Thank you for the new popolion post.
Rod vs Staff
What you didn’t take into consideration is that shields give insane stat, def, etc bonuses that completely negate the attack bonus you get from staffs.
The game needs an attribute similar to rod mastery for staffs that for example gives +50% or +100% magic crit chance / attack bonus when you wear a staff. I’d also replace all +1 aoe attack bonuses from staffs and replace them with +2 skill levels to all wizard class skills or something similar.
You need to give players a real incentive to use staffs. This way you could also make less played wizard classes like shadowmancers, sage, runecaster, etc. more attractive to players and add an additional element of strategy, class uniqueness and variety to the game.
They also forget things like there are more rod compaitable masteries (Off the top of my head… Cyromancer, and Kaballist) than staff ones (Pyro? I can’t think of anyone else.)
You did the Rod vs Staff thing considering that we think Rod was bad, but it is the opposite - Staff damage difference is too low to justify going for it, as Rod Shield gives you more stats and defenses, while Staff gives ~1k extra damage (and you are even considering Lv 10 gems… c’mon, this is not the reality of the game, most people stops at 7 or 8, cause the EXP to get more is absurd).
Don’t believe those guys, Rainbow Trek is the best!
Saalus changes were good and healthy for the game.
“Items that allow for safer item enhancement” -> rework your enhancement system. Maybe this is what is behind this option, other than bringing items like Diamond Anvils.
Any Boruta discussion -> the design of this content is being hated all across the board, alongside bugs, exploits and monopolization. Remove this content or follow the thread that is talking about ways of improving it. We know that even kTOS players are not happy with Boruta.
Thanks for bringing the Popolion Post back <3
Transcended or not, as long as comparing Rod and Staff of the same upgrades, Staff users will do about 20%+ more damage than Rod users. This difference gets higher as you kill mobs with higher defence. And Chrono is more popular after rebuild particuarly due to the self-pass, so most people have Quick Cast already. Due to the significant diminishing returns of high defence, people with transcended armors have less need for shield.
Of course, the maximum potential benefit of Rod + Shield is quite large, but this also comes with more resources (fragments to exchange Velc shield + Rod), transcending and ichoring both of them etc. Staff is certainly not something special, but it’s still far from as pathetic as many people deems it to be after rebuild.
Thank you for the hard work on the magazine
I especially liked the GM comic