Staff/Bio Planning (leveling build)

[Cutter]

Rolled this guy up last night, he's a pip away from L14 now. Bio is very well represented on the boards, but I don't see much at all about Staff. In the interest of building to the late game with the fewest number of respecs, as well as having a build that is functional all the way up, I'm looking for advice on what to take and what is skippable out of Staff (it seems like Bio is a "take all 9" set).

 

Here's where I'm at right now:

 

Level 1: Mercurial Blow -- (A), (3), (11)

Level 1: Hardened Carapace -- (A), (9), (13)

Level 2: Precise Strike -- (A), (3), (11)

Level 4: Inexhaustible --  (A), (5)

Level 6: Eye of the Storm -- (A), (7), (7)

Level 8: Environmental Modification -- (A), (9), (13)

Level 10: Staff Mastery --

Level 12: Adaptation --

Level 1: Stamina -- (A), (5)

 

Looking ahead, I'm looking at this pick order:

 

Level 14: Guarded Spin [or] Boxing/Kick

Level 16: Ablative Carapace

Level 18: Serpent's Reach [or] Boxing/Kick

Level 20: Evolving Armor

Level 22: Tough

Level 24: Weave

Level 26: Innocuous Strikes

Level 28: DNA Siphon

Level 30: Hasten

Level 32: Sky Splitter

Level 35: Genetic Contamination

Level 38: Parasitic Aura

 

Am I way off base with any of these? It sure seems like if I want to snag the Fighting pool I have to lose either Guarded Spin or Serpent's Reach, and I don't know which one should get the axe. Or am I looking in the wrong place for the cut? Can Hasten go away or be put off? Am I missing anything that should be obvious?

 

Thanks for any and all advice!

 

..cutter

[subbacultchas]

I've not played bio armor yet, but I do have a 40s Staff/Rad brute that I like a lot. So these are my suggestions with that.

 

Take Guarded Spin pretty early on, it's a good melee cone and the +def of it makes for a good fight starter or second hit.  I have not felt the need to take Mercurial, Precise, Serpent, and Sky Splitter single target attacks all together. I usually skip Serpent entirely, it's not a bad attack but there are better ranged one and it's animation *seems* slow, and stick with the other three.  Other than that, I think your build is fine from the Staff side of things, although I usually take hasten much much earlier. Then again this is on a rad brute that has no end issues to speak of.

 

No travel power?

[Cutter]

Thanks for taking the time to reply!

 

I'll plug in Guarded Spin at 14. That's why I deliberately left him one pip shy of dinging last night.

 

Re: endurance issues - at this point I have no idea how that looks. I'm basically unslotted except for the P2W damage enhancements and a couple useful DFB drops.

 

Re: travel power - I've read in a few places that Sprint+Beast Run and the Steam Pack can be perfectly serviceable. I know my way around pretty well.

 

What it comes down to is this: I can't see how to fit a travel power and/or early Hasten in without either pushing back the entire Fighting pool OR dropping something else from my primary/secondary OR losing out on EPP picks. Maybe I'm overvaluing Tough/Weave and they can be moved to the 40s tho? Are Brute EPP/PPPs deep enough that I'll want to make room for all tiers?

 

Tentative re-ordering:

 

Level 14: Guarded Spin

Level 16: Ablative Carapace

Level 18: Hasten/Travel

Level 20: Evolving Armor

Level 22: Travel/Hasten

Level 24: Boxing

Level 26: Innocuous Strikes

Level 28: DNA Siphon

Level 30: Tough

...

Level 41: Weave

 

Yes / no / maybe?

[subbacultchas]

I wish I could honestly say, but my experience with what Bio offers is fairly non-existent. I'll say this, there's not many brutes/tanks I've played where you *had* to have tough/weave by the 20s or 30s, especially weave (maybe regen?). But YMMV with the newer sets, and yes you can get around with beast/sprint.

 

I don't recall taking more than 2-3 powers from epic pools as a brute or a tank. As a dom or troller I have often taken 3-4 but those can be needy sets. So no, you shouldn't need that much room for it.  You can always get a good idea on which and how many epics you'll take in Pine's.

[Cutter]

That's totally fair about when to get Tough and Weave. In my travels around the boards they seem to show up pretty early in a lot of builds, tho whether those are L50 respecs or leveling builds I don't know. Guess I'll have to try it and see where it goes. I'll be into SOs by the time I'm looking at giving the Fighting pool consideration, so by then I should hopefully have a better idea of how survivable he is.

 

Thanks again for your advice on the Staff side of things, and the helpful questions about the other parts of the build.

[marcussmythe]

Id expect them to show up early in a lvl 50 respec - I tend to slot them in early when Im building my respec builds (I dont pay as much attention as I should to exemplar impacts when Im doing my respecs)

 

Leveling, Id put them in when theres no power you can take right now that helps you right now - but not be obsessed about runnign them.  Their real value to me seems to be capping out defenses and resistances, which you arent worried about until 50, and in most cases the marginal value of extra def/res is less than the cost of the endurance to feed them.  (most cases.  If Im teaming, I turn them on)

[Cutter]

Good advice, thanks! I'm used to running my protection set guys with ALL ZE TOGGLES (was super painful on my old /dark scrapper, lemme tell ya) but it does make sense to be a little more judicious in the whats and whens of it.

[marcussmythe]

Well, the flip side is, if your willing to marry yourself to the End-Reduction part of Staff, or to the End-Reduction Part of Bio, (or why-god-why-both), you can probably play the 'lets select every toggle in CoH and ignore Endreduction' approach. 

 

With Bio, I tend to like to 'build for' having the DEF/RES I want in defensive, and then use efficeint and offensive for when I dont NEED to hug those caps (which is most of the time).  Given Staff+Bio, your final build is gonna be a really itneresting exercise - what stance(s) do I want to be in most of the time, what value do I get out of switching out of them, yadda. 

 

What might be cool is to, given time and INF, use multiple build slots as well as multiple stances to really go nuts.  "How tough can I be, in a 'Tank' Build, with Defensive Adaptation, Defensive Stance, and appropriate Incarnates Slotted.  Cool.  Now, lets do a 'Murderparty' build, with nothing but Damage and Recharge everywhere I can find it, planning on being in Offensive Adaptation and Murder Stuff Stance.  Finally, lets do an IDGAF today build, aimed at solid all-around and assuming Im in at least one of Efficient Adaptation or Stance, switching out from either as needed.

 

If you can rejigger your whole concept by choosing Stances/Adaptations, Powerselection/Enhacnement Builds, and Incarnate Slotting before you step in the mission door, and further tweak it as you go... well, you might have 'the last melee character I will ever need to build'.

[subbacultchas]

What might be cool is to, given time and INF, use multiple build slots as well as multiple stances to really go nuts.  "How tough can I be, in a 'Tank' Build, with Defensive Adaptation, Defensive Stance, and appropriate Incarnates Slotted.  Cool.  Now, lets do a 'Murderparty' build, with nothing but Damage and Recharge everywhere I can find it, planning on being in Offensive Adaptation and Murder Stuff Stance.  Finally, lets do an IDGAF today build, aimed at solid all-around and assuming Im in at least one of Efficient Adaptation or Stance, switching out from either as needed.

 

I really like this idea a lot. While I don't have the versatility of bio armor with rad, I may still try this somewhat with staff/rad fighting. Rad fighting has enough +recovery and +end to make the end-red staff stance not necessary at all, so I can usually switch between the other two. Making a distinct build for each could be pretty cool, maybe even a third one with end-red staff stance just for endurance sappers and the like.

[Cutter]

Cool ideas!

 

Is there info out there about the Staff stances' non-power-related effects? I've read that maintaining 3 stacks of Perfection of X does something passively, but I can't find specifics. The tooltip in-game didn't tell me anything, and my Google-fu is failing me badly.

[subbacultchas]

It says on each stance if you view their info, but it doesn't give % values. IIRC, you get +dam for the Damage stance, +rechg for the middle stance, and -end cost for the End Stance. That's in addition to what they do when fully powered and activating the appropriate power. I believe with 3 stacks the buffs are around 15%, but I haven't tested each one. You can see by viewing combat attributes when using each.

[Cutter]

I've never looked at combat attributes, so that would be why I missed it!

 

Also found a little more info on Paragon Wiki... I'd been on the page before but apparently didn't scroll down far enough  ???

 

Form Types

Form of the Body Grants Perfection of Body levels

This power is obtained by purchasing Staff Mastery. All Staff Fighting attacks will build a level of Perfection of Body while this toggle is active. Each level will boost the user's damage output slightly. Once the user has built up 3 levels of Perfection of Body and they execute Eye of the Storm, the attack will reduce the target's damage resistance and will deal additional smashing damage. Executing Sky Splitter with three levels of Perfection of Body will deal additional smashing damage and grant the user a moderate resistance buff for a short time.

 

Form of the Mind Grants Perfection of the Mind levels

This power is obtained by purchasing Staff Mastery. All Staff Fighting attacks will build a level of Perfection of Mind while this toggle is active. Each level will boost the user's recharge rate slightly. Once the user has built up 3 levels of Perfection of Mind and they execute Eye of the Storm, the attack will slow the target slightly and will deal additional psychic damage. Executing Sky Splitter with three levels of Perfection of Mind will deal additional psychic damage and grant the user a moderate to hit buff for a short time.

 

Form of the Soul Grants Perfection of Soul levels

This power is obtained by purchasing Staff Mastery. All Staff Fighting attacks will build a level of Perfection of Soul while this toggle is active. Each level will grant the user an Endurance Discount. Once the user has built up 3 levels of Perfection of Soul and they execute Eye of the Storm, the attack will target's defense slightly and will deal additional energy damage. Executing Sky Splitter with three levels of Perfection of Soul will deal additional energy damage and grant the user a moderate regeneration and recovery buff for a short time.