Fast single hit weapons with 20 Poise damage are too effective at stunlocking medium sized enemies by knocking them over, they also build up Stagger bar too fast. HOWEVER
Neither value tried so far feels good, they’re both too far in one direction
The Solution
Move these weapons back down to 10 Poise Damage
Adjust the enemies that you would expect to flinch so that they actually flinch
Change flinch mechanics so that repeatedly triggering flinches with fast weapons doesn’t cause medium sized enemies to go through increasingly larger flinch animations until they fall over backwards
Unlink the flinching mechanics from Stagger bar buildup so that you can have weapons interrupt enemies without also fully stunning them in 2 hits
Ensure all the fast weapons have charged attacks so that you have the option of using a slower charged attack to get a flinch against medium enemies that would usually flinch at 20 poise damage
Where a small weapon has no charged attacks and has a slow, awkward normal moveset just give that individual weapon higher poise damage as a trade off if adding a charged animation is too hard
I do not know if the new class system will come with adjustments to weapon movesets, but if it does I would make the suggestion that these fast weapons should be designed around the idea of frequent “resets” to neutral after a couple of effective flinches against small enemies. The idea is that you want these weapons to interrupt reliably but you do not want them to infinitely lockdown an enemy to the point where you only need to win one interaction to get 15 unchallenged hits in. This is especially a problem with Wands and Staves due to their lower damage but I’ll get to that. The way you achieve this is you ensure that all of the flinches you cause with these faster weapons are very short mini-stuns and not long staggers, then you create the moveset with ‘breaks’ in it. Eg. After your 3 hit normal attack sequence you cannot immediately cancel into another attack and this causes a gap where the enemy will recover and gets a chance to do something. This doesn’t happen currently because after 3 hits with a 20PD straight sword a medium sized enemy is on the ground for 3 seconds. If that last hit is instead still a tiny flinch then enemies will recover fast enough to have frame advantage and then you need to play defensively again and win another clean interaction. For this to make sense it is ideal for weapon normal attack combos to not be much longer than 3 hits. It’s also fine if a good running attack doesn’t give frame advantage afterwards, but I should be able to running attack an archer without getting shot in the face AFTER I hit them
Wands and Staves
So wands and staves have low melee damage andtheir new melee movesets with elemental attacks on the end are very long with weird floaty recovery after each swing. I understand the point of the floaty animation, it’s mystical, you’re semi-floating because you’re a wizard etc etc. It looks fine, when you complete the full normal attack chain. The problem is that full normal attack chain is only ever getting to the end because 20 Poise Damage wands are endlessly stunlocking regular enemies while doing sod all damage allowing you to keep melee’ing them for half an hour.
What happens against larger enemies, and what will presumably happen against most enemies if they go back down to 10 poise damage, is that you get 1-2 floaty normals out before you need to disengage, at which point you’re stopping the sequence during a point where you have this weird floating animation going on which looks awful and feels bad. They have no charged attack so at 10 poise damage they don’t have any way to flinch a regular enemy and would always be breaking off that normal chain early where the animation looks silly. This brief 1-2 sequence is also really low reward relative to parries and backstabs because of the low melee damage and fairly low focus recovery compared to other options.
Suggestion - Give them a unique type of charged attack. Instead of a melee weapon style charged attack which is used to engage from a distance as your first hit, give them a fast charged attack which is a short range explosion that blows the player backwards. Instead of a gap closer and opener it’s a finisher and retreating animation. Since a charged attack would have higher poise damage this should interrupt regular enemies making it easier to land in an opening, but because it blows you backwards you can’t loop it and you’re forcing a return to neutral on every use. This solves the floaty animation recovery problem by ending with something that looks like a finisher and puts you at range to fire a spell.
I also want to suggest higher focus recovery on wand/stave hits paired with higher focus cost on the best spells as a way of adjusting the relative value of attacks vs parrying, but that’s another topic.
P̶e̶r̶s̶o̶n̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ I̶ w̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ c̶h̶a̶n̶g̶e̶ i̶t̶ s̶o̶ f̶l̶i̶n̶c̶h̶ i̶s̶ c̶o̶m̶p̶l̶e̶t̶e̶l̶y̶ r̶e̶m̶o̶v̶e̶d̶ f̶r̶o̶m̶ l̶a̶r̶g̶e̶ e̶n̶e̶m̶i̶e̶s̶ a̶n̶d̶ o̶n̶l̶y̶ a̶l̶l̶o̶w̶ p̶o̶i̶s̶e̶ b̶r̶e̶a̶k̶. -edit- did some testing, large enemies only seem to flinch on a charged attack with a 30 poise weapon, which is fine since that’s a unique benefit for using those weapons.
One thing that I think really needs to change though; stop allowing the poise meter from filling while the creature is already poise broken. You can see this happening here, leading to them just being completely stunned from start to finish.
Totally agree with the problem but I’m unsure what to make of the solution in its entirety.
On either end of weapon sets we either feel like we have
no agency in the fight or we have too much agency and they get boring.
I’m not convinced that there is a catch all related to a universal poise value but rather it’s high time armor is addressed with more nuance, weapon move sets are reviewed for their effectiveness(for the reasons you’ve stated), rune cost/damage/utility, in addition to the hit values you recommend.
Id be down to test some like you recommend but I still feel like giving enemies a break (which would give us a buff to let us animation cancel anything w/ dodge) could be fun. Not every enemy needs break, some are just trash mobs. But when it comes to time to kill in a fight it feels like we’re pigeon holed into focus abilities or stun to gain some agency in a fight. And there’s no balance between move sets and runes at the moment.
For example, I did my…
First playthrough with fist, hated it only finished the campaign out of spite. No agency in fights, enemies attacking through my attacks, limited access to meaningful AOE, etc
Second playthrough, loved the game again. Claymore, sword, shield. Good attacks the addition of turn back kick on claymore feels amazing, highly recommend. The game just felt playable again. That said once my weapon was scaled high enough everything felt bland. Admittedly I need to try juiced pestilence zones but I been leveling alts so I’ll get back to that
Third time around I’m on wand shield making my way to 42 INT so I can equip Icebreaker once again… And the build feels hilariously overturned for a one hander. I rolled some freeze build up on gloves and just parry, ice dart, sprinting neutral for the shatter and oh by the way my weapon enchantment landed on exploding enemies. It’s very effective, but I agree with your comments on wands, something feels off despite their effectiveness. It feels laggy (“floaty”) and deep combo strings I think need to be reevaluated in Wicked as a whole. That or the fights. I absolutely would not hate more 1on1 or 2on1 with more enemy HP so long as we’re not getting dog piled. As it stands we rely on focus abilities to equalize a fight and it can take the fun out of it as well.
All this is to say it feels like there is a wild swing in experience.
First playthrough with fist, hated it only finished the campaign out of spite. No agency in fights, enemies attacking through my attacks, limited access to meaningful AOE, etc
Would a lightning enchant not fix these issues? Genuinely asking as I haven’t played around with it much, but afaik it’s proc chains to nearby targets and fist weapons tend to have a lot of hits in their attack chains.
It would and did. I tried lightning and it was ok but build up relies on damage delt (and build up obviously). So by comparison a fist weapons doing small hits compared to a wand rune ability for applying elemental effects is night and day. And that still doesn’t solve the issue of enemies attacking through your attacks either.
Also I feel strongly that weapons should feel good with physical as well as elemental. So my feedback is related to that aspect more than anything. I don’t feel like elements should be a bandaid for combat but rather a functional choice a player can make. IE if a player is forced to play any weapon one way (ignoring weapons that have elements baked in) then it’s not a design choice but a constraint.
There was a rune I removed from another fist that lunges forward and does a double hit explosion (name escapes me atm). Runes is absurdly overturned and just started 1 shoting nearly everything.
For reference I used the starting wraps, and the dex/faith wraps with knuckles (again name escapes me atm) (not at the same time) based on having a move set I liked more than others but I also haven’t gotten that many drops on fist. There could be something out there I really dig
The problem with the staff weapon and its really long animation lock attack chain is pretty apparent when you fight any bruiser enemy or boss that is not stunned/frozen.
Cloth wearers have really low poise. Even medium enemies immediately stagger you out of your attack chain.
Take the Endless Winter staff. The tegular attacks at max upgrade exalted do no damage. Even on a fluff siren enemy each attack is not doing more than 1/8-1/9 its health.
This is because 80% of the damage of the attack sequence is backloaded into the final hit where you jump back and shoot 2 frost projectiles.
The problem is it takes FIVE hits on the attack sequence before the finisher. FIVE.
There is no way in a multienemy fight or a fight with goliath or bruisers where this 5 attack sequence is not getting interrupted by enemies pinballing you.
So the only way for cloth wearing mages to play currently is to freeze everything first and then go in to hit a few.
Try doing a pestilence lv4 without freezing spam and fight a pack of 2-3 goliath bruisers. You’ll get slapped and stunlocked out of any attack sequence.
Staffs and wands have way too much animation lock for how fragile and easily staggered a cloth armor mage is.
Yes this is inconsistent and only seems to happen on certain enemies or during certain animations, it is extremely silly with weapons like Scythes which pump out so much stagger bar buildup that they are stunlocking things they really shouldn’t be able to stunlock
Wands currently have 20 Poise damage and are more effective at interrupting regular enemies than they reasonably should be. The enemy types which do not flinch to 20 poise damage have movesets which are designed with longer startup and recovery to be played around without relying on flinch. That’s just how the game works and this applies to the majority of weapon classes in the game, the outliers like Scythe which can trivialise this sort of content are outliers and not the norm.
Although I mentioned some things worth addressing on wands and staves I don’t for one minute want to suggest that these weapons are weak, because the damage of runes on those weapons is absurd relative to everything else in game
And no, rune damage on a staff is not any stronger than a wand.
Plague Splatter on a mesh+leather character with a shield.
Why would anyone run a staff and cloth when you can run a quicker wand that can be paired with a shield and gets you 10 enchant rolls via 5 mainhand+5 offhand compared to a slower staff that has just 5 enchants and no better damage while being slower and more animation locked? On a cloth armor build for that matter.
If you’re playing cloth+staff it’s for the fantasy and flavor at this point, not because it’s good or competitive.
And while you’re claiming caster weapons have powerful spells, monk and sword builds are one shotting Echo Knight with physical runes.
You would use one the other based on their access to different runes, attack animations, etc. Also staff should scale harder, runes follow your attack damage and 2H have better scaling.
If you’re only comparing the effectiveness of runes to evaluate their strength then sure there’s plenty of room to grow. Rune damage is all over the place.
It does not scale harder, or in any way that matters. Test out the damage yourself.
Here’s the low scaling one handed monk gloves 3-shotting a Plague 4 echoless run Echo Knight.
There is currently no benefit whatsoever to staff, you run wand and that’s it.
The idea that staves or even wands have some special advantage in ability damage is just unsubstantiated BS.
Hell, even if you’re running a freeze staff build, the meta for it is to run it with Icebreaker greatsword(which scales with int and does physical damage) because the physical damage shattering the enemy when you freeze them is what’s going to do the big burst unless you use a 150 focus spell to do similar damage. And why would you, when you can just freeze for cheap with frost infusion or a cheap Frost Stream and then Shatter, which you can do repeatedly and easily instead of generating 150 focus or cheesing a ring.
Why are we referencing rune spam with unique ring combinations completely negating any game mechanics as a metric for strength?
The video isn’t even using the most egregious of rune attacks and they have 30+ points in focus yet are using health to attack so they don’t need that much focus. The damage shown even in this video could be significantly higher.
The only part of any of that which has anything to do with the topic is the comment about Staff attack interruption.
Staves have 20 poise damage but some of them have a melee moveset with a normal attack which hits twice as part of a single attack. The way the game handles these attacks is by splitting the poise damage across both hits, which for the purposes of Flinching turns those attacks into 10 poise damage hits which will fail to stagger small enemies and may get you hit mid attack chain against an enemy which would have been flinched by your first hit.
The reason the game does this is probably because poise damage for flinching is directly linked to the poise damage used to fill up the stagger bar and cause a heavy stun. Splitting the poise damage on multihit attacks prevents them filling the stagger bar quickly, but for flinching it would make more sense to not do that. If you unlink these 2 mechanics you can have a double hitting staff attack which still flinches small enemies but doesn’t have high stagger bar buildup.
Cloth armour has nothing to do with Wands or Staves because there are no mechanics which make cloth armour any more preferable on those weapons than they are on any other weapon. In fact the low weight of those weapons makes it easier to wear heavier armour.
Cloth armor has everything to do with wands and staves. It’s called a class archetype. Are you being serious?
It is not news to anyone that historically in fantasy settings the people using wands and staves are robe wearing or otherwise lightly armored scholars/mages/wizards/sorcerers. At best the heaviest depiction might be druids or shamans in leather armor instead.
Class archetypes aren’t in the game yet sonny, you can make that argument after 1.0, until then you’re not complaining about Staves you’re complaining about Cloth
Armor choices don’t restrict weapon choices and vice versa.
Build themes and archetype are a separate matter entirely. If you want to play with those bounds because it satisfies your interest in an RPG that’s cool. But then you’re also restricted to playing around what you gain/lose related to those armor and weapon choices as well.
The majority of players who play with staves and wands will do so with the intention of roleplaying a mage, not to be a walking tin can with a staff.
Class archetypes are not even coming with 1.0, they’re part of a closer update if you’ve even been keeping up, coming with combat updates.
You can act like staff balance is separate if you want to be annoying and argumentative, but as a practical matter the people who will be using these weapons will be complaining about how staves work with cloth armor. They’re not gonna give cloth armor more poise or more mitigation, otherwise those wearing heavier armors will complain about a light dodge class having the same mitigation. So, the staves and wands have to be balanced around the limitations of cloth. Which involves tuning their damage, animation locks, and focus generation.
The poise damage staff and wands do is relevant to this thread. Your suggested nerfs impact the weapons my character uses. If you don’t like the reaction to your suggestions, feel free to not read it.
