I feel like I can’t get the Battlemage to work for me. The bonus effect on the staff is very cool and I feel like I see some theoretical synergies with artifacts that can be charged quickly with melee strikes, but in practice it seems like I always eventually run short on resources and can’t output the damage I need.
For the most part, it’s “melee enemy to charge your staff”. That’s the whole thing. You can have seemingly endless staff charges as long as you mix in some melee. So maybe you put a few upgrades into good armor so you don’t just die in melee. I find +4 Scale Armor to be sufficient for doing lots of melee.
I’ve had the most fun with a Staff of Magic Missiles. Each melee hit gives all of your wands 0.5 charges, and a zap from Magic Missile boosts all your wands to its level (as long as you actually hit an enemy with the zap.) So you kinda-sorta have an entire holster of wands equal to the level of your staff.
Normally, wands recharge at a rate relative to how many charges they’re missing. Thats why a +8 wand goes from 0/10 charges to 1/10 very quickly, but a 0/2 wand takes a lot longer to get back a charge. With a Staff of MM, you just melee once and all your wands get 0.5 charges!
It’s also kinda fun to imbue a Wand of Disintegration into a Projecting Staff. Then you can hit enemies 3 tiles away as if it were a whip. If you have a Ring of Arcana, it upgrades the staff’s on-hit effect as if it were an enchantment. It will boost the reach from Disintegration just as much as it does the reach from Projecting. You can melee things across the room with a high enough ring!
Even without the ring, you can hit enemies around obstacles, so you can get the benefit of the extra reach even against ranged enemies as long as you can see the enemy. Perhaps with Eye of Newt, or you Metamorphose a tier 2 talent and get the Huntress’ vision talent.
I don’t remember what Wand of Blasting does for an on-hit effect. Wait, it’s probably just “Elastic” and knocks away enemies. Either way, it’s an excellent wand to put into your staff. I’ve had it to a high enough level that I can zap an enemy and push them 11 tiles, or zap one tile next to me and launch myself 11 tiles.
Blasting is an excellent Staff for Battlemage because even if you don’t really want to melee, and you have 0 charges, you can hit an enemy just once to give it a charge and then blast that enemy across the room. (You just have to brace yourself against a wall before you zap an enemy in melee range or else you both go flying and you end up paralyzing yourself.) The damage from Wand of Blasting also gets very high at high levels.
In the end, you’re still just a mage with a staff. You’re not a warrior. You just have some tricks, more charges than normal, and a free weapon enchantment.
And like any mage, you absolutely duuuump upgrades into the staff. Ain’t nothing wrong with a +19 staff. Although, a good ring might take some of those. I sometimes curse-infuse some armor if I feel too squishy. Preferably something that already had a couple upgrades.
Thanks for the write-up!
I just saw on the fandom wiki that melee attacks that do 0 damage don’t recharge the wands. I’ve been augmenting the staff for speed a lot thinking that it would be good to proc enchantments and the staff effects, but maybe that was misguided because too many of my attacks are being blocked or reduced to 0 damage?
Thats interesting, and something I wasn’t aware of. However, if you’re dumping upgrades into the staff, I don’t see why even a speed augmented one wouldn’t do at least 1 damage most of the time. There are some high armor enemies, but still…
I just started a Battlemage run. I’ll have to try the speed augment. How early are you doing it that it’s a problem? Like, how low level is your staff? I wouldn’t want to do it until floor 11, I’d think.
Certainly not before floor 11. On my best attempt with the Battlemage I was able to use an hourglass to cover the time I needed to swap to a sword when I wasn’t getting hits with the staff. Should’ve won that run too but I underestimated my own shrapnel bombs hehe
I speed augmented my staff on floor 16 and I’m having no problem dealing damage with it. It’s a Staff of Corruption, so melee is pretty much my only damage. Plus some throwables, and a +0 Wand of Lightning. Oh, plus all the enemies I convert to my side.
I’m wearing +5 scale armor. I usually don’t upgrade armor for a mage, but I really need it with just a Staff of Corruption. If it randomly gives an enemy the Weakness debuff, they can barely do any damage to me. If it gives them Vulnerable, I do quite a bit of melee damage to them. When they get low, I just keep zapping until they get corrupted. If there are multiple enemies in the room, the Amok debuff that triggers on melee is fantastic! The enemies start fighting each other.
The final boss fight should be interesting. I’ll have to try corrupting some worms, I guess.