Make Twinflame Staff Useful

[minor coral]

Problem:
As it is now, the Twinflame Staff is merely a cool looking weapon that is only useful for midgame ironmen.

The content is "targeting players around the Level 90 to 110 Combat range". However, it loses its relevance for elemental spells because its Wave spells and below restriction means it is always worse than a smoke battlestaff with fire Surge.
The blog's dps chart only shows smoke battlestaff with fire Wave when it uses fire Surge for the harmonized staff. Jagex wants this staff to "bridge the gap between the Harmonized orb and the Smoke battlestaff" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1ILJw7BLTY&t=1135s) but the Twinflame staff is always worse than a Smoke battlestaff with Surge.

Maths:
Surge spell: base 24 (vs wave spell base 20) -> effectively 24/20 = 1.2 multiplier.
Twinflame staff: 6-tick cast (up from 5) with a 40% spell echo damage -> effectively 5/6*1.4 = 1.167 multiplier.
Harmonized staff: 4-tick cast (down from 5) -> effectively 5/4 = 1.25 multiplier.

With the wave spell restriction:
Twinflame staff (1.167-1.2 = -3.3%) < Surge spell < Harmonized staff (+25%).
Without the wave spell restriction:
Surge spell < Twinflame Staff (+16.7%) < Harmonized staff (+25%).

Solution:
Let Twinflame Staff augment all elemental spells, including surge spells.

Alternatively, also lower the echo to 33% and allow casting of Surge spells.
This would make it a x1.11 multiplier to elemental spells while increasing the gap to Harm staff from 7% (1.25/1.167) to 12.5% (1.25/1.11).

This would let the Twinflame staff be a niche that fills the gap in elemental spell-casting weapons between the Harmonized staff and a Smoke battlestaff. This would also let the staff be a more relevant reward to the target "Level 90 to 110 Combat range" where the player would be transitioning away from wave spells (maxed at 75 magic) and towards surge spells (81+) and powered staves.

[wheat dagger]

I'm okay with this idea but I think there's opportunity to not just make it a better staff for auto attacking when instead we could give it a really cool special attack.
Making it along the lines of say the web weaver special attack(capping at say 20x5 with each attack rolling damage separately) or the crystal halberd special attack(maybe capping at like a 40/40 in max gear) could be really nice. The numbers here really are just chucked around but the idea of it being a high damage "finishing" special attack weapon is the goal here.
In doing this, it doesn't just replace other staves on a budget but actually gives it an interesting niche amongst magic weapons even in max gear.

[minor coral]

I just went with the simplest solution. Accursed Sceptre, Eldritch staff, and Volatile staff already control a lot of the magic special attack niche. It's not that easy to make something that's niche but not too niche when it comes to spec weapons so I didn't think too much about it.

[sweet yew]

But that's the niche the weapon is being designed to fill. These are midgame bosses, with an Araxxor-like loot mechanic to give endgame PvMers a reason to kill it. Having the staff designed this way leaves room for a future weapon between this weapon and the HNS. Maybe even an upgrade to this weapon. Not that your idea is bad, the math checks out and it wouldn't be gamebreaking, it just further restricts future reward space than the weapon already does, so there are pros and cons.

[blazing sigil]

I was under the impression that the wave limitation was specifically because it's supposed to fall off around 81+ magic, considering the explicit comparison to the swamp trident and the charts given

and wind surge, conveniently, also comes around exactly at 81, when the staff is supposed to fall off

[meager lance]

Support.

The whole point of adding elemental weaknesses to the game was making standard spellbook more relevant. But currently, it's hard to achieve that without a Harmonized staff. Trident of the swamp provides superior dps almost everywhere.

[blazing sigil]

I do think there's a lot of space between smoke battlestaff (or staff of the dead I suppose) and the harm and that it should be filled out

I just don't think that's what they're proposing this staff for in particular lol

[minor coral]

They're targetting level 90-110 combat range. I felt that's an appropriate enough range for an elemental weapon between smoke battlestaff and Harmonized staff. Plus, we never know when we'll have get a chance again to touch the gap in elemental spells before Harmonized staff.

[manic hare]

The 90-110 range is for the people killing the boss and apart from ironman that is not the people they expect to be using the staff. Hence the lvl 60 requirement and falling of at lvl 81. So the staff is supposed to fall of before you face the boss as a main. Which I will acknowledge is a bit odd. But making it almost as strong as harmonized staff is just way too far.

[blazing sigil]

tbf I think the harm is way too good in its niche to come from the boss with the worst drop table in the game

and anything that devalues it is good because it means less reason to sweat your way to a drop of bass forever

[minor coral]

Harmonized staff is still way better than this Twinflame staff even without the wave spell restriction (see maths - 125% vs 116.7%), and that's without adding the +15% magic damage from the Harmonized staff itself.

[manic hare]

A 7% difference between a lvl 60 weapon and a lvl 82 weapon is a damn joke.

[minor coral]

Why not raise the reqs to 70 or 75? They want "lvl90-110" combat range to kill this boss.

7% damage is huge, especially without adding the +15% magic damage that harmonized staff has. Whip (lv70) vs rapier (lv80) is only +2 max hit difference (~5% or less) damage difference.

[random mortar]

what is the smoke battlestaff for in this context

[minor coral]

Oh, smoke battlestaff is there because that what is used for comparisons in the original proposal blog.

Technically, any staff with +10% damage can take its place.

I was hoping to implicitly point out that the dps comparisons can be misleading because they only show smoke battlestaff with fire wave, when it can cast fire surge at a higher dps than twinflame staff.

[gray juniper]

i think its honestly fine that it has a reward that isnt exactly ”useful” since it has a few other ones that definitely will be

[halcyon orchid]

i just hate the concept of adding stuff that's specifically designed to be deprecated by existing options. like when they add the twinflame staff we'll never see another 6-tick spell echoing staff again unless they go back and make an upgrade for it in later content, which there's no guarantee they'd ever do, that makes it somewhat competitive in the harm orb staff's extremely expensive niche of elemental weakness exploiting

like i mean add new stuff that slots into gear progression like blood moon between the fighter torso and bandos, or that scorching bow to be a step below the bofa if i recall correctly, but don't just lock items down with a restriction that's designed to make it stay in its place

[quiet frost]

You say only useful for midgame ironmen.. I think since it hits twice it would probably be bis magic weapon versus Frost Naguas? 🤔

[halcyon orchid]

i mean you'd think the glacial temotli or the dual macuahuitls would be bis for them already

[buoyant trench]

I agree. Think the Surge spell restrictions do hinder it a bit

[quiet frost]

Pretty sure they are, but at least not for my 50 attack pure 😛
Or just if you want to mage them for magic exp anyhow
But the staff with the fire weakness could become higher dps than the those dual hit melee weps

[storm edge]

how much would it affect the proposed twinflame staff if they added an effect that boosts elemental weakness of a target enemy by a flat 10%, say for an enemy with 50% weakness? I think 50 is the most common value

that way it's specifically stronger against enemies with elemental weakness, but still weaker than other staves for non-elemental weak enemies, as opposed to just giving it a regular +10% all magic dmg bonus

[halcyon orchid]

Oh that's fair lmfao

[minor coral]

I think it's hard to overstate how niche elemental weakness is in the game. Without elemental weakness, even Harmonized staff with its x1.25 multiplier to elemental spells is worse than a Trident of the Seas in max. So Twinflame staff still wouldn't come close to other staves for non-elemental weak enemies.

A flat 10% elemental weakness addition is a 6.6% boost to 50% weak enemies (160/150), and a 5% boost to 100% weak enemes (210/200). But since Twinflame can't cast Surge, it would still be almost the same as a smoke battlestaff with Surge (~2% difference, which might be a +1 max, assuming Twinflame has an inherent +10% damage like smoke battlestaff).

[storm edge]

I think it being weaker (along with even harm staff, despite its cost) than the powered staves on non-element weak enemies is fine

the 10% was just a number I chose, could boost it a bit higher to make it in line or better than smoke bstaff on weak enemies

honestly I think smoke bstaff is the weird one here. it has +10% accuracy and damage on standard spells that only have the elemental spells for offense for the most part, so it kinda conflicts with the twinflame staff's niche

it's like we already had a twinflame staff before the introduction of elemental weakness

[minor coral]

Smoke battlestaff isn't as weird as it seems. It doesn't have any +% magic damage, so the +10% only brings it closer, but still worse, to stuff like staff of the dead (+15%) for elemental damage only

[storm edge]

twinflame should be considerably better than those imo if they're going for the 90-110 combat range, so +15% or even 20 to elemental weakness should be fine if it's not too much

[minor coral]

Powered staves changed magic to be more competitive dps, but left all manual casting spells in the dust. Elemental weakness rework actually made harmonized staff worse due to the nerf to tome of fire, so Harmonized staff is weaker than it was on non-elemental weak enemies.

[storm edge]

not sure how much it'll be compared to harm staff with those numbers though

it should be the stepping stone to harm staff

[minor coral]

Harm staff already has a +15% magic damage (inherited from nightmare staff) in addition to its x1.25 multiplier.

I didn't add that to the calcs because I'm not sure what the stats of the Twinflame staff is, and if it has +% magic damage. I only know mechanically it works out to a x1.167 multiplier atm.

[minor coral]

Yep, this is my feeling about Twinflame. Letting it cast Surge would make it a stepping stone without becoming better than Harm staff (x1.167 vs x1.25).

[halcyon orchid]

like weird ironman progression aside, it should absolutely go smoke staff as your 2 mil elemental staff, this staff as your 20-30 mil elemental staff, and then harm orb as your 300 mil elemental staff

[storm edge]

I do think the surge limitation is strange as well. an account with base 80 combat skills is around 104 combat and is perfectly capable of completing ds2 if we're looking at it from an iron's perspective for wrath runes, but even then you can still cast surge spells without ds2 by buying wrath runes on mains, or even using the surge sacks from emir's arena (though this is only in pvp worlds or wildy, very limited use)

[buoyant trench]

IIRC, they only added that when they nerfed splashing and didn't want to tank the price

[runic gale]

If Jagex believes the surge limitation is necessary to prevent it from creeping onto Harm, then it makes sense.

Twinflame is coming from med level content and likely to be way more common than Harm. It shouldn't creep anywhere near Harm if that's the case.

It's the same reason why they mentioned Dragon Hunter Wand would likely have an upgrade down the line to make it better, while keeping the fact that if you get one in the early-mid game, it's still a pretty big upgrade in its weaker state.

[halcyon orchid]

I think OP said it best though that because of the Wave restriction if you can cast Fire Surge you may as well use a Smoke Battlestaff/Mystic Smoke Staff instead of the Twinflame Staff if you dont have a Harm. Then the question would become for accounts that have Surges or will get Surges eventually why would you bother with grinding out this boss when you already have other, better options available at like 10x less price

And thermonuclear Smoke devil isn't exactly prime mechanically intensive content either to which you can just blood Barrage it to kingdom come for your Smoke staff

And even more tangentially don't you unlock Kraken before it? So you could just get your trident of the swamp before that point anyway including zulrah which you should be able to square up with by this point

[runic gale]

I don't believe they mentioned the requirements to access or do the boss yet, but given it's made for med levels, it can't be that high.

And if the requirements aren't that high and the boss is meant as another entry mode style boss to teach you about switching, there's not much justification to be anywhere near harm tier, or even smoke battlestaff tier since that's coming from 93 slayer.

Been thinking and saying this for a while now, especially with PM gear, but they've cornered themselves over the years heavily in terms of design space where in order for med level content "to be worth grinding", it has to creep on something, which isn't that high in the first place.

Twinflame is falling into the exact situation again. We already have Warped Sceptre at 56 Slayer so it's trying to shove almost redundant rewards and people get disappointed because it's balanced.

[minor coral]

I'm not sure what you consider "med level" but Jagex is "targeting players around the Level 90 to 110 Combat range" and trying to bridge the gap between smoke battlestaff and Harmonized orb with the Twinflame staff (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1ILJw7BLTY&t=1135s). Twinflame would do just that if it could cast Surge, but right now it would become worse than a smoke battlestaff with Surge.

What you view as "creep anywhere near Harm", I see as bridging the gap between smoke battlestaff and Harmonized orb that Jagex says they are trying to do. But if you feel x1.167 is "too close" to the x1.25 of Harm orb (which also has +15% magic damage and less overkill due to 4-tick vs 6-tick), I don't think I can change that feeling.

[gray juniper]

they mentioned this in the qna, sadly not happening

[runic gale]

So, I double checked their DPS charts and they actually put Fire Wave on the label, but it's actually Fire Surge lol

This one specifically

https://i.imgur.com/sDxc1I9.png

So Twinflame with Waves is better than Smoke with Surge it seems

Otherwise you can't get 9 dps that they're boasting for Ice Giants with Smoke.

With Surge vs Flames, it's a 20% DPS increase, meaning Twinflame will likely be high 12 dps on Ice Giants for reference,

Maybe even 13 dps

Which is going way beyond of a middle ground

Especially coming from a piece of content meant for 90-110 combat, which is still objectively med level 😕

[manic hare]

If you think lvl 60 magic as being 90-110 combat level the entire damn thing is going over your head. Also if you want to look at what you have to beet to kill it how many people with 93 slayer don't have max combat maxing a smoke staff staff a higher level unlock then this by your logic. Of course something met for lvl 60-81 falls off by the time you get to lvl 95.

[runic gale]

I ran this on two different DPS calcs btw

You can't reach 9 dps with Fire Wave on 100% weakness with just Smoke Battlestaff + Tome of Fire.

They ran the calcs with Surge it seems.

[manic hare]

You cna with searing pages.

[runic gale]

Excluding Sunfire Boost obviously

[minor coral]

The dps calc is wrong there, they are using max mage for the ice giant, which is why the Harmonized staff is pushing towards 14 dps. Smoke battlestaff + Tome of fire and max mage hits 8.9 dps with fire Wave, and 10.9 dps with fire Surge.

[runic gale]

They didn't put that in their assumptions

And that would be a flat 10% boost throughout either way.

[minor coral]

how did you attach an image? I have a dps calc image for you

[runic gale]

imgur

I really wish they would show the setups that they used to calc tbh

[manic hare]

Your to low level, haven't talked enough

Need tobe steel

[minor coral]

Yeah, they used max mage (full ancestral, sunfire runes) then just changed Smoke battlestaff to use fire Wave instead of fire Surge

[runic gale]

Nah, it's also channel specific sometimes.

[gray juniper]

it probably was with sunfire runes

that should be kinda expected while using fire spells no

[runic gale]

Oh they did share it

It's not max mage

The setup used in all of these cases was: Ahrim's Hood, Imbued God Cape, Occult Necklace, Ahrim's Robetop, Ahrim's Robeskirt, Tormented Bracelet, Eternal Boots, Seers Ring (i), with off-hands specified on each graph.

https://i.imgur.com/tMIfriJ.png

[manic hare]

It more than tripples the price of fire wave so no not assumable.

[minor coral]

Their calc for Harmonoized Orb is with max mage and I'm think they fubbed that up when they calc'd the fire Wave for Smoke battlestaff

Which is why you see Harmonized orb setup pushing towards 14 dps (13.873)

[runic gale]

Now I wish I didn't delete the comments in the other channel because you still can't get near 9 dps unless you also sunfire runes boost

[minor coral]

Yeah, but I'm sure that's what they did in the calcs. They were lazy and just changed the absolute max fire Surge Harmonized Orb setup (close to 14 dps) by swapping to Smoke battlestaff + fire Wave (close to 9 dps)

[runic gale]

I was able to get 8.949 with Fire Wave on Smoke Battlestaff if you throw in Augury.

I got 13.44 harm no Augury and 13.66 no Augury.

[runic gale]

It's also don't think it's max mage though because I managed to get 14.08 dps with max mage.

It ranges from 13.44 - 14.08

Sunfire is a must in their calcs it seems

Otherwise just outright impossible

So yeah, Twinflame sitting between 11-12 dps seems pretty fair tbh

[minor coral]

Ah, I completely forgot Augury. Looks like it's Ahrims and max everything else

[runic gale]

Yah

Found it above their dps charts.

No magus though

just seers

They left out Augury + Sunfire in their assumptions.

If Fire Wave with Twinflame is already ~11 dps, Fire Surge is going to be 13 dps like I mentioned above.

And given how close that is to harmonized, coming from a 90-110 combat content, probably not best to allow surge.

[minor coral]

~11 dps Twinflame is still the same dps as a Smoke battlestaff with Surge though

[runic gale]

Yes, which requires 95 magicfor the latter.

and 81 for the former

It's pretty on par for where it's coming from tbh

It's like how Warped Sceptre was mostly equal to Ibans

and can forget the 93 slayer requirement for smoke if you're an iron, whereas this one likely won't

[runic gale]

Did they say if Ice or Fire Giants Tasks would work?

[gray juniper]

both

[minor coral]

I think this is where I don't see it as "close". Harmonized is nearing 14 dps when Twinflame would be closer to 13 dps. Which coming from 90-110 combat is reasonable to me, when they also need to be 95 magic for Surge.

[gray juniper]

ice giants would give you bonus dmg vs ice boss fire giants gives you dmg vs fire boss

[runic gale]

11 dps is pretty high up there for a reward coming from med level piece of content, 7.5m magic xp or 20 magic levels less (75 vs 95), and no 93 slayer requirement to access tbh.

Especially when sit down and consider where harm is coming from + how long it is to farm by comparison

[minor coral]

It's a 100% weak enemy which is why the raw number is 11 dps, like how Harmonized orb has 14 dps.
Magic level is faster to train once players can start bursting at lvl70, and can be boosted before hitting 95 magic.
The 93 slayer req only applies to ironmen, and that's only for Smoke battlestaff when you could switch to Staff of the dead to beat that at an even lower slayer level if that's the issue.

Harm orb is still better to justify the grind at +15% magic with 4 tick instead of 6 tick (>7% dps improvement with less overkill).

Right now there's nothing sitting between that long grind and something shorter for the niche of elemental damage, especially once a midgame lvl90-110 player progresses towards endgame stats (92+ magic).

[wheat dagger]

To be very entirely fair and as previously stated, 93 slayer only matters for irons (not to mentions you could just use Ahrim's which has no req aside from 70 mage and priest in peril) so justifying smoke battlestaff power based on its slayer req is odd at best. Mains will always be eyeing cost and at approximately 1.6mil (last i check) smoke battlestaff is pretty cheap and easily out justifies any main from engaging in the content. Even something like Master wand could probably give twinflame a run for contention as a more useful mid game option. I think twinflame strikes and interesting niche as being a more forgiving weapon being a 6-tick, but it really feels as a bit of a crutch instead of an actually strong tool.

I feel like a good middle ground would be giving it an interesting spec to make it worth going out of one's way for in mid game or giving it a niche to fulfill in endgame. Personally I like the idea of a "burst weapon" like the crystal halberd or web weaver bow special attacks