu said it's really rushed so both summoner and mage are very weak, while magelock hybrid with one specific combination of skills and items is more than a little overtuned. And because they were rushed they also lack their own identity. Magic weapons are just standard ranged weapons but shiny, with no mechanics or functionality to set them apart from your garden variety bows. And summons basically combine to equal a single combat pet or be a little better (depending on where you are on the 4-7 summon cap range).

I suspect they will take it back to the drawing board soon and rework both concepts, or rather I hope they will.

The titile of this post is Arcane Staff while you are trying to make it sound like some secret "tech" that makes it "overtuned" the core item in all of this is front and center.

[AquaX]

The summons do have an aggression trigger but the target has to be 1-2 tiles next to you and I think the summon have a checklist if the enemy is argo to the player before attempting to atk.

You can see this is when you walk near the reg orange slimes, the summons ignore them even if you touch the slimes but the instant you are close to a spiked one, they will atk. This can even be seen with the hive mother spawns, you dig a 1 tile trench and your bats will atk the mobs that come at you from the 2nd pass the trench.

My guess for this is to ensure the player doesn’t abuse the summons because if you increase the aggression trigger range, the player will abuse it in mob farms.

[DoEFotGS]

Originally posted by AquaX:

Not even that. The reason the arcane staff is broken is because of the magic perk that lets you recharge mana based on getting a crit. With the amt of crits the arcane staff can produce with buffs, it can literally fully recharge your entire mana pool with just a small amt of mana.

Originally posted by lordmilier:

The thing that makes Arcane Staff the best magic weapon is the low cost even when upgraded it you will recupe the cost with the talent that gives you mana back on crit while the other options cost more than you can regain from cirting making them all worse. Not to mention due to Arcane Staffs high attacks per second it procs the soul powers and the bird pet passive for chance to deal tripple dmg non stop.

I know how it work.

What's why mana recharge delay is more stupid. You can invest in mana regen, but regardless of this you still need to stop attacking to use your regen, while one specific weapon, paired with two different skill trees, can attack almost infinately with only durability as limitation.

Mana recharge delay should be removed from the game and it be first balance step.

Originally posted by AquaX:

My guess for this is to ensure the player doesn’t abuse the summons because if you increase the aggression trigger range, the player will abuse it in mob farms.

And... what's the problem with this actually?

We in not hardcore survival game where you struggle to get resources and must to think two or even three steps further how and what exactly do next. It's pretty simple crafting sandbox game and such artificial limitations just make it pretty simple sandbox game with awful design/balance.

[Draggledew]

Scholar Staff Crit Damage with Triple Trouble pet hits like a truck, around 5k-20k each skill cast. There's a burn/explosive build too with Flaming Treat Embertail that isn't so bad. Mage is a high investment class that shines in late-game with the right set/equipment. There's definitely room for improvement and the Devs have said it themselves that they will be adding more in the future.

[DoEFotGS]

Originally posted by Draggledew:

Mage is a high investment class that shines in late-game with the right set/equipment.

Most effective weapon in entire game is Stormbringer. Free to use, ranged but use melee damage, fast. So, it's not about investments. It's about design flaws. Magic and summoning has a lot of flaws.

Anyway, your example not even close in compete with Arcane Staff on bosses. Outside of boss fights is does not matter that you can hit for 25k damage for once, because no one of regular enemies in the game has such high HP.

[lordmilier]

Originally posted by DoEFotGS:

Originally posted by Draggledew:

Mage is a high investment class that shines in late-game with the right set/equipment.

Most effective weapon in entire game is Stormbringer. Free to use, ranged but use melee damage, fast. So, it's not about investments. It's about design flaws. Magic and summoning has a lot of flaws.

Anyway, your example not even close in compete with Arcane Staff on bosses. Outside of boss fights is does not matter that you can hit for 25k damage for once, because no one of regular enemies in the game has such high HP.

Well Stormbringer has a huge flaw in of itself you can not make use of it for 95% of the game. W

While you can use melee I personally feel that for many bosses if you go there with the relevant gear to do the bosses it still worse than being a Ranger at least if you are playing on hard due to the risk/reward.

While unrelated to the main subject here I feel melee suffer from the same issues here as it does in Terraria while Terraria later melee weapons all more or less become ranged Core Keeper on the other hand only does this with one of the last weapons in the game.

Originally posted by Draggledew:

Scholar Staff Crit Damage with Triple Trouble pet hits like a truck, around 5k-20k each skill cast. There's a burn/explosive build too with Flaming Treat Embertail that isn't so bad. Mage is a high investment class that shines in late-game with the right set/equipment. There's definitely room for improvement and the Devs have said it themselves that they will be adding more in the future.

You do not get anywhere near the amount of casts in to make the tripple dmg pet passive mean anything. I have rolled what? 20 pets my best one had x3 2% tripple dmg which is 6% in general if we take when you do get the staff you will be doing between 6-9 casts before going oom in "general".

On the other hand Arcane Staff the item on disscusion here has the possbility of having UNLIMITED casts and it has one of the highest base attacks per second in the game. The biggest hits I have seen personally with it have been 9k-ish with Grim set going and over 6k with arcane monk set.

[DoEFotGS]

Originally posted by lordmilier:

Well Stormbringer has a huge flaw in of itself you can not make use of it for 95% of the game.

Obliteration Ray are exist. I used multiple due to how durability work and it also hungry for resources for repair/reinforce, but it at the same level of power for single target. I used Battle Axe for regular enemies and melt bosses with Obliteration Ray.

Anyway, point was: if we talk about endgame, right sets, minmaxed builds, etc - excuses about one specific class or weapon just irrevelant. You can make any weapon OP via food buffs. But we obviously has an options that sit on top of others. Arcane staff is example.