My impression of Staff Fighting (numerical and otherwise)

Your assertion has tended to be that Staff's single target damage was below average, and that wasn't compensated for by having sufficiently high AoE damage:
You've also called Staff "unbalanced" because of this. But those kinds of statements presume you can actually judge Staff AoE reasonably, and the only metrics you've presented to do so have been faulty in serious areas. If your premise is that Staff single target is below average, that only requires an examination of the single target damage output of Staff. But if your premise is that Staff is unbalanced, because its AoE is not high enough to compensate for below average single target, you can't say its too difficult to quantify AoE. Your assertion relies on having a reasonable way to evaluate AoE offense that is reasonably accurate.

I'm a teacher of Physics and Maths, but I am wise enough to know that Arcana understands this game much better than I do, and wouldn't even consider a challenge.

But consider this: the effects of FoB and FoS can be reproduced with inspirations. But there is NO WAY to reproduce the effect of FoM. That recharge is over-and-above what can be achieved in any other way. It's value is in it's uniqueness, not it's magnitude. However, it doesn't particularly benefit it's own powerset. It's value depends ENTIRELY on what other powers you have. Thus, any metric which fails to consider primaries, secondaries, and pool powers is going to fail.

Actually, my background in physical sciences is what you might call better than average. My claim to fame in college was auditing graduate level coursework in science and engineering and doing better than most of the graduate students, while simultaneously failing to show up for my actual classes and nearly flunking out of them.

Unfortunately, that doesn't average out.

Having now played the set substantially more than I had when I made that comment on the forms, I retract it. I didn't realize how efficient the set was before considering soul. Soul is still my go-to form while leveling up; at 33 my scrapper has maybe four slots total allocated to secondary powers apart from lightning field and it works very well. It now seems that it will be useful at 50 but not necessary in all cases even with a build that is fairly slapdash about endurance reduction.

This is what I mean by needing to consider what powerset it's paired with to evaluate how useful the various forms are. FoS is most useful when paired with a high end cost set, such as Dark, FoM is most useful when paired with a cooldown heavy set like Regen or Fire, FoB is most useful when paired with a resistance set that doesn't cap, like Dark or Fire.

It's funny that you say that, because that was one of arguments I've made in this thread several times.

I completely agree, by the way, and its one reason balance in CoH is so hard to define. Even in within the same AT/powerset combination, a build can be completely different depending on pools, IOs, and even incarnates in the later game. For instance, a DM/SR Brute with Presence, Flight, Leadership, and Stealth and no IOs or APPs/EPPs is completely different from a purpled out DM/SR/Mu Brute with Medicine, Fighting, SJ, and Leadership with along with Spiritual/Degenerative/Spiritual for incarnates.

Its one reason I think we shouldn't simply compare base powersets, but include some of impact from outside influences. Basically, we want to keep powersets within a range of power, with even base characters able to handle difficulties of 0/1 and even the most ridiculous character unable to solo iTrials. SS is probably the hardest set to balance because it truly isn't amazing without outside influences, with mediocre DPA attacks and only one AoE. But combine its +dam with either high DPA attacks (Gloom/Burn) or extra AoEs, and it becomes a monster.

However, I think the nature of FoM limits its practical in-game use. Its magnitude is such that it won't make more than a couple of seconds of difference on anything but the longest recharge powers. By combining a variable effect with a low magnitude, its usefulness is handicapped. I think it would be best served to either make the magnitude large enough to be truly interesting, or make it constant (even if it would have to be reduced down to something like 10%).

FoB just seems to be deliberately weaker than necessary in order to prevent the potential unbalancing effect of to much +dam. However, I think it can be argued that a small increase at this point would not make Staff OP, especially since a lot of potential problems with +dam would be partially prevented by the re-draw in the set (eg, Gloom, Mu Mastery). Comparing Staff to other powersets, FoB doesn't really make up for the loss of BU (in burst situations, not average contribution), and it provides much less benefit than the powers given to other sets without BU. One solution would be to just grant BU along with the various forms (which could also give Staff Stalkers the other forms).

And I'm fine with arguing with Arcanaville and being wrong. I've learned more about the game by losing arguments with Arcana than ever would have by talking with the average forum-goer. I gain nothing by being intimidated by another person's intellect, but I can benefit a lot from making mistakes. For instance, I never even tried to numerically judge a powersets AoE before this thread, and now I at least know something about it.

Actually i've been finding it to be quite good on my SM/DA Brute. While I haven't gotten any of my staff users to the end game content yet, it is definitely an excellent leveling set and fun to at least the early thirties. Since i normally spend most of my time playing alts under 50 for my purposes it's a good set.

Subpar- Not measuring up to traditional standards of performance, value, or production.

Not accurate in terms of the set in view of the way it holds up vs +4 X8 pre-incarnate spawns when looking at killing speed. It's not even subpar when looking at the average single target damage.

Perhaps you meant something else.

It averages out to significantly more than a LotG proc which people pay a significant amount of influence for. So the value of that recharge is, as judged by the playerbase, significant.

And verses the argument that because people build for recharge that makes it less valuable at higher levels, that would be tantamount to saying that each LotG you buy makes the next one less valuable. Almost no one should buy and slot four or five, because those must be practically worthless. That doesn't happen either, because recharge isn't really a diminishing returns thing in the normal sense (there's a more complex discussion about the effects of fixed cast time that make it somewhat diminishing, but that's a different effect entirely).

The fact that it fluctuates on a time scale of a couple of seconds is something almost no player is capable of noticing. When we discuss regeneration we talk about it like its continuous, we don't say +75% regeneration cuts the tick interval by 0.833 seconds. But that's what it does (assuming slotted Health).

I really haven't seen Staff Fighting to be sub par. It's not the top set in AOE or the top set in ST, but it does good in both areas.

I do think it'll find it's better pairings (and this is just a guess on my part) in EA, SR, and ELA.

ENDRED untill Energy Drain powers, then switch to more damage!

While I don't consider the +RCH worthless as an effect, I do thinkit's an effect people build for, so will lose some ground in usefulness.

Also, if not built for the best END REC, one can go all out damage (Body) then switch it to ENDRED, then switch back to MORE DAMAGE! \o/

I probably would of liked a little higher values in the +DMG myself, but that's only because the +DMG gets to be spent. But that could be a matter of perspective, maybe it's made to equal out to just under BU levels of +DMG in the long run?

But I wouldn't call Staff sub-par.

Actually, I think those are some of the worst* (just ahead of WP).

Best: Fire, Regen, Dark.

*Not Stalker SR and ELA.

You are using a value-less metric. Without qualifications for recharge/outside powers/IOs, we cannot simply say "it is balanced." Because any set combination can defeat mobs at that difficulty with enough investment, it really means nothing. Without knowing the build and the speed at which it actually defeats mobs, it is impossible to compare it to other sets. At this point, you are arguing opinion, not fact.

And it is fairly subpar when it comes to single target damage. Even counting bonus damage, its best attack is roughly equivalent to Chop from Battle-Axe (1.11 to 1.06). After that, it has a pretty large drop-off.

Comparing roughly equivalent chains on a theoretical melee class with a 1.00 melee damage scale and no fury/crits (numbers taken from CoD, dividing scrapper powersets by 1.05 to account for criticals):

BA: Swoop>Gash>Cleave>Chop (95% enhancement)
2.1633 DPS

BS: Hack>Head Splitter>Hack>Disembowel (95% enhancement, 10% -res from Achilles)
2.2659

Claws: Follow-Up>Focus>Shockwave>Slash (95% enhancement, 70% from follow-up, 3.3% from Achilles)
2.4248

Dual Blades: Blinding Feint>Sweeping Strike>Ablating Strike>Power Slice (95% enhancement, 70% from blinding feint)
2.4007

Dark Melee: Smite>SL>Smite>MG (95% enhancement, 50% from Soul Drain [Roughly comparable to one target every 36s or 10 targets every 90s])
2.6786

Electrical Melee: Chain Induction>Havoc Punch>Jacobs Ladder (95% enhancement)
1.6989

Energy Melee: Bone Smasher>Energy Punch>Barrage>Bone Smasher>(ET/TF) (95% enhancement)
2.2637 (ps: Energy needs a buff pretty badly)

Fiery Melee: Incinerate>GFS>Incinerate>Cremate>FS (95% enhancement)
2.3058

Ice Melee: Freezing Touch>Ice Sword>GIS>Ice Sword (95% enhancement)
1.7841 (also needs a buff)

Katana: Golden Dragonfly>Gambler's Cut>Soaring Dragon>Gambler's Cut (95% enhancement, 10% -resistance from Achilles' Heel)
2.3690

Kinetic Melee: Concentrated Strike>Smashing Blow>Body Blow>Quick Strike>Smashing Blow>Body Blow (95% enhancement, 40% from Power Siphon [averaging 4 stacks of PS while active, ~45-50s recharge])
2.3847

Martial Arts: Storm Kick>CAK>Storm Kick>Cobra Strike (95% enhancement)
2.2984 (worse for non-scrappers)

Spines: Ripper>Throw Spines>Impale (95% enhancement, Quills)
1.5709

Staff Fighting: Precise Strike>Serpent's Reach>Precise Strike>Sky Splitter (95% enhancement, FoB [4% +damage on SR, 9% on 2nd PS, 15% on Sky Splitter])
2.021

Stone Melee: Seismic Smash>Heavy Mallet>Stone Fists>Stone Mallet>Stone Fists (95% enhancement)
2.4569

Street Justice: Rib Cracker>Shin Breaker>Heavy Blow>(SC/CU) (95% enhancement, 10.8% -resistance from RC and Achilles' Heel)
2.2261 (considerably better for stalkers)

Super Strength: Knockout Blow>Haymaker>Hurl>Punch>Haymaker (95% enhancement, double rage [160% +damage, total damage divided by 5/6])
2.8328

Titan Weapons: Rend Armor>Crushing Blow>Follow Through>(AoD/TS)>Crushing Blow (95% enhancement, 14.1 -resistance from Rend Armor and Achilles' Heels)
3.1616

War Mace: Clobber>Shatter>Jawbreaker (95% enhancement)
2.6591 (fairly high recharge requirement)

So, in order:

1. Titan Weapons
2. Super Strength
3. Dark Melee
4. War Mace
5. Stone Melee
6. Claws
7. Dual Blades
8. Kinetic Melee
9. Katana
10. Fiery Melee
11. Martial Arts
12. Broadsword
13. Energy Melee
14. Street Fighting
15. Battle-Axe
16. Staff Fighting
17. Ice Melee
18. Electrical Melee
19. Spines

In other words, if we made a scrapper for each set with no offensive bonuses outside of the set and damage enhancements (and the recharge to run the chain), and those scrappers each tried to down a Pylon, they'd have times of:

Titan Weapons: 7:07
Super Strength: 9:31
Dark Melee: 11:18
War Mace: 11:35
Stone Melee: 15:29
Claws: 17:05
Dual Blades: 17:36
Katana: 18:09
Fiery Melee: 20:42
Martial Arts: 21:03
Broadsword: 22:43
Energy Melee: 22:51
Street Fighting: 23:00
Battle-Axe: 30:20
Staff Fighting: 56:42
(Ice, Spines, and Electric would not have enough DPS to defeat a Pylon with those chains without help)

Note, these times are not completely accurate, because I got the DPS by simply multiplying the DS per second by the scrapper level 50 melee_damage mod (62.562) and then multiplying by 1.1 for the 10% critical chance. Because scrappers get a higher modifier for buffing +damage, Super Strength, Claws, Dark Melee, and Kinetic would actually do better. On the other hand, any power that didn't have a full critical effect would do less. I would estimate the error of this calculation to be around 5-10% because of those changes.

If those numbers seem low, it is because they are mostly sub-optimal chains (I tried to keep recharge between 190 and 250%, significantly lower than some of my chains), and this ignores the additional +damage from procs/incarnate powers. Just adding reactive could reduce a lot of those times substantially. The times are fairly close to what we would expect from old Pylon times.

Opinion based on actual experience is far more valid than metrics based on a lousy model.

Just a few stupiditys in you model, without going into detailed maths:

1) It's for scrappers only. We know Staff is worse on scrappers, since they get a bigger bonus for BU than the other ATs, loosing it hurts them more than other ATs. They are also more dependant on big hitters.

2) It's an utterly stupid attack chain. Only a moron would use that in regular play.

3) You are using the worst form.

4) You are ignoring the influence of the secondary powerset. Some of those affect damage you know...

5) You are ignoring running out of endurance. That hurts DPS you know...

6) You are ignoring survivability. Being dead hurts DPS you know...

Anecdotal evidence has no validity. I could make the same argument with Ice Melee, a set that severely needs a buff.

"In my experience Ice Melee kills things crazy fast at +4/x8."

And you could not dispute it, because it is opinion. Opinion which might completely ignore the fact the the Ice Melee build in question is Fire/Ice/Mu, has a 30 billion influence build + T4 incarnates, etc.

There is simply no way to relate one person anecdotal experience and say that it will apply to all Staff Fighters. It is even worse than used a flawed metric.

If we assume that the recharge buff continues through Sky Splitter/Eye of the Storm, it still wouldn't average out to be significantly better than a LotG. The only possible scenario where that would occur is long-term fighting without using either SS or EotS. In an attack chain like PS-SR-PS-SS, the buff would average out to 8.9655% if we assume the recharge lasts through SS, but only 3.0172% if SS instantly eats the recharge bonus (haven't tested it, so I'm not sure which behavior occurs). Even with the former, the buff would only take about 1.6 seconds off SS with no recharge. And remember, a large amount of play will not have any buff from FoM at all.

But of course, FoM doesn't exist in isolation. The problem is the other forms arguably contribute more to offense and defense than form of mind does. Form of Soul's +regeneration and Form of Body's +resists will likely increase survivability more for all armor sets except perhaps regeneration (because of its clickiness), and it is unlikely that +recharge will help attack chains more than +damage because of the relatively tiny amount of +recharge it gives. This is because attacks chains increase in damage in step-wise fashion with increasing amounts of +recharge, but linearly with increasing amounts of +damage. So unless higher recharge allows for a better attack chain (or reduces gaps significantly), it will not improve damage.

Why would a large amount of play have no buff at all?


If you are going to bring discrete effects into the discussion, once again you have to be fair. +15% damage doesn't necessarily always increase effective damage output for the same reason +15% recharge doesn't necessarily always improve attack speed; in this case its because critters have discrete amounts of health and any amount of damage dealt higher than that is wasted. +X% damage doesn't always reduce the number of attacks required to defeat the target for this reason.

You cannot dismiss one while highlighting the other.

I'm guessing that you are criticizing my single target metric because I just posted it. If so, I'll respond to your criticisms:

1. I ignored the affect of BU on damage. This probably makes Staff appear better than it actual would in gameplay. Also, these numbers are the base ones for the powersets (ALL of the melee damage sets unless I happened to miss one, not just scrapper sets). Also, scrappers are not more dependent on high DPA attacks than Brutes or Tankers, and arguably are less dependent than Stalkers.

2. The attack chain I used is a reasonable one for the amount of recharge. It probably will put out more damage than any other Staff chain at that level of recharge, and these chains are supposed to represent the maximum level of damage a set will put out at a reasonable amount of recharge. I could, theoretically, add in other powers, but that would have made Staff seem less competitive.

3. FoM is the worst form. I used Form of Body because not using it would have made the set look less competive.

4. I'll do an analysis later on how the secondaries have an impact.

5. I suppose I could show EPS as well later when I have time

6. These chains all promote survivability to same roughly the same degree. An analysis that included survivability would have to take into account the interplay between every secondary, power pool, and patron/epic pool power that increased survability, something I don't what to do.

Because a large amount of the time no FoM stacks will be active. IE travel, any long downtime between mobs, using EotS or SS as the last attack against a spawn, etc.

Effective damage output isn't a good term because it could be confused with DPS. I'd prefer to just say effective kill-rate.

Anyway, the issue with your analysis is that recharge has to deal with both problems. If it increases damage by enabling a better attack chain or reducing gaps, the increase in damage may not result in a faster kill-rate just like if +damage was added. I didn't consider the affect of quantized kill-rates for two reasons:

1. Usually, single-target DPS is most important against hard targets. Therefore, the quantum nature of attacks will because less impactful against the primary single target threat (AVs and EBs), and will only have a minor impact on bosses.

2. Because it affected both forms of buff, I considered it a wash.

The only value-less metric is all that garbage you put after that sentence. It is clear now what your motive is and it has been exposed by those willing to argue numbers and your essentially useless personal metric.

There is always one or two outliars when dealing with these issues, it's just one or two more people for the devs to utterly ignore since the motive is so heavily tainted. This is nothing more than total object failure.

Even if we accept that Kinetic's actual in-game performance will be lower than than those numbers due to knockback, the devil is in the details.

Staff is 4th from last in single target, but AoE is less significant, because a set can make up for lack-luster AoE (by adding up to 5 AoEs [Burn,Mu/Leviathan,Spring Attack] from outside sources), but not for lack-luster single-target. Heck, you could 'almost' make the case that even Dark Melee could be a great AoE set just by adding /Mu and /Fire.

This will mostly impact the 40+ game, but I have no problems with Staff before that. In fact, I've already said it might be an ideal leveling/exemplaring set. The other problem is that Staff will not scale at high magnitudes of buffs because of the low base numbers compared to other sets, but I doubt that's a balance concern.

My metric at least could be analyzed for faults.

"It's fine for me, I can solo at +4/x8" simply cannot.

BTW, the single target numbers should be infinitely more valid than any AoE analysis barring human error.

I honestly cannot understand why you are so angry with my suggestions. I haven't personally attacked you, I haven't pissed in your Cherri-Os, and I'm not trying to ruin something for you. Heck, these suggestions are mostly for a set that I don't even play since I stopped playing my stalker. Nothing I've proposed would make Staff overpowered or take considerable amounts of developer time. In reality, the main change I've suggested wouldn't impact balance much at all, and mainly make Staff's forms more equal.

People are analyzing the set under the proper metric daily on live.

I don't have anything against your suggestions, but your suggestions have been made under the false hyperbole that the set is an "underperformer" when the facts prove different. That is the issue.

During those periods of time you're not in combat either: +DMG also has no effect.


It does not. You assume the "optimal" attack chain is the one that generates the most damage over an unbounded amount of time. More recharge than that just makes attacks recharge and become available before the chain "needs" them. But having powers recharge faster than the "optimal" chain needs them means you're more likely to have alternate attacks available other than that nominally projected by the "optimal" chain. And that means you increase the likelihood that you can reduce overkill by selecting the lightest attack that will still kill the target.

If your "facts" are the anecdotal evidence that Staff can solo at +4/x8, then technically the opinions prove different.

Theoretically speaking, staff is one of the lowest performing non-legacy sets. Personally, I think the most balanced melee set is probably Claws, and would to see sets balanced around that as a medium (with the least balanced sets being Ice and TW at different ends of the scale). I think that single target should be more tightly balanced than AoE because it is key from levels 1-50 and there are relatively few options to improve it (and because it can be determined more easily than AoE). Also, because it is a weapon set, it should be held to a higher standard simply because the impact of redraw.

Are their sets worse than Staff? Sure. And those sets are legacy sets that desperately need a buff (I'm speaking specifically of Ice Melee and Energy Melee, and probably Battle-Axe or MA as well). For a new weapon set, it should be slightly above the average set by non-weapon legacy sets.