Enhancer Staves

[LoopyLeo]

Hey people, so I've been playing a lot of elemental mages recently, and I'm not really sure whether or not I should use enhancer staves? The limited information I've found has been... conflicting. So -- how would you rank elemental staves, especially in regards to melee? And how would you rank the enhancer staves by element? Also, while we're at it, what was the magical number to which you had to train evo/element to in order for the staff to trigger 100% of the time?
Thanks guys

[duvessa]

For spell power purposes, each enhancer is like multiplying your intelligence (or spell skill levels) by 1.5. They stack multiplicatively so 3 enhancers is like multiplying them by 3.375. In practice, each enhancer is about +20 to +30 spell power.

For example, if you have fireball at 80 power, one enhancer will take it to 100 or 101 power. This takes its damage from 3d16.6 to 3d20.

[Majang]

The bonus-damage trigger formula is

  Code:

(Evocations+Foo Magic/2)×6.66%

This means that the sum of Evocations plus half your elementary skill needs to reach about 15 to have a 100% hit rate. When your evo is 15 in itself, you have 100 %.
Generally, a staff is a very powerful melee weapon once you have the evocations and elementary skill up to 10 each. Every hit will add the bonus, and the bonus itself is considerable.
If in the extended game you manage to get both skills up to 27, you have an extremely powerful weapon, dwarfing most other weapons of the game. But this requires a large skills investment. And don't forget that you need to train staves to 12 for minimum delay.
All staves except the staff of earth can be resisted by some monsters.

[edgefigaro]

Enhancer staff melee is decent under the following conditions: You have reached the point in the game where you (1) have not committed to another weapon class,(2) would like a melee attack to deal with trivial monsters, (3) have evocations trained, (4) have the relevant fire/earth/ice/air staff for your character, and (5) your character doesn't have more pressing needs to spend xp on.

These conditions occur from time to time, but are not common.

Enhancer staves do not turn your mage into a melee character. Enhancer staves can give your mage a viable melee attack.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

My general view is that enhancer staves are good to boost spell power and bad for melee. Of course there are special cases, but, as edgefigaro said, they are rare.

[Majang]

Not that rare, really. A deep elf, for example, would probably not train any other weapons skill for a quite a while. He will almost certainly have a high elementary skill and some decent evocations by the time he finds the respective elemental staff. All he then needs to train is staves for some levels (wouldn't even have to be minimum delay to begin with). That would give DE a decent melee option with minimal skills investment, with the only weapons skill he is not terrible at (except short blades). He can also wear a buckler with this. It would be a no-brainer to go for this melee option. But edgefigaro is right - DE should avoid melee fighting with anything else but popcorn, even with the most powerful weapon.
Other blaster characters should also consider that. A gargoyle might start out with a few levels of maces and flails. This cross-trains with staves, so when the staff shows up, it would again be a minimal investment to go for the extra few levels of staves. Why would he not take this weapon that he wants to wield anyway all the time to enhance his spells? And after a very short time it would be a lot more potent than any mace he wants to swing. A Gargoyle would actually turn into a veritable hybrid fighter with this staff, shooting conjurations until MP is down, and then bashing anything that still stands. This is a particularly friendly option for earth elementalists, with a staff that cannot be resisted by anyone, even in the extended game.
I agree that no melee-character should ever go for elemental-staff fighting, because for them all other weapons require much less skill investment.

[duvessa]

How the hell is it a no-brainer to train the skill for a bad melee weapon that you don't want to use against anything dangerous anyway?
You are massively overestimating the damage that enhancer staves do, especially staff of earth. With no aux attacks, here is a +7 dire flail of freezing vs. a yak at 10 fighting, 14 maces, 10 str:

  Code:

            AvHitDam | MaxDam | Accuracy | AvDam | AvTime | AvSpeed | AvEffDam
 Attacking:     13.7 |     44 |      92% |  12.6 |    60  |  1.67 |     21.0

Here is a staff of earth against the same yak with 10 fighting, 12 staves, 10 evocations, 18 earth, 10 str:

  Code:

            AvHitDam | MaxDam | Accuracy | AvDam | AvTime | AvSpeed | AvEffDam
 Attacking:     13.3 |     33 |      92% |  12.3 |    60  |  1.67 |     20.5

If your str is over 10 the dire flail (and any other actual weapon) only gets better. Obviously, a demon weapon or lajatang is going to beat a staff of earth by a greater margin.

[Magipi]

I don't get it. So your fsim shows that a staff of earth is practically equivalent to a +7 branded dire flail, (plus it is better, because 1-handed). How is it a bad weapon then?

Also, isn't staff of earth a special case? I vaguely recall that its extra damage checks AC for some weird reason (or bug?) while the others do not.

[duvessa]

I don't get it. So your fsim shows that a staff of earth is practically equivalent to a +7 branded dire flail, (plus it is better, because 1-handed).

With about 3 times as much xp invested, yes.

[Siegurt]

I think the point is if you already have that extra xp invested into element/evocation, for spellcasting and wand using purposes, it isnt really "extra". At that point is a question of training staves or slightly more maces for roughly the same melee effect, plus getting to use a shield and getting a spellpower increase without having to swap weapons (a minor convenience)

Now no-one should ever train *specifically for* using an enhancer staff. That is a terrible idea, but if you already have the elemental skills and some evocations trained (for not-terrible reasons) they make middling to decent one-handed weapons.

Also earth is slightly worse than the other ones, but nothing is immune to it, so there is that.

[bel]

A dire flail is a two-handed weapon. Also, the investment in the elemental school is mostly a sunk cost if you're playing an elemental mage type character.

Let's consider the following scenario. We compare damages with an eveningstar of flaming and a staff of fire. Eveningstar has min-delay at M&F skill 16. Staff of fire reaches min-delay at 12.

Let take two characters, char 1 and char 2. Both have trained fire to 12. Assume char 1 has maces at 16, and char 2 has staves at 12 and evo at 10. I don't remember the exact formulae, but the XP spent by both would be somewhat similar, assuming similar apts.

I find through fsim that a staff of fire is equivalent to a +5 or so eveningstar of flaming in terms of damage. That's pretty decent melee, I think.

[edgefigaro]

A couple Hypotheticals:

HuFE Str 9 Int 18 Dex 14
On D3 it kills Yuif and gett a +4 Quarterstaff of Chaos, Edward on D4 and picks up a +2 Dire Flail of protection, and picks up a Staff of Fire, and a hex wand +1 by D7. Has 2 ?enchant weapon scrolls. Does the FE commit to a melee weapon here, and which?

HuIE Str 9, Int 20, Dex 14
The IE finds a +2 Demon Trident of Freezing and a Staff of Ice in an L2 ice cave. It has 5 in evocations as an IE, no weapon skills trained, and 2 ?Enchant Weapon scrolls. Does the IE commit to a weapon here, and which?

[amaril]

Why 'commit' to a melee weapon if you can kill anything by getting your spells online?

[VeryAngryFelid]

Why 'commit' to a melee weapon if you can kill anything by getting your spells online?

Because hybrids are more enjoyable to play and are more forgivable to making mistakes. Also some combos are objectively stronger as hybrids because they are great in melee and not too good when going for level 9 spells: HOFE (high Str, Armour, Axes, bad Spellcasting), MfIE (high Dodging, Polearms, bad Conjurations). Even Hu is stronger as hybrid as it does not take much XP to get a demon whip or electro whip online and cheap first levels mean it's better to train both Armour and Dodging (and thus use middle armour) than just Dodging and stay in robe when archmagi hasn't generated.

[Majang]

I vaguely recall that its extra damage checks AC for some weird reason (or bug?) while the others do not.

It's not a bug. The idea is that Earth magic really applies physical damage, and that is resisted by AC, like any other physical weapon.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

It is quite rare for a character to meet all the following conditions:

- Enough elemental school training to comfortably cast lvl 6 spells (~18?)
- 10+ Evo
- 0 (or close to) weapon skill training
- An enhancer staff for the above mentioned magic school
- No access to demon weapons / lajatangs
- A buckler (without buckler there's no advantage to a 1h weapon)
- A need to train for melee damage specifically, as opposed to ranged (DE is better with bows than staves!)

The way I play crawl, this situation has never happened to me. Therefore, I'm quite happy to stick with my claim that it is a very rare situation.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Well, theoretically you can find an elemental staff AND quaterstaff/lajatang early. In this case training Staves is a good idea IMHO and later you can melee with the staff because it deals almost the same damage but does not require weapon swapping.

[Magipi]

I'm quite happy to stick with my claim that it is a very rare situation.

Well, if you claim a lot of things, some of them are bound to be true, innit?

You also claimed that they are "bad for melee", which is simply not true. The fsims above show that they are amazing melee weapons, pretty much demon category. (This was my own experience the one time I used a staff of fire).

[4Hooves2Appendages]

Can you spend a lot of XP to make enhancer staves an average melee option? Yes.

Should you? Not usually.

Is it sometimes the right thing to do? Yes, but rarely.

Now let's consider who usually asks about using enhances staves for melee: relatively inexperienced players. I don't believe they are served at all well by a detailed discussion on a complicated set of interactions between existing skills, other available weapons, XP costs, aptitudes, the type of character, etc.

[Majang]

Now let's consider who usually asks about using enhances staves for melee: relatively inexperienced players. I don't believe they are served at all well by a detailed discussion on a complicated set of interactions between existing skills, other available weapons, XP costs, aptitudes, the type of character, etc.

So you are happy to serve them a blanket statement instead: don't use enhancer staves for melee. Smooth.

[bel]

Perhaps LoopyLeo should tell us whether they found the discussion illuminating, confusing, useless or whatever else.

[LoopyLeo]

Perhaps LoopyLeo should tell us whether they found the discussion illuminating, confusing, useless or whatever else.

Ah yes, feedback! I'm appreciative of all the replies, they have been illuminating, and I think my questions have all been rather comprehensively answered. Although there has been some conflicting arguments, I've still been able to glean from everything the answers I needed, and more.

But yes, thank you all muchly for your responses -- I'm always thrilled when something I ask has merit enough to spark a discussion

Edit: Also, special thanks to Duvessa for taking the time to grab all the numbers and everything. Your input, although I've noticed isn't always warmly received, is always valued imo. And yeah, thanks to everyone else as well.

[duvessa]

I genuinely don't think training staves for enhancer staff melee is ever a good decision. If you have enough magic skill to make it better than other melee weapons, then you have enough magic skill that you should be killing everything dangerous with spells anyway, not melee.

Obviously, it can be a bad but convenient decision - as hybridizing usually is - but I think players can figure out for themselves what they find most fun/convenient. So when I'm giving advice, I usually only talk about what is most effective, not what is convenient.

[njvack]

What's been left implicit here is that bashing popcorn with your enhancer staff at 0 staves skill is just fine. Getting a bunch of any weapon skill on a character who kills everything dangerous with conjurations is probably a bad investment.

If it's popcorn, you can (and often should!) kill it with a shitty weapon. If that would put your character in danger, the monster isn't popcorn and you should deal with it like you deal with other dangerous monsters.

Yes, you can handle more dangerous monsters with your melee weapon by training it, but again, if you're killing monsters with conjurations, getting better at conjurations is usually better than getting less bad at melee, because better conjurations help you deal with the really dangerous monsters. Moving monsters from the "better hit it with bolt of fire" category to "walk up and punch it" category is way less important than moving monsters from "I need to escape" to "I can reliably kill this."

[njvack]

... this said, if I were using an enhancer staff I might pick up a few levels of staves because pressing tab is way faster in wall clock time than conjurations. But I'd do that knowing it was making my character a bit weaker than if I'd trained something else.

[Rast]

The more I read this thread, more strongly I am convinced that the current enhancer staff melee effects should be entirely removed.

[njvack]

I do agree that they are mechanically overcomplicated. But it would also be kind of annoying to find carrying an electric dagger or whatever to swap to for popcorn melee was suddenly actually important-ish.

I think it more argues for removing popcorn, so there are fewer monsters but they are more reliably dangerous, and using a convenient-but-weak killdudes option is no longer such a timesaver.

[Rast]

nvjack, the second half of the One True Enhancer Staff Reform Proposal is moving them to the shield slot.

[njvack]

that... that is actually a really good idea, also it means my gandalf dreams can finally come true

[gameguard]

nvjack, the second half of the One True Enhancer Staff Reform Proposal is moving them to the shield slot.

that would make elemental staff so op

[tasonir]

The unrand elemental staff isn't an enhancer staff though, and would presumably remain a weapon like it is now. It actually used to be a quarterstaff, but got nerfed to a plain staff.

[duvessa]

It actually used to be a quarterstaff, but got nerfed to a plain staff.

I'm not convinced that it was a nerf to change it from a +3 unbranded quarterstaff to a one-handed base type

[tasonir]

oh yeah, I meant just that the type got nerfed. As far as I know the elemental proc was added at the same time, and that proc is more than worth the loss of physical damage.

[njvack]

Whoah, I didn't realize elemental staff got buffed. I remember the one from like 0.7 when it was really bad.

[tasonir]

I found it once early on a DDHe, and between all the resistances (and bonus AC) it was nearly impossible to take damage. I eventually switched to TSO for extended, but I kind of feel like that was a mistake, I think the character played better with Ely. Either way, I did get 15 runes - I did also bless a trishula for killing demons, because why not. It's one of the most powerful unrands, imho. http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/tasonir/mor ... 192620.txt . Relevant part:

  Code:

Action                   |  1- 3 |  4- 6 |  7- 9 | 10-12 | 13-15 | 16-18 | 19-21 | 22-24 | 25-27 || total
-------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------++-------
Melee: Club              |    40 |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |       ||    40
       Unarmed           |    22 |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |     8 ||    30
       Dagger            |   132 |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |       ||   132
       Hand axe          |    21 |   404 |    81 |       |       |       |       |       |       ||   506
       Staff             |       |       |   396 |  1178 |  2001 |  2343 |  2715 |  2054 |  6383 || 17070
       Trishula          |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |  4955 ||  4955

[prozacelf]

How the hell is it a no-brainer to train the skill for a bad melee weapon that you don't want to use against anything dangerous anyway?
You are massively overestimating the damage that enhancer staves do, especially staff of earth. With no aux attacks, here is a +7 dire flail of freezing vs. a yak at 10 fighting, 14 maces, 10 str:

  Code:

            AvHitDam | MaxDam | Accuracy | AvDam | AvTime | AvSpeed | AvEffDam
 Attacking:     13.7 |     44 |      92% |  12.6 |    60  |  1.67 |     21.0

Here is a staff of earth against the same yak with 10 fighting, 12 staves, 10 evocations, 18 earth, 10 str:

  Code:

            AvHitDam | MaxDam | Accuracy | AvDam | AvTime | AvSpeed | AvEffDam
 Attacking:     13.3 |     33 |      92% |  12.3 |    60  |  1.67 |     20.5

If your str is over 10 the dire flail (and any other actual weapon) only gets better. Obviously, a demon weapon or lajatang is going to beat a staff of earth by a greater margin.

This is pretty much exactly why I like to use dblade or dwhip and a buckler on casters. Elemental staves are passable melee, but I more frequently just use them to cast and then swap to a real weapon if I actually plan to hit things.

[tasonir]

Alright alright I was trying to hold back, but now I have to link to the game where I used the staff of earth purely as a melee weapon on a minotaur: http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/tasonir/mor ... 075833.txt

It was an intentional conduct to follow a bad guide, namely this one: http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Buddy23Lee' ... ness_guide

It obviously isn't ideal, but being a minotaur and following okawaru you can get away with having a bad weapon. I think someone won a game using only a plain spear, right? I managed to find a staff of earth fairly early on, around level 13 or something, so it was really sad that I couldn't use this gift for long: Identified the +9 lajatang of Huocs {flame, rElec MR- Int-5 Dex+2} (Okawaru gifted it to you on level 10 of the Dungeon). Ah well. Also damn I criminally underused heroism, only 13 times. I used Finesse 15 times. I clearly need to learn how to okawaru properly.

[Rast]

I think someone won a game using only a plain spear, right?

That was with double damage bug

[VeryAngryFelid]

No, it was not done with double melee bug. It was done by at least 2 players from first try, one of the players had a 2 games streak with spear, second game even without invoking rage...

[Rast]

I stand corrected. I know it was also done during double damage tournament.