Do Relic, Mythic, and Empyrean staves lack utility?

[Abelia]

Do Relic, Mythic, and Empyrean staves lack the utility of their counterparts for other jobs. I have been bugged by this for a long time now. These weapons are supposed to be most sought after items across Vana'diel, but the staff versions of these weapons seem to for lack of a better word, suck, at least in my opinion. They are designed to be melee weapons, and thus lack any of the skills that would be useful for a Mage class (Summoner Mythic Staff aside). The Hvergelmir although it has a really neat weapon skill when is it really useful to a mage doing their job properly. The Claustrum again sort of had a neat weapon skill, that pales in comparison to the Hvergelmir, still lacks the basic stats a mage would use on it.

Mages in Vana'diel tend to use the elemental staves over these "Ultimate Weapons," because they lack the bonuses to magic damage and accuracy. These weapons are poorly designed in my opinion. They seem to be nothing more than a toy to play with outside of actual real content. I think its rather disturbing to find that ever time they make a new "Ultimate Weapon" for mages, they are just a stick for hitting an enemy with. Mages are changing their staff for each spell that is used, unless they only use spells of one element. It makes it hard to hold TP with the current way mages play their jobs. Maintaining TP isn't where the problems stop. Most mage jobs don't focus on haste as a priority, therefore TP gain is relatively slow. Even if it was viable for a mage to melee, I am pretty sure that there is a melee job better suited for that purpose. Am I the only one that thinks that these weapons lack the oomph their melee counterparts?

[Tagrineth]

The Empyrean Staff is actually pretty neat for BLM - you forego the ability to wield elemental staves or magian staves for offense, but every handful of nukes, you can fire off Myrkr to refill your MP.

It's still bad, though, since Spirit Taker accomplishes the exact same task. :\

[Malamasala]

Well, Mythic staff for SMN is exactly how all staffs for SMN should look like. Just a shame it is the hardest one to get.

Empyrean staff is so-so for SMN. It isn't the staff that is wrong this case, it is the WS that doesn't do damage while it is on the highest damage staff. A concept that is just wrong. Either you have high damage for dealing damage, or you have low damage and high TP rate to make a lot of WSes that do not rely on damage. Basically Myrkr should be redesigned. 20% MP back, 40% of your MP pool in damage would have been a nice design. And at 300% it would be 60% MP back, 120% your MP pool in damage. Still nothing amazing, but it would lower the gap between those Great Axe WSes and Staff WS.

Relic staff though. lol.

[Raksha]

Yes they all suck, but that's fine with me cause I don't want to have to waste all that time doing dynamis/salvage/abyssea to get one ;_;

[Gokku]

iirc its been tested but the level 90 BLM staff is currently the best nuke staff available. ill search for the proof.

[Raksha]

iirc its been tested but the level 90 BLM staff is currently the best nuke staff available. ill search for the proof.

relic or mythic?

EDIT: <3 Byrth

http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/101...=1#post4287092

[Gokku]

relic or mythic?

EDIT: <3 Byrth

http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/101...=1#post4287092

ah was thinking mythic , and ok its close but can still be beat.

[Mezzopiano]

...You even have to ask this? Of course they're terrible. The sole exception is the SMN mythic staff, which is actually pretty decent.

[Alhanelem]

Do Relic, Mythic, and Empyrean staves lack utility?

ABSOLUTELY, UNEQUIVOCALLY NO.

They are extremely useful, you just have build yourself and use a playstyle to suit them.

Nirvana is easily the best general-purpose staff in the game for summoner. The relic and mythic staves are the most powerful staves in the game as weapons. You just have to think outside the box to use them.

...You even have to ask this? Of course they're terrible. The sole exception is the SMN mythic staff, which is actually pretty decent.

They are not terrible. They are awesome. The relic WS gives you a huge refresh effect when using it, and the empyrean WS isn't even an attack- it just restores a huge amount of MP, cures status effects, and gives you occasional double damage (hello 800+ melee crits on SMN- the proof is in the pudding) Just because these are high damage weapons instead of having +5000 magic attack bonus does not mean they are useless.

If you get it out of your heads that this job has to act this way and that job has to act that way, they are extremely powerful weapons that are very useful to the people who want them. They, of course, are not for everybody. But that's also part of why they're hard to get.

SE made these weapons for to cater to a specialized group that would be interested in them. They aren't meant to be desired by everyone, and that's fine. Just don't go around telling people their weapon is useless when it's not.

[Glamdring]

The problem with staff is that it's a relatively high delay/low damage weapon in general. For mages it's really there more for the added effect (whatever it is on that staff) than for any special combat utility. Hell, most blms I see swap staffs so much for the elemental bonuses that getting a WS off is a miracle.

What really showed off the combat deficiencies of staff to me was NPCs. I got my NPC right when it came out, and I powerred thru much of the content before a great deal was known. I have too much time invested in it now to start over. When I got it, I never envisioned using it in any form other than healer, so I went with a staff, mistakenly believing that it might get staff-type bonusses. Unfortunately, down the road I started leveling other jobs and wanted to use other options. Even with its A+ in staff, my NPC tank can't hold hate, not even if I TA DE onto it, simply becase staff is slow and doesn't do much when it DOES land.

Later, when I started leveling jobs that staff main I got to experience this myself. I still use staff on my bard, mostly for red/blue !! to take some of the load off the jobs that can use other weapons, but when I don't need to !! I switch to daggers, unless I need the staff to juice a support job (Apollo's for my /whm for example).

it would be nice to get a staff that gave elemental bonuses in 1 weapon, especially since the powers that be decreed bard can't use Kirin's... but outside that, even if I did level a staff type job, I think I would have more important things to do than make an augmented staff, unless I had LOTS of downtime.