Quarterstaves

[Baron Saturday]

Quarterstaves are real strong right now, benefitting from a lot of different factors.
- Large weapon (+2 AB, disarm attempt bonus)
- Double weapon (More APR, ranger dual-wield AC)
- Finesse weapon (Dex meta)
- Monk weapon (Even MORE APR)
Question is, do they need to be tuned down, or does their low crit threat and multiplier keep them balanced? If they do need a little nerf, what's the best way to do so? My own inclination is to remove the +2 AB, which would bring them more in line with other finessable monk dual-wield options.

Thoughts?

[Drowboy]

They're pretty much best in slot right now for anything that really wants to spam attacks, aren't they? Sneak attacks, blade thirst, spellsword imbues.

And, with that list of tag-ons, I think they're the most augmented weapon on the server, for the low low price of simple or monk proficiency.

Thay said, they should lose at least one of those properties. Dealers choice. Ubab would be mine, but I'm sure others disagree.

Losing the large property would do it good too. Then it's basically a 2-for-1-spell set of kamas, and there's a decent set of kamas to balance against already.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

Quarterstaves have always been a monk thing. In 3.5, they're a double weapon.

I think they should lose the Large Weapon status, and that +2 AB and bonus to disarms. That's more universal to why they're problematic across a lot of builds - it's all the synergy plus more AB.

[Archnon]

I would dearly love it if it were a medium weapon. After race-based weapons, the quarterstaff is one of the weapons that can really be used as an RP tool. You can keep it out. RP it as a walking stick. It just lends more of a story. Make it a medium weapon so Hin and Gnomes could use it too.

I also think the spellword synergy could be looked at. ALthough, i think you can land more damage types with two kamas so maybe it is just the +2 ab that gets them to use it.

[AstralUniverse]

Ranger's duel-wield ac bonus should not stack together with monk's wisdom ac. Problem solved.

I can say from experience that any balance problem we had with spellsword and quarterstaff is now history due to the recent changes to negative imbue and timestop.

[NPC Logger Number 2]

IMO we need to buff STR melee somehow. Even if we nerf quarterstaves DEX is still going to be the meta because high AC and a better selection of gear. My suggestion - buff adamantine full plate, give it +6 AC and enough DR that APR alone won't be able to melt STR based fighters in a round or two. A warrior covered head to toe in adamantium with a scimitar and a tower shield should be able to put up a fight against a guy with a wooden stick and no shirt. That one tweak to end-game full plate armor would make heavy armor sword and board builds useful again. Right now they are just pitiful and cannot really compete with any DEX builds.

[Baron Saturday]

IMO we need to buff STR melee somehow. Even if we nerf quarterstaves DEX is still going to be the meta because high AC and a better selection of gear. My suggestion - buff adamantine full plate, give it +6 AC and enough DR that APR alone won't be able to melt STR based fighters in a round or two. A warrior covered head to toe in adamantium with a scimitar and a tower shield should be able to put up a fight against a guy with a wooden stick and no shirt. That one tweak to end-game full plate armor would make heavy armor sword and board builds useful again. Right now they are just pitiful and cannot really compete with any DEX builds.

That's a bit beyond the scope of this thread, which is quarterstaff balance, not Str/Dex balance as a whole.

[Might-N-Magic]

They're fine. For goodness sake, they're just kamas with one less damage and one more ab that you have to keen yourself.
Nobody in their right mind would bother with them again if you changed them. Kama as far as the eye can see.
Right now you have a balance of choice.

And given the fact that if you want to have Epic Dodge, you're not going to have your fancy pants 21+ level epic ranger build, that also is a balance of choice. Epic dodge or more hard ac.

[Eira]

Quarterstaves, more like "I don't like large numbers when dealing damage"

[Tarkus the dog]

They are fine, honestly.

The only change I would propose is:

If monk and ranger = Lose the dual wielding ac bonus.

Reasoning: Ranger base damage against fav races is pretty high, but you need to invest a lot of levels to make it work so it's a fair trade. However, when combining it with monk you end up with the best of the both worlds scenario, good damage ( an average 35-50 per hit ) with great APR and great AC on top. There's no reason for a zero-time prep build to be sitting on 63 ac constantly whilst having actual kill pressure at the same time ( unlike so many other dex builds ). 60 ac, 70 in expertise, 50 AB. 1d10 hit dice, sneaks + extra skill points and damage mentioned above puts the cross-class in a more fair position towards the other dex build options without gutting the build.

Or, at the very least, cut the ac bonus in half.

[TooManyPotatoes]

My assumption of the ranger ac bonus was so that rangers didnt have to go monk to get good ac while duel wielding. The fact that it stacks with monk ac is bonkers and surely misses the original intention of the change?

[Itikar]

If monk and ranger = Lose the dual wielding ac bonus.

This is already how it is for the spellsword one-handed shield ac, "Monks using a single Kama are denied this bonus for balance purposes", quoting from the wiki, so it would seem consistent.

Even that, however, does not prevent the fact that most spellswords I met are actually spellstaff monks, I suspect for a mix of social perception and the many synergies of the weapon for the reasons mentioned by OP.

[AstralUniverse]

"Spellstaff" used to be REALLY good before:

-Timestop nerf - this is because one of the main bread and butter strategies of a spellstaff is to timestop + true strike and then hit the target so many times it just dies to elemental damage or gets really chunked and debuffed that you can finish the work with maximized IGMS. This is not possible to pull off anymore.

-Negative imbue nerf - This means that now you either dont use this imbue at all or you use it at all times, where as before you could use electrical for the AOE part of the fight and then heal up back to full after you killed most of the spawn and left with 1-2 mobs in front of you. Now you need to keep the negative imbue at all times (hurts your overall DPS) or not use it and no vamp regen.

-Dispel bait meta - 21 ss / 6 fighter / 3 monk used to be the best way to do this (using mostly wands and potions for self buffing, permonition and shadowshield are breachable anyway) because even with all these attacks and imbues, without the epic weapon spec and the extra apr from fighter, the over all damage of the Spellstaff is just not that impressive (because dex based and because staff has the worst crits in the game, for a reason). Now you cant really pull this off without being a dispel bait and without the fighter levels it's really 'meh'.

Now spellstaff is pretty bad imo. I rather go str based with divine dip on this class.

Rangers are a different story because rangers do not technically have to take the fighter lvls to begin with, so they are left with solid 26 CL and their damage is pretty high even without epic weapon spec. I think, even though they cannot access e-dodge, ranger/monk should not sit on this high ac like that when they reach 40-50 damage a hit and 51 ab, being a d10 hp class too. Duel wield ac should be disabled for monks.

[Jencent]

+1 at this moment staff is a superior weapon. Giant Guts sword? Pfff, please, a wood stick can slay any demon better!

[NPC Logger Number 2]

That's a bit beyond the scope of this thread, which is quarterstaff balance, not Str/Dex balance as a whole.

I think STR/DEX balance as a whole is more important than just nerfing one weapon into the ground like we did with EDK and destroying a LOT of people's builds. My suggestion would be an indirect nerf to quarterstaves since their low damage per hit would suffer a lot against heavy armor with good DR, and it would be a buff to STR Melee encouraging more diversity in builds. It would give quarterstaff builds and their high APR a niche to fill without being totally overpowered and the only best option you should choose. You can nerf quarterstaff if you want but everyone will just switch to kamas and still play DEX/WIS monk dips so that will solve absolutely nothing.

[Archnon]

Taking out the synergy with Monk would really change the game but it would affect things other than the quarterstaff. It would essentially drop the standard 23 Ranger, 4 Fighter, 3 Monk build by just 3 AC. However, this would also hit ranger who dual wield with different weapons. Kamas might deserve this as they get UBAB but they are a tiny weapon so -2 AB on the quarterstaff and risk of Disarm. Alternatively, a ranger may be using a spear/light weapon or any combination of two other small and tiny weapons. These weapons would not get UBAB but would still lose the 3 AC? (Where are all the spear dagger builds?)

As it is though, the better build will always be Ranger with a monk dip and not vice versa. Removing the scaling monk AC and the two required feats to get the +5 fists make high level monk tough. But I digress.....

Right now, the 3 AC for Dual wield at level 20 does not make up for the potential 8 AC from Wisdom (14 base + 12 gear). If you keep them from stacking, you will see almost all hard ranger builds just lose 3 AC and not change play style or weapons. Quarterstaff will still be dominant as it is an across the board hit. Offering 1 AC every 5 levels instead of every 8 on dual wield and removing the stacking might open things up. Then you can choose between 4-5 AC ranger or an 8 AC ranger monk? That being said, if you made monk Wisdom AC scale with levels you would see a stronger shift. However, you would really just see a big boost to the divine meta as it would leave it as the only reasonable way to get high AC and high damage.

**Edit**
Before someone calls me out on it. I totally forgot about tumble. That is an extra 6AC that monk brings to the table that ranger really can't live without. So my suggestion means that rangers will just choose between Monk and Rogue again, ala the old style.

[AstralUniverse]

Right now, the 3 AC for Dual wield at level 20 does not make up for the potential 8 AC from Wisdom (14 base + 12 gear). If you keep them from stacking, you will see almost all hard ranger builds just lose 3 AC and not change play style or weapons

That's what I meant and that's totally fine. I dont think there's any problem with quarterstaff, again. I think this one build that uses quarterstaff is a bit too strong and nerfing it by 3 ac seem on point, quarterstaff or not. Maybe I shouldnt have brought this up in this thread but my point was that quarterstaff itself is not the problem here.

[Baron Saturday]

They're fine. For goodness sake, they're just kamas with one less damage and one more ab that you have to keen yourself.

Not entirely true. The builds that make the best use of quarterstaves are those like ranger, hexblade, and spellsword that can buff them up to +5, with additional sources of damage coming from the class itself. I'm currently running a ranger/monk that primarily uses a dweomered keen/vamp regen/unisave/dmg essence staff with blade thirst to great effect.

[Anomandaris]

Ranger monks are very strong. I don’t see them as OP however. They aren’t the best tanks and they aren’t the best dmg dealers. They happen to be quite amazingly well rounded. Saves are so so and gearing is a pain. I don’t play one but have built a few in PGCC. I wouldn’t want to nerf the AC on these, they aren’t terrorizing the server. Changing this synergy will just push more to div shield for AC and change the meta, not eliminate the potential performance of a PC that’s built well.

[Drowboy]

Monk gearing, even after the nerf, is among the easiest on the server.

[Anomandaris]

Monk gearing, even after the nerf, is among the easiest on the server.

Ranger with monk dip. Gearing is a pain. Dex, Wis, Con and unis. Not to mention often wanting hide/ms/spot/discipline/and a disguise skill geared. Very tough to max hp and ac without sacrificing saves etc. So some of these benefits are mutually exclusive in practice without millions of gold.

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

Ranger's duel-wield ac bonus should not stack together with monk's wisdom ac. Problem solved.

I can say from experience that any balance problem we had with spellsword and quarterstaff is now history due to the recent changes to negative imbue and timestop.

thats just nerfing ranger/monk combo, not qaurter staffs. Dual wielding kamas is is still viable. We have nice kamas to compete with ab, but the weapon size difference and the fact that you only need to buff one weapon versus two seperate weapons is what makes quarterstaff really stand out.

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

Monk gearing, even after the nerf, is among the easiest on the server.

how i tri-qaud stat gearing easier than a pure fighter or cookie cutter weapon master lol?

[Might-N-Magic]

They're fine. For goodness sake, they're just kamas with one less damage and one more ab that you have to keen yourself.

Not entirely true. The builds that make the best use of quarterstaves are those like ranger, hexblade, and spellsword that can buff them up to +5, with additional sources of damage coming from the class itself. I'm currently running a ranger/monk that primarily uses a dweomered keen/vamp regen/unisave/dmg essence staff with blade thirst to great effect.

Sounds like the problem is multiple weapon buffs at once, not staves.

[Drowboy]

Monk gearing, even after the nerf, is among the easiest on the server.

how i tri-qaud stat gearing easier than a pure fighter or cookie cutter weapon master lol?

Relatively easy to craft runic items with +2 to Wis, am incredibly common 2 Wis/1 con belt, and a triple stat amulet, also wildly common from loot. I'm playing a monk right now and have had zero issues gearing since level 7 or so.

(At least two of those pieces can be further runed if you're feeling nasty)

For sure, an Am Need Just Str/Con build will gear easier but as far as triple stat builds go I'd rather gear a monk than whatever else.