Nobody uses the force staff melee attack. It’s so terrible and switching to a real melee weapon is so fast that literally the only time I’ve seen the staff melee used is when someone used it specifically to disrespect a lone poxwalker.
So the question is, what should it be replaced with?
I have three ideas and I’m not sure which I like best.
Idea 1: Shockwaves
I remember posting this idea elsewhere. It would be more useful and a lot cooler to be able to perform low damage high knockback shockwave attacks with the force staff special action button, pretty much the same as Necromancer Sienna’s scythe over in Vermintide. Might be neat to give each staff a slightly different kind of shockwave (purgatus’s could ignite, trauma’s could be bigger than the others, etc) but honestly just having any basic blast would be great.
Idea 2: Force Bolt
This would be kind of like giving staves a side-arm option. It would also free up the primary fire on Trauma, Surge, and Voidstrike staves to be something more interesting than force bolt. I’d give Trauma Staff a shotgun-style attack, and the Surge staff a sniper lightning bolt that does super high damage and has super high range, but also causes super high peril. Not sure about a new primary attack for the Voidstrike staff though since force bolt fits it pretty well. Maybe it could have that close range explosion attack that Sienna’s beam staff has.
Idea 3: Block
Being able to block with a staff would be vastly more useful than being able to smack people with it. I expect all four staves would have the same block and same push as force swords. Might also allow staves to have the Deflector blessing. Might be a bit cumbersome to push by clicking while holding the special attack button, but wouldn’t be impossible. And you could always just switch to your actual melee weapon.
Idea 4: ALL OF THE ABOVE!
DO ALL THE THINGS!
Clicking special action could shoot force bolts, clicking and holding special action could block, and finally left clicking while holding special action could be the shockwave instead of a push.
I’M A GENIUS
GIVE ME ALL THE POWERS
I WILL BE UNSTOPPABLE
I think balance wise it’s a bad idea to give it a real use thats often used. I would be happy if it was just a slightly better stagger move, sort of like the rifle bash some autoguns have. Not completely worthless as it does stagger melee stuff for a second, but also not really something you want to have to do.
hell yeah, why do vets get a bayonet charge and psykers get nothing?! staff specials should do different things like a big aoe thing for surge but at a very high peril cost or a rapid fire mode for void
Oo, flame wall, hadn’t thought of that. I’m thinking low damage and no stagger, but ignites enemies that pass through it. Come to think of it, walls might be a nifty thing to add to all four of them; some kind of lingering defensive thing, possibly balanced by having a high peril cost or being limited to only one at a time. Fire walls for purgatus, electric fences that stun enemies that pass for surge, explosive trap for trauma, and voidstrike can maybe have a slow field type thing.
And as for primaries, yeah it’s weird to me that three of the four staves have the same primary fire especially when we have all these Sienna staves over in Vermintide that they could just port over. Like nobody actually cares if they copy stuff from one game to the other, right? When they added Chaos Spawn to Darktide and added Bulwarks to Vermintide nobody was like ‘aw man I wish they’d stop copying stuff from the other game.’ At least I was like ‘sweet, the chaos spawn is here, except now I have a MACHINE GUN, HOW DO YA LIKE THEM APPLES’ or ‘awesome, bulwarks in vermintide except back here I have a RECKONER, WHO’S LAUGHING NOW, FATSO’
ps, dear fatshark please add the reckoner to darktide and make it a daemonhammer
As I’ve stated before, my vote is for the trauma staff to have the coruscation staff’s shotgun primary, and the surge staff to shoot a giant ultra high damage ultra high peril single target lightning bolt like a souped up version of the beam staff’s hold-right-then-left-click, and voidstrike can keep the current good all-rounder force bolt.
Id like to be able to block with the staff. I do sometimes use the staff poke but only in low difficulty private games with the wife just to derp around and bully some lone poxer for fun. Ive never felt the desire to use it in serious play.
FS could add the projectile blocking function of the Deflector blessing as new staff special (maybe blocking bullets only, not melee attacks).
This would make the special useful by applying an already existing function.
It would also open up a few more build options for the psyker class (regarding melee weapon use), since force swords with Deflector blessing would no longer be the only way to block bullets.
Not a bad idea. They really should have done something more interesting with the Stave special and primaries.
All kinds of things are possible. If we ever got marks, you might have Deflect on one mark, and something completely different on another one, despite being the ‘same’ type of staff.