It still stings a bit coming to Darktide after Vermintide 2 where every staff had a different left click attack (except for the fireball and conflagration staves). Psykers get four staves and three of them do force bolt. Boring. Even if force bolt is versatile and decent, it’s boring.
Well, now we’ve got this big fancy new system of switching between weapon marks, and force staves have no weapon marks. So how about each staff type has three marks and each mark has a different primary attack? All the charge up secondary attacks would stay the same.
A list of things that could be primary attack, starting with all the Vermintide staves.
- Force Bolt, as it currently exists.
- Flame Burst, a short range puff of flame that ignites and knocks over enemies, as seen on the Inferno staff, and on Sienna’s Flamestorm staff
- Blast, big explosion directly in front of the caster, as on Sienna’s Beam Staff
- Shotgun, a blast of like seven low accuracy projectiles, as on Sienna’s Coruscation Staff
- Soul Seeker, a bolt that strikes a target then homes in on another nearby target, as seen on Sienna’s Soulstealer Staff
- Burst Bolt, a short barrage of three fast projectiles, as on Kerillian’s Deepwood Staff
Some other possibilities from my imagination:
- Strip Soul, a giant lightning bolt like I’ve mentioned in other staff threads. High damage, high range, high armor piercing, pinpoint accuracy, instant hit, but doesn’t home in, chain, or pierce, and generates like 45 peril per shot
- Spontaneous Combustion, snap fingers and somebody in front of you bursts into flames, basically a hitscan instant ignite target button, possibly with a small area of effect, a bit like a very fast much weaker Brain Burst that doesn’t target the head.
- Psychic Lash, short range shockwave attack that does low damage but high knockback in an area adjacent to and in front of the caster, like if you left click Smite and don’t hold it down at all, except with more peril generation and a several second cooldown
- Molten Beam, similar to the beam on Sienna’s beam staff, except it can’t be detonated by clicking the other button. Deals constant damage and builds constant peril, but has very low stagger.
- Terrify, a medium range cylindrical wave attack similar in shape to the inferno staff’s primary attack, except it deals no damage or knockback and doesn’t ignite. Enemies hit by the wave get a stack of Brittleness for like 10 seconds, and the wave does high Suppression. The wave projectile would probably look like a purple smoky cloud or something, maybe with little bits of warp lightning arcing over it, or little glowy skull faces.
- Astral Aim, burst of long range somewhat homing energy bolts (like assail shards but faster) that deal nearly no damage, but have a light amount of stagger, and highlight enemies they hit for the psyker for a few seconds.
These may or may not ignite enemies on hit. If they’re on the marks for the Inferno Staff, they probably should, but some of them could be on other staves and ignite stuff anyway, so that psykers have a few more options for applying Soulfire to people without needing to use the Inferno Staff.
So personally my lineup would be:
Voidstrike Mark 1 - Force Bolt
Voidstrike Mark 2 - Blast
Voidstrike Mark 3 - Astral Aim
Would give the voidstrike staff the option of trading its force bolt’s versatility for strong short range area damage, or a debuff that can make it easier to hit distant targets.
Voidblast Mark 1 - Shotgun
Voidblast Mark 2 - Burst Bolt
Voidblast Mark 3 - Psychic Lash
I would give the Voidblast staff two close range attacks since it’s a lot easier to use at short range than say the Voidstrike staff, so it feels like it should be generally a close range weapon. Shotgun (if it has decent armor piercing) could give it an option for quick elite killing, while psychic lash would keep it within the role of high disruption. Burst Bolt would give it a long range option, but one which is still alright against groups of enemies like its shockwave attack.
Electrokinetic Mark 1 - Strip Soul
Electrokinetic Mark 2 - Soul Seeker
Electrokinetic Mark 3 - Terrify
Strip Soul maintains the role of heavy target killer and adds the ability to snipe, while soul seeker allows some good sustained damage against hordes while being too slow for sniping, and Terrify allows for high disruption like the original Surge Staff used to have before that function was given to Smite.
Inferno Mark 1 - Flame Burst
Inferno Mark 2 - Spontaneous Combustion
Inferno Mark 3 - Molten Beam
Both Spontaneous Combustion and Molten Beam trade Flame Burst’s really useful knockdown for longer range. Combustion keeps area damage and adds easy target acquisition, and Beam trades area damage for better sniping of priority targets, but isn’t as high damage as other long range staves.
oh yeah also all staves should do shockwaves as their special action instead of that useless-ass melee attack that nobody uses.