Hey, here’s another thread - this time I actually have some neat ideas for replacing the bonk attack of each staff. Instead, give each staff some more versatility by allowing you to press the sp. attack button while charging, with a different utility.
Voidstrike: Fires a beam (essentially a single bullet) with very high damage, penetration, and finesse bonus, but poor crowd control.
Trauma: This one’s harder. My first thought was a mini-venting shriek thing, but you can do this already with its base charge attack. I don’t have any ideas other than that.
Purgatus: Copy Sienna’s Coruscation Staff from VT2. Long-lasting pillar of DoT.
Surge: Lock on to a single enemy, dealing massive damage over time and stunlocking them, but building peril extremely quickly.
Sorry to be all debbie downer on these staff special attack sessions but my first question is do you really expect to go from a little bonk to some powerful new effect and all else remains the same?
I get that it would be cool, but it seems like to balance the new effect you’d need to weaken some other parts of the staff. I’m not sure that’s been factored in adequately is all!
What would you change/rework about the staves to support these cool new abilities?
You know, you’re right. I never thought about the Implications™️this would have on staff power - they’re already the best option for Psykers, period, and this would only solidify that.
They should give the AoE on surge staff like Necromancer’s scythe in addition to making it only ever do weakspot or better damage (or just make it also 1.0x to limbs). Definitely agree that the other staves work well. I just want surge to not be awful.
As a certified lore nerd, I don’t want the bonk to be replaced. I actually want the Force Staves to function more like Grenadier Gauntlets, in that the melee is actually pretty effective which it is supposed to be. And of course this would go a lot nicer if the primary attack was switched up on a lot of the staves.
Have the melee take peril to use, and create a small version of the power maul stun. Maybe it only stuns 1 target, but can stun Crushers. Add 1 or 2 blessings to staffs where the melee applies brittleness like Can Opener, or even a blessing that gives +50% power to melee attacks. Just something to make the Force Staves at least somewhat feel like the powerful melee weapons they are supposed to be.
On a side note, the follow up melee attack on the Force Staves shouldn’t be that ridiculous and slow overhead wind up that it is right now.
I think they should be given a light (current attack), and a charged attack where there are some Warp-y stuff coalescing on the staff.
It’s also how I’d see a Pistol and Powerfist work, being able to either hit with the fist normally, or holding it long enough that the Power field is activated
I would imagine such alternate abilities would simply also generate peril, so they would add versatility without inherently adding more power.
But that brings up an interesting problem; how much versatility should a weapon have? If a weapon is Basically Good At Everything, it becomes an obvious pick over more specialized weapons.
Should an extra ability supplement the role of the staff, or should it compliment it? For example, I’ve suggested in other threads about this subject that the surge staff’s boring force bolt primary attack should be replaced with a gigantic long range lightning bolt that has perfect accuracy and does huge damage and armor piercing, but doesn’t home in, only hits one target, and generates like 45 peril, similar to the OP suggestion. This would compliment the surge staff’s role as an armor piercing anti-elite weapon (leaving aside any discussion about how good it actually is at it). A giant single target lightning strike would still be fitting that precision elimination role, just also add the utility of being able to snipe distant targets or do super high damage really fast to a big target provided you’ve got peril to spare.
However, giving every staff a shockwave like Sienna’s scythe would add a new role onto whatever existing role the staff has; now the staff has a little bit of crowd control at melee range. Personally I think that would be a good thing, because psykers could really use a bit better protection against melee enemies since their health is still really low, I’d certainly like that more than the boop they currently have, but it’s worth considering how it might tip the balance a bit if staves were useful at too many things.