Exactly what they did
I was really disappointed when they killed my favourite staff to make room for smite to take its place. I have been trying my absolute hardest to like it still after the changes but it just doesn’t feel good to use anymore.
For its new role as a single target dps staff, it takes way too many fully charged hits to kill elites and the stagger it provides now is not enough to offset this low damage in my opinion. I definitely feel like I shouldn’t have to use my entire peril bar to kill a single crusher or mauler with a weapon who’s role has been shifted to focus on killing elites.
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Surge staffs single target damage is great. But it could really use slightly more AoE around your target. I know it can hit multiple but the range is really small and should be expanded.
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Before the talent update, Surge Staff was okay in damage and amazing for stun.
Feels like the Talent Rework broke the old Surge Staff into Smite and the new Surge Staff, with Smite inheriting the wide stun and the new Surge Staff inheriting boosted damage.
But it does feel rather pointless. Instead of one powerful staff we now have two neutered versions that excel in one niche, but that’s not really self-sufficient or useful.
Smite is better than the Surge Staff, because the killing power the Surge Staff has can be easily outshined by the other staves and some guns. So the original point of the Surge Staff, being one of the few reliable stuns against anything, is gone.
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Thank you all for contributing. Although the thoughts vary, that is good. I’m hoping it makes some noise and creates traction to do something with the Staffs in providing different game play styles and identities.
Yeah the damage they gave to Surge isn’t nearly enough. If they’re not comfortable giving proper single target damage to a staff with auto-aim, then just remove the auto aim. I’m sure the majority would prefer if it actually did significantly more damage than the other staffs, considering it’s now essentially single-target.
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It’s pretty infuriating.
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Ah yes. The famous obscurity, outperforming 2 Kickback and one Rumbler Ogryn. And no, this is without fire talents, pure Surge and melee. This was just a chill hi int auric on damnation and is just one example of many. Surge is perfectly viable. I’ve earlier had a Psyker ingame that used it in the hard mode finale of the new map and did amazing.
Surge is honestly in an ok place right now. The only issue is that it always misses certain break points by a tiny margin. But then again if it’d hit those breakpoints I’d have done 700-800k in that above screenshot.
It’s not that Surge is trash, but a lot of weapons (kickback, plasma, columnus mk5, power sword, ogryn shovel, etc.) being a bit overtuned. Slap Warp Nexus & Flurry on it and watch it shred.
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Thank god they did not put the stupid scoreboard in the game, what a useless piece of information it is.
Yeah, every single weapon can be made to look overpowered selecting the right combination of map/party.
The damage is just a part of the discussion, even keeping it the same but concentrating it into 1 target instead of 3 would be enough.
And thank god you told us to use Warp Nexus and Warp Flurry, we would have been lost with all the options this staff has…
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Which is why I said I have loads more. It can dominate plasma vets, zealots and other psykers. Just tell me a map and composition and I’ll grab something for you.
The scoreboard also has valuable information. it’s mit just damage. Check the special kills, disabler kills, melee and ranged elite, as well as lesser enemy (horde). Surge works on all. What else do you want a weapon to do.
I swear to God some people just want an autoplay or auto win button.
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Yeah, you just have to have the kills on your scope instead of the objective. I’ve had plenty people like this in party.
I also happen to get top score but I really don’t give a damn about those because they don’t matter in the slightest.
The score board has a line for that. Machinery operated, but I digress.
Since you were yapping about surge only performing well in certain team combinations and maps have two different ones then.
So far you’re just screaming ‘gimme buff’ without any proof as to why. At least I’ve got some kind of indication to back up my claims that surge can and does well. All you have is ‘trust me bro’.
The top Psyker players I generally run into use a decent mix of Surge, Trauma and Purgatus. The only one that actually falls off right now is Void, which was hit too hard with a nerf bat in my opinion.
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I mainly dislike the inconsistent damage because of the random hit location’s health type values and how they nerfed the damage profile against armoured enemies. And the number of lightning jumps. At least it doesn’t cause headaches and nausea (mostly).
Does it not still stagger bosses and reliably open bulwark shields?
I have only played with it twice since the traitor curse pt1. Bulwark stagger works, no idea about bosses, but they kinda nerfed the weakspot cleave guaranted crit talent triggering as well as damage and suppression.
It takes a hell of a lot more shots to kill a Crusher now as well.
IMO the utility was pretty strong even pre patch 13 so I kinda doubt it’s in a terrible state now after still being net buffed from there 
I feel like all anyone cares about in balance discussions is DPS and any nuance in advantages and disadvantages gets thrown out early into the discussion.
I’d disagree. You definitely feel the loss of suppression. Gunner packs are much more dangerous now. Due to the 5 weakspots = crit talent nerf you’re also not as fast at taking out priority targets, thus requiring more hits and generating more peril. It honestly feels sluggish in a meta with a lot of OP builds and guns to me. Then again, I haven’t used it extensively for a long time so take that with a grain of salt.
The surge felt better when you were able to hit and damage more enemies at once while still doing ok damage and more damage to armoured (flak and carapace) enemies. It feels like a downgrade now where it deals full damage to one target and piddling damage on the jump to the other 1-2 targets.
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I wouldn’t mind the trash secondary damage if it forked and thus stunlocked 1-2 more enemies. That’s honestly a sensible buff that’d nudge it into a nice direction with more utility. Like a mini-mini-mini-smite.
Yeah, surge felt ok when the talent node from smite for +1 jumps applied to it.