Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves?


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Post Friday, 27th June 2014, 16:00

Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves?

I've never understood why enhancer staves don't allow their +0 to be increased for combat purposes.

Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on enhancer staves?

Do they work for rods? I can't recall; and if not, why not, since they are hand weapons too?

---------------------
Original additional text misconstrued as a proposal removed to spoiler.
Spoiler: show
If this would be a benefit to all staves, but an over-powering to Staff of Earth, rework the Staff of Earth formula.

Can't Rods be increased (though only via Recharging, right; or are they all at +0, too)?
Last edited by XuaXua on Sunday, 29th June 2014, 17:07, edited 1 time in total.
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Post Friday, 27th June 2014, 16:20

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

Rods can be increased to increase their recharge rates.

I definitely support allowing enhancer staves to be improved with enchant weapon scrolls as long as it was just a pure addition to their melee capabilities before the additional effects.
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Post Friday, 27th June 2014, 16:29

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

Bim wrote:Rods can be increased to increase their recharge rates.

I definitely support allowing enhancer staves to be improved with enchant weapon scrolls as long as it was just a pure addition to their melee capabilities before the additional effects.


Shouldn't that be after the additional effects (assuming the effects are multipliers)?
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Post Friday, 27th June 2014, 17:25

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

um staff of earth is the worst elemental staff for melee
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Post Friday, 27th June 2014, 18:12

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

duvessa wrote:um staff of earth is the worst elemental staff for melee


That contradicts what I've read on the tavrn about EE's using Earth Magic with Evo and seeking out the Staff of Earth to smack things around.

If this is true, then I think Rods and Enhancer Staves both should benefit, melee-wise-only, from use of Enchant Scrolls for combat purposes.
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Post Friday, 27th June 2014, 18:22

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

Why should thing X do thing Y?

Enhancer staves certainly don't need a buff, and nothing else would be accomplished by this change.

XuaXua wrote:
duvessa wrote:um staff of earth is the worst elemental staff for melee


That contradicts what I've read on the tavrn about EE's using Earth Magic with Evo and seeking out the Staff of Earth to smack things around.

That is not a contradiction. The two statements taken together just emphasize how strong the other enhancer staves are.
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Post Friday, 27th June 2014, 18:43

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

XuaXua wrote:That contradicts what I've read on the tavrn about EE's using Earth Magic with Evo and seeking out the Staff of Earth to smack things around.

Well, um, if you're all trained up in earth magic the fire staff isn't going to work very well.
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Post Friday, 27th June 2014, 18:54

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

njvack wrote:Well, um, if you're all trained up in earth magic the fire staff isn't going to work very well.


So, the Fire Staff is the best one for combat, and unlike the Staff of Earth (enhancing the appropriate spell school) which grants no elemental protection but equally affects those with fire and cold resistances, it also grants +rF ?
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Post Friday, 27th June 2014, 19:02

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

This is the problem I have with one line posts: duvessa doesn't explain why he feels earth is the worst. My guess is it's not the resistance, but because earth damage is physical, and therefore it checks AC.

I believe, but could be wrong, that fire/cold/air bypass AC, and check the relevant resistance. This means they do more damage against non-resistant foes, but (probably) much less against things with resistance, and no damage if the target is immune. Personally, I'd rather have the thing that checks AC but works on -everything- rather than using fire which may fail when facing a fire immune mob, but that's personal preference.

That fire/cold give you a resistance and earth gives you nothing is something I've long felt was unbalanced and that the staff of earth should give you +3 ac in the same way that qaz's resistance choice does. But I think that's tangential to why duvessa prefers non-earth staves for combat.

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Post Friday, 27th June 2014, 19:15

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

Well the OP just throws out that buffing all enhancer staves further would somehow make |earth more overpowered than the others without anything to back it up so idk why a side comment on it would need in-depth explanations.
Also regular staves don't show plusses to begin with so I don't see why they should be enchantable. Because they go in your hand?
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Post Friday, 27th June 2014, 19:18

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

tasonir wrote:This is the problem I have with one line posts: duvessa doesn't explain why he feels earth is the worst. My guess is it's not the resistance, but because earth damage is physical, and therefore it checks AC.

I believe, but could be wrong, that fire/cold/air bypass AC, and check the relevant resistance. This means they do more damage against non-resistant foes, but (probably) much less against things with resistance, and no damage if the target is immune. Personally, I'd rather have the thing that checks AC but works on -everything- rather than using fire which may fail when facing a fire immune mob, but that's personal preference.

That fire/cold give you a resistance and earth gives you nothing is something I've long felt was unbalanced and that the staff of earth should give you +3 ac in the same way that qaz's resistance choice does. But I think that's tangential to why duvessa prefers non-earth staves for combat.


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Post Friday, 27th June 2014, 19:20

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

Enhancer staves (fire, cold, air, earth, death) have (2*evoc + magic skill)/30 chance of getting random2(1.25*(magic skill + evoc/2)) extra damage that ignores AC (except earth), but checks the appropriate resistance.

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Post Friday, 27th June 2014, 19:56

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

nilsbloodaxe wrote:Elemental damage is affected by AC. Not that I have more insight into elemental staves.


You're generally right, but there are special cases: electric damage tends to bypass, I think attack flavors (ie. ice fiend's melee cold damage) also bypass AC. For attack flavors the physical attack has to have done 1 damage, so AC can prevent attack flavors from triggering, but if they do, they bypass AC. In another special case, phantasmal warriors also bypass AC because why not.

I believe, but could be wrong, that enhancer staves that aren't earth tend to bypass and check the resist instead. I could be wrong. I don't bother trying to remember any of these rules; they've never made much logical sense to me.

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Post Friday, 27th June 2014, 20:14

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

Phantasmal warriors ignore half AC and all of SH because it's crypt so hey.

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Post Friday, 27th June 2014, 21:15

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

tasonir wrote:This is the problem I have with one line posts: duvessa doesn't explain why he feels earth is the worst.
...What the hell is there to explain? It's the worst because it does the least damage. What other reason could there possibly be?

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Post Friday, 27th June 2014, 22:35

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

duvessa wrote:
tasonir wrote:This is the problem I have with one line posts: duvessa doesn't explain why he feels earth is the worst.
...What the hell is there to explain? It's the worst because it does the least damage. What other reason could there possibly be?

Who knows? Experience has taught me that assuming people who make dogmatic claims do so for the "obvious" reason, or even for a reasonable reason, is frequently a poor assumption.

Also missing: why you would believe it does less damage. Assuming you actually know what you're talking about, you could have said something informative and useful. Instead, we get people spending hours speculating about the reasons for your claim.

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Post Friday, 27th June 2014, 22:40

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

duvessa wrote:
tasonir wrote:This is the problem I have with one line posts: duvessa doesn't explain why he feels earth is the worst.
...What the hell is there to explain? It's the worst because it does the least damage. What other reason could there possibly be?


It doesn't matter that there's only one reason, what matters is that this reason isn't as apparent as you appear to believe it is. Omitting it causes miscommunication and confusion, as evidenced by this very thread.
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Post Friday, 27th June 2014, 23:10

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

duvessa wrote:
tasonir wrote:This is the problem I have with one line posts: duvessa doesn't explain why he feels earth is the worst.
...What the hell is there to explain? It's the worst because it does the least damage. What other reason could there possibly be?

Enhancer staves (fire, cold, air, earth, death) have (2*evoc + magic skill)/30 chance of getting random2(1.25*(magic skill + evoc/2)) extra damage that ignores AC (except earth), but checks the appropriate resistance.


Looks like it does exactly the same amount of damage to me. It just checks a different defense mechanism.

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Post Friday, 27th June 2014, 23:13

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

Huh, I thought this was already in CYC, would have moved it earlier if I had realized. My bad.

"Why don't EW scrolls work on Enhancer Staves?" is an okay question for GDD, but then the OP was actually a proposal, not a question, and a proposal that didn't really give any explanation as to why it would be a good thing to make enhancer staves more like other weapons.

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Post Saturday, 28th June 2014, 03:24

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

did you know that there are far, far more monsters that have AC than monsters that have rC, rF, rElec, or rN?

if you didn't, then this confusion makes sense! otherwise....
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Post Saturday, 28th June 2014, 03:28

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

and into wrote:Huh, I thought this was already in CYC, would have moved it earlier if I had realized. My bad.

"Why don't EW scrolls work on Enhancer Staves?" is an okay question for GDD, but then the OP was actually a proposal


There was no proposal.
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Post Saturday, 28th June 2014, 04:09

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

XuaXua wrote:
and into wrote:Huh, I thought this was already in CYC, would have moved it earlier if I had realized. My bad.

"Why don't EW scrolls work on Enhancer Staves?" is an okay question for GDD, but then the OP was actually a proposal


There was no proposal.


I beg your pardon if I was reading too much into it; I thought there kind of was implicitly (to wit, "If this would be a benefit to all staves, but an over-powering to Staff of Earth, rework the Staff of Earth formula").

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Post Sunday, 29th June 2014, 00:01

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

I've never actually used an enhancer staff as a weapon before, but it sounds to me like checking the resistance sounds like a bad thing. Presumably if you are using the staff as a weapon, you are doing it because you are

A: lazy, against weak enemies
B: using it when you run out of mp
C: using it against enemies that resist your chosen school of magic.

While case A and B would not be problematic, wouldn't C become an issue? Wouldn't you need a backup melee weapon? In which case, staff of earth feels like a solid choice with more adaptability, even if its potential is less.

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Post Sunday, 29th June 2014, 01:44

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

If you are an earth magic character, monsters that fall into category "C" don't exist in the first place. If you are not an earth magic character then a staff of earth does about as much damage as a club.

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Post Sunday, 29th June 2014, 01:59

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

My point was that a staff of earth for an earth elementalist seems like a more versatile weapon than a staff of fire for a fire elementalist.

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Post Sunday, 29th June 2014, 02:02

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

At least you can enchant the club!

did you know that there are far, far more monsters that have AC than monsters that have rC, rF, rElec, or rN?


Obviously. however, assuming you have decent skills, you're likely hitting for 30-40 damage with an enhancer staff (of earth). The chances that a monster can resist 20 of that with AC is very, very small. Thus earth staves will do more damage than a fire staff on a rF+ monster. Staff of <element> are best if there's 0 pips resistance, but worse on even just one pip monsters. Basically the staff of earth hits everything like it had .5 pips resistance, which I'm perfectly fine with. Even powerful AC monsters don't have much ac - dire elephants 13, stone giants 12, etc. AC more or less tops out at 20 from the monsters I've checked (ancient liches and orbs of fire both have 20), and that means they're only taking off 10 on average. If you're hitting for 40 damage at that point, damage is still getting through. Orbs of fire are resistant to every other staff type anyways, if not immune.

In any case, I'd still rather hit an orb of fire with iron shot than a staff of earth, but no other staff is any better.
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Post Sunday, 29th June 2014, 05:23

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

and into wrote:
XuaXua wrote:
and into wrote:Huh, I thought this was already in CYC, would have moved it earlier if I had realized. My bad.

"Why don't EW scrolls work on Enhancer Staves?" is an okay question for GDD, but then the OP was actually a proposal


There was no proposal.


I beg your pardon if I was reading too much into it; I thought there kind of was implicitly (to wit, "If this would be a benefit to all staves, but an over-powering to Staff of Earth, rework the Staff of Earth formula").


As evidenced by the investigative follow-up, I don't know enough about the workings of SoE to even state that.

I never edited it out because it takes 90% of the posts that followed out of context.
Still, the original question of why we can't enchant them for enhancing melee stood.
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Post Sunday, 29th June 2014, 05:31

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

tasonir wrote:Obviously. however, assuming you have decent skills, you're likely hitting for 30-40 damage with an enhancer staff (of earth).
getting an average of 30 bonus damage from a staff of earth requires 32 earth magic and 32 evocations skill

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Post Monday, 30th June 2014, 03:10

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

The things that have bothered me about enhancer staves are:

(1) They are never bad; you never find a sub-par staff. Pretty sure they never spawn cursed either (I've never found one that did anyways).
(2) They are never unique. [in the average extended game you will find a few dozen identical staves (1-3 per type, but a lot of identical ones).] Sometimes you'll even find two of the same staff in a vault (Elf is particularly bad for this.)
(3) To restate (2) There isn't ANY variation. Once you've found a Staff of Earth, you've found your staff of Earth. There's no putting work into improving it; there's no chance of finding a better enhancer staff; you are done.

They are useless for 90% of characters; but important enough to the characters they are important to that they have to be as common as (at very least) lajatangs or quick blades; but there are enough staff base types that you constantly find (mostly useless TO YOU) staves.

In short though; I do think extra variation inside each staff type could be nice if only to make it so 'one weapon ends all' mentality doesn't set in.
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Post Monday, 30th June 2014, 04:03

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

Staves absolutely can generate cursed.

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Post Monday, 30th June 2014, 06:00

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

duvessa wrote:
tasonir wrote:Obviously. however, assuming you have decent skills, you're likely hitting for 30-40 damage with an enhancer staff (of earth).
getting an average of 30 bonus damage from a staff of earth requires 32 earth magic and 32 evocations skill

I never said average - I was listing the max damage. You can see this through the rest of my post when I mention things like stone giants having 12 ac, which is their max absorb, not their average. But I guess misinterpreting me is worth 2 thanks :P When does anyone list a bardiche as 9 damage? It's 18 base damage.

Getting ~30 damage would be around 20 earth, 10 evocations (31.5 damage exactly), which is about when I'd say they become powerful weapons. Obviously you can keep training it to get up to 40 as you get into the late game, at which point very little will meaningfully resist a staff of earth, unless it's something extreme like an ancient lich/orb of fire.

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Post Monday, 30th June 2014, 19:08

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

tasonir wrote:you're likely hitting for

tasonir wrote:I never said average - I was listing the max damage.

Image

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Post Monday, 30th June 2014, 19:22

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

Image
Ummm...obviously?

To try to be a bit nicer, I'm just pointing out that rolling from 1 to 40 is likely to still result in a positive number against rolling from 1 to 10. I simply said 40 and 10 because it's shorter, but if people really want to hear me say 1d40 beats 1d10 quite reliably, there, I've said it. 1d40 even generally beats 1d20 in extreme AC cases like ancient liches, although somewhat less reliably, it will still work. If you want to try another staff against an ancient lich, staff of fire will only hit one pip of resist, but staff of cold hits two, air hits rElec, and they're completely immune to the staff of death. No staff can hit the ancient lich without being reduced by something. There are probably better options than the staff of earth (ie, spells, 2h weapons like great swords, dispel undead), but 1d40 vs 1d10 is likely still more damage than 1d20 vs 0. Someone can run the math on that, but I'm fairly sure the 1d40 - 1d10 would come out ahead. Ie, a staff of earth against a target with ac is better than a staff of fire against a single pip resistance target. Obviously the staff of fire wins when the target has no fire resistance. Can we please bury this thread already :)
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Post Monday, 30th June 2014, 19:54

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

tasonir wrote: Can we please bury this thread already :)

No, because it got derailed and my initial questions / the title question remains unanswered. Thanks, CYC.
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Post Monday, 30th June 2014, 20:06

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

XuaXua wrote:
tasonir wrote: Can we please bury this thread already :)

No, because it got derailed and my initial questions / the title question remains unanswered. Thanks, CYC.

Because rods have a separate mechanic, recharging rate, and having a weapon with +recharge, +accuracy, +damage, was probably considered too confusing. There's probably also a desire for them to seem more purely magical, and not get more practical "physical" upgrades. Staves and rods use the same base type, staff, which is generally meant to never be used for physical damage, although they can get various additional damage effects which make them worth swinging in combat. As you've seen, debate over the staff of earth vs staff of fire can get heated, needlessly technical, and off topic.

There's no reason that staves (and even rods if you really want to) couldn't have +slaying (since acc and damage is now merged). It'd be technically possible, but probably not very good game design. They are powerful as is, and it makes weapons based on magic (staves and rods) different from physical weapons. I don't think it's likely to be changed. I suppose the ultimate answer to why it doesn't work is because it was coded that way, for simplicity.

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Post Monday, 30th June 2014, 21:33

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

tasonir wrote:
duvessa wrote:
tasonir wrote:Obviously. however, assuming you have decent skills, you're likely hitting for 30-40 damage with an enhancer staff (of earth).
getting an average of 30 bonus damage from a staff of earth requires 32 earth magic and 32 evocations skill

I never said average - I was listing the max damage.
Then why did you use math that only makes sense if you are talking about the average damage?

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Post Monday, 30th June 2014, 21:49

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

duvessa wrote:Then why did you use math that only makes sense if you are talking about the average damage?

I don't believe I did this at any point and since you've given no reasoning or examples to back up your claim I can't respond to it. I did explicitly mark the one time I mentioned an average, in that monsters with 20 ac means "that means they're only taking off 10 on average".

Why doesn't the game's AC display show you ac/2 since that's what you absorb on average? Everything displays maximums.
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Post Tuesday, 1st July 2014, 02:53

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

I think this thread has gone too far down the tube to return to GDD, but I'll stab at a serious answer: because there's already a mechanism by which staves become more powerful as melee weapons.

I certainly think staves could be clearer mechanically (eg, it's not super obvious that they are supposed to be melee weapons at all and why do only the individual spell school staves grant enhanced damage except conjurations which doesn't for some reason and why do they not corrode) but once you know the tricks, they're interesting and pretty well-balanced.
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Post Tuesday, 1st July 2014, 10:31

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

njvack wrote:I think this thread has gone too far down the tube to return to GDD, but I'll stab at a serious answer: because there's already a mechanism by which staves become more powerful as melee weapons.

I certainly think staves could be clearer mechanically (eg, it's not super obvious that they are supposed to be melee weapons at all and why do only the individual spell school staves grant enhanced damage except conjurations which doesn't for some reason and why do they not corrode) but once you know the tricks, they're interesting and pretty well-balanced.


I have avoided enhancer staves pretty much entirely (in hundreds of runs) as melee weapons despite knowing that in theory they could be useful. There just has never been a time when an enhancer staff was what I wanted in hand as a melee weapon. Ever. I am not saying it couldn't happen, just that it never has. And that certainly doesn't speak to my game experience as a "good" player. I wouldn't claim any expertise, but the way staves are presented in game is as a seemingly unnecessary distraction (like Large Shields, Shortblades and stones (though at least those are good (better than nothing) early game) after you've already chosen a different path. If I do have staves skill it will be to weild lajatangs or quarterstaves. Invariably those will be better. So maybe you are right that the use for enhancer staves as melee weapons isn't clear. Or rather it is, as mud.

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Post Tuesday, 1st July 2014, 17:18

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

I know exactly what enhancer staves do and it is very rare for me to use them for melee

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Post Tuesday, 1st July 2014, 19:42

Re: Why don't Enchant Weapon Scrolls work on Enhancer Staves

Enhancer staves, broadly speaking, do three things in roughly this order of importance:

1) enhance the spellpower of that school (this is where the name comes from)
2) give you resistance to that school (except for earth, which should get +3 ac :P)
3) function as a halfway decent weapon for primarily mages who have a lot of magic skill.

So picking a weapon whose third purpose is damage is fairly uncommon. The only reason you'd go enhancer staff melee is if you already happen to have 20ish of an elemental skill, a couple levels of evocations, and want to use it for reason #1. While enhancing your spellpower, you then can use 3 to avoid having to use the weapon switch command. But if you find a lajatang like I did on my last mage, it's probably better to use that since it's only .5 turns to switch anyways.

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