I love mages, and the staff never really felt like a “pure mage” weapon, more of a “combat mage” one.
The addition of wands made me really happy, as they looked like they covered that “pure mage” archetype I was missing.
Now that I’ve played 7-8 hours with wands, I can say that they left me unsatisfied. They’re just staves with worse melee and slightly better runeset for long range combat.
Which… is bad. Why?
Because, currently, fighting with a wand consists in:
Being too scared to go melee, since your hits are weak and quite slow for how small the weapon is;
Being forced to go melee, since with the change to focus fials now you can only hit enemies to regen focus.
It’s a constant back and forth trying to build up some focus since it’s your “best” way to deal damage, but it feels like you are NOT made for this back and forth since melee is not very rewarding, both in damage and focus gain.
I usually have to reduce an enemy to half life to gaing enough focus for a firebolt, an the firebolt itself deals less damage than what I had to do to gain that focus.
My damage feels lackluster and unreliable, I feel like I’m risking a lot, and enemies take ages to kill compared to other weapons.
It’s a wand. I should be a spellcaster. Spells should be my main form of combat, but right now I’m fighting 80% of the time in melee combat and only less than 20% using runes. Like, I was using runes more when I was playing a CLAYMORE!!
Right now the best way I’ve found to cast a lot of spells is parrying. But it’s still “wrong”, a mage should not rely on parries to reliably cast spells and it makes me feel like I’m not playing the game correctly…
My suggestion would be to give wands a light, fast ranged attack as their base attack, not consuming focus (and instead, regenerating it). If ranged attacks like this are a no-go, then at least make it so it’s less of a commitment going melee. Faster attacks, lesser stamina consumption for attacks, something like this. I can see wands becoming more satisfying to use in the future, and I hope this feedback wil be useful in identifying how to make them better.
Bows, wands and staves need a rework. They should have a max range of about 1/3 of the screen and do less damage than the melee weapons. They should also have a short delay after each hit so they feel more like 2h weapons when it comes to how fats they can attack. All should cost stamina to use a basic ranged attack, and generate focus. Bows should use arrows. Staves and wand could use some kind of magical charges. Both arrows and magical charges crafted with materials. 10 arrows per any wood. 10 magic charges per ore. Without the magic charges it should be possible to use wands and staves in melee.
I dont like wands either except for being able to use a shield.
So we already had bows consuming stamina. And having range attacks generating focus feels a bit to cheap to me.
95% of the danger comes from fall dmg …kidding … being in melee range.
With the exception of archers and witches (to OP).
So for now you generate a lot of focus by parrying. I mean it is A LOT for just a parry and having enough to cast two spells/skills. In the endgame with + rune generation and cost reduction you might gain enough for 3.
You can gain focus via channeling skill.
There is focus gain on dodging dmg.
What might be feasible is if stats gained additional functions. Like Int would provide 1 focus per second per 10 INT.
But that might come with a HP increase of monster or more resistance (might be specific to zones or type of monster) to combat the wait for full focus and then blast through.
Honestly I think they made staves and wands perfect. And I enjoy this battle mage playstyle a fuck ton. What you are suggesting is getting rid of any difficulty and just being in range and not interacting with the enemy. There are other games that fill that purpose. I like this hit some enemies, use parry, use heavy bash to knock enemy on the floor, use your HUGE wand/staff rune aoe spell, just don’t be afraid to use all the mechanics. Also I have no idea why you think that dmg is lacking on these skills, because in my experience they are actually busted. ALL aoe spells literally oneshot everything. I just managed to two shot derrek with fire aoe spell, and I’m not even putting my points into dmg, because I play hardcore. Every single spell is just a feels good moment, their animation and sound effects are so fucking satisfying.
I totally agree with this, except for staves. Wands and bow should be ranged by default, but staves cover the niche of “combat-mage style” and I like them for that. They sould instead empower this fantasy, giving them more interesting melee/magic hibrid choices and a slightly improved moveset.
YES! I had hoped wands could make me feel like a spellslinger, and having a high fire rate/attack speed is key in that, even if each attack does little damage. Give me this, and THEN the opportunity to cast a much more powerful spell here and there.
It goes onto resource redundancy imo. Just use stamina for attacks and focus for rune spells. A cool way to keep a balance between melee and ranged for wands could be an “activation threshold” for ranged attacks. Like, as long as you have a certain amount of focus you can do ranged attacks (which cost no focus). If you go below that threshold, you must go melee to gain back some focus and gain the ranged attacks again. This would introduce a penalty for using too much focus and an element of resource management, while keeping the core idea of the wand being a spellslinger weapon.
I like staves, and the battle mage idea is very well done. My criticism on wands births from the fact that they are basically staves but a bit worse, they don’t really fill their own niche and instead remain as part of the staves archetype. I might end up picking up a staff and abandoning wands.
Well, no. Definitely not. And in general I’m not lamenting a difficulty problem that needs to be solved. I’m lamenting a conceptual redundancy and lack of unique qualities to the wands, which would be solved by giving them the archetype of “ranged magic weapon” as much as bows fill the archetype of “ranged physical weapon”.
“Ranged” doesn’t mean “fullscreen”. Like @Kaybris said, around 1/3rd of the screen would be perfect. Far enough to be safer than normal, but not enough to be out of danger. Most enemies can move pretty fast, so I don’t see it as a problem.
Normal attack damage would be obviously very low, but fast hitting, so you would regenerate a bit more focus than other weapons to use your runes.
And this is a problem. Obviously wands would be broken if runes are broken. Runes damage should be toned down, in general they are very strong even in melee weapons.
TLDR: I think wands lack identity. They could be really cool with some tweaking. You could just balance the weapon a bit and call it “Alternative to staves”, but I would like wands to cover their own niche.
i’ve been planning on doing a magic playthrough since I finished my first playthrough before the breach.
My focus is on parrying to gain focus and cast spells. Which is fun, its a really neat system. But the parry timing is just too jank, I don’t know why they chose the dark souls system for parrying that no one likes. Just make it a block timing.
I say this as someone good enough at parry stuff that I can hit the parry timing consistently.
My thoughts about how wands are used from other mainstream things like Harry Potter and Aurora in League.
Ranged projectile based weapon that should about nothing to help with mobility and speed. Projectile attacks could be low damage but it builds Focus to do spells for damage. IDK just seems too melee and brute strength of a staff versus a small wand th at would have broken. :@
Staffs are already slow and don’t need more delay, generating focus by hitting in melee already feels slow.
I think what will make mage players feel a lot more magical is to add magical VFX to the staff and wand attacks, not just the runes.
Equipping a wand or staff should change your parry to a magical shield and your dodge to a blink teleport. It’s all about the immersion, and how much the game caters to a physical melee feel but doesn’t provide as much immersion for mage players.
Focus based builds also currently feel bad because of how much dodging was given to enemies, an enemy dashing out or blocking the hit just before a fireball or lightning bolt hits when you spent 2 whole combo chains to generate enough focus to cast a single one of those feels horrible. The tracking should be improved in that case.
I don’t like the idea of making a long-range weapon out of a rod. I would like to see wands as a second-hand weapon like a shield and bow. I would do the same with one-handed daggers. There is almost nothing to occupy the other hand in this game. But a rod and a dagger would be very suitable for this role.
I’d rather staff be made the offensive longer range weapon with CC and mainly focus on damage and CC, while wands be a quick and agile midrange weapon with debuffing and leeching aspects; accompany wands with either a grimoire or floating magic sphere.
Then the staff can be the traditional DPS caster powerhouse and the wand and book/sphere can be the defensive second set for when enemies close distance or you need to be more maneuverable and need better survivability against multiple opponents or are in danger against a boss and need to play more defensively for some time.
I also like the staff vs wand difference, where staff is more like a melee mage and wand is ranged. It makes more sense like this.
The problem with ranged weapons, from what I read, is that the game breaks too fast. One can just stay away and kill everything before it even get close.
Ignoring the fact that is is exactly the point of begin a ranged mage, I can see It might be an issue for balance.
But all ranged weapons need some sort fo basic attack that does not consume focus.
Imagine playing co op and you want to play a support class, that heals and buffs. It would be impossible to do.
I completed my first company in this patch with the wand Molten Clutch that you can buy from Eleanor.
It felt unbalanced, because I didn’t really need to use Focus — I was able to kill everything with ranged attacks alone.