Staff vs Wand+Focus, huge discrepancy.

So I took a look at the actual numbers between the two choices to see if a staff would be viable in order to get the Lightning Bolt skill and try it out. The discrepancies are so massive there's no way a staff can ever compete. Seem like a huge design oversight.

Combined max rolls for either choice as follows.

Staff:
Spell Damage :169
Lightning Damage :169
Spell Damage + Mana :69/64
Mana :251
Cast Speed :52
Intelligece :33
Spell Crit :109
Spell Multi :39
Mana Regeneration :69

Wand+Focus:
Spell Damage :238
Lightning Damage :238
Spell Damage + Mana :49/45
Mana :358
Cast Speed :67
Intelligece :66
Spell Crit :208
Spell Multi :73
Mana Regeneration :138

This is obviously not all rolls but should be more than sufficient to illustrate the discrepancy. On top of this the focus also provides implicit energy shield that the staff does not have.

Are staves EVER worth using?

The only times I used staves were while I was playing at low levels and I had a decent unique staff.

Unless somethings changed I don't see how it would be beneficial. You'd have to be desperate for the skill it provides.

There are amazing passives for spell based staff builds on PoE 1's passive tree and pretty much nobody uses staves anyway, for the very reason you mentioned

They removed those passives from the tree in PoE 2 and didn't even give players any other reason to use a staff, except the garbage implicit skills. Yet they thought people would choose a staff over wand+focus I suppose?

?

What's GGG smoking down there? I just hope this team doesn't ever work on a PVP game, they seem pretty unfamiliar with the fundamentals of game design

Can you cite the "fundamentals of game design" that would have prevented this from happening?

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vexorian#9572 a écrit :

Can you cite the "fundamentals of game design" that would have prevented this from happening?

Not the person making the claim but I would claim it to be fairly fundamental to have items competing for the same items slots be comparable at the very top end. Exception being unique items ofc where power might be more relative based on build.

If a rare item competing with another rare item for the same slot(s) is ~30% worse in every aspect then it serves no real purpose as it will never be used over the alternative that has 30% more stats.

Not a game developer so could be wrong, don't think so though.

This happens to every single arpg. Using 2H by default leaves ourselves out of a 2nd weapon.

Same complaints were made for Crossbow vs. Bow+Quiver, dogwater.

They should just add unique modifiers to each weapon type to give people a reason to want to use them and to differentiate item types from one another.

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Brisket5450#4084 a écrit :

This happens to every single arpg. Using 2H by default leaves ourselves out of a 2nd weapon.

Same complaints were made for Crossbow vs. Bow+Quiver, dogwater.

Well in the case of 1H weapon VS 2H there's a distinct difference, same goes for the crossbow vs bow and quiver as the crossbow has it's own skills and build archetype. When it comes to staff vs wand and focus the stats are the same, they are ment to be used for the same builds, it literally makes no sense that they are that different in power levels.

The only counterargument I have is that you're comparing top rolls. Getting highest tier mods on one weapon is much easier than getting them on two. The ceiling is higher for wand+focus, but it is also unreachable for 99% of the players.
Is that enough to make staves worth using? No idea. Let someone else do the math.