Instead of AGS pumping up damage on Fire Staff, which is certainly one way to resolve its clearly relatively poor state, but how would the community feel about perhaps FS being given a cleanse function on a skill or two? For instance, Incinerate, which is a melee range skill with an otherwise useless knockback skill, instead being given the added function of cleansing all debuffs and cc on the user and his teammates within the spell area? This could have some interesting potential, right? In many games, especially when dealing with large scale PvP, having CC mitigation is critical, and I don’t think AGS has tapped into that in the right ways. It should be weapon related, not potion or perk related in my opinion.
The reason I say this is two-fold: One is obviously the glaring lacking functionality of Fire Staff in a below average state with regards to cc’ing or any utility in combination with its otherwise ineffectual damage potential in the grand scheme of the meta, and two, this game is entirely unbalanced in CC vs cleansing abilities, at least from my perspective. A litany of weapons have cc’ing ability, but there is limited weapon associated cc mitigation, and this possible change might have a really positive effect on the game and knock out two birds with one stone. One further argument is that in any healthy PvP related game with CC, there is a relative trade off or give and take balance struck between CC and CC mitigation, and NW doesn’t seem to have this balance without perks or some cheese-ass potion or effect.
There would obviously be secondary effects, but I personally feel like if the Fire Staff doesn’t get legitimate damage boosts to solve its ineffectual placement in NW, then what other things could the devs do to rememdy this and give the weapon and the game more flavor? I can see FS having interesting gameplay implications if given counter CC skill.
What are your alls thoughts?