[WiP] The Dark Staff

[zeus9860]

I suppose we could still use it as a Greater Snake Staff, rather than waste the Wizard Wars staff, but I've no clue what such a staff would do - save make bigger snakes... Dunno if I could use the snake model as some sorta astral projection attack that whips out from the staff and bites things.

If you want an honest opinion, i think you should stick with the summoning theme for the greater version. If it's called a "Greater Snake Staff", i think it would make sense for the staff to focus on summoning snakes to help you in battle. The meele part could act as a bite from a snake, so it applies poison that scales based on your affliction level, making it a strong poison at X level requirement and being a weak poison at earlier levels. The snakes themselves could also use upgrades based on your SC level, similiar to the undead summons. Making the snakes slightly stronger and different from low to mid and high tiers, with some proper scaling in usefullness for each tier. Could even go as far as adding a passive effect that helps the player and the enemy at the sametime, something like "You get poisoned from summoning a dark snake!", said poison can spread to nearby enemies, making them receive more damage from all sources for a moment, this also applies to the player, all enemies will deal increased damage for a moment.

Making it yet another affliction spell based staff would be redundant, more so when dark staff is somewhat recent and decent in its own way. Chances would be that this staff would become useless if it was offensive spell oriented, as we already have one staff of that kind in the same field. I know some people might disagree on this and want "NEW DAMAGING SPELLS NAO!!1!1!One" in the form of a new staff (i somewhat agree on the part of new spells, but in this case it's not the best approach), but honestly, the chances that the item will be of any use if that happens are pretty slim, i would rather see it as an utility weapon of sorts, like a support-role kind of thing and i think summons+passives are a decent approach to the item and players who want to experience something new (being closer to an actual summoner). This is all based on the currently existing spell oriented staves we have ingame, both fire and ice staves are lame and useless, unless you use potions to make them stronger, which nobody will bother with since there are much better elemental items available and one of the two staves has limitations to how you can use it (the meteor stuff, it's logical but it's also a massive downgrade to the item).

EDIT: Just had another idea for a passive effect, an aura similiar to the holy lance, that buffs the snakes for its duration, that are touching the aura. Might not be a bad idea, it's something new and summoner oriented.

 

[Kanta]

I agree that the current new "dark staff" should be made into its own weapon.

"NEW DAMAGING SPELLS NAO!!1!1!One" in the form of a new staff

I want damaging spells in the form of spells, not staves.

 

[zeus9860]

You won't be getting new spells in the form of spells. It has been stated multiple times before, any new spells you will see will be coming from weapons. In this case staves (i was actually one of the main people in the community to push this forward as a suggestion through caluminium back then). There are no plans for new spells untill the spellcasting gets reworked which has been on the to-do list for over a decade now i believe. So good luck with getting any of that stuff ingame without using staves or other magical weapons.

I'm just defending the fact that we don't need 2 affliction staves that use various damaging spells in the same type of damage, as one of the staves will more than likely be the main thing while the other one a collectors item. I would rather see something new applied to this staff.

 

[Kanta]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. By two affliction based staves do you mean the dark staff and a potential greater snake staff? Because if that's what you mean the dark staff is in no way on it's way out of use. It shoots a laser beam that recharges your mana.

 

[Thothie]

Well, the original idea behind the creation of the Dark Staff was that it was to be the upgrade to the Affliction XP gathering Snake Staff, which is for nubs.

If we were instead to make a Greater Snake Staff, I was thinking of maybe making a ghostly giant snake head come out of the staff and bite nearby enemies (perhaps passively), assuming I could work that out, in addition to larger snake summons, that yeah, maybe had a contagion or exploded or applied Defile, or... Something.

As for "no new spells", that's not *exactly* true, but yes, the whole spell tree needs to be redone from scratch, and rather than remove the old system, I was thinking of adding an additional one, so folks could use either or (and add that Earth line).

 

[zeus9860]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. By two affliction based staves do you mean the dark staff and a potential greater snake staff? Because if that's what you mean the dark staff is in no way on it's way out of use. It shoots a laser beam that recharges your mana.

Look at it this way, the dark staff is already good in its own way. Adding another affliction staff with damaging spells, what are the odds of it being any better than the darkstaff? Plus, we really don't need yet another affliction based staff for damage if the first one is already decent enough... So this is where my suggestion kicks in, instead of making a second staff that focuses on damaging spells, it focuses on buffs/debuffs and summons.

If we were instead to make a Greater Snake Staff, I was thinking of maybe making a ghostly giant snake head come out of the staff and bite nearby enemies (perhaps passively), assuming I could work that out, in addition to larger snake summons, that yeah, maybe had a contagion or exploded or applied Defile, or... Something.

As for "no new spells", that's not *exactly* true, but yes, the whole spell tree needs to be redone from scratch, and rather than remove the old system, I was thinking of adding an additional one, so folks could use either or (and add that Earth line).

That idea doesn't sound bad tbh, it's something new to the eye, and avoids the whole conflict of having 2 staves doing the samething in the sameway. At least it sounds like it would be more summon oriented which is nice.

Well it has been true so far, according to what you have been saying the past decade. If i'm not mistaking you avoid releasing new spells under the current system so that you won't have the problem of rebalancing/reworking everything again at a later date whenever this new spellcasting system is applied. It's logical and understandable. If something needs to be changed, adding more stuff to it is just going to complicate things long term.