The Way of the Staff

The Way of the Staff
https://youtu.be/S71zfCAagZg?t=177


"Those who spare the rod hate their children,
but those who love them are diligent to discipline them."
- Proverbs 13:24
(Don't hit your children, hit mobs in an online game instead.)


Introduction

In the time I've played Project: Gorgon, I've heard many differing opinions regarding my ultimate all-time favorite combat skill in the game: Staff skill. This guide will serve to describe the versatility, playstyles, abilities, and *some* of the combat skill combinations which can create powerful builds in the game (as of Update 273). You might hear people say Staff is a weak or underwelming combat skill. You might also hear them say it just doesn't seem very cool or it wasn't what they expected. Don't listen to them. Always try it for yourself and form your own opinion. That said, I played Gorgon using this skill for the past 9 months and it was...addictive.

Note: @BetaNotus, if you are looking for content like this for the wiki, please feel free to repost it there and edit it as you see fit.

Abilities

Spoiler:

I wanted to describe Staff abilities in my own words, in case it helps newer players understand how they function more easily. If you're not new to the skill, you can probably skip this whole section or most of it.

Hogan
Heed the Stick - "tanking" ability. increases your aggro. you can mod it to mitigate 24 damage for 10 seconds. Thats enough time to fire off the skill again and always have 24 mitigation up.
Headcracker (Nice) - damage ability. If modded to be the end stage of the Suppression Stun combo, this will stun your single target. can also reduce the targets rage.
Phoenix Strike (Epic) - newly added this year. 60 second cooldown unmodded. moddable to increase Fire dmg for some seconds, heal you, decrease its own cooldown, buff your Major Healing abilities, and trigger vulnerability.

Wombat
Suppress - Strongest AOE dmg dealer and rage reduction. beginning of Suppression Stun combo (Suppress+AnyMelee+AnyMelee+Headcracker). moddable to deal more dmg and reduce more rage.

Furlak
Pinning Slash - Shares a cooldown with Pin. Deals some initial dmg and then some trauma over time. Meant to be used as part of the Staff/Unarmed skill combo that Citan has been working on. This version of pin doesn't root the target for multiple seconds. It stuns them momentarily.

Level Up
Double Hit (Core) - great dmg dealer that can reduce cooldown on Headcracker and increase dmg the next crushing attack you do.
Deflective Spin - reduces all types of incoming dmg by 40% for 8 seconds! amazing. can be modded to restore health over time, immediately, and restore power after a delay. Spam it!
Blocking Stance (Survival Utility) - makes you immune to piercing, crushing, and slashing damage for 10 sec. costs no power at higher ranks. can be modded to restore power immediately, increase dmg to Mentalism attacks, and increase healing amount of First Aid ability. This means you can save money and use only Good kits and still get the heal of an Amazing kit. They are expensive.
Smash (Basic) - pretty straightforward Combat Refresh ability. Pretty moddable but nothing very exciting.
Safe Fall (Sidebar) - extremely useful ability which allows you to take zero fall damage. useful if you don't have a flight form like me.
Pin (Signature Debuff) - roots the target in place. modded, this ability can have the widest array of effects such as -40% dmg to target, healing, reduce rage, increase dmg of Core attacks, etc.
Lunge - a light hit that can be modded to do AOE dmg, restore armor, and knockback.
Redirect - hits target, knocks them back, and reduces your taunt to them so they attack someone else. very moddable (-taunt, +%dmg, trauma dmg, more rage reduction).
Strategic Thrust - piercing dmg. deals more dmg to vulnerable targets.

Level 51+ staff abilities are taught by Roshun the Traitor in Serbule.

Playstyles

Spoiler:

There is a high fantasy image engrained in our mind that Staff skill is meant to be used to enhance our magical abilities. I believe it is this that has affected Staff's reputation. This is not to say that the skill doesn't function well as a Secondary skill to Fire Magic, Ice Magic, Psychology, Mentalism, or even Archery (!). It functions quite well as a secondary skill. However, when you think of Staff skill, think more along the lines of the scene from Kung Fu Hustle that I posted above. This is the Bo Staff skill. Highly offensive, Highly defensive, Highly useful as a primary damage dealing and tanking skill, Highly supportive.

*Some* Staff skill playstyles
Defensive: Many of the skills directly reduce the amount of damage you receive. From being fully immune to any physical damage to mitigating a set amount of damage every time you're hit, to reducing all types of incoming damage by a percentage. Staff offers true survivability. In addition, modifications on Staff gear offer self-heals over time, percentage of max health heals when under a 50% health, self-heals on skill use (Suppress), and more.

Tanking: These abilities and mods also make this skill as viable for tanking as Shield and Cow. Mods on gear can increase the amount you taunt with the skill Heed the Stick. Pin can reduce incoming damage from your target, as well as keep the target from running.

Offensive: Staff isn't the strongest damage in the game. The difference here is that the innate defensive nature of Staff allows the player to survive longer than other skills when receiving direct damage from named mobs or full groups of enemies. Staff mods can increase Crushing damage done to targets, create combos which allow you to deal more damage, and increase the Area of Effect damage you do as well. In fact, the majority of these mods can be built into your gear without losing any of Staff's signature defensive capabilities. The best mods for this playstyle are the Headcracker combo (Suppression Stun) mod on gloves and the 2 +75 crushing dmg mods to Double Hit.

Simple Survival: When I first used this skill, I had it paired with Ice Magic and only used 2 abilities. Blocking Stance and Deflective Spin. Both abilities were completely unmodded in my gear and still offered more than enough reason to use Staff as my secondary. The No-risk solution to taking too much damage in AOE farming. It's notable here to say that if you mod these two skills, you can receive substantial health and power regen on use and over time.

Staff's helping skill "Hoplology"

Spoiler:

This skill allows you to regain up to 15 Armor every time you use a Staff ability in combat. It currently only provides a bonus up to level 50 Hoplology, but is fairly easy to level up. It can be learned from Timmy's research table in Wolf Cave. Open your Recipes window after learning it. Each base item (armor or weapons or jewelry or instruments) in the game can be "studied" there. You may study a new item every 5 minutes and you receive a level every 3 or 4 times you study. You can only study each base item once. This secondary skill is still pretty powerful and essential to getting the most out of Staff. I levelled it up to 50 by setting an alarm to go off every 5 minutes until I was finished. I did this while I did my normal farming and grinding panthers in Kur. I still hear the alarm in my nightmares.

Which skills can I pair with Staff?

Spoiler:

AnyRanged: Really any ranged skill can be paired with staff as long as it doesnt require a special Main Hand weapon other than a staff. I recommend building your gear as a Defensive staff build or a Simple Survival staff build. Pin is useful for getting out of harm's way. Redirect can send the mob back to the tank or another party member or even deaggro it entirely. Suppress can reduce their rage greatly. Defensive Spin and Blocking Stance are always must-haves. Don't focus on melee dmg with these combos, obviously.
Staff/Unarmed: I've tried desperately to get this build to work the way Citan seems to want to make it work. As a Pinning Slash & Slashing Strike trauma build. I can't. Building this as a Crushing Damage build is very very effective though. Use Bruising Blow & Double Hit to increase your overall dmg, with Bodyslam and Suppression Stun combo as your heavy hitters. Many have told me this is a stupid build, but Autopsy tells the truth. My numbers matched theirs.
Staff/Druid: A seemingly good combo that combines the utilities of both skills to reduce alot of damage. I'd call it an "Off Tank" build I guess. You could probably do some interesting things with this skill combo, but I'm not a druid.
Staff/Shield: So unstoppable that it got nerfed twice. Even still, this is a great tank/soloing build with lots of immunities and regen. If you've never played Gorgon this way, you've gotta try it. It's not all about the glass cannon builds.
Staff/Necro or AH: Pet(s) tanks or damages, you stay alive and deal damage for as long as the pet needs to kill the mob. Very cool, but not a recommended group or dungeon build at this time.

Conclusion

I hope this guide has been informative to you! If you have any questions or further suggestions to add to the guide, please post them below or message me ingame. -Hood

Many thanks for this guide! I always appreciate the time/effort it takes players to go this extra mile.

Which skills can I pair with Staff?

I would think Battle Chemistry as an offhand would make a fantastic pairing. Mind you.. I think BC pairs with pretty much anything. Mentalism could also be a strong contender for survivability.

EDIT: one of my fave movies too!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kell.shepherd

Many thanks for this guide! I always appreciate the time/effort it takes players to go this extra mile.

Which skills can I pair with Staff?

I would think Battle Chemistry as an offhand would make a fantastic pairing. Mind you.. I think BC pairs with pretty much anything. Mentalism could also be a strong contender for survivability.

EDIT: one of my fave movies too!

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Yes :) Staff/BC works very well! My personal favorite though is Staff/Psych. "The Philosopher Build"

At one point in the past I ran a Staff/Mentalism pairing, that had decent survivability capability. Although due to my sub-par equipment I tended to be more support than anything. Suppress was always one of my favorite moves due to the mods available for it at the time.

Anyone play Staff and Hammer before? What are strengths and weaknesses of both in your opinion? I'm starting to see a lot of staff users now. Just curious as to why.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Spiritfingers

Anyone play Staff and Hammer before? What are strengths and weaknesses of both in your opinion? I'm starting to see a lot of staff users now. Just curious as to why.

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Hammer is for killign stuff. It has damge, more damage, and even more damge. Then some more damage on top of it. It also ahve soem decnt cc - including unique knocdown mechanic, that works liek stun but also boost damge done to target by 25%.

Staff has good mix of surival and utility. And a bit of trivia fact - there are only 3 skills that cant be used with equiped satff - Hammer, Sword, and Knife. This make staff most universal weapon in game.
[MENTION=177]Hood[/MENTION]: From what i noticed, studign any item gives you 20 exp in Hopology - and it cnat be boosted in any way. Since every level needs 50 exp - you need 3 items for 1st lv up and then 2 for next.

Also a bit of my personal experience with satff - well i did started it in wrong time and in wrong set. i stillc na figure out what mad me think that makign staff/ice magic build for Gazluk would be good idea. With ice magic as main dmg source...

Well so far its not too bad (only thign i regret is not having stun), surivability is good(as long as i remebr to use defensive and deflective stance) and dmg is not bad either

Hmm, then Hoplo seems to be different than it used to be. Still an easy skill to level, even if it does take a little time. Edited the post.

Ice/Staff is a very cool build. Both myself and Lyra used to play it. It makes AOE grinding very easy, but also does good single target damage. I like the fact that Ice skills give you so much utility as well. Armor, Slow, Stun (if you mod it), and Freeze. Staff is a great skill to pair it with bc of all the power regen. Definitely keep spin and stance up as much as you can :)

Hammer may do more damage but it has a heavy power usage. Hammer isn't a spammable weapon. Lots of sitting around using basic attack or other combat skill. I can see why more people are using Staff now. It synergizes with other combat skills better than hammer.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hood

Hmm, then Hoplo seems to be different than it used to be. Still an easy skill to level, even if it does take a little time. Edited the post.

Ice/Staff is a very cool build. Both myself and Lyra used to play it. It makes AOE grinding very easy, but also does good single target damage. I like the fact that Ice skills give you so much utility as well. Armor, Slow, Stun (if you mod it), and Freeze. Staff is a great skill to pair it with bc of all the power regen. Definitely keep spin and stance up as much as you can :)

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Heh at first i was plannign on picking up all AoE's from ice magic, but decided it would hurt my ST too much. Right now im using shardblast(more for rest on Ice armor than actual damage) and ice nova. Well, build is not completed, i made it in a hurry just to have something to level in gazluk (since i have to wait for full moon to progress my werewolf). So not all mods are the ones i wanted - basily if it was for skill i used i kept it. So even with this half-assed build, im having fun.

Interesting read.

I know I'm a little late to the party, but I've had some issues with Staff. Mind you, I'm only around level 40 in Staff, so I imagine some of my gripes will be managed by gear/skill levels later on.

For right now, I'm trying to come up with a "Tank" build. Combining Staff's extra aggro, damage reduction, and mitigation to keep things from beating up on my wife (who plays as a healer).

I've been playing with Shield for the last couple of weeks and it seems to work 'okay.' It doesn't wow me, doesn't really do much to keep things from wanting to go after my wife (the aggro from 'Fight Me You Fools' seems lackluster), but it works pretty well against bosses. Basically, I was just wondering if there was a different skill that I might be able to pair with Staff that might function well as a good defensive tank build with good aggro management.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MisterVeziel

I know I'm a little late to the party, but I've had some issues with Staff. Mind you, I'm only around level 40 in Staff, so I imagine some of my gripes will be managed by gear/skill levels later on.

For right now, I'm trying to come up with a "Tank" build. Combining Staff's extra aggro, damage reduction, and mitigation to keep things from beating up on my wife (who plays as a healer).

I've been playing with Shield for the last couple of weeks and it seems to work 'okay.' It doesn't wow me, doesn't really do much to keep things from wanting to go after my wife (the aggro from 'Fight Me You Fools' seems lackluster), but it works pretty well against bosses. Basically, I was just wondering if there was a different skill that I might be able to pair with Staff that might function well as a good defensive tank build with good aggro management.

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I would image Psychology might do the trick. You get at least 2 Aggro inducers with Mock and Ridicule, and then you could use Pep Talk and Positive Attitude to keep your Health up. And But I Love You reduces the damage the mob deals which is nice.

Ice Magic is preferred by me, it has got Crowd Control and Extra Defense options, but doesn't have much in the way of extra aggro features.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ShieldBreaker

I would image Psychology might do the trick. You get at least 2 Aggro inducers with Mock and Ridicule, and then you could use Pep Talk and Positive Attitude to keep your Health up. And But I Love You reduces the damage the mob deals which is nice.

Ice Magic is preferred by me, it has got Crowd Control and Extra Defense options, but doesn't have much in the way of extra aggro features.

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I was thinking Psychology would be my best bet, with the two taunts and the added benefit of not requiring any specific weapon. (Also jives well with me being stuck in woof form every month.) Health isn't usually an issue, unless we somehow aggro way more than we can handle.

I use staff with fire, aggro has some issues in PG atm and burning things is usually the sure way to piss off any mob. The downside-it also fills their rage meter super fast so you trigger rage attacks. It still is the best way to keep wife from being hurt:P
I did staff+psych a while ago, pretty steady combo but a bit lackluster in the way of damage.

PS-kinda unrelated to aggro but related to survival-look into a skill called hoplology, I find it very useful for staff users.

I use Psychology for tanking.

Crissa, can you speak more about how Psychology is good for tanking? It seems like a good skill, but I've never considered it much of a tanking skill.

Psychology has the most ways to mess with aggro, I think. Mock is most obvious, as being basically just a straight aggro-generator. But there's also Fast-Talk, which reduces aggro; Soothe that saps Rage; Psychoanalyze which makes Rage generate more slowly.

There's also juggling skills like Tell Me About Your Mother and Cause Terror interrupt attacking.

Ridicule also generates aggro and But I Love You and You Were Adopted reduce incoming damage.

So it's just really useful to grabbing and maintaining aggro. It has three heals, too.

I vary my loadout for Psychology the most based upon what I'm doing; if I'm in a group as a tank, I add Ridicule; if I'm not skip the aggro generation and stack the soothes. If I'm dungeoning I don't tend to use Cause Terror or Tell Me About Your Mother but when I'm gathering they're always in my rotation.

(My combat is either Unarmed or Animal, which varies only by gear and infrequently the combos I'm getting)

PS, I generally only use one Basic Attack, and that's Mock.

PPS, I am not above level 50 in anything, so what I say with my experience is... Not current top-tier. Things are always changing. For instance, I had a great set of 20+ cow tanking gear, and now I don't ^-^;

We did a couple of trial runs last night, with me using Staff/Shield and Staff/Psych, with Staff, Shield, and Psych all at level 40. Although, I haven't had a chance to get to the Wolf Dungeon for Hoplology. It's honestly a bit of a toss-up for me.

When I'm running Psych, the spammable taunts are very nice, but the lack of a consistent stun, knock-backs, and mitigation require that I use the heals that come with the kit, which keeps me power hungry and unable to really do anything in a prolonged fight. On the other hand, not having the heals nor the ability to pull/taunt/DPS at range puts more stress on my wife's Power bar. Since we mostly just duo dungeons, we're trying to balance around each other.

I'm loathe to use a DPS skill as my secondary, just because I dislike playing a hybrid. So it's a toss-up between Shield and Psych. I'm more leaning towards the former, but I'll continue to try both out. Thanks y'all.

Unarmed is filled with stuns, which is why I went with it. Given the right gear and combos, you can really stun-juggle. You give up your major damage doing that, though. Cow has two stuns and a throw, and Unarmed has two stuns and two throws. You could even use these concurrently. But it has trouble holding aggro, and Unarmed has no heals so it solos poorly unless you can overwhelm.

There is nothing Hybrid about it: Every skill comes with more actions than you can take into combat, so you have to select the set you want.

I used to run a Staff/Mentalism build that was AoE/support, which with the mods at the time was very difficult to kill, but was horrendous for damage. I haven't gone back to that combo for ages, but I found it an okay soloing and support combo. Maybe I should get some hands again and polish off the ol' staff to see if spinning still leads to winning :P

Does anybody still use Staff? I started playing around a bit but never see anybody using it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Madmatx

Does anybody still use Staff? I started playing around a bit but never see anybody using it.

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My main skills are fire magic and staff