Staves?

[EZ_Drachan McFeyer]

My Luri Nightshade is Lvl10 atm with Thrust7 and CS8 (if I remember right). With a Dmg4.2 piercer in main and a Dmg3.6 (or so) piercer in offhand and first deadly poison on both weapons I was able to solo yellows.
Now I bought a staff (Dmg4.4) just to see what happens since it's not a trainable skill. To my surprise it works much better then the piercers.
Now the question: Is that just because I'm still low-lvl or is piercing just a waste of skillpoints?

..a pretty confused
Drachan

[EZ_Balor Gafdan]

Hell I got whacked by an Infiltrator the other night.. if not.. friars have stealth..or I was lagged and my GeForce3 Ti 500 sucks arse, ROFL This was before our pre-patch uberness btw. Balor Gafdan Nightshade of Guinivere
What life brings, is it ours to take?.
Adreneline feeds my soul, feeds my need
Kiss the blades edge I hold for thee. Silence....I Am A: Chaotic Good Half-Elf Thief Ranger

Find out What D&D Character Are You?

[Lisboa]

Staves aren't very good. You get a damage variance of 25%-125% because you have zero skill in it. It may look like it does significantly more damage than your thruster, however this is just due to the long delay. If you put zero points in thrust and put those points in CS and envenom, then staff might be a reasonable route to go.

[EZ_Drachan McFeyer]

True..the damage range is wide, but from what I know when using CS style it doesnt matter how high piercing/slashing/whatever skill is except CS skill which determines the damage of the style. A 2hand staff makes way more damage and the high delay isnt really important for a style-combo or better say it doesn't interfere the usage of the style-combo. When CS-style fails a well-specced pierce skill might be better, but shouldnt CS do as much damage as possible so you dont get in trouble of long fights?
I might be wrong, but thats why I'm asking ;)

Drachan

[EZ_Balor Gafdan]

I was under the impression, as well as most of the shades i"ve talked to ..

Critical Strike is a Three Way Spec...


Critical Strike
piercing / slashing
Stealth - Our positional moves require us to be stealthed


So.. with that said.. not only does piercing raise damage output, it also helps your critical strike spec.
I for one recommend you keep your weapon melee skill AT LEAST half spec. You'll begin to notice the variance at the higher levels. Honestly, level 10 isn't enough to notice the CS/PIERCE variance. Balor Gafdan Nightshade of Guinivere
What life brings, is it ours to take?.
Adreneline feeds my soul, feeds my need
Kiss the blades edge I hold for thee. Silence....I Am A: Chaotic Good Half-Elf Thief Ranger

Find out What D&D Character Are You?Edited by: Balor Gafdan at: 2/27/02 2:07:35 pm

[EZ_Zadok Baccarat]

Pierce/Thrust/Slash/Blades, whatever, has a definite effect upon your CS style damage. The CS styles don't determine the damage by themselves, they modify the damage done on the hit. This is an important distinction because it illustrates how someone with a very fast weapon does relatively less damage on a CS style than someone with a slower weapon (which inherently has more damage per hit).

Since your Weapon skill also determines the variance from maximum damage (or lack thereof) that you do, it follows that a low weapon spec'd assassin will see a lot of variance in their CS attacks while a high weapon spec assassin is going to see consistent and near max CS damage on most of their attacks.

The jist of the issue? At low levels the staff may be a viable CS weapon choice but at higher levels the variances on your CS damage are going to get really frustrating.

[Lisboa]

Interestingly, the early thoughts on the staves were they trained up with your level (your weapon skill raised with your level as opposed to with pierce/slash). However, we have now found out that it does not--your weaponskill will be significantly behind that of someone who specs in a weaponskill.

[EZ_TheSmilingTree]

I wonder if ability only weapons are autotrain... it might make sense if they were and could explain why people though that the weapon skill increased with their level.

Peace,

[EZ_Ela]

Just some invo on Staves since I know so much about them through experience:

It only takes 1/3 Piercing specialization with 0 in Dual Wield to defeat Staves in average damage, so if you took up a weapon spec, you're better off not using a staff, even for a one shot.

Staves "appeared" to autotrain, when in reality they are a DEX based weapon, and significantly increased weapon skill upon equipping one. This is one of the advantages of Staves, but it's not a large bonus.

[EZ_Landril77]

I do carry around a staff for occasions when I need the extra PA damage. At level 42, my regular thrust weapon caps at 585 on PA. Using a brilliant asterite shod staff My max goes up to 686.

The interesting thing is that the staff is only a 12.6 or so dps. However the 5.0 delay really raises the max hit. Because of this I do pull the staff out occasionally when going after seated or lower level opponents to make sure Ican kill them and remain stealthed. In most situations I stick with my regular weapons because they do higher damage to even opponents, and I can get CD off with them.

[EZ_Drachenfeuer Silberflamme]

I'm back to "normal" now with two nice piercers =)
Thanks for sharing your thoughts..

Drachan