Guide Ned Reddavis' Guide to Voodoo Staff Damage (Updated to pyp-v1.0.20)

Ned_Reddavis

Honorable Pirate
Finally, we're here to discuss the final weapon type in my guide series: Voodoo Staffs. As usual we will discuss the skill tree and how to best use it to deal maximum damage and then finish up with disclosing the best DPS possible for each of the best staffs so far in the game.


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Voodoo Spell Attacks
The top left skill and the ring of skills in the center are all ways that a voodoo staff is able to deal damage. A comparison of the damage ranges of these attacks at the same ranks over the time required to perform each attack (Damage per second, DPS) shows that flaming skull and soul flay (right!) are rather similar, and banish edges with higher damage under a niche use on only skeletons. Wither is still bottom tier, but comes close to soul flay dps. Desolation, which deals a fairly high average DPS mid-fight, does have the most damage in one hit of all the attacks, and since one can charge an attack before an engagement this is the best attack to charge preemptively (if you can survive the health plummet for using it) and will dramatically boost your DPS in the short term.

Passives
Most of these passive abilities are incredibly useful and should have points spent into it, especially since points do not need to be spent in several of the inferior attacks. Concentration increases voodoo recovery rates, which is essential to having continual spells to use; Spirit Lore increases casting speeds for spells, which will directly increase DPS due to decreasing the time requirement to use a spell; Conservation decreases the voodoo cost of a spell, again being essential to continuous spells; and Spirit Mastery increases damage, which should in theory increase the DPS for dolls and staffs but at the moment is not working properly and provides no benefits whatsoever. With the amount of free skill points that can be distributed to these passives, I believe as many as possible should go into these passives. I have not tested all possible combinations to see where the cut-off for continuous spell use is for voodoo spells, but with the three useful passives at rank 5, banish and flaming skull can be used continuously. One other thing to note is that the passive skill under the voodoo doll tree named focus increases the maximum voodoo a pirate can have, and this too is useful in the uptime of spells. I am unable to test if staffs that go to rank 7 and 8 for the conservation passive go past the breaking point and prevent continuous spell use for flaming skull and banish, but if they do then the focus ability may bring that back in line. With all four of these currently working passives, I found that one can achieve continuous use of banish and flaming skull after using desolation.

Staff Damage Equation
This one is as simple as it can possibly get:

D= 1.5*B*(1+.005*A)*SM​

  • B= Base (minimum) damage of an attack as displayed by your skill tree
  • A= Attack value of staff being used
  • D= Damage (minimum) outcome of attack being calculated
  • SM = Spirit Mastery factor increase (between 1 and 1.25)

Staff DPS
As I hinted at earlier, there are many staves, and each have closely tied DPS values for different attacks, so a comprehensive chart of every attack is most helpful here. Interestingly, many common and rare staves still make it up the ranks and beat out some famed weapons in each category. These all assume a maxed and working spirit mastery skill.

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DPS Analysis
Overall, staves are in a really great place now; there are a lot more interesting things going on now than in the past. The maximum DPS for each staff (at least on non-skeletons) is more up in the air than ever. Banish is the technical winner, beyond that we see desolation outperform flaming skull, but minimally, and realistically desolation cannot be strung together like the other attacks. However, if we want the best non-Banish, non-Desolation DPS then we turn to the soul flay on a rare staff! In normal situations I would still recommend flaming skull as desolation is risky if you're targeted. Notably, in Gold Room, certain staves with desolation can clear the room instantly. The most interesting thing that I haven't mentioned so far is that the lava staff has an ability that indirectly increases DPS by increasing the attacks of nearby players by 10%. With a couple or even one other pirate dealing decently high DPS then your collective damage can be higher using the staff of lava over the corpse staff and with a large amount of pirates (say at the twins) can be substantially higher than using even the best DPS swords and guns in the game so far.

That's all that I have for staffs and this concludes the guides for individual weapon type DPS. Feel free to check out the other weapon guides, or the two part general guide as well. If you're still interested in this topic and how the results were made, you can
view the google spreadsheet that I made it with. I hope this was helpful as always! Ned Reddavis out!
 

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Hey, great guide, but I noticed you don't have the dire staff. In my testing it has the best dps at least for desolation, due to dark aura applying to the caster.
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Hey, great guide, but I noticed you don't have the dire staff. In my testing it has the best dps at least for desolation, due to dark aura applying to the caster.View attachment 121062

Good catch! Looks like that wasn't on the list of staffs on the wiki, which is what I base my collection of weapons on. I really appreciate your diligent checking! I've updated the chart accordingly, but I'll leave this part here for your ease. It would appear like the Dire Staff is indeed very powerful, but not quite the best.

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