Mages: Yay or nay on the Burnt Wood Staff?

[Thugnuts]

I'm playing through my first mage here, and wondering if this staff is something I should invest in? It's a a 13.5 second clicky bolt spell that does around 500 damage starting at level 46. Sounds alright, but I keep running into the following thoughts:

1. If I'm soloing with a max level, buffed, and armed pet and keeping him alive from one fight to the next, it seems like it would be difficult to outdamage him so that I get full experience. 13.5 is a long casting time and at level 46+, how many casts do I need to get off, especially counting for resists? If my pet is getting smacked hard and I need to heal him, that's going to make it even more difficult to get enough damage off with the staff before the mob dies. Using the staff in this situation seems like it would be less ideal than using a level appropriate nuke to guarantee full experience.

2. If I'm soloing via chain casting... 13.5 is a loooong casting time. How can I possibly integrate the staff into that scenario without fubaring my chain casting? I suppose I could use it for the finishing blow once a mob starts fleeing, but wouldn't it be more efficient to just use a fast casting lower level nuke and finish it off quickly instead of waiting for one or more casts from the staff, and possibly risking picking up additional aggro?

3. If I'm grouping, I could see it being somewhat handy in providing mana free damage in situations where it takes a long time to kill each mob. Otherwise, most good groups are going to kill each mob so fast that I'd have trouble even getting the bolt off before the mob dies.

4. There's also the stat loss resulting from equipping a 2 handed staff and losing my slots. As of right now, that would mean the staff's stats are actually -15 INT, and minus some hit points and resists as well. That's a big chunk.

5. And finally... it's a bolt. If I move or try to use it in twisty areas or multiple elevations... it's going to strike out anyway.

All in all, it seems like a lot of sacrifices to be made for a questionable return.

Is there something I'm missing here regarding the utility of this thing?

Any firsthand experiences you can share would be great.

[Kowalski]

Negative, takes to long to cast and too little damage for the time spent. I have one and don't even bother with it.

[Nibblewitz]

You initiate the fight with max mana gear then you equip the staff when you are a mana deficit. Don't balk at mana-free clickies.

[dafier]

You initiate the fight with max mana gear then you equip the staff when you are a mana deficit. Don't balk at mana-free clickies.

^^

Boots off of Velk are REALLY nice too. 17 second cast though. Still, it's a free dmg spell

[Raev]

If you are meditating with C2, you'll get 32 mana per tick. Using Shock of Swords (ratio 3.0) you'll do exactly 16 damage per second. Using the Burnt Wood Staff you'll do 333/13.5 = 24.6 damage per second. Figuring out to make that happen is up to you!

[Thugnuts]

If you are meditating with C2, you'll get 32 mana per tick. Using Shock of Swords (ratio 3.0) you'll do exactly 16 damage per second. Using the Burnt Wood Staff you'll do 333/13.5 = 24.6 damage per second. Figuring out to make that happen is up to you!

Interesting. I was wondering about the damage... wiki shows the spell doing 333 damage or so, but the page linked to the staff says up to 500. Thought maybe it scaled up.

Has anyone tried aggro kiting with the staff? Use sow/jboots, turn pet's taunt off, open with the staff, then run out of range and spam it until it's back in range? I wonder if it has time to complete before you get hit, like the Lumi staff does for druids?

[dafier]

You'd have to do quite a bit of damage to it, even with pet taunt off for it to not turn around on your pet.

Plus, you better have Expedience or Velocity for your pet if you are going to attempt it.

Over all, I wouldn't recommend 'kiting' with a mage in this manner.

[Uuruk]

This is a nice item on red where you can med while you cast it.

[Lowlife]

I had one on my mage, on red the long cast time is a huge liability.

[Tenloar]

It's a love/hate relationship with this staff.

The hate:

In groups this will rarely even land on the mob, mobs usually die pretty fast in pick up groups. And for the damage, it isnt worth casting.

The love:

Using this when I solo, like OoT giants, works wonders.

Send pet and chain cast this, mind you I use velocity on pet and I have Jboots just incase I get agro. But this really wears a mob down when you're soloing high-hp mobs such as the giants.

[Vexenu]

1. If I'm soloing with a max level, buffed, and armed pet and keeping him alive from one fight to the next, it seems like it would be difficult to outdamage him so that I get full experience. 13.5 is a long casting time and at level 46+, how many casts do I need to get off, especially counting for resists? If my pet is getting smacked hard and I need to heal him, that's going to make it even more difficult to get enough damage off with the staff before the mob dies. Using the staff in this situation seems like it would be less ideal than using a level appropriate nuke to guarantee full experience.

You should not be soloing like this to begin with because it's mana inefficient. You're better off in almost every case summoning a 49 Earth pet, DSing it and spamming the staff for added DPS. You can kill mobs that give XP to 60 (i.e. ravishing drolvargs, forest giant ancients) this way in under a minute using only a single pet and 1 cast of DS (320 mana minus whatever you can reclaim). The staff allows you to throw an extra 1k -1.6k of damage on the mob for zero mana (or more accurately, for the opportunity cost of not medding for let's say one minute - about 200 mana without clarity. 1480 damage for 200 mana is very good).


2. If I'm soloing via chain casting... 13.5 is a loooong casting time. How can I possibly integrate the staff into that scenario without fubaring my chain casting? I suppose I could use it for the finishing blow once a mob starts fleeing, but wouldn't it be more efficient to just use a fast casting lower level nuke and finish it off quickly instead of waiting for one or more casts from the staff, and possibly risking picking up additional aggro?

See above. Also, there's no real point to using a memmed nuke to finish off the mob after reclaiming. That's just more mana to med back, and you will lose kills to your pet by trying to get mobs down to under 2 or 3% health when he quads them at low health. Better to reclaim when the mobs are at 5-10% for a nice buffer and finish them with the staff.


3. If I'm grouping, I could see it being somewhat handy in providing mana free damage in situations where it takes a long time to kill each mob. Otherwise, most good groups are going to kill each mob so fast that I'd have trouble even getting the bolt off before the mob dies.

To be blunt: what the fuck else are you going to be doing in your group? If you've got a max level hasted pet positioned correctly, you're DSing the tank and you've summoned whatever items the group needs, you have nothing else to do but toss in nukes for extra DPS. The staff allows you to sustain DPS in excess of what you can achieve by regular medding and nuking (as I pointed out before, the staff does 1480 damage over the course of a minute - 10 ticks - during which you could meditate for 200 mana. 1480 damage for 200 mana with the staff? Or 800 damage for 300 mana with a lava bolt? You decide.


4. There's also the stat loss resulting from equipping a 2 handed staff and losing my slots. As of right now, that would mean the staff's stats are actually -15 INT, and minus some hit points and resists as well. That's a big chunk.

Your max mana is basically irrelevant as a mage in most situations (the exception being if you need to chain a LOT of pets for some reason, which you will not be doing in an XP group, and which you would not be using your staff for anyway).


5. And finally... it's a bolt. If I move or try to use it in twisty areas or multiple elevations... it's going to strike out anyway.

It's really not bad at all unless you're standing at the bottom of a hill trying to hit a mob above you. It's very usable in the vast majority of XPing situations.


All in all, it seems like a lot of sacrifices to be made for a questionable return.

Is there something I'm missing here regarding the utility of this thing?

Any firsthand experiences you can share would be great.

Yes, you're missing it entirely. It's 1480 damage at the opportunity cost of medding 200 mana. This is far more efficient than any other damage spell you have. Anyone who says not to use the hell out of the staff (at least until you get the superior Velious clickies) doesn't know what they're talking about. The staff really shines at 50+ while duoing or trioing (i.e. Mage/Cleric or Mage/Shaman/Warrior). When mobs have more HP at these levels and you don't have the benefit of a group's worth of DPS, the extra damage and efficiency of the staff are very apparent.

[Thugnuts]

Vexenu-- very compelling response. I'm going to give it a shot and see what happens.