Gandalf would turn in his grave...

You really throw your searing touch/taryn's shiver at your oppenents ? :D

Gandalf approves

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rCP4CRRO7E

"

rockdog2161 wrote:

Gandalf approves

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rCP4CRRO7E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVy7YeeqGZQ !!!

and for me <3 Azalin Rex the wizard king :)

OP makes a good case. However, we must consider that the POE caster class is not mage or wizard, it's a witch. Moreover, all wizards mentioned by OP were old and/or frail men who relied on their staves as a better walking stick that just so happened to have magical powers as a bonus. The Wraeclast Witch in contrast is young and virile, it therefore stands to reason that she would forgo an inferior staff in favor of a more powerful and handy wand/shield combo.

Any build that goes for physical damage uses swords, maces, axes, claws, daggers... Do they need the option to wield a staff as well? Meanwhile, spell-casters uses a wand. That's about it. There are some good daggers out there, but that never made sense to me either. Surely it would make more sense for a spell caster to use a wand or a staff.

The staff is in a weird place right now. It's not really good for anyone.

In all my time playing, I have never found a good (rare) staff.

"

Charanjaydemyr wrote:

But truly great rare caster staves? They're almost an anomaly at times. The chance of rolling martial mods is just too damn high.

This is the basic problem with staves, sceptres, wands and daggers. They have two distinct uses (attacking and spellcasting), and even though you can benefit from both at once (e.g. on a cast on crit build), because of the way stats are set up in this game, you're strongly encouraged to specialise in one or the other. Rare items, however, have no such preference for specialisation, and will just roll a random mix of mods. So the end result is that we get a lot of rares where one or more stats is 'wasted' because it is of the wrong archetype (e.g. on a staff with 3 martial mods and a spell mod, the spell mod is hardly ever going to be useful).

What I would like to see is one of the following:

1. A division of these item types into 'martial' and 'spellcaster', with separate affix pools.

2. Every base type of staff/sceptre/wand/dagger is capable of rolling both martial and spellcaster mods. However, the game first rolls a 'meta-mod', which takes one of two values: 'martial' or 'spellcaster'. (The meta-mod should probably be visible to the player somehow for crafting purposes, but it doesn't need to appear on the standard tooltip.) This introduces a bias in the rolls of the other mods (a bit like how socket colour rolls are biased). 'Martial' has a very low chance to roll pure spellcaster bonuses; 'spellcaster' has a very low chance to roll pure martial bonuses. (There is no bias against dual-purpose mods like 'increased fire damage'.) It's still possible to get an even mix of martial and spellcaster mods on an item, but it becomes much less likely than rolling a strongly attack-focused or spell-focused item. When it comes to crafting, a mod reroll (Alteration, Chaos, Chance orb) rerolls the meta-mod, but a mod augmentation/adjustment (Augmentation, Regal, Exalted, Blessed, Divine) leaves it alone.

"

Incompetent wrote:

"

Charanjaydemyr wrote:

But truly great rare caster staves? They're almost an anomaly at times. The chance of rolling martial mods is just too damn high.

This is the basic problem with staves, sceptres, wands and daggers. They have two distinct uses (attacking and spellcasting), and even though you can benefit from both at once (e.g. on a cast on crit build), because of the way stats are set up in this game, you're strongly encouraged to specialise in one or the other. Rare items, however, have no such preference for specialisation, and will just roll a random mix of mods. So the end result is that we get a lot of rares where one or more stats is 'wasted' because it is of the wrong archetype (e.g. on a staff with 3 martial mods and a spell mod, the spell mod is hardly ever going to be useful).

What I would like to see is one of the following:

1. A division of these item types into 'martial' and 'spellcaster', with separate affix pools.

2. Every base type of staff/sceptre/wand/dagger is capable of rolling both martial and spellcaster mods. However, the game first rolls a 'meta-mod', which takes one of two values: 'martial' or 'spellcaster'. (The meta-mod should probably be visible to the player somehow for crafting purposes, but it doesn't need to appear on the standard tooltip.) This introduces a bias in the rolls of the other mods (a bit like how socket colour rolls are biased). 'Martial' has a very low chance to roll pure spellcaster bonuses; 'spellcaster' has a very low chance to roll pure martial bonuses. (There is no bias against dual-purpose mods like 'increased fire damage'.) It's still possible to get an even mix of martial and spellcaster mods on an item, but it becomes much less likely than rolling a strongly attack-focused or spell-focused item. When it comes to crafting, a mod reroll (Alteration, Chaos, Chance orb) rerolls the meta-mod, but a mod augmentation/adjustment (Augmentation, Regal, Exalted, Blessed, Divine) leaves it alone.

You sir do not desirve your name.. this shit seems pretty competent to me !

The whole genre has moved quite a long ways from where things used to be.

You used to not be able to wear any metal other than a small dagger to cast a spell at all.

If you were a caster, you would absolutely suck at trying to hit anything anyway and if you reached the point where you had to attack physically as a caster you were going to die 99 out of a 100 times.

Also, for the first considerable portion of your life as a caster, you sucked period. The rest of the party had to carry you. Around the middle of your career you started to get stronger and weren't such a liability, and in the later stages you became truly powerful and were more devastating than the rest of your party.

This is going by the d&d rulesets which is where rpgs come from.

As a side note, thanks to Rona Jaffe's book Mazes and Monsters we had quite a bad rap in those days btw. Think torch bearing mobs.

Things may have changed in the later rulesets, I played from d&d first edition until around '92 '93 or so when we used the advanced dungeons and dragons second edition books (ad&d 2ed).

By that time you could both cast and fight, but only if your race allowed it, and you had enough points in the correct stat. Then you could dual, or even multiclass. But in order to do that you had to stop progression in your current class (forever) and start over again in your new class and you were not allowed to use your first class skills at all until your second class passed the level of your first. Then you could use both, but you still couldn't cast if your were wearing more metal than a small dagger.

As a dm I allowed a lot of latitude in this regard and pretty quickly had players that could both cast and fight with reasonable weapons/armor - not full plate mind you but up to chain mail if it was magical chain.

I also discovered just as quickly that this screwed up the balance of the game quite badly.

So did a couple of other issues, like the full plate I mentioned earlier. You used to have encumbrance. Basically how much weight you could carry based on your strength. Plate is heavy. So is a two-handed sword.

Casters, even high level casters had some limiters on their spells. Like needing to memorize them, spell components, sleep, schools.


So, today when you can run around and blast spells of pretty much any nature without pause, without having to sleep, without having to memorize anything and without regard to obtaining any materials or components of any kind, while wearing full plate, a 2h weapon, or equally heavy shield and sword and a 'pack' full of extremely heavy items, merrily chopping like a wild dervish on angel dust with barely a pause to fire off multiple of the aforementioned spells, and I hear people go on about how hard the game is, or quality of life, I find it quite amusing.

(Whew!, I think my old English teacher would call that a run-on sentence)


However, one of the reasons I like POE is that it at least attempts to keep some of these limiting concepts. Not many, but more than most.


What the hell was I talking about again?



TLDR:

Oh yes, go ahead and whack whatever you want with your staff, its a fairly small detail compared to the other changes that have occurred over time.

"

Antilogy wrote:

The %block should be changed to %spell block.

I would agree with this.

On another note, been playing this game 2 years and barring the unique staves I've not found one staff that could be used as a caster staff. I don't really see people using staves for melee builds either. Everyone doing 2-hand is doing axe, mace, or sword.

1. I don't think you know what a bow is. LOL
2. Staff should get at least up to 200% spell damage and 30% cast speed.
3. FUCK GANDALF.