Speaking as a Sienna main, I hope they don’t overnerf the beam staff (but they probably will, since that’s what happened repeatedly in VT1.) When that happens, if some of the other staffs don’t get a significant buff at the same time, Sienna will have ZERO decent weapons as the beam is the only one she has now. She’s supposed to be using the staff most of the time - that’s why she doesn’t have any good melee weapons.
I do agree the beam staff is overpowered, but there seems to be a general problem with ranged weapons due to how many characters can run with practically infinite ammo builds. You complain about Sienna sucking the fun out of games by killing everything before you can get to it, but I see elves do that quite often too.
In any case, I think it would be fair to potentially increase the heat generation of the beam staff, and reduce the spammability of the shotgun blast by making it a charged attack like all the other staffs. The damage isn’t exactly high now but rapid firing it makes that a non-issue. Another potential change would be to remove the primary fire blast entirely, but increase the beam damage a bit to compensate. This would retain the ranged ability but prevent it from rapidly killing specials and performing long-distance staggers.
As for the other staffs, the fireball and conflagration primary fire is too inaccurate to be useful, conflagration charges too slowly for what it can accomplish, bolt staff is just plain inferior to the beam in all respects, and I don’t even know what the flamestorm staff is supposed to be for. It’s like a worse flamethrower and makes Sienna melee range only.
The one other thing to mention is that the vent on crit trait and Pyromancer’s overcharge-clearing ability may be a bit too powerful right now. Those just exacerbate the problems.
had to put the rest of the quote in as the context matters here. i’m sorry but at this point i can think of no non snarky way to put this , the error here is in either your reading or comprehension. because its not an analysis.
really impressive over defensiveness though good job on that. and best of luck in the future balance patches.
I didn’t pretend anything. waystalker and bounty hunter benefits from a tank, but they have FAR BETTER melee weapons than Sienna. handmaiden and shade, witch hunter and zealot don’t really need tanks, they are already tanky or mobile enough.
if you think the game is about “competing for kills” then you have a bad analysis of the game. My legendary groups don’t compete for kills. We work as a team to beat the crap out of the map. we win. we have fun. Our tanks tank and our dps dps. If you think the game is only focus on range shooting then you haven’t seen high level play.
If you think the game is anything like COD, then you’re dead wrong pal. You’re just using that word because you think it is some sort of insult. If you hate it so much then just leave. Goodbye. Cya. You aren’t making valid or constructive criticisms, you just want to play a different sort of game. V1 is waiting for you. Good luck.
Indeed it may be a better idea since we already got the flamethrower staff like you mention.
The difference with the bolt staff would be that you stagger special before killing them, so better special control imo and maybe less ff. And way easier to kill shielded SV with beam.
I’m a little torn about that as a data point – on the one hand, it suggests that, because it can be done at all, the build is broken. And there might be some truth to that, but it doesn’t really capture what 99% of the player base is capable of. In your mind, is it fair to say that if any build allows a player to complete a solo run on legend, then it is evidence that that build is inherently broken?
With that said, it’s worth paraphrasing what the expert player said about the staff:
The exploit was centered around the heatsink trait, which he said wasn’t as strong on any of the other staves. As counter measures he suggested:
Increasing the heat generation of the beamstaff
Reducing the knockback effect that it has on armored enemies
This strike me as reasonable suggestions for fine-tuning what is currently too powerful.
Allowing you to solo run is not because of the staff, j sat is a really good player, but the solo run shows that the staff has no weaknesses and can be spammed a lot.
He did solo run with swiftbow spam ( thanks to ultimate giving 50% ammo instead of 20% ) but you can see that swiftbow take 2 to 3 headshot to kill special which is clearly its weakness, horde has to be kited way more than with beam staff.
Once the ultimate will get fixed it will be way harder to do what he does with swiftbow since you will run out of ammo faster.
Dont know if you noticed as well but beam staff is probably the best ranged weapon to take down shielded SV.
This could be a good start to balance the staff, heatsink trait is a bit too strong on bolt staff too with left click, the trait should maybe be tune down a bit. It should not proc for each enemy hit ( that is what happens with shotgun beam and flamethrower, you crit multiple enemies and you get a full heat reset ) it should only proc one time per attack or tick.
I fully agree with just about everything you said.
Overheat needs to be “tuned” a bit on this staff. I’m for a crit change but I prefer small changes a little at a time rather than a ton of changes. Increase the overheat timer on it, see where it stands. If it is still overpowered adjust crit.
I’m not normally for nerfs… but the BW has other staffs that are good… this one is just insane.
How about you buff the other staff weapons before you nerf the ones that work? You only see 2 on Legend right now. Beam and Bolt. Buff what is not working, rather than nerfing what is, thanks.
It’s not. If anything heat generated by this staff needs to be toned down coz the heat it generates is crazy, and now this staff works only if you sacrifice all your other talents for heat reducing ones. Even with +10% crit quite often it comes dangerously close to “red” overheat, and you have to pause, and the closer it gets to it the slower the bolt stave is which balances it out on its own. Your nerfs to the trait will make it almost useless.
+
Need I remind you that the bolt stave unlike the beam stave is bad when it comes to the armored storm enemies, especially the ones with the shield, it is worse thna the beam when it comes to killing hordes and it doesn’t have aoe knockback.
Honestly, the Beam needs to be more ramped up longer sustain = more damage its propose should be the boss shredder then it already is meaning more time Lazering to get up to that good damage meaning more heat spent
Bolt is pretty good with the right set up though beam does everything bolt does and more you I’d rather bolt rmb had some minor homing on it so it can fill the “special killer” role if both true flight bow and bolt had this they wouldn’t have been so "bad "if you still had to aim close to the mob to hit it that’s not bad they fill a good spot for people in high difficulty that don’t wish to FF and makes your shot count even if less damage if its 100% hit rate that’s pretty good
the staffs are less of a problem though Pyro’s kit is crazy strong the crit to overheat ratio is what makes her dps godlike should have gave her a damage buff instead would make it so more BW want to stay at 50-75% heat for damage and they would move in and out of range/melee which means they have to manage their resource in order to truly min-max
and her other careers have too little to be worth their salt for the roles they are suppose to fill I forget Battle wizard is even a thing because its pretty much a shitty pyro
The players suggesting that Sienna has only one viable weapon currently are what is really wrong with her at the moment.
The Bolt and Conflagration staves are perfectly viable on Legend. The Flamestorm is definitely a support weapon since you won’t do much more than horde clearing. The Fireball doesn’t do anything that isn’t done better by every other staff, and never has.
I’ll certainly agree that the Beam staff is OP and needs a serious nerf, but I rarely see people use it effectively. Most people site in the back and hold LMB into a horde that could be cleared in two shotgun blasts. I would have the beam nerfed such that it is once again an un-popular option. I’m tired of being burned by inexperienced players trying to “help” me kill a lone clanrat.
Side note: Pyromancer Active ability needs a much longer cooldown, that thing is way too spammable.
We used flamethrower staff the other day to do a legend deed with upgraded enemies and more horde spawning which made horde way tougher and it helped a lot more than beamstaff.
So yeah other staff are great they just have weakness like every weapon should, while beamstaff dont really have one in normal play.
Things that I considered staff a little bit OP are…
Damage from explosion at beam tip is too high IMO, in VM1 we need to headshot with this thing 2 times to kill sv in cata but if we have hawkeye its only 1 time (or not? Im not sure)
But right now this explosion at beam tip is too high to the point that we can spam this to kill boss. IMHO this thing should be decrease a bit
Alt-fire shotgun blast damage is too high and too effective to the point that we can change name from Beam Staff to Shotgun Staff and I believe that many ppl dont have any objection against it.
IMO, this alt-fire should be use as a quick CC, not a tool for anti-horde. Right now beam staff is… anti-horde/anti-special/anti-boss/anti-elite/CC weapon
CC and kill horde much more effective than fireball,conflag and flamestrom
Kill special more effective that bolt staff cuz doesnt has projectile travel time
And can deals highest boss damage far more superior than Shade from range while Shade need to go melee for backstab
After playing on legend a bit, I think I’m going to take back my previous comments. I think the beam staff is fine where it is. Yes it’s a jack of all trades weapon, but that’s kinda what Sienna’s for. It is pretty useless against full armor though. Fatshark should be looking more at buffing the other staffs than nerfing beam.
There are other weapons that outclass it in each category - flamethrower’s much better at horde clearing due to significantly longer range and higher damage, Kruber’s longbow does more damage to bosses (though beam is still very strong here, at least against non-armored bosses,) swiftbow is better at ranged horde clearing, and plenty of weapons are just as good at sniping specials. The easy availability of near-unlimited ammo makes these weapon choices even stronger.
The only thing beam really excels at is ranged and close range CC, which I think is a good niche for it. Being able to stunlock plague monks (though not easy and building up overcharge fast) and taking down shield stormvermin easily is where it really shines.
If you speak about versatility then beam staff should be worst than the other staff at any particular role which isnt the case atm, it is the best special sniper and best boss killer ( except against armored boss ), best CC staff against elite.
So it deserve a nerf to be on par with the other staff.
Lets take this example to the halberd, which is probably one of the best melee weapon right now.
It is versatile, but what makes halberd op is its that it does the job as good as a hammer which shouldn t be the case. Halberd deserve a nerf on the double attack after push, it should do only 1 overhead and not 2 imo, because right now as long as you got shields it is better than hammer or mace.
This would make hammer better against armored, swords better at horde cleaning, halberd will be versatile and with a longer reach but less effective than other weapons at certain roles.
