Lifestaff help please

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Forgive the wall of text but I hope that there are some other poor souls who have struggled with this and have some insight. :slight_smile:

I’m a returning player. I’m also a horrible, undecided, “grass is always greener” personality. So, you can imagine the draw of playing a game where you can basically change your class at will.

I’m always torn between playing a class I enjoy the most and playing something that I will enjoy more later. I know that it’s easier to get groups for dungeons, etc if you play a healer or tank for example.

I also seem to be drawn to classes that I’ll never be great at. I love the bow despite not having the reflexes to be a snapshot aimer. :slight_smile:

So, I think my best bet is to run lifestaff/X because being a healer makes you more desired in groups.

The problem is that despite a million videos and countless testing, I can’t find any second weapon that comes close to competing with the hatchet for leveling. Of course, I’m not a big fan of the hatchet because if I were there would be no reason for this post (also don’t like the warhammer/ax/greatsword. Not a fan of anime style weapons.) The reason I don’t love hatchet is because it’s just berserk mode. It’s fast and burns down everything and has the best weapon heal in the game but it’s boring.

I like sword and shield. I like the dance of blocking and the animations. But, it’s slower to level and medium armor hurts your damage and healing.

I like Void Gauntlet. But it’s like playing an ax where the ax has a cooldown. Not to mention the man problems.

I like bow. But there are many reasons why that’s not a good leveling build.

I like spear. But again, once you use a hatchet it’s just silly how much more efficient it is.

I like Ice Gauntlet. Did I mention how efficient the hatchet is?

So, gentle reader, if you have read this far I ask you:

Is there a happy life to be had for someone who wants to run lifestaff/X but not use hatchet?

Am I wrong to assume that I running no tank/no heal will be frustrating when looking to group? (I should also point out that I will never be a great melee PvP player)

What would you do if you were me? (Besides beg for the sweet release of death)

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Well you already said hatchet is the most efficient so I’m not really sure what answer you are looking for… I’d use Void Gauntlet with Life Staff for sure.

VG has no CD problems at all btw, you can easily spam all your skills 24/7, you just need a bunch of mana potions.

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Void gauntlet is by far the best I’ve come across. If lets me solo Myrkgard and high end areas pretty well. If you are hitting things when you have your blade out, you should easily have 100% uptime if you go the blade tree. The oblivion will not only help you but make you highly desirable in dungeons as you are buffing your entire team. DPS and Tanks for stamina regen.

The final perk is kinda up to you. I use scream because it’s fun and can be helpful with the weapon perk against healing enemies. Essence rupture likely is the most ideal which might be fun to mess around with. It seems and gives your tank even more stamina.

In the end, void blade is likely the most optimized out of the box. You can totally do other things. You can use amber gems to help increase their damage. I say do whatever you enjoy.

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Another thing that is great using it with life staff is you can be cheap and avoid using potions if you go AOE healing build. Sacred Ground, Beacon, and Orb of Protection. When you run low on mana and before you cast your sword again (when sword is out, it blocks instead) you can hold right click to convert health into mana if you are standing on a healing circle it’s relatively safe. In dungeons I just spam mana potions because they are so cheap.

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You can easily level as a paladin; that’s Lifestaff plus Sword/Shield.
If you go this route, medium is the heaviest you can go, and light is the goal. Paladins are solid healers and solid tanks, or a mixture of the two, depending on how you build your character.

In PvP, I’m a healer, and in PvE, I’m generally a tank. Sometimes, I do both roles in PvE. Generally, this is only during Genesis and Dynasty weeks as they are really easy dungeons.

With a sword, you’ll have very low cooldowns if you run refreshing move and reverse stab. Reverse Stab reduces active weapon cooldowns by 25% every time you use it, except its own, and Refreshing move with further reduce cooldowns, but also help you get reverse stab cooled-down faster, to reduce all active cooldowns as much as possible.

For PvP, I run sacred, splash, and divine embrace. In PvE, I generally run sacred, beacon, orb or divine embrace.

The other night, I did a pug m10 dynasty and the healer randomly disconnected right before the first crystal. I threw my lifestaff on, respecced my attributes and weapon trees, then we cleared up to chen and his ladies without hiccups or issue while he reconnected and ran back.

It’s nice to be a paladin, just know there are not many because of both the very-high skill requirement, and the fact that there are lower skill-requirement meta builds that do their one job better; you’ll have to be better at all times to be a paladin, but it’s worth it imo.

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What is “the man problems”?

I love the Void Gauntlet, it hits multiple targets, heals you, debufs the enemies.

Usually i pull a bunch of melee mobs and then just kill then and still stay max health, the cool down reduction really helps to keep the blade up 100% of the time when farming.

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That’s a typo lol… “mana”

I think a big problem in these discussions is that everyone has maxed their weapons and is high level with perks. From a leveling point of view, the cooldown reductions, etc don’t come into play for a while on the VG. Meanwhile, the massive Berserk heal starts at what, level 4?

It surprises me that the hatchet still has such a big heal.

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So I went in and specced more in line with what you are saying and it opened my eyes to a few things. First, I think that a lot of the time the abilities aren’t really that useful. I feel like I can hit twice with a short attack in the time it takes do hit once with an ability and the short attacks combine for more damage. So, it’s really about the extra stuff that comes with the attack like stagger or cool down reduction.

I still find that hatchett kills faster and the heal is better than the damage mitigation of SandS armor and shield and the defensive ability (forget the name). But it doesn’t kill THAT much faster if you specc the sword for the passives that increase your damage (the one that gives you 30% more damage after a long attack is huge). It really comes down to a trade-off where I give up a little healing efficiency (med armor) and a little time to kill in return for the comfort of knowing I can always block when things go south and collect myself and maybe tank if I wanna go that route.

Thanks for the reply. :slight_smile:

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The bow is awesome for levelling, I use it with Sword and shield to give me that extra protection.

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Like Blackxp said, VG is probably the best pair for PVE and is strong for PVP if you build around it. It grants a lot of flexibility by giving strong options for both support and DPS, all while scaling off FOC.

If you are leveling try to find one with Refreshing Move as that will help out a lot with up time. Void Blade will likely be your central DPS ability so either a VG or an armor piece with Voracious Blade will be very important as it will give you strong life steal below 50% health. That’s probably the only VG perk I’d worry about, however Nullifying Oblivion is good to think about for later.

IIRC 150 INT/150 FOC/200 CON is the ideal hybrid build that will give you good healing, good damage and good survivability. Of course that is ideal and can’t be done right off the bat, so I would reach 100ish CON and focus on INT and FOC (start with INT to rush DPS or FOC for heals). Ideally this would be in light weight class for the healing and damage buff, but can be safely done in medium too.

And also like Blackxp said, don’t forget that holding right click (not in Void Blade) will convert health to mana in fairly generous amounts. Standing in a Sacred will most times completely counter the health taken essentially making it free mana.

Honorable mention is the Rapier. This is generally used in PVP for maneuverability, but it can also be useful in PVE when tackling harder content. The focus is mainly survivability, however depending on how you build it you can dish some decent damage.

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To be fair as a Life Staff main (healer) you shouldn’t be relying on a secondary weapon heal, maybe instead of AOE heals try to use Single Target heals, like Sacred (AOE, but required) Divine and Light Embrace? I think that should heal you more than having like Orb of Protection or Beacon. You should be able to level up your weapons fairly quick too, one way is to tag the mobs with your life staff then finish them off with VG, Hatchet w/e and you’ll get XP for both.

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