Is it worth to dip into staves as a pyromancer?

[|Revenge|]

I never liked "hybrid" builds, but ever since i realized they reworked staves to have sinergy with mages i wonder if it's worth to dip in there a little bit.

I juts wanna take hail of blows really.

[Bomjus]

not really IMO. cause the farther you get into the game, the less and less situations you'll be ending up in melee. and even if you do end up in melee, you'll probably be casting another spell regardless.

seal of power+body and spirit will already give you a substantial boost in melee damage.

me personally, my favorite "hybrid" skill dump for mage would be to go for defensive tactics in the warfare tree. because spells are not skills, casting a spell does not reduce the stacks of defensive tactics. so if any enemy starts to get into melee range, you can pop defensive tactics for 20% damage reduction, 25% block chance, 25% dodge chance, 25% counter chance, and 35% bleed resist. and you will stay at 5 stacks for the entirety of its duration too. this will substantially boost your survivability. and since block/dodge/damage reduction are all effective vs magic/ranged attacks, defensive tactics is useful outside of melee as well.

[Freeman]

I'd say no. Tried once. Was fun at first playing donatello but later never used my staff. Being a mage is pretty much 100% effort. What bomjus said is pretty spot on.

[brown29knight]

Agreed. Staff benefits from magic now, but not so much the other way around.

As a staff user, you have the protection and gear to survive melee.

In mage gear? Melee kills you.

So now, Staff users can dabble in Electromancy or Geomancy to get ranged damage and CC, as well as get some buffs to staff melee. but a pure mage should leave staff alone, as melee is just too dangerous.

Hybrids can work, but it is a balance act that makes it a very hard build to do. (My first character this patch is one) You'll have an easier time going full staff or full magic.

[funkmonster7]

I've actually tried theory-crafting hybrid mage-staff build, but every time I tried, I realized going pure mage or pure staff is just better... If anything, parts of the staff tree now makes it look like one should dabble in the magic tree, and yet the moment you do so you realize you gimp yourself by branching out of the combat trees since you're limited in AP.

Staff doesn't benefit from magic, I think that should stay as it is. But staff naturally benefits from Geomancy and Electromancy to a degree, and I think that is enough.

My issue isn't to do with skill trees, but more stats. Willpower is almost strictly speaking a mage dump stat, and as a theoretical staff main we have no reason to invest into Willpower just for Pain Resistance and Fortitude. We might boost a bit of magic power, but that comes at a cost of not having some block chance from STR of example, which is necessary for a staff main due to how little block chance a staff main actually has. The 1-SP-per-level is probably hurting this build right now, especially the breakpoint system. The breakpoint system is good for what it is right now though, it either needs to be tweaked or just reverted to the previous system where everything was much more fluid and changeable without all the complications we have now. Dunno... Just my opinion.

If I have more time I'd test run some staff hybrid builds, but nah... no time these days. And I've lost interest in personally testing out builds. Maybe once outposts arrive and new dungeon layouts arrive, which is in the next major patch, I might spend a bit more time. Because when dungeon layouts change, we're gonna have major game overhaul to deal with...

[jotwebe]

Staff hybrid did okay even before EQ3, I did a Staff/Geo/Electro run and it was fine. Very easy early game, bit of a dip in late mid as I think I was spread to thin, got better and did distant dungeons without problems, And that was without the hybrid gear and skills we get now. Sure, non-magic staff would have been stronger, but then that nonsense was extremely strong.

With the new Body & Spirit and revamped staff it should at least compare more favourably with non-magic staff builds if only because that has been nerfed and changed to have more bonuses towards doing magic.

I agree that for pyro specifically pure mage is the way to go, but Impulse is really quite something when you're in a position to take advantage of it, and Geo has a lot of skills you're only using half of if you're staying at range.

I do agree that the way to hybrid is to go mostly skills/melee with some spells and buffs rather than the other way around.

[Freeman]

Yeah mage gear isn't exactly made for protection which alone nullifies the point of investing into melee skills. Defensive tactics gives you an incredible protection for 2 point investment, which is pretty much all you can ask for.

To my mind 'hybrid'means investing 2-3 point out of your main field to get some critical skill. Seal of reflection for melee fighters, for example. Wizards could conceivably get the aforementioned defensive. And dash is useful for just about anyone.

Since magic schools take so much effort to master pure casters can only dabble in few, carefully chosen utility skills.

Btw new armor tree gives heavy armor some energy regen. Theoretically you could try to be an armored caster... but then you'd sacrifice the massive power bonuses from high mage gear.

[brown29knight]

Originally posted by Freeman:

Yeah mage gear isn't exactly made for protection which alone nullifies the point of investing into melee skills. Defensive tactics gives you an incredible protection for 2 point investment, which is pretty much all you can ask for.

To my mind 'hybrid'means investing 2-3 point out of your main field to get some critical skill. Seal of reflection for melee fighters, for example. Wizards could conceivably get the aforementioned defensive. And dash is useful for just about anyone.

Since magic schools take so much effort to master pure casters can only dabble in few, carefully chosen utility skills.

Btw new armor tree gives heavy armor some energy regen. Theoretically you could try to be an armored caster... but then you'd sacrifice the massive power bonuses from high mage gear.

But that's the issue. As a mage; magic power, range, -backfire chance, miracle chance, cooldowns, energy regen, energy, and -spell cost are all needed, and that doesn't leave much room for anything else. Heavy armor comes with some pretty severe energy and energy regen penalties, the armor tree usually just offsets SOME of that, so you'll need more vitality to compensate.

Doing this will also deprive you of mage helms and chests, which are a major source of magic power and (pyro/geo/electro)power. Losing all that power not only severely nerfs your damage, but it also lowers the chance to burn/daze/jolt foes, further lowering your effectiveness with magic. (as you said)

The hybrid build works because geo and electro can both cause stuns, and the staff tree now gets substantial bonuses from spell use. It also gives miracle chance, and lowers foe's resistances to magic, thus you can land those stuns even with lower magic power, and the staff ALSO causes stuns, so you can keep foes dazed or stunned for quite some time while you beat on them. Even so, your spell damage will be low compared to a full mage, so you need the staff to compensate. (it also doesn't hurt that you have ranged spell attacks on a melee, for when you meet archers or other mages)

So if you want to play a mage, skip staff skills. If you want to beat people with a staff, think about adding in some magic instead of taking aim + crossbow, but otherwise build like a melee.

[Rhapsody]

We'll likely see some staff hybrid builds when further schools are introduced. Psiomancy for example just might have enough disabling effects, similar to electro, that smacking enemies both physically and mentally might work.

[funkmonster7]

For sure. Chronomancy as well. I highly doubt you warp time so that your enemy turns into a baby or an embryo for you to 'damage' them. Hell, I really don't know what the devs have in plan for Chronomancy... Virtually every game that I've played Chronomancer before is either a futuristic genre, or sci-fi or steampunk. Not a medieval dark fantasy genre. And most games don't feature Chronomancy just because of how difficult it is to make it happen. Most have it as a plot mechanic, and some have it as a core game mechanic that makes you the only hero of the game capable of using it. Very un-Stoneshard-like.

[jotwebe]

ToME chronomancy has some neat stuff.

• Excise someone from the timeline -debuff someone, if you kill them while the spell is active, the game resets everything to the turn after you cast the spell - minus the victim, and you keep all the resources you used while going after them
  
• Summon versions of yourself from the future to help
  
• Play through X turns three times, pick the one to keep
  
• Speed yourself up, slow your enemies down

[jotwebe]

Originally posted by brown29knight:

Originally posted by Freeman:

Yeah mage gear isn't exactly made for protection which alone nullifies the point of investing into melee skills. Defensive tactics gives you an incredible protection for 2 point investment, which is pretty much all you can ask for.

To my mind 'hybrid'means investing 2-3 point out of your main field to get some critical skill. Seal of reflection for melee fighters, for example. Wizards could conceivably get the aforementioned defensive. And dash is useful for just about anyone.

There is some mage gear with pretty decent protection around now. You can also get along decently well without mage gear.

Personally, when I'm talking hybrid, I'm envisioning something like 25% and more of skills in the "off-type" category. A mage with Dash and maybe DT is still a caster in my books. Hybrid for me means a weapon tree (or a lot of utility), and something like 3-4 MM skills plus 3-4, maybe more sorcery skills. Electro hybrid would have Jold, Residual Charge, Impulse at the least and maybe also Short Circuit, Chain Lightning or Potential Difference. Geo would have Runic Boulder, Stone Armor, Rune of Sustension, Rune of Enfeeblement, Petrification and Rune of Absorbtion, maybe Rune of Fortifying and Stone Spikes.

Originally posted by funkmonster7:

But that's the issue. As a mage; magic power, range, -backfire chance, miracle chance, cooldowns, energy regen, energy, and -spell cost are all needed, and that doesn't leave much room for anything else.

A hybrid can do without a lot af that, though. Buffs especially don't care much about magic power, and with Body & Spirit you get a lot from attacks. Miracle chance you get from staves, and PER can be helpful in melee as well. Backfire chance goes down by 10% in every turn, and for the rest you can either go AGI (which also helps in melee) or Seal of Finesse. You won't be casting tier 4 spells and maybe not even tier 3, so you don't need quite as much Backfire mitigation as pure mages do.

Geo at least offers some help with energy for hybrids that pure casters won't be using much: energy drain from Rune of Sustension (25% at max) with Rune of Absorption offering another 10% no questions asked and 6 energy per round from every enemy adjacent to a boulder. Interestingly both of a these are not percentage of your max energy, which gets around the usual double whammy from heavy armour, in that it both makes you have less energy and also reduces the amount you get from your skills and each tick of energy regen.

Originally posted by brown29knight:

So if you want to play a mage, skip staff skills. If you want to beat people with a staff, think about adding in some magic instead of taking aim + crossbow, but otherwise build like a melee.

That's it in a nutshell.