Tanker Staff - Awful

Yes, I realize we all love Staff. I have a Staff/Elec brute at 50 and IO'd out and now a SR/Staff tank. I've run them on two identical missions. We have to be honest with ourselves:

Staff Fighting on Tanks is the worst melee set, damage-wise, period. Sky Splitter does so little damage you almost shouldn't keep it in your tray. Guarded Spin is GREAT, but every other power in the set, on Tankers, is so abysmally low on the orange numbers I almost quit a coalition ITF tonight because I felt useless. Bosses? Couldn't bring one down. Surgeons? Could aura heal through a full attack chain of EotS -> Guarded -> Splitter -> EotS. EB's? I felt them laughing at me

Please, someone, take a look at Tanker Staff and how it scales to level 50+ mobs. Buff overall, increase Sky Splitter damage, increase the buffs from Mastery... just do something. Staff doesn't need to be incredibly damaging; indeed, that would make it OP on brutes and scrappers; but Tanker Staff needs help. A lot.


Edit - This is actually the first 50 I might delete.

First and most important question: Did you have Form of the Body turned on?

There are many threads like this in all the melee forums and I think that's a shame. Thematically staff is about lots of little hits rather than burst damage. I suggest working on increasing your recharge.

I have 165% global after Hasten.

By the way, Staff on Brutes is excellent. Really fun, decent damage, good utility. On Tanks its so bad I'm going to delete this toon. At 50. I've never done that before.

I'm really not being alarmist, here. Something is wrong with Staff on Tanks. Maybe it's a misplaced damage modifier, maybe it's a scaling issue against +50 mobs, but Tanker staff is so awful end-game it makes me want to cry.

That wouldn't prove anything. I mean, unless our powers are slotted identically and we have the same primaries, there are just a whole lot of variables. Even if we have builds as close to identical as possible, there's still player skill involved.

And, even having a level 50 Invulnerability/Ice Melee tanker, I'm sure I don't do as much to full leverage Frost as I could.

Have you tried Staff against end-game mobs and content?

No, but looking at the numbers, it seems like Staff has a slight edge in single target damage compared to Ice Melee. It is close though.

Wouldn't Ice Melee edge out by being pretty much unresisted?

I am going to try not to be sarcastic here. Wait, no I'm not. Staff has been out less than a week..and you have TWO 50s with it. I am going to assume you were not one of those people who played it on Test (because if you did, you might have already been aware it sucks on tanks) so I guess quite a bit of AE was involved?

This is what happens..pl a shiny new set, find out it is not as perfect and shiny as it seemed when you made the toon and went to the AE building.

Also..you made a tank, wanting damage? Surely it is just ss/fire/em, maybe TW for tanker damage?

If you did not pl your toons, I totally retract my comments. Except for the one about tanker damage.

Not against Romans, which was your suggested fight.

I am still just not sure what you expected. I get that it is really bad, but still..its a tank set, that is all smashing damage, without build up. Its no ss, its no TW..

Still, it must be very bad to get that reaction from you. Any other staff takes got an opinion?

Just delete it and be done. Damage tanks are very specific and this would not be a recommended damage tank.

Look on teh bright side..at least your brute is good! Who wants a tank anyway!

I didn't use my attack chain. My Invulnerability/Ice Melee build is non-standard. It hits 45% Smashing/lethal defense with no toggles, but my attacks are 4 slotted with Kinetic Combats, so they're kind of underslotted for damage and recharge.

I made two common invention origin builds, Invulnerability primary. All attacks were slotted 1 acc/3 dam/1 end/1 rech.

Then I used NoChain (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=279838) and generated different lengths of attack chains.

I didn't account for Build-up or Form of the body, it doesn't use any power pool attacks, it doesn't account for redraw, and there are no set bonuses of any sort, so it's not a comprehensive comparison, but:

Results are displayed in the following format:
Number of attacks in chain, Single Target DPS Ice, Single Target DPS Staff.

6, 62.287, 67.255
7, 67.033, 70.833
8, 65.343, 69.427
9, 64.070, 72.206
10, 64.086, 71.579
11, 64.471, 72.961
12, 61.488, 68.676
13, 65.344, 68.270
14, 60.735, 67.750

It looks pretty close.

I think Ice benefits more from recharge bonuses, because Freezing Touch animates rather quickly and does a fair amount of damage, and every attack in Staff that does more damage than Freezing Touch has a longer animation.

On the other hand, even Ice beats Electric Melee for Single Target damage.

Which is just to say that there's more than one metric for comparing sets.

For AoE:

Ice Melee:
Frost: 72.07 base damage, 11 second recharge, 2.508 second activation, 10 foot range, 90 degree cone
Frozen Aura: 63.17 base damage, 20 second recharge, 2.244 second activation, 10 foot range

Staff:
Guarded Spin: 51.53 base damage, 8 second recharge, 1.98 second activation, 9 foot range, 90 degree cone
Eye of the Storm: 54.72 base damage, 17 second recharge, 2.772 second activation, 10 foot range
Innocuous Strikes: 73.85 base damage, 10 second recharge, 2.376 second activation, 9 foot range, 90 degree cone