Let's generate some ideas to think of how to improve the function and viability of staffs. There's a handful of weapons that simply aren't functional. Polearms can't be bossed with, 2hbw are useless compared to faster 1h and 10 slot shields all the way from midgame to endgame, and staffs are immediately discarded in 3rd or 4th job because of the element boost and speed increase of wands, the no stat requirements, and they rain down all day from almost every gach [suggestions and concepts for polearms and 2hbw improvements can be read here: https://royals.ms/forum/threads/general-warrior-feedback-useless-skills.160831/ ] First idea, have all 70+ staffs give negative elemental boosts, the exact opposite of ele staffs. Ele wands are the absolute meta, are faster, require no luk, and boost elements, and this will not likely be changed. Impossible to compete, and an entire class of items is forgone. so instead have staffs buffed to have naturally higher m.att, slightly less luk requirements, possibly increased speeds (or not), but negative element boosts or completely neutralize elements The reason being is the ele wands totally dominate and rule the leeching/farming meta, this will not change lol, I sincerely doubt it will, I should say. But staffs being lowered or neutral in element but higher in raw m.attack could open doors for arch mages in bossing and alternative builds. Other ideas to improve staffs: -more raw m.att, negative elemental boost -staffs over 70 have a chance to crit -have slightly lowered luk requirements -higher mastery -status effects/buffs are slightly improved using staffs (seal/meditation, m.guard etc) -range of attacks (not ultis) are slightly farther -10% chance to do an extra line of 30% damage etc etc. something to make these weapons usable and open doors to using them and also helping arches boss if they choose that path
LOL I tot you were mentioning the staff staff anyway, we are limited to the client so I don't know whether if crit/mastery/elemental can be adjusted based on the weapon choice
Sure, I'm just throwing lots of ideas out, let's talk about what can be done when we establish for certain what can not
You can adjust the % elemental damage that the staffs do, instead of the usual 25%/10% extra, I know for a fact that's changeable
Interesting. Then keeping the requirements but increasing their amplification would be an option, but smells power creepy
Power creeping what, mages that already 1 shot all relevant content as leech, but are so underpowered they don't even function in bossing?
You mention wands are "faster" twice. This is misleading. The physical "wack" attack speed is faster, but the magic casting speed is the same. Also, I do not believe the polearm/2h blunt weapon problem and staves are equivalent. Contrary to what you're asserting, staves are still relevant and useful. Truly, I am not a fan of any of the custom changes you proposed for staves. In fact, the only option I see here that I'm comfortable with is lowering the luk requirement slightly. I'm not saying your propositions are bad or not creative, I just think they are too custom and fundamentally change the gameplay. For example, enabling an additional job branch to make critical hits without SE can be quite jarring, let alone additional lines and so on. The way I see it, staves do offer an alternate path for the unfunded player. While the tma difference doesn't totally make up for it, one can forego some ap in int and be a low luk mage, while equipping an elemental staff at end game with an extra boost in tma. Also for this last statement: Improving the ability of mages to boss has much less to do with equips and more to do with their skills, in my opinion. I don't think any change to the way a staff works would be significant enough to make archmages useful in a bossing context. To be honest, the real atrocity is that Elemental Wands do not require any luk. Why have they been chosen (by someone at Nexon?..) as an exception, especially with their absurdly high tma. Just food for thought. Maybe someone can enlighten me.
Oh true, forgot casting speed is different. PA/2hbw are mentioned, as examples, because they also need creative input, this thread isn't a bubble. All three need examination, and they were mentioned because they also need attention like staffs. And if you think staffs are worse than pa/2hbw, let's get feedback going This thread is to generate ideas to make them more useful, that's fine if you don't like my ideas, the point here is to talk about ideas that will work. Staffs really aren't useful because of maple weapons, and elemental wands. There's no reason to ever use staffs except out of total desperation or to be ironic, or some self imposed playstyle. But realistically, they're useless, require tons of luck, and functionally have no use in 3rd/4th, because they don't amp your elements. The abilitity to min/max a mage requires almost no effort, and you get nothing on return for investing in luck or supplemental luck eq to equip staffs. Also, there shouldn't be a funded and unfunded weapon choice, they should both have pros and cons with or without funding. Their skills are an altogether different topic discussed in lots of other places (like this post https://royals.ms/forum/posts/1096304/ ) but the elemental wands meta does have an impact on their bossing presence: If their secondary attacks were viable (para/cl), other elemental wands, or even staffs, would be more relevant. Agreed about the no stat requirements for such broken wands, boosting elements so much. But, very unlikely that will change, so let's talk about stuff that could change or improve extremely uninterested in what people don't like or want to nitpick over, this is about ideas that could work and how and why to improve them and lift them from the unusable "unfunded" place they exist in. Like I said I threw all kinds of ideas out there to get ideas churning and going and other people thinking. I don't care how wild or crazy it sounds, I want to hear about it, anything could inspire a new idea or concept, and what can't work will be passed
Mages will never get to point of being able to boss without breaking the game. Mages damage is linear where as everything else is exponential
Look, I think your heart's in the right place, but like, just throwing out a whole bunch of scattered ideas rather than coming up with a more singular focused idea isn't really the best way to approach these sorts of topics imo. Try keeping your ideas more grounded and focus, and make sure to fact check before making suggestion threads, otherwise people aren't gonna take these threads seriously. Also, being "extremely uninterested in what people don't like" isn't a particularly good mindset to have if you actually want to get a discussion going on a forum. Just some thoughts my dude Anyways, on the topic of staffs, I don't disagree that they don't get nearly as much use as wands do. However, moreso than say, polearms or 2hBW, staves have pretty much no mechanical, or even any real thematic difference between them and their counterparts, nor do you need to invest any sp into any skills for wands or staves, unlike melee weapons, so I wouldn't say their in the same boat as polearms or 2hBW. Basically, the two are almost completely interchangeable. Remember, there are maple/pyrope staffs too, and they're just as effective as their wand counterparts for the level ranges that they're used at. Really, at the end of the day, it's Elemental Wand vs Elemental Staff where the issues arise. Possibly lowering the LUK requirement to elemental staffs to something slightly more reasonable, but still requiring some amount of excess LUK from gear to equip might make them a viable high level mage options. That all being said though, I'd love there to be a more tangible difference between wands and staffs, but as Kenny mentioned, there are client limitations. Hypothetically, if it wasn't an issue, I think mages could benefit from a few reworks. Maybe having LUK actually contribute slightly to the magic stat(ele wands would be given a LUK requirement as such), and there being a distinct wand and staff mastery skill, instead of each skill having it's own mastery. I would have staffs essentially be the "two-handed" option for mages, i.e. have a higher damage multiplier, and have higher range for attacks, but no shield. Whereas wands would be the "one-handed" option, i.e slightly lower damage multiplier, but you can also equip a shield (as well as giving mages a passive skill for shields or something). Essentially this would just make wands and staffs more unique and cohesive rather than being more or less the same exact thing like they are in game now. Again, all hypothetical, but a man can dream... :3 time to buff Kenny to make him viable in the meta
If you plan to make a attacker with less then 20b budget worth of mage gears.. obviously it won’t work out too well. That aside to make ele staff (Lv163 version)work, auf helm is probably required. From what i know. Chain Lightning / Paralyze / demon does not scale according to attack speed of your weapon, imo this should be adjusted, and allow speed infusion to scale with these skills. To add 1 more line to the skills. allow the skills to scale with SI around 600ms / paralyze or Chain lightning. EVEN STILL, it will only do 110k ish each paralyze. So... =.= Rebalancing the staff w/o working too much on the skills will still make the class utterly useless in bosses. (Unless a washed 17k F/P that deals constant 75k+ paraylze to pin auf.) If 1/1 is reverted, (which probably wouldn’t) washing an archmage could be quite a sed mule that does amazing splash damage with meteor/bliz and maintain spawn control in HT. Which honestly back then if many of you guys didn’t know was pretty good. Sadly its nerfed to the ground now so \o/ —— Let us be real here, allowing a powerhouse farmer/leecher to do dps.. is just designing a broken mechanic. Imo its fine as it is even with the nerfs AM received the past few patches, be it unmarco-able Bliz/Meteor or potion prices.
What do you mean they are not viable . If you get an Auf Haven helmet and scroll it +20 you naturally get enough luk to wear the staff without adding any base luk, so you get to be an OP mage.
That was kind of my point, they already one shot all relevant leeching spot contents, and it would take a tremendous amount of increased damage for them to be relevant in bosses, there's nothing to power creep to begin with, especially at level 163
When I played a Korean preserver in 2016, there was a similar dilemma. Every intellectual mage preferred to go lukless but for the few who managed to reach 4th job (it was 1/1/1 super hardcore rate server) to wield the timeless weapon, Luk mages came out stronger. Back then, pyrope staff was the strongest lukless mage weapon. In royals, the rates are rather high and the mage's journey to lvl 130, on average, takes less than 2 weeks if played consistently. Mages who take the nostalgic route with luk stats will feel robbed because they get less MP vs lukless mages. If the journey was slow and tiresome, there may be more merits to build Luk stats and benefit from Staves that have higher TMA than wands. Almost every player who's new to GMS contents finds the existence of the Ele wands the most broken feature. Why is there a lukless end game mage weapon that outshines even the timeless staff in tma? It's so easy to acquire vs reverse/timeless weapons too. The moment GMS introduced ele wands, they crossed the river with no return for Luk mages.
100000% what I think every single day. How the hell are the best weapons in the game (and it's not only the ele wands) OBTAINABLE FROM GACHAPON????? It makes no sense at all. That's why timeless weapons should be introduced, so the strongest weapons in game at least have decent a fulfilling way of getting them.
Lol look, you're not wrong. If I had the perfectly measured suggestions to counter the ele wand meta, it would be in here. I am but a humble himbo, an ideas person, just trying to get some heat going on this topic, it could inspire anyone to think about it, and post here. I actually thought about the wand/staff mastery thing, but discarded thinking that would be way too fussy of a suggestion, but you did it. And I'm sure lots of people want to come in here and say wow, what a god awful idea (like all of my threads lol) but I disagree, I'm glad you posted, it's something and it's a valid suggestion to ideate, lots of potential ways to consider it. Posts that are just dismissal, with no feedback or engagement or their own input, I just hate that. This is a forum for ideas, let's have them. I'm sure you know exactly what I mean. Lol no I'm not going to be the one doing deep dive research and a thorough post with math. I am going to post a lot of potentials that could get folks who can do that thinking, though Abt the ele staff vs ele wand... I still think that's not doing enough for the entire class of weapons. Yes the pyrope staff exists and for a minute when you're still maxing HS or mist, it's probably pretty good, but you're already in the ele wand supremacy event horizon. I mean it's such an imbalanced division there's literally no way to compete with them once you're able to equip them or finally get one. Its just a shame, lots of great later game staffs with no chance. I figured there'd be a bit more input here. The idea I think works the best is that staffs have quite a bit more base m.att, but neutralize elements, it would be the perfect foil against the ele meta, and give mages raw bossing damage somewhere where they normally couldn't. If staffs and wands had their own mastery skills, and speeds, boom, easy way to work this through, but again, sounds cumbersome, but has lots of potential. The thread isn't about me or my personal bad, scattered ideas, I'm just throwing lots out there to think about as usual. I've posted all over about some skills potentially breaking through cancel with a chance% and hmmm look what just happened to total crash lol. Just sayin, some concepts just speak for themselves and don't need fussed out to understand them
