Im trying to find good use for bolt staff. But it feels very unwieldy and awkward.
LMB fire is fine. Gives small knockback, has good rate of fire, mows down the horde.
I have objections about charge attack though.
It’s supposed to be sniper weapon. YET, it lacks zoom, which forces it to be used at mid range at best. Or get lucky.
Secondly, dmg is too low for it’s charging times.
Lonbows can bodyshot SV’s given good rolls.
Why the only anti-armor sniper weapon in wizards arsenal can not?
Thirdly, it’s awkwardly slow. The time it needs to connect to a target at longer ranges is atrocious, and aiming the bolt is very unrewarding, as enemies tend to move quickly or change posture.
Im perfectly fine with increasing overcharge cost, but increase it’s damage or armor pen and travel speed of the spear. And possibly ad zoom.
Otherwise it has just rapid fire for horde, and uncharged spear spam also, for horde.
It´s only really useful on the Pyromancer. Stack crit and get the “overcharge remove on crit” trait and you can hold LMB the whole game, as long as you hit something. It´ll grant you 15k + dmg etc.
Btw you can go for 30/40% cdr on your ultimate and even bodyshots with the staff on armored targets (CW/SF) will count crits and will load your ultimate + remove your overcharge.
The RMB shot is quite useless. You´re right, the dmg - heat - cast relationship is pretty bad, but i won´t call it an “anti-armor” sniper. RMB is just made for specials far away and Sienna is strong af so or so. No need to buff their staff´s.^^
That’s why i didnt say “buff”.
Change.
Sienna doesnt have any reliable anti armor options.
Either give her a AP melee weapon or change staff a bit.
it it’s quite useless, then we both agree it needs a change.
So far, i cant call it anti armor too.
Im well aware of that, but it doesnt outshine other staffs in any way.
Fireball kills crowds and fully specced can oneshot SV with dmg+tick
Beam is for ult recharging and horde stagger, better than bolt
Conflag is for all unit stagger/ stun and breaking up density
Flamestorm is for deleting hordes and stacking hp
And finally bolt, which lacks it’s niche. Even as special deleter you usually need 2 bolts unless lucky crit, so it’s mediocre at that.
IF there were no “scrounger” or “conservative shooter” traits i could say its weaker intentionally because of “unlimited” ammo, but a of know, again, I dont see the real use for it.
I would prefer any AP buff for the Flamesword/sword , but it´s not really that Sienna need more AP.
She has the best waveclear in the game on all 3 careers and shines VS everything but CW´s. Especially a Pyromancer can melt down everything. (thx to the ultimate)
The unchained gets dmg . - buffs and only the BW got real problem VS sick armor.
Every staff got its “specials”. Yes it´s not that “WOW”, but atleast you can snipe specials anywhere. You could compare it with the Beam just the other way.
Beamstaff:
Beam - Midrange/Longrange and you´ve to stay at your position
“Shotgun” - Shortrange
Boltstaff:
Bolts - Shortrange/Midrange and you´ve more mobility with it
Arrows - Longrange
It´s probably just not your playstyle?
As long as i can kill everything with the boltstaff - pyromancer, i wouldn´t say it needs a buff. If you think it´s “that useless”, i would call out “nerf the others”. Especially the Pyromancer can run any stuff and burn out every map.
FS just have to fix the careers a lil bit and maybe make the weapons more “unique for a career”.
Fireball - BW only
Bolt/Beam - Pyro only
Flamestorm - Unchained only
We could talk about “Bolt is useless on BW” for example, but as long as there is a Pyromancer and FS don´t make any traits like “if you have xy equipped, then…”, i don´t see the need of balancing her staffs.
Agreed.
Especially flamesword first strong attack, that does 0 dmg +3 dot dmg. And with windups/ opening times of these attacks you wont fit the other, damaging one often enough.
(So its “just” 13 strong hits per SV or 47 attacks vs CW)
Kind of disagree. IB has flamethrower and more sensible melee, Footknight on cdr charge has basically panic button for free clear, Merc is better than ever thanks to recent both 2h swords changes. And they’re not as glassy as non-unchained Sienna. So it’s comparable.
Waystalker ult is stronger, and doesnt fail when used short range nor cancels when hit/pounced on end cast.
Unchained ult is just “overcharge panic button”, because dmg barely kills base rats.
BW ult is getting better, but still a barrel or pebble is impenetrable barrier for Aqshy.
Well, exactly. They’re too similiar. And I’d like high overcharge high dmg to be more highlighted on fully charged spear. If not, then at least make it faster.
Or change +atk speed on overcharge to +dmg per charge, because attack speed doesnt spread to staves, and rushing to wave to make use of it is asking for trouble.
Re: the RMB attacks, I agree. I like head-hunting in general and it’s disappointing that Sienna’s sniper weapon 1) has no zoom, 2) is slow as hell and 3) doesn’t hit all that hard.
If 3 wasn’t the case then there would be this kinda fun trade-off between the challenge of nailing headshots with no zoom and having to lead targets vs. the effectiveness. But no.
I’m not sure what the best direction is to take Bolt Staff (add zoom and speed? add damage? bring back some homing?) but the charged shots definitely seem like they’re in a no man’s land right now.
Nice start.
( shall I give you benefit of the doubt and adress you as God Emperor of Aqshy from now on?)
Never in entire conversation I wrote about sucking with it.
For me, it feels off, especially compared to it’s V1 equivalent.
Which was, you know, THE sniper weapon. I’d like this to continue.
Minus the homing aspect, as it was too easy.
And nothing would change except it could actually be used at long range reliably.
Or it would require even more finesse, when you could only pass 2-3 charged bolts for full meter.
Even more skill/reward ratio.
Bolt is definitely lacking boss damage. But it has very good horde clear with charged attacks when stacked or with light attack spam when skattered and I don’t actually think the charged attack damage is that low. With right setups, you can take out stormvermin very quickly even with bodyshots and it is still useful against CW. Charge speed is alot better with BW, obviously, but it generates ALOT of overcharge which BW can handle not as well as Pyro or Unchained. But I do think it is alot better than its reputation. I use it quite alot as of late and I don’t feel that much difference than when using other staffs - other than boss damage.
But it is not an AP weapon at all.
Please do not confuse light weapon that has vertical, easy-to-headshot 1st light attack and 1st strong attack with a weapon that pierces armour.
An axe is AP weapon, or a pick.
If you aim anywhere else but the head, your 2h mace will simply bounce off, therefore is not an AP weapon.
And personally, I feel the mace is overused, as it’s currently the only weapon capable of reliable head-boinking.
Boltstaff has also the distinct advantage of allowing you to reliably kill armoured targets with your ranged, allowing you to make use of weapons like the flamesword.
Not as good as Longbows/Crossbows/Firearms.
Again, without ammo regen traits I’d say its fine, it would just be spam vs effectiveness ratio.
But with those traits it’s spam vs spam, and staff is on the less effective side.
it’s not
when others can do it way faster (charge+travel speed) or with smaller effort (Bolt cant one-shot enemies).
It is not far away, though. SV die with two medium charged secondaries on body or one medium charged headshot. That is reasonably fast. The staff does have surprisingly high damage drop, though.
Except that it can. Very much so. You can one shot body shot marauders, you can one shot headshot stormvermin and it absolutely obliterates hordes, probably on the same level as fireball staff or beamstaff shotgun (imho even better) at a safer distance. I don’t know what you are talking about.
Bolt staff is quite workable at the moment, but not at its (apparently) intended purpose as a sniper staff. It’s the only staff to reliably damage CWs (with fully charged bolts), its fast shots work well enough against specials and hordes, and low-charge bolts clear hordes. It suffers from one design flaw and one bug that both make it hard to use as an actual sniping weapon, though. The design flaw is the (already mentioned) lack of zoom. That’s pretty much needed to be accurate at longer distances, especially if headshots are wanted (and they are). The bug is that charge time reductions (especially from BW) don’t show in the animation, and thus your precious visual cues for charge stage mean nothing.
So to make it better at what it’s supposed to do, a fix to the charge time reduction visibility is needed (same goes for at least Fireball staff also), as is a zoom function, possibly tied to charge level or (preferably) using the Weapon Special button (a sadly underused mechanic still, btw). At that point true balance can be looked at. Afterwards maybe reduce its charge time slightly, if needed balanced by heat production. I think then Bolt Staff would be able to be used for its intended purpose in addition to its current somewhat generalist form.
I agree. I found bolt rather lackluster as well. It’s usable, but generally performs worse than fireball or beam on pyro in the major categories (infantry, armor, boss, single, and aoe). And conflag is just the hands-down winner on BW – charge speed/conflag is actually a suprising amount of fun.
Bolt also doesn’t have the utility of beam on pyro – instant temp health refill and ult recharge by weaving the beam wiggle and RSS into normal play. But beam is just broken as hell, so that’s not really a fair comparison – although a very vocal minority on this forum doesn’t seem to think there’s nothing wrong with beam. /facepalm.
EDIT: Maybe if the charged attack on bolt cost less overcharge, did more damage per charge tier, and had a zoom, that would even out bolt a little. It would make it better vs. armor at least.
Beam isnt truly broken, as it’s just mostly overspecialized in RSS.
It’s literally THE CDR staff.
Wiggling dmg is laughable, especially with RSS trait instead of Hunter.
It has reliable breakpoints for trash (20-25% vs Infantry lets you blastshot rats to oblivion, and fanatics require blast+tick)
It’s “meh” on bosses.
it’s great pointer of specials.
In V1 it was bosskiller, because the longer you held beam on 1 target, the faster the ticks came.
If this mechanic is restored, people stop wiggling it for CDR and focus on dps.