Pledge Of Hands staff

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MonstaMunch wrote:

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johnKeys wrote:

at first glance, it looks like GGG went all-out with this one.
ridiculous.

Care to elaborate?

gladly:

1) huge 7-link potential with a newly-popular support gem you can't otherwise have.
2) huge mana bonus.
3) huge spell damage bonus,
4) absolutely no drawback.

just think of some crazy 500DPS 2-hander with a "gems are supported by level 30 Multistrike" and no drawback, and you'll get my point.

I remember the days when Kaom's Heart was considered ridiculously overpowered, despite being a low-armour chest with no sockets.
I remember the days when even lowest-tier uniques were created with drawbacks to balance them out, even though there really was no need to do it.

and Diamond/Eternal supporters correct me if I'm wrong, but GGG rejected some of your item designs for being "too OP", when they weren't even near as powerful as a mirror-worthy rare or had any buffs a player couldn't get otherwise.

and now we get this staff.
yeah.

and the worst part isn't the fact it's "caster god mode".
the worst part, is it's boring as hell.
more boring than "+10000 life" Kaom or "+100000 to everything" Atziri's Splendour.
even Shavronne's Wrappings and Lioneye's Glare are more interesting, and yes that's an insult.

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PsionicKitten wrote:

Overall, it's a good unique, but there's a lot that will outperform it. I doubt there will be any builds where it's BIS. If there are any, it'll probably be a MOM/EB/AA build to push that mana even higher.

I think it'll be bis for an ek/kaoms build, just because a rare ek staff can only get a max of +1 gems rather than the +1/+2 elemental gems that elemental staves can get. This means that you'll be able to take a level 3 or 4 empower in addition to your 6L (I'm thinking ek-pcoc-added fire-empower-life leech-faster casting/projectiles-crit multi, then obviously the level 30 echo)

I'm cooking something up already that should get about 7k life with non-legacy kaoms, 8k armor, max level aa, and plenty of mana regen to not need leech. And a butt-ton of damage to boot.

Spells scale most strongly with +levels and crit and this staff has neither.
It also doesn't hold a candle to wand+shield for virtually any casters.
I agree with the general sentiment that having "opportunity cost" downsides is less than desirable, though this staff doesn't seem overpowered to me.

The only place I could really see it being useful is on life-based fire-based hardcasting builds that want to use Kaom's and need a strong linkage in their weapon (ruling out the wand+shield case). Then within that category of builds, they need to not worry about crit, and care more about castspeed than anything (including +levels). And it can't care about burning, since Searing Touch is better for that.

The end result appears to only be two builds right now: a life-based, Kaom's wearing, Incinerate hardcaster or Firestorm hardcaster.

That's pretty safe.

A rare staff with + 3 levels, cast speed and elemental/spell damage will be infinitely better.

A wand and shield will be infinitely better than that. Which is why no one uses a staff in the current game.

For ele spell it definitely loses out to +1/+2 staff.
For crit spell it definitely loses out to dual wand/dagger/1h+spell shield combo.
Like other mention it seems to be only Bis for non-crit EK char, for crit EK it might be a toss-up vs wand+shield crit combo.

In fact for raw offensive power it holds no candle to a dual Void Battery, which is fair since from the drop rate so far it's as rare as Void Battery itself, if not more.

If you do not only consider raw offensive power then why are you even use a staff and not shield ?

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pneuma wrote:

Spells scale most strongly with +levels and crit and this staff has neither.
It also doesn't hold a candle to wand+shield for virtually any casters.
I agree with the general sentiment that having "opportunity cost" downsides is less than desirable, though this staff doesn't seem overpowered to me.

I would say one of the strongest scaling factors is the amount of links. 5L is better than 4L. 6L is better than 5L.

...7L is better than 6L.

As far as comparing complex bonuses like this, I compare "more" multipliers. Gaining levels in a spell gem is essentially "more" damage, because it inflates your raw base damage, which is then inflated by all your scaling factors.

For example, using the wiki, a level 27 Freeze Pulse (empower in a 2 + 1 staff) does about 35% more base damage than a level 23 FP (empower in pledge of hands).

It gets complicated, of course. A level 30 Echo has 79% more cast speed vs 69% on a level 20 empower.

If the person using Pledge gets to use Faster Cast vs no faster cast on the person using the rare staff, that could yield a fairly substantial "more" modifier.

It's really not as simple as ppl are making it out to be.

I don't think the staff is OP but all the same I don't think it's a good unique either.

It's just yet another unique whose supposed downside is not having certain stats, which in PoE's extreme RNG isn't really much of a downside at all.

As long as this thing isn't stupidly rare it will be an automatic choice for many spell builds that want a staff simply due to the fact that getting a good staff with the rolls this thing is missing is going to be extremely difficult.

It's only saving grace is that it's a staff which not many people will want.

There shouldn't be high-level uniques with purely guaranteed all-around good rolls. Uniques should either have guaranteed negative rolls alongside with the good rolls or they should have niche rolls that are only beneficial to very specific builds.

Pledge of Hands only has guaranteed rolls that are good to all spell-casters even if they're not technically BiS. That's just another unique competing for the space rares were supposed to occupy.

Rares = all-around good stats balanced by extremely random rolls.
Good Uniques = good stats balanced by explicit negative stats or very niche applications.
Bad Uniques = all-around good stats balanced by ???.

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There shouldn't be high-level uniques with purely guaranteed all-around good rolls.

Why not? Has everyone forgotten about searing touch and taryn's shiver? They work the same way, they're amazing but not as good as the best rares. The staff looks great but it's not exactly equivalent to staves with +3 gems and a high spell mod.

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pneuma wrote:

Spells scale most strongly with +levels and crit and this staff has neither.
It also doesn't hold a candle to wand+shield for virtually any casters.
I agree with the general sentiment that having "opportunity cost" downsides is less than desirable, though this staff doesn't seem overpowered to me.

The only place I could really see it being useful is on life-based fire-based hardcasting builds that want to use Kaom's and need a strong linkage in their weapon (ruling out the wand+shield case). Then within that category of builds, they need to not worry about crit, and care more about castspeed than anything (including +levels). And it can't care about burning, since Searing Touch is better for that.

The end result appears to only be two builds right now: a life-based, Kaom's wearing, Incinerate hardcaster or Firestorm hardcaster.

That's pretty safe.

Well put.

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kasub wrote:

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There shouldn't be high-level uniques with purely guaranteed all-around good rolls.

Why not? Has everyone forgotten about searing touch and taryn's shiver? They work the same way, they're amazing but not as good as the best rares. The staff looks great but it's not exactly equivalent to staves with +3 gems and a high spell mod.

And I don't think either of those are good uniques really.

They're certainly not the worst of the bunch. But I wouldn't call them good any day.