Remove stagger from beam staff

Yeah, it’s a small nerf. But it would remove any crowd control from the staff. No stagger on headshots, none on crits, none on shotgun, nothing. Make it a pure DPS staff and leave it at that.

So there are people out there who think Beam staff is still OP :face_with_raised_eyebrow: … dude, have you seen a FIreball staff in action? Beam staff is so yesterday, and everyone is now running with it. At least that what I see playing pub. Yes, Beam staff is still popular, but it’s 2nd at best together with Conflagration staff.

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Not sure how these two sentences go together…

no headshot reward?

no close-ranged safety net with high heat cost? (though admittedly still rather low cost)

Can’t say I agree with this, although removing it from beam and only making it work on some enemies (most notably some specials) wouldn’t be a bad thing but removing it entirely just sounds like a request based purely on ‘‘I don’t like people using it so let’s nerf it’’

Where are your arguments to ground your request for a nerf?.. This is a very empty post for such a large request, not trying to make a fool out of you but I’d really love to hear more reasoning and so forth.

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Shotgun should have it’s stagger left where it is now that’s for sure. Beamstaff is not very strong atm, and it’s not easy to use well.
But i would definelety remove stagger from beam itself, because it just makes enemies like Globs really annyoing to target, and even elites entering stagger state usually dodge the beam for a split-second causing right-click blast damage to drop significantly, unless you are doing it from the front. Also stagger pushes them back, so it usually causes you to beam an enemy that was behind them.
And btw, removing stagger alltogether from a weapon is not a “small nerf”, and it is not really needed anyway, because beam is not the strongest staff for Sienna.

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Removing stagger altogether would be way too much. I suspect it would remove half the staff’s utility right away.

Haven’t played on it in a while, but the way I see it, the Beam is still Sienna’s most versatile staff, and may be slightly stronger than others because of that. After all, the quickplay mechanic (and lack of equipment change at map start) strongly encourage people to take the versatile option to play. But the only overpowered aspect of it is how well it synchronizes with Pyro’s heightened crit rate, and enables constant Flaming Skull spam or infinite shooting through that, depending on the Trait chosen. That isn’t the staff’s problem, though, but that of the high crit rate. Same could be done with Flamewave, with far less general utility and range.

No. Beamstaff is fine as it is. It rewards skilled play with boons and can let really good players min max to levels that enable them to handle most threats with ease. Most Ranged weapons are fine now for this reason as well. Hagbane needs something done to but arguably that’s also in an alright spot.

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To be able to handle most treats with ease, is that what we want?
If you mean a really really good player can handle most treats with ease, then I agree. But if this is directly related to beam staff, then I think I disagree.

CC is the entire point of Beam Staff. Removing it would make the staff a complete dud. It’s fine as is. It does very little damage, killing slower than almost every other ranged weapon in the game.

Also, the beam doesn’t stagger most elites (only shielded SV because everything staggers them no matter what). The charged burst or blast does. This means it takes skill to juggle multiple unless you’re PBAOEing in which case you’re at risk regardless.

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that kinda untrue, well, at least in my experience it staggers everything but CW. The first and second tick on beam, that do almost no damage and apply no dot do not stagger that’s true, but the third and the following ones stagger elites very well. I actually think it would be better without it, as it would actually allow to reliably hit a good charged blast for the side, if you have good aim.

That is still true, because you have to keep a beam on enemies(elites mostly) for some time before it actually starts to stagger.

The time requirement for what you’re describing is slower than the time it takes any other class to shoot the same enemy with any other weapon, which would also stagger it to the same degree. Yeah, beam can “lock” some enemies but only via focusing them exclusively.

If the stagger on beam is in any way adjusted the weapon becomes pretty trash. At best it’d just be the “shotgun” staff because you’d be able to beam for all of 2s before having to switch. It’d also be mad unsafe in that being able to twitch-stagger a mob near you while you’re tunnel-visioned is pretty critical to the weapon’s versatility. I agree gasrats are dumb like that but meh, it’s the rat that needs fixing if anything but tbh that design adds to the challenge.

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