Assault/Effect Staves

[NekoKnight]

In Fire Emblem Heroes, they made some adjustments to the way staff users work. Rather than being dedicated healers, they all have some offensive power (although far below the damage output of dedicated tome users). Even more interesting is that many of these staves (and the skill triggers you can activate) add additional effects such as lowering the movement of enemies or reducing their attack power. How would you feel about staffs users in the mainline games being made more like this? Do you think they should have a weaker magic attack + effect or do you like them as being defenseless and only using the traditional effect staves (Berserk, Silence, Sleep, etc)?

Personally, I like what they did in Heroes and would have both those assault/effect staves in addition to the long range effect staves we've seen in the past. I could see "healers" being dedicated support units, the magical analogue to what ninja were with hidden weapons/lockpicking if ninja were not broken.

[Extrasolar]

I really liked the idea of Assault and effect staves that Heroes introduced. We've had debuff staves like Silence, Enfeeble and whatnot before, but they've definitely been rare and de-emphasized as compared to the straight-up healing staves. Staves like Fear and skills like Solid Earth Balm and Swift-Winds Balm could provide some interesting strategies and even more depth to the gameplay, not to mention making pre-promotion healers more than just simple healbots like they are a lot of the time. It could also make getting experience for them before they promote much, much easier, since they'd be able to farm enemies just like other units.

Though I'm not a fan of Heroes automatically cutting staff damage in half (so they didn't eclipse tomes as the primary damage source targeting resistance), so I'd allow staves to have a Might that worked off the user's magic stat. In order to balance, staves would have lesser Might than the powerful tomes, though holding one might give its user beneficial effects (the divine power they're channeling; they might get a buff to luck or resistance, or some such).

And as for the poll, I chose both. Let staves heal and attack! (And not in the Radiant Dawn variant where the bishop or sage in question would straight up smack the person with it. As amusing as that is, it's not all that helpful in the long run.)

Edited March 10, 2017 by Extrasolar

[Jedi]

I'd rather they stay mostly support, and have stuff like Silence, Berserk, Sleep and the like back.

[NekoKnight]

15 minutes ago, Extrasolar said:

In order to balance, staves would have lesser Might than the powerful tomes, though holding one might give its user beneficial effects (the divine power they're channeling; they might get a buff to luck or resistance, or some such).

Radiant Dawn did have some extra effects for when a staff was equipped, such as self healing or automatic status recovery.

8 minutes ago, Jedi said:

I'd rather they stay mostly support, and have stuff like Silence, Berserk, Sleep and the like back.

I do think they should be primarily support, but I'd like it if that support role were expanded. Effect staves in the past have had little durability, take higher weapon ranks and are only available later in the game. Ideally, in my opinion, staff users would be able to do more than basic healing from the start. I'd like to get away from characters or classes being "healbots"

[BANRYU]

While I like the idea quite a bit, at the same time I can't help but recognize that it's as a result of each of the units in Heroes having only one weapon type; in a setting where most any upgraded staff-user has another weapon capability I somewhat question how well they could work. I guess they'd be like a weak neutral-magic attack? Maybe staves might even be tied to the other types of magic (IE Light)? I can also see staves like Berserk and Gravity being Dark magic staves or something maybe.

[Sire]

I prefer the GBA era of staves. Sure, healers can't attack, but upon promoting they can wield tomes and still heal allies if need be. (Unless I am remembering incorrectly, but I could've swore if a Sage used a staff and was attacked the Sage would properly retaliate with the equipped Tome.)

Tellius era staves are fun and amusing and I would not mind if such a system returned. At least they are trying to fight back the best they can! (Although, it sucks when using a staff on a promoted character.)

As for Heroes, it is nice system. However, I don't want to start managing a whole other line of Staves that deal damage and debuff enemies. I prefer simple healing (Mend, Physic, Fortify), utility (Torch, Unlock, Barrier), and debuffs (Silence, Berserk, Sleep) like the GBA days. Healers can learn Tomes upon promotion and use that as their method of attack.

Then there will be the "Staff" vs "Dagger" argument since both can technically debuff enemies. Perhaps Daggers can debuff stats directly while Staves do other effects instead.

[Topaz Light]

The way I see it, the attacking staves in Heroes were kind of just there so that healers would have something to go in their weapon slot; they're still really not very good fighters at all. Frankly, the way the game is set up, mechanically, they could absolutely have just had staves be healing/support-only, delegating them to only going in the "Support" skill slot, and making the weapon types of all Staff-using characters some other weapon they were capable of using, which in most cases would be some color of Tomes.

I wouldn't necessarily object to the attacking staves being in the main games, but I've never really found healers to be that direly in need of them, frankly. I would absolutely love for the various status and other general non-healing staves to be given more presence and usefulness, though.

9 minutes ago, Sire said:

I prefer the GBA era of staves. Sure, healers can't attack, but upon promoting they can wield tomes and still heal allies if need be. (Unless I am remembering incorrectly, but I could've swore if a Sage used a staff and was attacked the Sage would properly retaliate with the equipped Tome.)

You are remembering correctly. Staves can't actually be equipped in any of the handheld games; the closest it comes is the 3DS games showing characters holding the highest staff on their inventory list in battle if they get attacked when they don't have a weapon equipped.

Edited March 10, 2017 by Topaz Light

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Nah, I think part of the reason Heroes gave Healers these attacks is because they knew they can't give them Recover or Fortify when teams are made up of four. In main series fire emblem, if you want your healers to have offensive moves, hurry up and promote them. I would prefer the offensive staves we've already seen. I love Freeze in fates, I think it's way more reasonable to deal with than Sleep, which makes the unit incapable of counterattack or moving for four turns. What Fates needed more than anything is Restore staves, and maybe some skills that apply a Restore effect to the unit on the start of their turn, or auras to their allies. Because the way debuffs work in that game is excellent, they just didn't put in enough counterplay. So few enemies come after you rather than wait, so there's no incentive for the player to push forward with debuffed units. Players just end their turn early outside the enemy's range. Berserk could totally make a comeback as well, but again, Restore staves need to be in the game if you want to have such threatening status effects.

Edited March 10, 2017 by Gustavos

[Shadow Mir]

Far as I'm concerned, I don't expect assault staves to be in a mainline game, and status staves should just jump into a bonfire already - they're stupidly niche at best and outright worthless at worst, and some of them in particular are just annoying to get hit with (Hexing Rod and Berserk, anyone?).

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

I'd like to see returning all the classic status affecting staves ike sleep, silence and berserk + some new ones. They should work like they do in FE7-10 with the formula magic/2.
I liked the introduction of of heal staves with 1-2 range for Hoshido. It makes it easier to place healers out of enemy attack ranges who have 1-2 range weapons. It's often enough a problem that your healer is so squishy that it'll get oneshotted or doubled by a bow or hand axe.
Since I can't play Heroes I can't really argue with actual topic post.

Edited March 10, 2017 by Magillanica Lou Mayvin

[Dragrath]

Hmm personally I would love to see more utility to staves that said there shouldn't really be direct damage staves in my opinion at last not "conventional" damage.

On the other hand I wouldn't mind seeing Staves that do a set amount of damage,  remove a set amount of enemy health or possibly even an AOE damage "attack" (staves if given effects shouldn't be able to retaliate as then they would be just another weapon)

Status staves however have always been a great risk on the map so I'd love to see more of them as well as the return of status healing staves like back in the old FE Days

Though the hit and avoid of hostile staves should probably be determined like weapons (with res coming into play perhaps towards resisting status effects?) then magic could go towards range which is what always made staff users a big threat

[The_antithesis]

I personally quite like the idea of a healer being able to hold their own. Firstly, it could make picking off healers on the enemy team when their AI screws up a bit less of a guaranteed easy kill, as you would still be taking damage, which is one step closer to losing a unit...

Also, offensive staves mean that healers, which are normally USELESS at healing in heroes as everything gets one-shot anyway, can hold their own by dealing ranged chip damage and picking off small-fry.

Having this could also make for some neat 'edge case' strategies. For example, if everyone's on full health but the healer needs EXP, they can attack with the longest range weapons in the game, even before the enemy is anywhere near you. After all, some staves have a range as high as 1-10 or even 1-magic/2, which is more than some ballistas. This could really help beat players who like turtling in PVP (or even PVE), as the aggressive player can attack with healers without being punished for it.

I do still think that tomes should have greater might than staves, so tomes don't become obsolete, but I can see attacking staves being very versatile in a metagame for FE 15 and beyond.

Edited March 14, 2017 by The_antithesis
typo correction :(

[Dragrath]

20 minutes ago, The_antithesis said:

I personally quite like the idea of a healer being able to hold their own. Firstly, it could make picking off healers on the enemy team when their AI screws up a bit less of a guaranteed easy kill, as you would still be taking damage, which is one step closer to losing a unit...

Also, offensive staves mean that healers, which are normally USELESS at healing in heroes as everything gets one-shot anyway, can hold their own by dealing ranged chip damage and picking off small-fry.

Having this could also make for some neat 'edge case' strategies. For example, if everyone's on full health but the healer needs EXP, they can attack with the longest range weapons in the game, even before the enemy is anywhere near you. After all, some stave have a range as high 1-7, which is more than some ballistas.

I do still think that tomes should have greater might than staves, so tomes don't become obsolete, but I can see attacking staves being very versatile in a metagame for FE 15 and beyond.

Personally I don't think staves should have conventional damage but rather fixed  percentage based damage (i.e. Fates AOE damage that can't kill but can reduce enemies to 1 hp) (My thoughts are that this would give them a role separate from tomes as they would need a tome to kill while having their own value thanks to access to 1-(mag/2) range )