During the full BWE3 I sank all my time into the staff DD thief. As others have stated, this weapon is missing alot.
PVE Feedback:
In PVE the staff is actually a pretty good weapon, sporting the highest AA damage out of all of the thief kits. I can see the staff actually being a decent go to weapon. The major PVE issue is that the thief just doesn’t have the innate ability to just stand there and take frontline damage from enemies. While the staff deals good damage, it is offset by the thief’s lack of innate class survival. There have been several times that I’ve been rocked by smokescales before the animation of vault even finished.
Vault is pretty good for AoE damage, but its damage radius is actually smaller than the circle. It could afford to be bigger because of the long animation. 3 is pretty much useless in pve and pvp. 2 is decent for PvE but can place you in strange places when you are trying to stack and burn. I spent most of my time in staff just spamming AA and vault. 4 is ok in pve and good for preblinding enemies as they are drawn into the stack before vaulting them down.
Staff is definitely a stronger PvE weapon than PvP weapon. The survival power is still a huge issue. While vault is good for leaping into a cloud of enemies, once you run out of initiative and bound dodges your probably going to die. Also during vault animations you can still be hit, its not uncommon to get blown away by mob instakills or things like mordrem dog leaps while vaulting through the air.
PVP Feedback:
While staff is ok for PvE, this is where it gets ugly.
1.) Staff has no reliable way to stick to a target. The weapon has no soft CC except for the cripple on staff 3, which then leaps you AWAY from the enemy. Staff 3 is so terrible. The weapon needs to have a chill, immobilize, knockdown, or some sort of easy access soft/hard CC skill.
2.) Vault is so easy to see coming, hard to hit moving targets with, damage radius is smaller than its indicator. There needs to be QoL here. Good luck hitting anyone with strafing using this. This is really bad in combination with the staff’s lack of CC.
3.) Skill 3 sucks. So useless, why is this skill even here? Leaping away from the enemies is the complete opposite of the staff’s aggressive playstyle. You usually position yourself in a place to get your face melted in.
4.) Staff 2 is actually good. No complaints here. Good for longbow rangers and messing up their rotation by using staff 2 to get behind them. The weakness is pretty meh. To be honest, I think this is a better place for a cripple.
5.) Staff 4 is much better with the animation speed up but only really good for finishing downed enemies by blinding them before the stomp. Has no real use otherwise. It also targets in a slow line and will never hit anyone circle strafing.
Proposed Staff Changes:
1.) Staff 1: I don’t have any problems with the autoattack chain.
2.) Staff 2: Change to whirling charge. Add an evade to the animation of this and have it cause cripple instead of weakness. This gives the staff DD slightly more survival and a soft CC to help lock targets within staff range. This will be a good change for PvE and PvP.
3.) Staff 3: Complete rework. Change to debilitating throw. Now throws your staff at the enemy using the same exact animation as bladetrail from warrior GS. Inflicts weakness when it hits enemies. Pulls enemies back to the DD if it strikes on the way back. This will be good for PvP to help the thief control targets and inflict weakness before engaging. In PvE this will be a good way to pull enemies to the group or prevent enemies from running away (i.e. things like grawl shamans going after sacrifices in the volcano fractal).
4.) Staff 4: Unchanged but has a new functionality. If the target enemy has weakness and is in melee range, this now launches them. The purpose of this is to combo with vault. You knock them into the air then vault where they are going to land. Will look really cool and gives the thief some added combat functionality. Fits with the DD theme. Also, in the Guilty Gear fighting game series a “Dust Strike” is an attack used to pop the enemy into the air for an air combo. The uppercut animation is already there. An echoing sound effect like guardian Banish should be played when it connects for maximum cinematic fulfillment.
Just think of how awesome this would be. You pop in, hit them with weakness. Staff 4 to launch them off of a point, then chase them as they fly through the air with vault and hit them with big damage when you land. To balance this you can add a internal CD to the launch effect.
5.) Staff 5. Increase radius where the damage is dealt. Make it land more reliably on where you target it. QoL change.
(edited by lordhelmos.7623)