Weapons help: Staff?

[Isanov]

Im just getting into the game, and I know most of the basics of the War lifestyle. (I played a while back but never kept with it past 30) I intend to lvl my GAxe as my primary weapon, but I dont want to mess with axe just yet (I'll lvl it whenever I do BST). My question is this, if I buy decent (as decent as possible) Staffs, would it be untoward to lvl my Staff skill as a 2nd weapon? I only intend to lvl it when my GAxe is capped, and if I am tanking then the loss in damage should not be too bad (assuming I can still keep the hate).

Now I'm not sure what rating war is on Staff skill, but the reason is this: Someday I would like to try a staff-weilding monk/war. Since Staff is hard to lvl and I still want to use H2H in exp parties I figure I will lvl it now so that I can have some skill when I toy with it later on.

Is this a completely moronic idea, or do you think a party would be ok with it if I held hate and used my GAxe most of the time?

[Siber]

Re: Weapons help: Staff?

The idea isn't too bad, but some party leaders may not be a big fan of it. Also, Staff damage is inferior to GA damage on weapons of near-equivalent levels. At level 12, you can use the GA "Greataxe" with a base damage of 30, but level 11 "Holly Staff" only has a base damage of 10. The GA has a delay almost 150 more than the Staff, but such a delay reduction does not merit using a staff in a party.

As you solo WAR to 12 or 13 (I always suggest doing this on the worms in Konschat since it's so easy to do), use your GA all the way. Once you hit 12 or 13 and the worms start to con EP, then bust out your staff and skill it up. It may be slow, but if you do it on the east side of the map you can always run to Gusgen if things get dicy and you can squeeze a few extra levels out of them.

Since you want to use H2H on your MNK in parties, you may just want to wait to when you're toying around to level it up then. You could always do it with an NPC partner to make things a bit easier, and skilling up to a respectable level to toy around on generally doesn't take that long. You can get a weapon to ~85 in Qufim fairly quickly soloing as a WAR/MNK or WAR/NIN. Also, WAR has a B in Staff.

[Bravura]

Re: Weapons help: Staff?

Is this a completely moronic idea, or do you think a party would be ok with it if I held hate and used my GAxe most of the time?

Short answer; No,

Long answer; If I were you I wouldnt even bother, WARs have no use for Staves what so-ever other than endgame kiting (Don't even need it leveled for this) or endgame blood tanking (Which I doubt you'll do much of but this is all end game) and I dont think youre party will be all that happy to see you use staff either, seeing as how you'll have worse WSs, ACC and ATK.

Plus staves look ugly.

[nanatsu]

Re: Weapons help: Staff?

Well to be fair, Pole type weapons have more base damage than staff types. At level 16 you can get Holly Pole +1 for 21 base dmg. The fact that it has less base damage than great axe isn't really a problem. It also has less delay. Weapons with less delay have less base damage. You hit softer but swing faster. Poles have similar DPS as Spear-type weapons in the early levels, and Drg have to use Spear type until they get their first Lance type at level 20. Having said that, spear type weapons start to pull away much farther in damage than Poles in the mid 20's.

The real concern, as has been said before, is the lack of accuracy. War have a B skill in staff. But this makes very little difference in level 1-40 at least as long as you balance your acc/atk/str armor and food (Rice Dumplings ftw) choices, and your party isn't the overhunting type. After that, it starts to become a problem that only uber gear can bring up to par. And at that point, you'd be doing much better damage with an A ranked weapon.

As was also pointed out earlier, something else to consider are your weapon skill choices. Actually, Staff weapon skills in the early levels are similar to great sword and scythe weapons skills. Some staff weapon skills have slightly stronger modifiers than those of scythe and great sword at higher TP percentages, but lower base def still hurts the dmg you can do with them. And since staff seems to be primarily a mage type weapon, later weapon skills seem to be devoted to that, so you'll be lacking greatly in the weapon skill department. When you get Full Swing, you may have a chance to do okay damage, but that's a long way off. Staff weapon skills also seem to benefit greatly from having 200% and 300% TP, but waiting around like that in a party will be problematic if you're DDing. Not much a problem if you're tanking.

Having said all this, unless you're goofing off fighting toughs or VT, I can't really recommend Staff either. You could bring your damage up to par if you really worked at it and invested in the gear, but putting that same amount of effort into stronger weapons would have an even more profound effect. In the early levels, you probably could get by just fine with a pole, but unless you could somehow put up good numbers you'd also have to deal with others giving you grief about it and being ridiculed and shunned for your weapon choice. That, imo, isn't worth it. I'd be intersted to see how well a war would do with a staff tho.

[LyonheartLakshmi]

Re: Weapons help: Staff?

Well to be fair, Pole type weapons have more base damage than staff types.

WARs don't typically get access to Pole type Staffs. According to somepage, the only Poles that WARs can equip are Platoon Pole at lvl 20 and a few poles in the lvl 70+ range.