An Absurd Idea.

[Doc]

I was thinking this morning, a dangerous thing to do indeed, when it occured to me...

You could put the Passion rune word into a staff.

I instantly thought of all the usual suspects. Zealing staff barbs, zealing and berserking staff amazons, stickball playing variants, etc.

It crept into my mind that there are a wide variety of rune words for staves now. Some of them melee, some of them not. Some are just confusing, like Insight. Is it for melee or for a caster? Or both?

So why not stick a staff where it belongs? No jokes about the Prime Evil's orifices now... A staff wielding sorceress. A staff wielding melee sorceress.

Zealing and berserking with a Passion staff would look quite funny I believe. Smacking something with an Insight staff could potentially be quite painful with the Critical Strike chance. Malice would be good for those times when you feel cruel, and for those high end out of reach rune words with impossible runes, I reckon you could use those as well. Fortitude looks almost possible... But I have never even seen a Lo rune. Dex could be kept lowish, as there is no need for a lot of dex with staves low requirements, as well as Enchant adding a stupid amount of AR. So one could potentially be free to pump as much strength and vitality as one wishes, making a very high defense build, which would be rendered useless while berserking. Pump a cold armor, get a Defiance Merc, and you could conceiveably make a reasonably durable sorceress.

I propose to name this build The Spanker Sorceress, as she would go around giving deserving monsters the caning they deserve. She could keep several staves around for different purposes, A Leaf Staff for Enchanting, A Passion Staff for hardcore caning, Insight, along with Energy shield for dangerous areas where much tanking is involved.

[Yogi_Baar]

Love the name. ^_^ </useless>

Nice idea, and elite staves do have nice damage, so this might in fact be quite viable. So basically it would be an enchantress, but with staves (no block). Screams out for Energy Shield, doesn't it? And with a fair amount of damage reduction, you could go all out and make a Titan Spanker. The monsters better behave then.

EDIT: Hopefully turned this post from useless to almost useless.

[Little Faith]

Well, there is also good old Breath of the Dying in an ethereal Archon Staff.

While it might be a bit "unobtainium" (even the 6-socket eth Archon is hard to find) it does open some possibilities due to the ridiculously low stat requirements.
Personally I imagine something along a Whirlwinding pure Vitality barbarian.

In the more realistic end of the spectrum we have that neat little blue Ribcracker. Purpotedly an upgraded one should be one of the best Fury Werewolf weapons.
People have also stuck it on an Assassin with maxed Tiger Strike, a Zealing Paladin and even a Tankazon. If you look up the mods you will see why the Ribcracker is treasured by the true connoiseurs.

[ICanChangTheWorLd]

does it called An Absurd Idea????

[whathuh]

Honestly, I like the idea of using the whole staff concept, but staves ARENT the only option for a melee sorceress. Axes, Polearms, and Mauls are also good choices. All of them are in the same weapon class, so they all have the same speed. The base fpa for normal 2h weapons for sorcs is 15 for 0 speed weapons. Thats the fastest melee 2h attack in the game!

For staves, Stalagmites and Archon Staves have 91 average damage (archon has better minimum)
Axes, the pickings are just like staves withouth the undead bonus. Decapitators have 93 and Glorious Axes have 92. Feral axes are FAST, but average 74 damage. Good for low IAS equipment.
Polearms have the range, which may be good for certain melee sorcs. If you are going for range and speed, Giant Threshers have the best, but require too much dex for a non-blocker. Colossus Voulges have the best damage, but only 4 sockets and are a tad bit slow. Only 55 dex though.
Mauls are where the damage is at. Thundermauls have the highest damage in the game, but are really really slow and require massive str to use. Thundermauls also have the highest possible damage in the game if you get a perfect rare one, but you aren't going to.
Looking at this closer:
Staves - Low req, + skills, +50% undead, 2 range, Low-Mid durability
Axes - Low dex, High Str, 3-4 range, Mid Durability
Polearms - High Str, High/low dex, 3-5 range, Higher Durability
Mauls - High Str, best damage, higher durability, very slow (in comparison)
Also, Staves/polearms can have insight, which when combined with a maxed telekinesis/energyshield can cause massive amounts of replenishing energy. level 20 energy shield takes around 95% damage, level 20 telekinesis reduced that damage to 1/4th, and it is instantly regenerated by (hopefully) 20 points in warmth and +600% mana regeneration.

Doom is an option for axes, polearms, and mauls, imagine a merc with prayer/insight (the meditation gains bonuses from prayer) and you using a doom decapitator.

Death on an axe will rock, but no IAS, which is a problem.

Destruction on axe, ehh, there's better things out there.

Looking at grief, it could be very good on an axe because of its fast attack and min/max damage bonuses as well as deadly strike.

Last wish is on polearms and axes (the triple jah runeword, bah!)

Pride works better on mercs, but its for polearms here too.

I've missed a bunch of good stuff, I know, but I'm getting tired of looking them all up.

[Little Faith]

You forgot one of the oldies: The Kingslayer runeword.

Kingslayer gives an Oskill Vengeance attack which can be boosted by the elemental masteries.

The typical Kingslayer Enchantress will max Lightning Mastery alongside Fire Mastery to get the greatest effect out of the Vengeance.


Two-handed axes, mauls and staves all use the same "swing" animation which is maturally fast on a druid or sorceress.

[Doc]

Actually, the swing animation is quite different for a Sorceress.

She has three of them. But only with a staff. Three very different distinct attack animations with staves only.

She has an overhead chop. She has a high shoulder swing. And she has a low shoulder swing, that when it connects, nails most hominoid monsters right in the nuts.

She does not do this with other weapons.

Clearly we can see that Blizzard intended the Sorceress to melee with their staves, as they are the only class with an extra attack animation.

Which is kinda funny when you think about how bad Enchant used to SUCK.

As for all the high level dooped rune word items that entered this conversation, and took it totally off topic, meh. I want nothing to do with it. The whole point was about a sorcie that CANES monsters. Not chops them into salad bits with a Grief Axe. See the difference?

[whathuh]

As for all the high level dooped rune word items that entered this conversation, and took it totally off topic, meh. I want nothing to do with it. The whole point was about a sorcie that CANES monsters. Not chops them into salad bits with a Grief Axe. See the difference?
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Sorry. :( It was just a comparison between the normal 2h weapon class and a melee sorceress. As I was looking at the stats of each, I found that the staves were just as good as axes/polearms/mauls if not better due to their low speed and lack of any real requirements.
[/quote]She has an overhead chop. She has a high shoulder swing. And she has a low shoulder swing, that when it connects, nails most hominoid monsters right in the nuts.

I can see why you want staves more than anything.

Actually, the swing animation is quite different for a Sorceress.

The swing animation is different, the speed is not.

This is to Little Faith's response since I dont want to double post
[quote] You forgot one of the oldies: The Kingslayer runeword.

That is so not an oldy. Silence is an oldy.

[goldfish]

A big, big problem is going to be . . .

repairs.

Most of the staves you find have +skills on them. If you find that archon staff, but it's got +2 to a level 30 skill on it, you're talking about a serious repair bill. If it's got more that one +skill, you could have a million dollar repair bill on your hands.

(Doesn't apply to indestructable runewords, of course).

[phaedi]

A big, big problem is going to be . . .

repairs.

Most of the staves you find have +skills on them.&nbsp; If you find that archon staff, but it's got +2 to a level 30 skill on it, you're talking about a serious repair bill.&nbsp; If it's got more that one +skill, you could have a million dollar repair bill on your hands.

(Doesn't apply to indestructable runewords, of course).
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yeah, but this is also one of the big points PRO staves:
in 1.10, you arent able anymore to cast a spell with one weaponset and then use the other, the dmg decreases.

so if you can find a staff with +3 to enchant, energyshield or the armor of your choice, its far better than any axe that has nearly as good other stats.

a propos:

energyshield at lv 20 only reduces by 89 %, as far as i can remember.