The Voidstrike and Trauma Force Staffs in particular seem very low power with how long it takes to fully charge, and how much peril it results in. I rarely ever see them picked in games, the choices being narrowed down to the Surge or Purgatus ones instead.
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This is not true - almost every staff have their use, just need to pray RNG GODS to fing good one.
I fully agree with the Trauma Staff feeling underwhelming, the thing is clunky as hell.
Voidstrike is definitely usable though. The only real issue I have with it is that, there is a delay for your right click before you can fire a shot. The low charged shots in general do not deal much damage, but are useful for cc. That delay though is more than hindering in that regard.
I believe all staffs have that delay when starting the aim with your right click (similar to delay when ads with normal weapons) and if I am perfectly honest, I want it gone on all of them. It feels bad.
Other than that they all fullfill some functional niche more or less, but we definitely need one that is for sniping and one for armored targets.
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I feel at the very least the Trauma Staff shouldn’t build up 50% peril on a fully charged circle, perhaps reduced to 33% or so would make it more flexible.
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Trauma staff is truly garbage. Totally useless whatever the situation.
Maybe by halving the peril on charge attack and doubling the max area it could start becoming viable.
Else void staff outperforms it in every regard.
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If the Trauma staff simply caused it’s detonation where ever you aim the staff instead of having this awkward action-MMORPG ground target mechanic it would be amazing. Unfortunately the ground targeting makes it so awkward to use and limited that it’s just not fun.
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The trauma staff could possibly see more use if it was designed as a cone based push/knockback/slow staff.
One attack could be used in a cone to suck psychic energy from enemies and slowing them at the same time.
The other attack could expend the energy, generating peril to push them backwards, either backwards stagger and/or backwards knockback.
This would result in balancing peril between the two attacks, and also add useful elements of crowd control.
It would need to be balanced well though, as it would have the potential to be OP.
Or this could just be a new staff entirely and try a different approach for the trauma staff… maybe a slow heal applied to allies on it along with a slowing effect on it and no knockback…
Just a few thoughts…
Trauma Staff is trash
Voidstrike is trash on Heresy and above
Purgatus is amazing if you only have 1 zealot
Surge is great if you have 2 zealots.
Both Trauma and Voidstrike need to be buffed and all staffs need access to all the damn blessings instead of the current situation in which Surge and Purge doesn’t get access to anything that actually makes them… do more DPS… Instead they get access to blessings that just flat out do not work… The only one that actually works - is the one that let’s it be uninterruptible (sometimes, not always on Purgatus staff). The crit one per peril - herpederp it increases melee damage (???) and neither can use weak spot peril reduction (like what the heck, why even have it?!)
If we actually had:
- Functional blessings that all staffs had access to
- All 4 staffs being viable
Then Psyker could live with the current mish-mash of feats that doesn’t really work with their current role which is to… Kill Hordes or CC/clear out Scabs
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Trauma staff is cool, but very pointless and underwhelming. It would help immensely if the dmg hit more than a single enemy. If it did fall off damage from the center of the thing, that would be better than simply single target with pushback. Since no one using it would assume it only does single target damage, very unintuitive.
I don’t see why you think voidstrike is underwhelming as I find that to be the only useful staff, the others are way to dependant on your teammates.
Though you might think it’s underwhelming because your are fully charging it. That is simply not worth it.
You should instant shoot instead of charging it or only charge it to 50%, that seemed to me to be the most effective thing since it’s dmg seems very rng and the upside of throwing a lot of them means more stagger on groups.
Spamming void made me feel more useful in mission than any of the other staffs, simply because I can use void at any range and from safety and it allows you to stagger/interrupt the most dangerous enemy, random ranged mobs, won’t be able to do that with the other staffs.
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Trauma Staff is very much like Sienna’s Conflag staff in VT2. I would say Conflag staff is one of more useless staves to use though. The ground targeting mechanic works betterish in VT2 due to how levels are designed, the color of the ring vs everything else, and enemy AI focusing on getting into melee combat. It still feels pretty clunky to use effectively though.
Trauma pretty much suffers from the same negatives but they are much more pronounced. That light blue circle gets lost in the sea of dark colors and geometry making it super annoying to target. The Peril generation compared to other staffs is much higher vs the effect being generated. The only effective way to use the staff is to pop little tiny explosions with it as fast as you possibly can. Taking the time to actually aim and charge is just not worth it. Because dmg is so low and the CC effect is a pronounced knock back the staff can actually be detrimental to your team when they are trying to fight in melee. Random not dead bodies falling all over makes it hard for your Ogryn and Zealot to dodge around and actually hit anything. Trauma needs some work to be made viable in anything after Malice.
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Void doesn’t do jack on heresy and higher… Can’t kill Poxwalkers unless you fully charge it, can’t kill Dregs or Scabs even on a full charge - all it does is spread mobs all around and that’s bad for both Vets and Preachers when you constantly knock enemies out of their shots and/or their melee range.
However, Purgatus will wipe an entire horde without it ever getting close including the elites and Surge will kill Scabs on a full charge and stun all specials/elites in the game - those you can’t reach with Surge you can BB even if it doesn’t kill them it’s better than obstructing a Vet from killing them…
- Granted both requires you to not be a bad Psyker in the first place.
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Haha, yeah I agree it is less effective on rank4s.
They really messed up the effectiveness of staves on Heresy and Damnation.
In Malice you can carry like a pro with a well rolled Void staff. Full charges can delete hordes and keep specials staggered until dead. You think to yourself “wow this is a really great weapon, I should try Heresy”. During your first mixed horde with specials you realize you are shooting exploding cotton balls at everything and noting is dying but everything sure is spread out all over the place.
Surge and Purge really are the only viable staffs for high difficulty play in quick match. I love Surge(when its fixed) because Lightning is always the coolest “element” to play as a “spell caster” and that hard stun is invaluable. Purge I have a love hate relationship with. Mostly because at 200 hours I’ve still yet to even see a decent rolled staff but also because what it does well it does really well but what it lacks it really lacks in certain team comps. I’ve had games with 2 flamers and an Ogryn mixed with my Purge staff and we just got wrecked hard because no one could take anything out at range without me having to channel BB over and over and over which is just not effective.
Our currents staves need some work. I would love to see more unique primary attacks that work off the base mechanic of the staff. Surge could shoot a ball/bolt/stream that applies a strong stagger and DoT, this would allow you to focus down on a priority target with CC instead of relying on the pure RNG targeting of the secondary. Void primary I wouldn’t touch much. Trauma could use a lobbed projectile with high dmg and a super small AoE.
So weird that they copy pasted a bad staff like Trauma almost straight from Sienna but then failed to copy paste staff mechanics that people actually enjoyed using. You can still have a “Beam” staff and a “Bolt” staff without it being a total copy of Sienna.
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Trauma is currently bugged (anyone surprised?). It deals approx. 2 times less damage than it is supposed to. I do think that peril cost should be reduced and the epicenter area increased by, at least, two times.
Voidstrike is not useless. It can be very efficient on damnation if you know how to use it well and have good stats. But it does feel just… less fun than others, so a minor buff would be welcome.
Every staff should have at least one blessing that procs off full charge or charge level.
I love fully charging staves. I find it rewarding to unleash really powerful attacks on a delay that reward me for foresight and positioning. Any game where I can get a weapon that rewards me big for predicting where the enemy would be and being ready for them with a charged or spooled attack is my favorite in shooters. But there isn’t enough of a reward to fully charging staff abilities most of the time. Rending Shockwave is missing from the Voidstrike staff, which is stupid. Generally there should at least be one blessing in there that just goes “More damage on full charge”.
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It’s the conflag staff all over again.
You don’t need to fully charge the trauma staff.
Bop with quick charges on elites to stagger them.
Instantly blow up poxbursters even with a minimum charge.
Blow up huge swathes of the horde with bigger charges.
Save swarmed teammates by using it on them.
I do think it could use a minor buff (Less peril generation would help) but I don’t think it’s nearly as bad as people are making it out to be. It’s a control staff. Less powerful than the surge but much more controllable.
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The trauma staff is a cool concept, but poorly executed. It’s a worse version of the Voidstrike staff in every way. I personally like using the Voidstrike staff, I like using it to bombard swathes of enemies from long range. If they buff the damage on it, it can very easily be an S-tier weapon.
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Yea, the problem with the Trauma staff is the awkward ground targeting and extremely limited range.
What we don’t have but really should have is a staff that simply shoots a big explosion where you point it, or launches one on a trajectory. The Voidstrike staff is super fun and cool, but it’s more like a cannon where in order to hit the most targets you have to line them up. It doesn’t perform well for blowing enemies out of cover or hitting them from behind to circumvent shields and such. The Trauma staff does all that, but is crippled by its weird and limited targeting.
According to the devs it’s the tooltips that are wrong, not the staff damage. Disappointing.
Dev response:
Aight, nevermind my statement about the trauma then. It is pointless indeed.
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