Damage Lore - and underutilized skills in general

[idbeholdME 394]

So, after playing a couple characters that took Damage Lore, I have to say that it is actually quite powerful once Mastered. IF you are using mainly Fire/Poison attacks that is. It increases exclusively duration for the Ice and Magic effects and that doesn't really mean much.

But for Fire and Poison, once you pump Damage Lore Mastery to around 400% bonus damage/duration, it's actually massive. Especially with weapon attacks and powerful converters. You hit an enemy once and then he takes several ticks of damage, dealing the same damage as the original hit, passively. You can just attack most enemies once, move on to another and things will just die on their own while you move on to the next enemies. The chance to trigger secondary effects from the skills is additive, meaning it just gets flatly added on top of the existing chance. So at high levels, you are pretty much guaranteed to trigger them with every hit. I rarely see this skill suggested, but if you are using mainly Fire or Poison damage, squeezing this skill in can do wonders. But the reason I don't see it mentioned often is probably the Mastery requirement. Without it, the skill is mediocre at best.

 

Another skill that I feel is often looked over is Spell Resistance. It doesn't really do much initially, but the impact once Mastered is one of the strongest in the game. It works against every negative effect inflicted on you that has a duration. From damage over time, to roots, debuffs like magic damage secondary effect or Olm blinds, slows... Everything is reduced to a fraction of its original duration and does absolute wonders for survivability. The only thing it doesn't work against are stuns. Immediately at level 75, you instantly gain the equivalent of 65% "Detrimental Effect Reduction", which can be pushed to 75-80% with enough skill points. Absolutely massive, frees up a ton of defensive slots/bonuses that you'd have to get from gear otherwise. Not to mention that the base bonuses of the skill, the extra Spell Resistance and reduction of spell criticals can also be quite noticeable at higher levels. I came to appreciate this skill a lot, on par with things like Constitution or Toughness. My Seraphim has this skill + extra Detrimental Effect Reduction on gear and all negative effects last 1-2 seconds max. Damage over time effects like the infamous Spider Spit does a single tick of damage instead of 4.  Some negative effects drop so fast the game bugs out. I had a Weaken effect get stuck on me after walking through T-Energy, constantly getting turned on and off because the duration was so short. That's how you know a skill is broken Again, the main negative of the skill is the Mastery requirement. Somewhat mediocre without it.

 

Alchemy. Unlike the other two, this one can be left at 1 point and let gear do the rest. This is a skill with one of the least impactful Masteries in the game. All it does is is provide a mediocre bump in the value. Nothing special happens if you master it. Got it on my Seraphim for testing purposes and with all the skill bonuses, having Mentor potions last 2+ minutes in Niobium is a joy. Not to mention the various trophies and effect on other potions. Health potions become instant full heals and Alchemy even works to counteract the penalty for spamming potions too quickly, meaning that 2 or even 3 consecutive potions can still full heal you even when the diminishing returns kick in. Also, just from bringing one character with Alchemy into late Niobium, I now have 1000+ Strong Mentor potions in the bank for other characters because thanks to the increased duration from Alchemy, the supply far outdoes the demand. For Trophies, both duration and effect increase. Things like Iron Ore, Skull or 4 leaf Clover can become extremely powerful with enough Alchemy points. Here are some numbers from my Seraphim that has only 145 soft points in Alchemy (219.5%) and Niob trophies:

Strong Mentor Potion duration - 158.9 seconds

Base trophy duration - 20 seconds, becomes ~44 seconds.

Four leaf clover Trophy - +215.6% Chance to Find Valuables. Easily the most powerful source of CtFV in the game. Save these for farming Guardians and it works wonders, especially if you can kill all 4 plus the machine in the duration of one trophy. Combine with Enhanced Perception, high survival bonus and map explored % for ludicrous results.

Troll Tooth - + 620.4% Attack Value. Yes, you read that correctly.

Branch Trophy - Block Root 85.8%. Can be a great help in root heavy areas.

Iron Ore Trophy - +1798 Physical Armor, which then further gets multiplied by any armor bonuses you have. My character goes from 10176 Physical armor to 19717 just by popping an Iron Ore Trophy, almost doubling it.

Skull Trophy - +23.6% Critical Chance

Harpy Feather Trophy - 77.8% Chance to Block ranged attacks

Construction Plan Trophy - 77.8% Chance to Block Spells. Use this and laugh at everything, including the dragons in dragon caves or eyes in the Blood Forest.

Talisman Trophy - 32.1% Chance to Evade.

 

If I Mastered the skill with another 74 points, it would only move from 219.5% to something like 295%. Truly one of the worst Masteries in the game. BUT, it would probably bring all those high % chances very close to 100%.

 

The only other skill that I'm not sure about yet is Riding. Wondering how much of a difference Mastery will make in the speed. Will probably try running a Riding character soon to find out, Speaking of which, does anybody know if the Mastery speed bonus from Riding is flat or relative? Wondering if it means you get +15% at level 75, or 15% from the base. Inquisitor has 130% movement speed on the spider and I'm not sure if it'd become 145% or 149.5%.

Edited June 28, 2023 by idbeholdME

[gogoblender 3,070]

im on vacation but...even while taking an afternoon siesta couldnt help but get drawn into your clear and persuasive writing.  I wanted to reflect a little upon Alchemy.  I agree with how powerful it can be, I believe Chattius has even written some reams upon the subject regarding its marvelous appications, and I had tremendous success with it when creating a left-click only mounted warrior with riding skill... before any battle with a boss, my hero was oft-remembered swigging draught after draught till his belly distended, then launching himself at huge ferocities head-on after which, under the effects of trophies they would simply melt.

Its a particularly pleasing effect, and I would get no end of satisfaction from it.  The only reason I didnt pursue the build into HardCore Niobiom was because of the lack of animations and satifaction from *thwacking* a creature incessantly with a long stick

It got boring fast

I'm curious.. I remember trying but dont remember or didnt record the data...but is there a number of trophies or alchemical effects that can be fun at once?

This is reference quality writing Idbehold me, I hope you'll consider adding it to the Wiki, or perhaps when I return home next week, you'll let me add links on the appropriate wiki's page to your tested data here in this topic.

Great work

gogo

[Lindor 438]

7 hours ago, idbeholdME said:

So, after playing a couple characters that took Damage Lore, I have to say that it is actually quite powerful once Mastered

The Wiki Damage Lore page is not very informative about Damage Lore on spell damage based combat arts. All that I know is that it doesn't affect built-in DoT. But I don't know wether and if, then how much it affects spell damage based triggered DoTs. Only thing that is general consens is that spell damage can trigger DoTs, but honestly I'm not even sure about that. Would be interesting to know whether it's worth it or not for a spellcaster hero.

 

Another underrated skill for me is Combat Discipline, although one shouldn't go for that if one attempts to build a character around "chance to halve regen time", because that doesn't work with combos. Definitely something that would be worth fixing if only one got the skills to read and speak Assembly like Dmitriy,
Combat Discipline does a huge amount of work on your DPS when mastered. It especially synergizes well with the higher speed cap from EEs balance.txt.

 

Warding Energy Lore is also pretty good not because of the shieldstrength but because of the "block warding energy +x" bonus. Flat damage absorption which synergizes extremely well with percentage damage absorption from toughness.

 

Overrated Skills however are also existent. Any skills which have to do with Attack Value/Defense Value like Combat Reflexes, e.g. Because of a typo in the source code (I think it was a "+" instead of a "="), Attack Value and Defense Value both don't do anything in the hit chance formula calculation. Only level difference matters afaik. Dmitriy fixes that in the Addendum. Don't know wether he fixed it for PFP as well.

[idbeholdME 394]

59 minutes ago, gogoblender said:

I'm curious.. I remember trying but dont remember or didnt record the data...but is there a number of trophies or alchemical effects that can be fun at once?

Thanks.

As far as I know, there is no limit. You can have all the temporary potions and trophies going on at once. But there is no way to tell when they start wearing off, as the only indication is the swirly circles around your character. But multiples of the same don't stack, only refresh duration.

47 minutes ago, Lindor said:

But I don't know wether and if, then how much it affects spell damage based triggered DoTs. Only thing that is general consens is that spell damage can trigger DoTs, but honestly I'm not even sure about that. Would be interesting to know whether it's worth it or not for a spellcaster hero.

I haven't done extensive testing, but I'd assume it works the same for spells. They absolutely do have a base chance to inflict a secondary effect based on the amount of damage of a specific element they do, like weapons but you can't see that chance anywhere. An enemy can burn simply from being thwacked by an unmodded Ancestral Fireball and Damage Lore should increase the chance/damage of this burn effect too.

47 minutes ago, Lindor said:

Another underrated skill for me is Combat Discipline, although one shouldn't go for that if one attempts to build a character around "chance to halve regen time", because that doesn't work with combos. Definitely something that would be worth fixing if only one got the skills to read and speak Assembly like Dmitriy,
Combat Discipline does a huge amount of work on your DPS when mastered. It especially synergizes well with the higher speed cap from EEs balance.txt.

One interesting thing about CD is that it still scales very well after Mastery. The diminishing returns for this skill are very low. You get 135.6% damage at level 75 and 244.7% at level 150. Every point is nearly equally valuable, unlike some other skills that pretty much stop scaling past level 100. I take it often and a caster Temple Guardian pretty much has to because he doesn't have access to Ancient Magic (in the unmodded game).

47 minutes ago, Lindor said:

Warding Energy Lore is also pretty good not because of the shieldstrength but because of the "block warding energy +x" bonus. Flat damage absorption which synergizes extremely well with percentage damage absorption from toughness.

I personally take WEL every single time I play a character that utilizes shields. The increase in shield capacity is simply too massive to pass and the flat absorption is just a cherry on top.

47 minutes ago, Lindor said:

Overrated Skills however are also existent. Any skills which have to do with Attack Value/Defense Value like Combat Reflexes, e.g. Because of a typo in the source code (I think it was a "+" instead of a "="), Attack Value and Defense Value both don't do anything in the hit chance formula calculation. Only level difference matters afaik. Dmitriy fixes that in the Addendum. Don't know wether he fixed it for PFP as well.

Attack vs Defense 100% works in the PFP.

As for overrated skills, I absolutely agree with Combat Reflexes. Works only against weapon attacks and evasion chance can easily be gotten from other sources. Waste of a slot. Speed Lore is not really overrated but probably even worse than Combat Reflexes.

Edited June 25, 2023 by idbeholdME

[Khorath 13]

I experimented a bit with DoTs or to be more precise with "secondary damage effects" of fire and poison, and came to an interesting (at least for me) result. I am using the latest Community Patch.

After reading the page in the wiki I assumed, the amount of damage over time inflicted per tick on an enemy would be dependent on the amount of corresponding damage I inflicted. For example: A weapon that does a total of 100 damage that deals 90% physical and 10% fire damage would deal less fire damage over time than a weapon that deals 100 total damage with 20% physical and 80% fire damage.

This is NOT the case. Both weapons deal exactly the same amount of damage over time per tick. Just the chance of inflicting the DoT is lower on the first weapon.

Weapons that deal different types of damage (I.e. poison and fire) can deal both DoTs. One attack can only apply one type of DoT, but a double shot for example can trigger a fire-DoT with the first and a poison-DoT with the second shot. This can easily be tested when equipping the unique 'Dragonbone Swiftbow' on a Dryad. She can inflict both DoTs with her Ravaging Assault.

Contrary to what is written in the wiki, both effects can be seen at once on a given enemy.

[idbeholdME 394]

1 hour ago, Khorath said:

I experimented a bit with DoTs or to be more precise with "secondary damage effects" of fire and poison, and came to an interesting (at least for me) result. I am using the latest Community Patch.

After reading the page in the wiki I assumed, the amount of damage over time inflicted per tick on an enemy would be dependent on the amount of corresponding damage I inflicted. For example: A weapon that does a total of 100 damage that deals 90% physical and 10% fire damage would deal less fire damage over time than a weapon that deals 100 total damage with 20% physical and 80% fire damage.

This is NOT the case. Both weapons deal exactly the same amount of damage over time per tick. Just the chance of inflicting the DoT is lower on the first weapon.

Weapons that deal different types of damage (I.e. poison and fire) can deal both DoTs. One attack can only apply one type of DoT, but a double shot for example can trigger a fire-DoT with the first and a poison-DoT with the second shot. This can easily be tested when equipping the unique 'Dragonbone Swiftbow' on a Dryad. She can inflict both DoTs with her Ravaging Assault.

Contrary to what is written in the wiki, both effects can be seen at once on a given enemy.

Can't comment on CM Patch, but in the PFP, the DoT absolutely does correspond to the amount of damage inflicted. Just did a quick test where I simply tried two differently powerful Lava Chunks.

This attack results in a 21152 fire damage per tick from burn:

 

And this attack results in a 16570 fire damage per tick from burn:

Both attacks performed on the same enemy.

 

Regarding multi-elemental weapons, yes, they can inflict all the secondary effects as long as you don't use a converter. If you use a converter, it changes the damage type of all other elements to that of the converter along with the stated % of the Physical damage.

And about the visual effects, I am 99% sure that was one of the community fixes, so that you are able to see multiple effects on the same enemy.

Edited April 20 by idbeholdME

[Khorath 13]

Really interesting. I will conduct further experiments with higher leveled characters. I will report the findings here shortly.

[Khorath 13]

Here are the results of my tests:

I duplicated two weapons of roughly the same damage:

1st weapon - pure physical damage
a) with low-level converter (29,2% converted to poison-damage)

b) with higher-level converter (65,5% converted to poison-damage)

 

2nd weapon - with two damage types (70% physical - 30% fire damage)
a) without damage-converter

b) with higher-level converter (68,2% converted to fire-damage)

All four weapons consistently delivered the same results when used on exactly the same enemy (Black Wolf, Lvl 111, Niob, The enemy had no visible resistances (yellow bar) against any elemental damage.):

Any hit with ca. 1750 dmg inflicted resulted in a DoT of ca. 275 dmg per tick
Any hit with ca. 2000 dmg inflicted resulted in a DoT of ca. 320 dmg per tick
Any hit with ca. 2250 dmg inflicted resulted in a DoT of ca. 345 dmg per tick

All critical hits inflicted more damage with the initial hit and consequently resulted in higher DoT-ticks.

Conclusion:

The amount of elemental damage inflicted does not correspond with the amount of damage over time the enemy takes, only the total damage inflicted on the hit, that procs the DoT is taken into account, when calculating the DoT.

 

[Androdion 884]

So in short, if you're playing with a DoT build, let's say a dual-wielder with Fire/Poison weapons and maxed out Damage Lore, is it better to maximise damage conversion on each weapon or is it irrelevant damage wise for applying DoTs? Sorry for the inane question, but my brain isn't collaborating today. 

[Khorath 13]

As I understand it, two things are needed for delivering high damage-over-time:

1. Consistently applying fire / poison DoTs. A high conversion rate will help with this.

2. Delivering heavy hits - as much damage as possible with the DoT-proccing hit.

The skill 'Damage Lore' will also greatly increase the chance of inflicting fire/poison-DoTs. (It will also increase the chance to apply magic & ice secondary effects, but these do not deal any damage.) The mastery bonus of the Damage Lore-Skill will NOT increase the duration of poison and burn DoTs over the hard-cap of 5 seconds. My observations indicate, that the bonus might counteract enemy resistances, which may reduce the duration of DoTs below 5 seconds. The last thing is a kind of speculation on my side. I cannot say this for sure.

About your question: I am sorry to say that I did not test dual wielding weapons of different elements yet. I just testet multi-hit attacks. If both hits of a dual-wield attack are capable of applying DoTs, then it would be better to use weapons with different elements and a high conversion rate on each one. This would result in consistently applying two different DoTs simultaneously, which could be really powerful.

Very interesting. I will test dual wielding and report my findings.

Edited Monday at 06:12 PM by Khorath

[Androdion 884]

Looking forward to your results, and thanks a lot for the explanation! 

[Khorath 13]

Okay, I conducted a few tests with a dual-wielding Seraphim.

Applying DoTs while dual-wielding works differently when using a standard left click attack and when using a CA.

When using standard (default) attacks, both weapons can apply a secondary damage effect and will consequently inflict DoTs. It is possible to inflict a poison-DoT with one weapon and a fire-DoT with the other weapon in a single attack. Interestingly, it does not seem to matter how much damage the off-hand weapon deals. The amount of both DoT-types (main and off-hand) seems to be based on the total damage inflicted and not on the actual damage of the specific weapon hit. This behaviour is in line with the mechanic described in the wiki: For all damage calculation only the main hand weapon damage seems to used. When calculating the %-chances to inflict the secondary damage effects (which is done based on the amount of damage inflicted per element) the damage differences between main-hand and off-hand weapons are considered. Example: When using a main-hand weapon with 1000 poison-dmg and an off-hand 'stat-stick' with only 200 fire-dmg, the chance to inflict a fire-DoT is much smaller than inflicting a poison-DoT. However once the DoT is triggered, both DoTs inflict the same amount of damage per tick.

Sadly, this is not the case when using CAs. When using Soul Hammer only the effect of the main hand weapon is used, even if two hits are applied to the target. If using CAs (which will be the case most of the time) it is not necessary to use two weapons with different elements, instead it would be better to use one weapon that can inflict two elements (fire/poison). This way it is possible to inflict both types of DoT without switching weapons, even though it's not possible to inflict both DoT-effects in one single CA-attack.

When using multi-hit attacks (I just tested Pelting Strikes) the same behaviour is observable. Even though the animation suggests, that you hit multiple times with both weapons, this is not the case. You just use the main hand weapon and can only inflict DoTs of this weapon.

I haven't tested the behaviour of other CAs.

[idbeholdME 394]

Then the behavior has been changed in CM Patch, as the amount of elemental damage does matter for the power of the DoT in PFP.

And yes, your observations regarding CAs are correct. When dual-wielding, it only ever uses the main weapon. The off-hand is purely a stat stick for everything other than left click normal attacks. This is the reason why I ran an Inquisitor build focused on just left clicks with Damage Lore, so that both hands can apply DoTs (burn and poison). In the PFP, the off-hand weapon is considered individually for left click attacks and inflicts a DoT based on the actual damage you deal with it, not the total of both.

And another yes, Damage Lore will help counteract the DoT duration reduction the enemies get from Willpower at higher levels. Very noticeable on bosses, who without Damage Lore, by late Niobium usually only take one tick of DoT damage before it expiring, due to their excessive Willpower.

Edited Monday at 08:22 PM by idbeholdME

[Androdion 884]

Ah yes, dual wield does have some associated shenanigans, as both of you explained so well. There's another interesting mechanic that happens post CM 1.60, and by extension on PFP as well, and it has to do with the new behaviour of mage staves. If you dual wield a staff with any other melee weapon, and you use the staff as your main weapon, the attack will actually be... ranged! Since staves were changed to shoot projectiles even without its relevant weapon mastery, but still count as melee weapons, you can dual wield one with any other melee weapon. This can result in some really wild results if you run with a Malevolent Champion SW and modify Frenzied Rampage twice for double hits. Want to see something fun? Try it, it's a blast. One-handed staves don't have %LL, but if your secondary weapon does, you can then throw a barrage of projectiles and each will proc it. RpH gets pretty crazy as well, so you can get your CA's cooldown really high and it'll reset very easily.

As for DoT builds, they do seem to be more effective with LMB attacks if even multi-element CAs can only proc one effect per hit. It's probably possible to theorycraft a build that relies more on CAs as support instead of using them as a constant means to attack, in order to maximise DoTs. I remember that there was this crazy Spectral Hand build back then with Damage Lore maxed out, and the guy who ran it used to farm the Guardians with it. It looked like it was a lot of fun, there's probably still its forum post around here somewhere.

[idbeholdME 394]

On 4/23/2024 at 3:49 AM, Androdion said:

As for DoT builds, they do seem to be more effective with LMB attacks if even multi-element CAs can only proc one effect per hit. It's probably possible to theorycraft a build that relies more on CAs as support instead of using them as a constant means to attack, in order to maximise DoTs.

You can use CAs. It will produce a more powerful instance of the DoT (at least in the PFP) corresponding to the element of your main hand weapon as CAs do more damage than normal attacks. Just make sure to mix in normal attacks occasionally to also proc the off-hand DoT on tougher enemies, where having multiple DoTs running is worth it.

Another option would be to have 2 pairs of weapons, one for applying burn, the other poison and use only CAs. You can then have the 2 weapons in the set both focused on maximizing the respective DoT. But it requires a lot of APM and maintaining 2 sets of main weapons, which can get bothersome. 

 

As for staves, I will sadly not touch them with dual wield again since the Ice&Blood change already broke a lot of things back then and the subsequent community fix of always making them ranged without the skill to fix one of the most egregious bugs didn't really help other than that. Not to mention it made the Staff weapon lore utterly irrelevant again.

Edited Wednesday at 08:35 AM by idbeholdME

[Androdion 884]

1 hour ago, idbeholdME said:

You can use CAs. It will produce a more powerful instance of the DoT (at least in the PFP) corresponding to the element of your main hand weapon as CAs do more damage than normal attacks. Just make sure to mix in normal attacks occasionally to also proc the off-hand DoT on tougher enemies, where having multiple DoTs running is worth it.

Another option would be to have 2 pairs of weapons, one for applying burn, the other poison and use only CAs. You can then have the 2 weapons in the set both focused on maximizing the respective DoT. But it requires a lot of APM and maintaining 2 sets of main weapons, which can get bothersome. 

 

As for staves, I will sadly not touch them with dual wield again since the Ice&Blood change already broke a lot of things back then and the subsequent community fix of always making them ranged without the skill to fix one of the most egregious bugs didn't really help other than that. Not to mention it made the Staff weapon lore utterly irrelevant again.

Good advice, considering that I'm running PFP myself. I remember that trying to micromanage two different sets of weapons while dual-wielding, with each set pairing different elemental damage types, was very hard due to not being able to have similar stats on different weapons. The easiest way to do so was with a build that had Bargaining and that could fish for specific modifiers on rare weapons on vendors, and considering that you can fish for weapons with forging slots like that, and more importantly for Deathblow bonuses, it can work. It's still a lot of work, and I'm not sure if the gains are that visible. However, with melee builds not having a way to reduce armour resistances like casters have with Ancient Magic, using a set of weapons with a single element against a single element heavy armour boss in higher difficulties can be an issue.

I actually use the Staff weapon lore on my Magic Coup High Elf for the attack value bonus alone, but that's mostly because I had a spare skill to burn. I know that staves being ranged, even with a short range, isn't vanilla behaviour per se, but the way it was implemented made way for a completely different way of playing the game when using them. My MC build for instance, it focuses on Crystal Skin and Shield Lore for durability, Shadow Step for evasion/stun/damage, and then uses a one-handed staff to be able to hit mobs without having to be head to head with them. And since HE are squishy as melee it actually brings in an interesting dynamic, as opposed to the the more typical Incandescent Skin/Pole Arms template. I agree that a Malevolent Champion SW with dual-wield staves can be a bit OP, especially with an off-hand weapon with %LL and stacking RpH, but that's an archetype that didn't exist and that wasn't exactly balanced, so I'll give you that. I guess that a good middle ground is running an Inquisitor with a Ruthless Mutilation/Callous Execution combo, which despite still throwing more than a few projectiles is much more controlled, I.e. fair/balanced. Frenzied Rampage with the two double hit mods and dual-wield staves is OP, I have to agree, and even if the lower base damage of staves tends to balance it somewhat, the amount of stacking modifiers and huge amount of projectiles thrown at a single time just ramp it out of control. It's fun though, if you want a fast boss melting build that isn't a Glacial Thorns build. 

[idbeholdME 394]

13 hours ago, Androdion said:

Frenzied Rampage with the two double hit mods and dual-wield staves is OP, I have to agree, and even if the lower base damage of staves tends to balance it somewhat, the amount of stacking modifiers and huge amount of projectiles thrown at a single time just ramp it out of control.

Yeah, the main problem is, that 1 handed staves use the same animations as one handed melee weapons. Which was perfectly fine in original Sacred 2 as they were melee only, but with the change in Ice&Blood, Ascaron didn't really think about the far reaching consequences of it. It was a nice idea, trying to make staves unique and different from normal weapons, but they probably didn't have the budget/time to either implement a new set of animations for it, test it properly or separate them from normal melee weapons. I feel like the main idea behind it was to give caster builds an option to have a viable weapon attack, but the problem is that especially with dual-wield, it led to many potential bugs/exploits.

So it basically depends on the player if he wants to engage with these buggy behaviors.

[Androdion 884]

8 hours ago, idbeholdME said:

So it basically depends on the player if he wants to engage with these buggy behaviors.

True that. I guess that with projectiles being locked behind Staff Lore mastery these kind of situations were so damn specific that you just couldn't get to the core of its implications, whereas when the behaviour change in staves was made to have them shoot projectiles without the Lore skill mastery, that became all too evident. I understand why it was done, and I know that at the time both Flix and Dimitry had to compromise to it in order to solve the "shoot everything on and off screen" exploit. And trust me when I say that they tried their best to have it be as balanced as they could, namely testing different attack ranges, type of projectiles, animations, etc. I know that because I was testing CM 1.60 implementations as they were making them, and that patch was anything but consensual. I don't think that anyone feels like Viperish Disease and Eternal Fire weren't heavily nerfed, to the point of kind of loosing their own appeal, but there were things that just couldn't be made to work in any other way. Staves were just another victim of the source code's limitations, and with having to choose between a game breaking exploit and a class specific exploit, I can understand the choice that was made. Lesser of two evils if you will. 

I'm very partial to enjoying "mega-projectile" staves though, but I guess that it's due to testing it so much that I started enjoying that machine gun-like behaviour. It's just fun stuff, which wouldn't be as fun if the game had an active build meta, because that'd become the standard for fast grinding. But considering how the game has just a few hardcore longtime players, who have hundreds or thousands of hours spent in the game, I guess that choosing to be OP in some particular cases isn't that big of a deal. Like you say, it goes down to each of us to choose what and how we do with it. Much like using Char Editor for respecing, or to create blank templates to avoid climbing up to mastery level (guilty!), or using non-vanilla XP gains, etc. It's all cool because there's no meta, just hardcore players having fun.