Staff Fighting feels kinda bad on a scrapper

[FFFF]

Mine just hit level 30 and I love both her concept and how stylistic everything looks. A+ on form over function. 
 

It’s the function part that bothers me. She’s Staff/SR and easily the weakest scrapper combination I’ve ever played. With mostly common IOS and a couple of cheap sets she has 33% positional defense so it’s not like she’s easy to bring down. I think the SR secondary is holding up. 
 

But staff… Feels like every battle is whap-whap-whap-whap. There’s a fair amount of AoE but everything is damage over time. And the feel is whittling down everything instead of the ‘crunchiness’ (big hits) I’m used to on scrappers. I can see this as a great tanker set as the sustain is great, but feels weak on a scrapper. Lots of long fights and rarely is the character able to 1-hit a minion. 

[Thraxen]

I have it on a brute.  I like it fine but it isn't great though.  Been wanting to respec my brute but been too lazy to pull the trigger.  Hate the push broom sweeping attack and would like to get rid of it.  

[Ston]

Staff is bad on a Scrapper, so you’re not experiencing anything out of the ordinary. It doesn’t have a good attack chain. Sky Splitter has abysmal DPA even when it is enhanced by form stacks.

 

The AoE is alright. And you do get really nice passive buffs by keeping stacks of your forms. But that’s all it really has going for it.

 

Another nice thing is that you get 10ft range on attacks vs the typical 7ft.

 

But aside from that, Staff leaves a lot to be desired. Sky Splitter really needs an animation reduction. But since that probably isn’t something that the HC team can do, the set might just be bottom of the barrel forever. The redraw adjustment was at least a good QoL improvement.

[BrandX]

Something to consider, is reroll to Staff/Regen.  That 10% Resist from Skysplitter (Body) stacking on your regeneration! 🙂

[SomeGuy]

11 hours ago, Ston said:

Staff is bad

 

 

/thread

Edited May 31, 2023 by SomeGuy

[StriderIV]

4 minutes ago, SomeGuy said:

 

 

/thread

SAY IT AIN’T SO 😭😭😭

[SomeGuy]

2 minutes ago, StriderIV said:

SAY IT AIN’T SO 😭😭😭

 

 

@Ston

[SeraphimKensai]

@Ston seeing staff range in CoD at 9 feet for melee attacks instead of the 10 you stated, otherwise I fully agree about sky sky splitter.

 

Staff works best IMO as a stalker as the introduction of Assassin's Staff helps a lot (although it still under performs compared to other stalker sets). I also think it's alright on a tank due to the modifiers that tanks get for increased range/arc for cones/AoE/target cap.

[SomeGuy]

Staff on stalkers is still really bad. Electric Melee will do better ST DPS AND really good AOE on the stalker version of it.

[FFFF]

Well, hit level 34 and couldn't beat an even leveled Silver Mantis elite boss. I've had scrappers in the past that treated this mission as a speed bump. I had hope because she narrowly beat Nosferatu earlier this evening (probably because SR made it difficult to hit his heals) but this is as far as I can take her. I ended up with 41% positional defenses but the offensive output was just too poor. Oh well, back to the lab...

[Blackjoy]

I played a Staff/WP scarpper up to 50.  I didn't think it was that bad.  It does suffer a little on ST damage, but it makes up for it on the AoE side.   With /SR, you should be near capping +DEF with the Guarded Spin.  The reason why you sucked against Silver Mantis is because you have no +DEF vs Toxic.  That's SR's fault, not Staff's

[FFFF]

44 minutes ago, Blackjoy said:

I played a Staff/WP scarpper up to 50.  I didn't think it was that bad.  It does suffer a little on ST damage, but it makes up for it on the AoE side.   With /SR, you should be near capping +DEF with the Guarded Spin.  The reason why you sucked against Silver Mantis is because you have no +DEF vs Toxic.  That's SR's fault, not Staff's

 

Is this new? Position defenses (melee/range/AoE) not defend against Toxic? As I understand it, there's a check on position and then a second check on type? Is that not how it works anymore?

Edited June 2, 2023 by FFFF

[Blackjoy]

I could be wrong.  But if you're at 41% before Guarded Spin, you should be capping the +0 EB at around 6 or 7 % .   Were you getting hit more than that?  I know what when I fight the hydra in the sewer, on Tin/Plex, it hits my /SR like I'm naked.

 

What sucks for /SR is that even if you're getting +DEF, you're not getting any scaling +RES to the damage.  So with /SR, you're generally used to that last sliver of health lasting a long time.  But vs toxic or psi, you die real quickly.  Especially if they use Build Up and hit you with a big hit.  That toxic will melt  /SR

Edited June 2, 2023 by Blackjoy

[Stormwalker]

On 6/2/2023 at 12:38 AM, FFFF said:

 

Is this new? Position defenses (melee/range/AoE) not defend against Toxic? As I understand it, there's a check on position and then a second check on type? Is that not how it works anymore?

 

It depends on the attack.  If the attack has a positional component, positional defenses will work.  If it doesn't, they won't.  I don't recall my /SR's ever having problems against Silver Mantis, but it's been quite a while since the last time I fought her on one.

 

As for Staff, it's a fun set, and its AoE is pretty solid, but its single target damage is terrible.  I enjoy my (level 46) Staff/WP quite a bit, and she's very, very hard to kill, but she'll never come close to my Claws/SR or my Energy/Energy in the damage output department.

[Wavicle]

Most Toxic attacks ARE defended by positional. But Silver Mantis has -Def and caltrops which I think may ignore all defense.

[Doomguide2005]

2 hours ago, Wavicle said:

Most Toxic attacks ARE defended by positional. But Silver Mantis has -Def and caltrops which I think may ignore all defense.

     The defense debuff should be heavily resisted (i.e. DDR) by level 34 making that almost a non-issue unless her debuff is absolutely huge (or one or more powers have been delayed).  Caltrops in general are auto hit but against SRs Quickness (40% move resist) a single patch of caltrops shouldn't do much but a low constant DoT.

     @Blackjoyhinted at the likely issue if Siver Mantis uses/used Toxic damage SR's scaling passive resists do not effect the amount done (resist = 0%).  So if she manages to land a strong Toxic attack you'll eat the full damage regardless of your health.  

 

[honoroit]

dunno about scrapper - but its quite good on stalker, and amazing on tanker because of the larger aoes and target caps.  rad armor/staff pretty special

[Zect]

Staff is defensively very powerful. It's a parry set that can also get a resistance buff. The problem is that coh has become more and more about dps exclusively, so a defensive melee set is a hard sell - compare the whines about storm blast not doing enough dps on blasters.

 

Then there's also the issue that defensive sets are inherently stronger on defensive AT's because of how def and res work in this game, where every point of def and res is more valuable than the last. Staff is much better on a tanker where the much higher mitigation numbers let you throw everything into procs and still be indestructible in nearly all babymode content. On a scrapper, a 75% res cap AT getting 10% from sky splitter, the numbers are just not good enough to be worth much.

 

 

[Uun]

This is the version of Silver Mantis you would face at lvl 34 (all the other versions have the same attacks). None of her attacks do toxic damage or lack positional vectors. They are all 100% lethal damage. Caltrops is autohit, but you can move out of them. She is tough against Staff because she has 57.5% S/L resistance (25% base + 32.5% Temp Inv) plus Dull Pain and Unstoppable.

 

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/entity.html?entity=arachnos_silver_mantis_medium_high

[Saiyajinzoningen]

I have a staff/ninja scrapper and its underwhelming.

Its fun to play and look at 

it sounds really impactful (sometimes)

but it feels weak, dots dont crit.

I can push through by reminding myself that in a game where you can shoot lasers and knock enemies a hundred feet in the air, hitting enemies with a stick shouldn't do that much damage logically.

[Yomo Kimyata]

When I first came to HC I spent a lot of time on Staff, because it was new to me and I liked the animations.  Later I got to 50 in all four variations of Staff/Bio and I decided that in declining order of greatness I ranked them Stalker, Tanker, Brute, Scrapper.  At this point in time, I didn’t know much about builds (or even what an ATO was).  Thanks to this post I went back and ran more content with some of my staffers.

 

The thing I like best about Staff (now) is that there are lots of skippable powers.  I need P. Strike, Guarded Spin (one of two +def AoE powers), Eye of Storm, Staff Mastery, Serpents Reach.  I generally keep Sky Splitter but I can make the case to skip it.  This means lots of other places to put powers that are very yummy.
 

I recently remade my staff/bio scrapper and really leaned into offense, and it’s spectacular.  Just enough mitigation to stay upright most of the time and it shreds.  I’d probably clear faster with TW/bio, but he stands up there with any of my top scrappers.

[ChocolateMercenary]

On 6/2/2023 at 2:38 AM, Blackjoy said:

I could be wrong.  But if you're at 41% before Guarded Spin, you should be capping the +0 EB at around 6 or 7 % .   Were you getting hit more than that?  I know what when I fight the hydra in the sewer, on Tin/Plex, it hits my /SR like I'm naked.

 

What sucks for /SR is that even if you're getting +DEF, you're not getting any scaling +RES to the damage.  So with /SR, you're generally used to that last sliver of health lasting a long time.  But vs toxic or psi, you die real quickly.  Especially if they use Build Up and hit you with a big hit.  That toxic will melt  /SR

I actually checked my combat log. The Hyrda tentacles around the pylons didn't have ToHit rolls. Bad time for all of my SR, EA, and NIN characters.

[nihilii]

On 8/16/2023 at 7:30 PM, Yomo Kimyata said:

When I first came to HC I spent a lot of time on Staff, because it was new to me and I liked the animations.  Later I got to 50 in all four variations of Staff/Bio and I decided that in declining order of greatness I ranked them Stalker, Tanker, Brute, Scrapper.  At this point in time, I didn’t know much about builds (or even what an ATO was).  Thanks to this post I went back and ran more content with some of my staffers.

I too feel Stalker is where the set shines. AS bumps up your otherwise sad ST damage, Eye of the Storm is a solid 10ft PBAoE, you get real BU and the best form is baked in (which makes for a tanky Stalker).

Then Tanker as a solid #2 as well, given that Tankers are so playable these days and you can find great value in stacking +DEF and +RES on Tanker armors.

The Stalker version is honestly so superior to the standard version.

[Yomo Kimyata]

Something worthwhile pointing out:  don't put the Critical Strikes proc in Eye of the Storm.  Yes, it will hit up to ten enemies.  But according to City of Data, the animation time before activation is very short, which means if the proc does activate you have to sit through a long period of dead time.  Therefore it is impossible to activate Critical Strikes and then use it for, say, Sky Splitter or Serpent's Reach (although it will be possible for other powers).