The new vMA perfected Destruction Staff and Bow are very interesting ideas. However I think the stat chosen for each perfected bonus is not ideal, and in the case of the staff I’d say not even beneficial.
Destruction Staff: Received 1190 Spell Penetration. This is exclusively a PVE weapon, and Spell Pen is not needed in PVE since Light Armor and group debuffs already allow reaching the cap with minimal investment in Spell Erosion. Additionally, this weapon is always used on the back bar (since it has to be with Wall, and Wall is the only way to reliably proc back bar enchants), so the extra Spell Pen will only be active on back bar. Since Spell Pen is built to reach the target 18.2k on front bar, this means Spell Pen on back bar will be at 19.4k, which has 0 impact on damage and is completely wasted.
Instead the destruction staff would benefit from a Spell Crit bonus, because many front bar sets or the Precise weapon trait give more Spell Crit on front bar than back. Having one extra set bonus of Spell Crit back bar would reduce the “bounce” of this stat when swapping bars and make it slightly worthwhile to pursue this new weapon. I’d like to see the standard set bonus of 833 Spell Crit, not sure why these Perfected bonuses are only giving about 80% of the standard set bonus.
The Maelstrom Bow I feel less strongly about, since Weapon Crit is a decent choice for its bonus (front bar crit is typically higher than back bar on stam builds, due to daggers, sets, and sometimes precise). However if the idea is to have one Maesltrom weapon give crit and the other give Pen, this would be the better choice for Physical Pen. Stamina builds do not get any Penetration from Medium Armor passives, so they often use the Sharpened trait on front bar (and sometimes sets like Tzogvins which loses its 4pc Physical Pen while on back bar). This means back bar Pen is lower (since bow is best as infused, with Berserker enchant procced by Endless Hail) and would benefit from 1487 Physical Pen as the Perfected bonus on the Maelstrom bow (again not sure where 1190 came from, can these just be a standard set bonus?).
Thanks for reading, I hope you’ll consider this request
Edited by WrathOfInnos on April 20, 2020 8:58PM