Charged VMA Lightning staff

NinthPrince64 · June 2017

Maybe I misread it, but I came across a discussion the other day about this staff that suggested that the charged trait was worthless because of the enchant on VMA staves. I asked somebody else who I consider to be knowledgeable and he said that the charged trait works on the status effect and so it is valuable.

Can somebody help me to understand the relevance of charged on a VMA staff? Thanks.

Scyantific · June 2017

While it's definitely not as useful as a sharpened lightning staff, it's probably one of the best staves to use if you're a healer because of the off-balance proc it produces.

Danksta · June 2017

Charged makes it more likely to proc concussion (as well as burning and chilled), and concussed enemies sitting in your Wall of Lightning are set off-balance. If you have 75 points into the Ritual CP tree you unlock the exploiter passive which gives you 10% more damage against off-balance enemies. This was way more powerful last patch because heavy attacks consume off-balance and this patch there's a lot of heavy attack builds.

I was using a charged Spinner lightning staff on my mDK last patch for vMA for high uptimes on off-balance because of Power Lash. It was a fun build even though I wasn't very effective at it, but I know some people were getting pretty high scores with it.

paulsimonps · June 2017

Scyantific wrote: »

While it's definitely not as useful as a sharpened lightning staff, it's probably one of the best staves to use if you're a healer because of the off-balance proc it produces.

That last part is big to note. So OP, that staff you got there is BiS for some End Game Trial healer builds. Its preferable to have sharpened or at the very least precise for it, though the last part is only for backbar. So I would go with another type of staff unless you got yourself a healer. But even if you don't have a healer at the moment, keep it if you ever think you might heal.

Oh and like it was said earlier too, some Vet Maelstrom builds do use Charged, but its not that easy to use but can be effective if trained for those types of builds.