A Better Staff

[Vallar]

Hello Monks and forumers!

Recently I have made a pure monk giving the class another chance after U19 and I have to say, I am having loads of fun with it. I went Henshin and using the staff.

Currently my monk is 10K XP away from level 10 and since I have created it till now I have been using Arlyn's Staff with +1 Minor Acid Ruby slotted in the red slot and Force Critical added through rituals.
In all honesty, the damage on the staff is quite nice, however, I feel that it is time to change weapons. Therefore I come to you for guidance what is the next best staff and how can I obtain it?

Please bear in mind I am only Premium so I don't have all the packs (what I have are STK, Phairlan Carnival, Red Fens, VoN, GH, Vale of Twilight, Reaver's Reach, The Devil's of Shavarath, Dreaming Dark, High Roads and MotU pack).

Thank you very much!

[TeacherSyn]

Hello Monks and forumers!

Recently I have made a pure monk giving the class another chance after U19 and I have to say, I am having loads of fun with it. I went Henshin and using the staff.

Currently my monk is 10K XP away from level 10 and since I have created it till now I have been using Arlyn's Staff with +1 Minor Acid Ruby slotted in the red slot and Force Critical added through rituals.
In all honesty, the damage on the staff is quite nice, however, I feel that it is time to change weapons. Therefore I come to you for guidance what is the next best staff and how can I obtain it?

Please bear in mind I am only Premium so I don't have all the packs (what I have are STK, Phairlan Carnival, Red Fens, VoN, GH, Vale of Twilight, Reaver's Reach, The Devil's of Shavarath, Dreaming Dark, High Roads and MotU pack).

Thank you very much!

A quick search in my addled state this AM isn't looking good. Some of the better staves are in packs you don't own. However, some of those staves may be bound to character on equip, meaning that these turn up in the Auction House from time to time.

One of these is the Souleater, an ML7 end reward from the Red Fens. It doesn't do a lot of damage until it uses a Slay Living spell effect on a vorpal hit to kill something. Its Bodyfeeder effect is helpful.

Another is the Witching Hour from the Necropolis, a ML8 which will improve your Mystic spell power and has a red slot to add some melee damage effects. Similarly is the ML13 Branch of Vile Curses that I found a decent weapon and spell power booster. There's also Tinder, an ML10 from the Demon Sands, which has two augment slots for damage and has spell power boosting.

Hope that's a start. Since you have Menace of the Underdark, the best staff you can attain that I can figure at your access level comes from there and requires only 15 Villagers of Eveningstar commendations: The Stout Oak Walking Stick is a beastly powerful staff by damage numbers you should get as soon as possible. My L20 Mystic pulls that one out when she's less inclined to use ki power and is in the mood for smacking the heck out of things. It's a lovely thing.

[giftie]

Spencerian covered the basics.

I'd like to mention another staff though, Stave of the Seer ( http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Stave_of_the_Seer ), which may or may not be of interest to you depending on your Wisdom. It has double crit range and very high base damage along with two red augment slots, but it's usually very expensive whenever it appears in the AH.

[serthcore]

Hello Monks and forumers!

Recently I have made a pure monk giving the class another chance after U19 and I have to say, I am having loads of fun with it. I went Henshin and using the staff.

Currently my monk is 10K XP away from level 10 and since I have created it till now I have been using Arlyn's Staff with +1 Minor Acid Ruby slotted in the red slot and Force Critical added through rituals.
In all honesty, the damage on the staff is quite nice, however, I feel that it is time to change weapons. Therefore I come to you for guidance what is the next best staff and how can I obtain it?

Please bear in mind I am only Premium so I don't have all the packs (what I have are STK, Phairlan Carnival, Red Fens, VoN, GH, Vale of Twilight, Reaver's Reach, The Devil's of Shavarath, Dreaming Dark, High Roads and MotU pack).

Thank you very much!

I like this one. http://ddowiki.com/page/Itemreamspitter it is BTA so if you have a higher level alt you can get it and upgrade (it adds force burst) and it's still lvl 14. Then once you get to lvl 18 and run dreaming dark you can put holy on it (it will switch to BTC tough).

For level 18 there's this one aswell, with x3 crit multiplier and higher base damage: http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Rahl%27s_Might

[voodoogroves]

Spencerian covered the basics.

I'd like to mention another staff though, Stave of the Seer ( http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Stave_of_the_Seer ), which may or may not be of interest to you depending on your Wisdom. It has double crit range and very high base damage along with two red augment slots, but it's usually very expensive whenever it appears in the AH.

It's expensive because it has a True Seeing clickie and the UMD+5 (useful for low-level gear swapping - or at least used to be - not so much on that one now).

[HastyPudding]

Don't forget the http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Staff_of_the_Shadow. You can upgrade it with several different effects depending on what you want.

http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Staff_of_Nat_Gann isn't a bad staff, either, for lower levels.

http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Totemic..._Splinterskull has 2 slots for red augments.

http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Breeze is a good staff, but you have to run Abbot to get it.

And, of course, http://ddowiki.com/page/Sireth trumps them all, provided you can get it to drop.

If you wanted to be strange, you could use a http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Twilight,_Element_of_Magic, which would give you +120 fire/impulse spellpower if you upgrade it that way.

[Vallar]

Wow, thank you guys for the replies. I didn't expect so much information; thank you very much.

A few questions however...

First you mention the spell power in staffs; I for one don't know what they do to a monk. Do they boost the fist attack (Like the Water fist, Fire fist, etc...)? Or do they just boost the special abilities like Cauldron of Flame as well as finishers? Since I read somewhere in the forums that spell power for monk is different from the casters so I am a bit confused.

Second question, does that spell power thingy apply to all other staffs? Like for instance, if I use The staff that boosts 3x spell type (can't remember the name, it is Theum something) would that boost my spell power same way as the staffs you mentioned?

Thank you very much!

[HastyPudding]

Wow, thank you guys for the replies. I didn't expect so much information; thank you very much.

A few questions however...

First you mention the spell power in staffs; I for one don't know what they do to a monk. Do they boost the fist attack (Like the Water fist, Fire fist, etc...)? Or do they just boost the special abilities like Cauldron of Flame as well as finishers? Since I read somewhere in the forums that spell power for monk is different from the casters so I am a bit confused.

Second question, does that spell power thingy apply to all other staffs? Like for instance, if I use The staff that boosts 3x spell type (can't remember the name, it is Theum something) would that boost my spell power same way as the staffs you mentioned?

Thank you very much!

For light monks, positive energy spellpower boosts the strength of healing ki finisher.

For Henshin, combustion/impulse (or universal if it's higher) spellpower boosts their unique ki abilities (mainly incinerating wave, ki bolt, and cauldron of flame). Combustion spellpower also affects the monk fire-fire-fire finisher. This is why the tier 3 Henshin core ability treats all staffs as if they were a spell implement, to gain more spellpower (meaning for every +1 enhancement bonus a staff has, you gain a +3 equipment bonus to spellpower).

Spellpower does NOT affect ki strikes used for monk combos. Personally, I think this needs to be changed.

The staff you're talking about is a thaumaturge staff, which is a random generated type of loot which can have up to 3 different spell-boosting effects (like spellpower, spell penetration, spell points, spell lore, etc). These types of staffs are already a spell implement because they have spell-boosting abilities on them and gain the +3 spellpower bonus per +1 enhancement automatically, just like any scepter or other weapon with such effects. A Henshin can take ANY staff and turn it into a spell implement to gain more spellpower, regardless of what is on the weapon; this makes it so a Henshin can take a good combat-oriented staff like Rahl's Might or Sireth and still gain spellpower from it.

[Qhualor]

I liked using Staff of Shadow and Dreamspitter. The neg level drain was quite handy in killing mobs quicker. The cool thing about Dreamspittrr is that its glass and never took damage in quests, except when forgot to switch weapons against a rusty once. There needs to be more quality named staffs though. I have all of the named heroic ones and only 3 I thought were pretty good.

[HastyPudding]

I liked using Staff of Shadow and Dreamspitter. The neg level drain was quite handy in killing mobs quicker. The cool thing about Dreamspittrr is that its glass and never took damage in quests, except when forgot to switch weapons against a rusty once. There needs to be more quality named staffs though. I have all of the named heroic ones and only 3 I thought were pretty good.

How did dreamsplitter get damaged by rusties? It's one of the few crystal weapons (it's labeled as glass, but it's crystal for DR purposes).

Honestly, although there aren't that many options for staff-users, the ones that are there are good. Lower levels have a plethora of staffs to use, and the mid levels should be dominated by greensteel, dreamsplitter, and the shadow staff. After that there's rahl's might at 18, stout oak walking stick at 20, and sireth at 23 which should hold until they give us something better.

[Qhualor]

How did dreamsplitter get damaged by rusties? It's one of the few crystal weapons (it's labeled as glass, but it's crystal for DR purposes).

Honestly, although there aren't that many options for staff-users, the ones that are there are good. Lower levels have a plethora of staffs to use, and the mid levels should be dominated by greensteel, dreamsplitter, and the shadow staff. After that there's rahl's might at 18, stout oak walking stick at 20, and sireth at 23 which should hold until they give us something better.

hmmm maybe I was mistaken and was thinking puddings of some sort. either way, I know it got damage by using it against something where everbright would have been a better choice.

[HastyPudding]

hmmm maybe I was mistaken and was thinking puddings of some sort. either way, I know it got damage by using it against something where everbright would have been a better choice.

Possibly golems. I know on my henshin and acrobat that beating on any kind of golem or earth elemental seems to damage your staff more than anything. That seems to be a weak point of quarterstaff build: low durability, especially on wooden staffs. I know when my acrobat was running CITW to get his sireth an entire run would bring my stout oak walking stick down to very low durability.

[Vallar]

Ahh, I see what you guys mean now. I'll look into the Dreamspitter thing since I don't have the Attack on Stormreach pack. Hopefully I can get a hold of that one.

Guess it is all Arlyn's Staff till that then.

Thank you very much!