Gondor vs Mordor

Hi all,

Was thinking of new build options and with the changes to the spells, I was wondering if anyone has experience with the blackstaff spell.. We looted a windforce (or something like that) the other day: staff with 1d8 sonic, fire, cold dmg, +5, keen. Seems to be made to pair up with blackstaff changes (adding the damage vulnerabilities on-hit).

Thinking along following lines:
druid18/wiz21/monk1, with dragon shape and epic mage armor.

Built it (with couple of flaws still) in the test area and it reaches (when flaws are fixed) about 67 ab / 90 ac and blackstaff vulnerabilities of 56% (including epic focus transmutation).

Only 7 attacks, and with monk lvl will get 67 -> 64 -> 61 -> 58 -> etc, so after 3rd attack becomes quite useless.

Your thoughts?

PS on the upside: this toon will get some nice buffs, like shadow shield, mind blank and 21 caster lvls will ensure you don't get dispelled too much.

Hey

I've never built a shifter/druid based blackstaff toon, but have built a fighter/wizard melee version and it is one of those builds that I posted on the forums under the speciality builds section:

http://www.gondorvsmordor.com/gvm2/forum/index.php?topic=1466.0

I suppose the only disadvantage I can think of, as with any wizard based druid/shifter build, is that once it wears off you have to deshift, but extended spell will help with that.

General thoughts on Blackstaff is that it is a great tool - my build specifically gets 61% vunerability effect which you do notice, and any party member will gain from the effect too.

The only drawback of the spell itself that I can remember is that the on-hit effect has a timer, probably to stop it becoming a spammable effect. By this I mean if you bane someone (causing them to get the vunerabilities and glow red) and then that target is restored via one of the restoration spells (not sure which level of the spell works lesser/regular/greater), the effect is removed from the target. The next bane success requires an amount of time to pass before it can be re-applied to that target (I don't recall what that time is). So killing off clerics or anything with restoration spells first is probably a good idea incase they start casting restorations on all of their friendly NPCs.

Fairly recently (in terms of overall mod lifespan) I introduced a new Quarterstaff into the mod which is a very nice weapon for blackstaff toons. It's also a lot easier to get that the one from Barad-dur and arguably nearly just as good.

Tono had a pretty decent blackstaff toon. I think it was wizard/WM focused in two weapon once the Blackstaff took hold  >:D

FYI: just tried a variant of this build (wiz + shape + blackstaff) and i can tell you that (maybe since nwn:ee?) the blackstaff debuff will not proc. It works when the toon is unshifted, but as soon as I shift, it fails. If I then deshift, it works again. Clearly makes these builds nonviable.

I think I mentioned this years back to FC when my dragon had blackstaff, but it makes sense otherwise will be a bit overpowered when shifted. That being said, there may be other weapon abilities / properties as well that don't work when shifted (AC bonus / vamp regen?).