[Official] Druidic Staff | Jade Staff

[Absol]

If i may suggest a buff, then reduce the upped attack to 3.
Yeah, you heard that right. Reduce the attack as a form of buff.
Why? Adren, that's why.

Anyway, it's not UP. The 9 damage swing vs 12 damage swing from Dagger is offset by the fact that healing occur regardless of anything. Also, Adren in-element again.

[Annele]

@memimemi, if it was immaterial, it would lose ALL synergy with adrenaline, one of the main reasons it is used.

[memimemi]

@memimemi
Is the hypothetical quaterstaff anything like Hammer? (also 2 )

PS:I estimate 2 + 1 card ~= 1/3 + 1 card

Well, you're the Guru.  Hammer(ish) seems fair: 2|7, 4|7 upped (when flown), with +1 HP for  mark, seems suitable.  Once again, +1 HP seems more fitting for a  effect than the +1 ATK given for Hammer.

So: Quarterstaff - 2 ATK (+2 cost), 7 HP (+1 cost), Single Slot (-3 cost), Passive skill (+2 cost)[bonus to HP with  mark) = 2 , like Hammer.
Jade Staff - 2 ATK (+2 cost), 7 HP (+1 cost), Single Slot (-3 cost), Passive skill (+2 cost) [+5 HP life gain/turn] = 2 , or 1/3  .  Seems UP.

What if we add Immaterial?  We'd have to add ((+2[ATK]) + (+1[6=<HP<8]) + (-1[ bonus])) + (1 + 2[ATK]1/2) = 4  , or ~ 2 .

If I follow the mechanics properly, I'd suggest Immaterial as a possible buff.  However, I still think it's fine as it is, considering it's great synergies with other  effects, such as Adrenaline, and even SoG.

OldTrees?  Does this sound about right to you?

[memimemi]

@memimemi, if it was immaterial, it would lose ALL synergy with adrenaline, one of the main reasons it is used.

Absolutely.  But, then again, it would gain a new reason to be used.  A single-card SoG/PA combo, with 5 HP gained regardless of mark, would make Jade Staff at least as splashable as Vamp Dagger.  Seems a fair trade-off: a 3-card combo lost (JS/Momentum/Adrenaline); a single utility healing card gained.

[OldTrees]

@memimemi

Immaterial would remove a valuable synergy (Immaterial Regeneration already exists. No reason to collapse 2 synergies into 1).

Rather I would suggest 3|4 attack with the regenerate increasing from 5 to 8.

[Annele]

@memimemi, if it was immaterial, it would lose ALL synergy with adrenaline, one of the main reasons it is used.

Absolutely.  But, then again, it would gain a new reason to be used.  A single-card SoG/PA combo, with 5 HP gained regardless of mark, would make Jade Staff at least as splashable as Vamp Dagger.  Seems a fair trade-off: a 3-card combo lost (JS/Momentum/Adrenaline); a single utility healing card gained.

I think you mean AW, not momentum.
I personally disagree with you, I believe one of DS/JS's great uses is adrenaline. Also, the healing may not rely on the mark, but the cost is -specific.
However, I have put your idea in the poll.

EDIT: Darn, it reset it. Very sorry to all who voted.

[memimemi]

@memimemi

Immaterial would remove a valuable synergy (Immaterial Regeneration already exists. No reason to collapse 2 synergies into 1).

Rather I would suggest 3|4 attack with the regenerate increasing from 5 to 8.

Forgive me, but I can't for the life of me think of a single card that is both Immaterial and Regenerating.  Probably just overlooking something obvious.

If it's a card I've missed, please ignore the following...

Imho, a standalone Immaterial Jade Staff would be far more valuable than the current Adrenaline/Momentum synergy.  As evidence, I ask you to look at winning decks in PVP and Arena.  How many are built around Adrenastaves, vs the number built around Flying Glories?  Unless I'm a victim of heavy confirmation bias, I would suggest that Immateriality mixed with 5 HP healing/turn +2 damage, in one card, is even better than 20 (removable) healing +12 damage, over 4 cards, is (JS/AW/Adren/Momentum).  Or even when compared to 20 HP (removable) healing +8 damage, over 3 cards (JS/AW/Adren).

Perhaps the usage statistics would show that the community as a whole feels about the same?  I don't know.

I know that I would gladly give up Adrenastaves for up to 6 extra PA'd, damage dealing, SoGs.  Especially when they only cost 2  .  Heck, 6 Immaterial Jade Staffs +5 AW is almost a stall deck, in and of itself.

But I will gladly bow to the wisdom of those more experienced than I in this matter.

[willng3]

I'm somewhat on the fence as to what to do with Jade Staff, Druidic Staff seems perfectly fine to me.  It bothers me that Jade Staff is pushed aside even in fully upgraded decks because Druidic functions better with Epinephrine.  If you're not using Jade Staff for the Animate Weapon + Epinephrine strategy then what are you using it for? 

Generally you're using it for additional healing in whatever deck you're using.  Life-based stalls use this card to act as a pseudo-SoG where the healing is nearly infinitely more useful than the damage dealt (assuming non-Animated).  Upped Crusaders benefit tremendously from Jades as they reach 7 attack and grant themselves an 8 damage bonus from Epinephrine, plus 15HP of healing. 

You can use it for damage in rushes, but you can just as easily use a Long Sword nearly every time, right?

So the biggest buff option that I hear people suggesting is to reduce the Jade Staff's attack to 3 to give it greater synergy with Epinephrine.  If we're viewing this as Epinephrine + Animate Weapon being the only possibility of using this card that exists, then this is acceptable and preferred in most cases.  However, there are certainly cases where you'll want to use Jade Staff and either not want to use Animate Weapon + Epinephrine or in restricted PvP you may not have the ability to use Animate at all.  Viewing this from a pure Mono perspective makes the 1 attack decrease an unwarranted setback.  Viewing the upgrading situation based purely on the weapons and none of the other combinations makes the 1500 spent seem really worthless.  Dropping the attack also loses the upped Crusader synergy while adding an Animated Jade + Blessing + Unupped Crusader + Epinephrine synergy, which is obviously not at all practical.  So my reaction to this buff is that it's unacceptable without some other form of buff being granted.  Extra HP added to Regeneration or a cost reduction (although Jade's already pretty dirt cheap as is) seem to be the ones that make the most sense for me.

Adding HP to regeneration without a decrease in attack would also work assuming the amounted of HP restored became 7 or more, otherwise there's still not a significant reason to use it over Druidic Staff.

I completely disagree with the suggestion to make it Immaterial, either upped or unupped.  Adrenaline synergy is freaking huge with this card.  And you're not just getting rid of Adrenaline synergy, you're also removing Unstoppable, Rage Elixir, Blessing, Chaos Power, Twin Universe, Crusader, Sky Blitz, etc. from being viable strategies at all.  This would leave Jade's primary use to Life-based stalls where it would largely make less of a difference because you're going to likely rely on several different permanents of more threat than your Staff (Feral Bond, Thorn Carapace, SoG, Sanctuary, etc.).  Having the Staffs work with Animate Weapon in these situations doesn't make any sense because there's really not much than an Immaterial standalone Staff can do en masse that a single Epi'd Staff can't do as well.  You're removing the weakness to Reverse Time, Lobo, and Bolts in late game, but continue to have issues with Infection and Fire Shield.  7HP really isn't something that's easy to take down.  Its usage in full blown rushes would likely be negligible because people don't tend to run rush decks with a Life mark just for Jade Staff splash, they use it because they want Life's abilities in the form of Frogs, Adrenaline, Mitosis, etc.  Thus if you're using Life as a core for your Life strategy then you're likely going to suffer from the rather large weaknesses that Life's renowned for when attempting to rush, and that 5HP increase at the end of each turn isn't going to do much to save you against the biggest counters such as decks using Dim Shield.

So...I'm not really leaning towards any one option at the moment.  Part of the problem here I believe is that Life's current card pool is pulling it in several different directions at the same time which has weakened its core and in turn made it difficult to discern how cards such as Jade Staff should be buffed.  It could be buffed to be a beatstick for greater rushing ability or it could be buffed to enhance a stall's survival potential.  I would personally prefer to see Life take the latter of the routes, therefore I believe I would like to see Jade's Regeneration HP gain increase a bit; whether or not that needs to be accompanied by an attack decrease I'm unsure of at the moment.

Oh, and someone should really add an option to change your vote in the polls since each new option added appears to completely screw up the current voting.

[memimemi]

I think you mean AW, not momentum.

No, I meant Momentum.  For Jade Staff to hit the magical 3 ATK mark for Adrenaline, Momentum is usually used.

I personally disagree with you, I believe one of DS/JS's great uses is adrenaline. Also, the healing may not rely on the mark, but the cost is -specific.
However, I have put your idea in the poll.

The cost is  specific, true.  But, at 2 , it's in a single Supernova's range - so I don't see how that makes a very big difference.  I suggest that 5 HP guaranteed healing for 2 quanta of any specific element >> 3 HP for 5 .  Especially when we factor in the 2 for PA, to acheive the lesser effect.

5 +  mark + 2 +2 cards = 5 HP gained/turn, untargetable (SoG + PA, unupped).
3 +  mark + 1 +2 cards = 5 HP gained/turn, untargetable (SoG + PA, upped).
2 + 1 card = 5 HP gained/turn +2 Damage, untargetable (Jade Staff, with my proposed buff of Immaterial, unupped).
2 + 1 card = 5 HP gained/turn +4 Damage, untargetable (Emerald Staff, Immaterial, upped).
2 + 1 + 4 + 3 cards = 20 HP gained/turn +8 damage, removable (JS + FW + Adrenaline, unupped).
2 + 1 + 3 +3 cards = 20 HP gained/turn +8 damage, removable (ES + AW + Epinephrine, upped).

So, with SoG, it's about 0.55 HP gained per  quantum; 2.5 HP gained per card. (unupped)
Jade Staff + Flying Weapon + Adrenaline is about 0.7 HP gained per  quantum; 6.67 Hp per card. (unupped).
Immaterial Jade Staff is about 0.8 HP per  quantum; 5 HP per card (unupped).

Seems like a pretty fair trade-off, unless I'm missing something in my figuring.

EDIT: @ willng3: Immateriality also allows new synergy with SoW, which is becoming a very popular way to avoid shields.  Also, how would Immaterial limit JS to  based stalls?  At only 2 , it would provide an untouchable source of healing to pretty much any rainbow; one that adds a little bit of damage at the same time.

[OldTrees]

@memimemi

Immaterial would remove a valuable synergy (Immaterial Regeneration already exists. No reason to collapse 2 synergies into 1).

Rather I would suggest 3|4 attack with the regenerate increasing from 5 to 8.

Forgive me, but I can't for the life of me think of a single card that is both Immaterial and Regenerating.  Probably just overlooking something obvious.

Not a single card.
Currently the staff can be buffed by Adrenaline or by Protect Artifact. Thus it can be adrenaline'd or immaterial. If it starts immaterial then it can remain immaterial but cannot become adrenaline'd.
Material -> A or I
Immaterial -> I
A set (2) of possibilities expands the metagame more than a subset (1) of those possibilities would.

[willng3]

EDIT: @ willng3: Immateriality also allows new synergy with SoW, which is becoming a very popular way to avoid shields.  Also, how would Immaterial limit JS to  based stalls?  At only 2 , it would provide an untouchable source of healing to pretty much any rainbow; one that adds a little bit of damage at the same time.

SoW also carries a few nasty drawbacks that I don't need to mention.  If you're looking for shield penetration then there's still Unstoppables + Adrenaline.  Why would I want to run Staves with SoW when Morning Glories can do it better in a Light deck?  You'll get the regeneration from the Staves, but Light can use Sancs to do the same while gaining other forms of protection in addition to dropping a single Miracle to set the situation back to ground zero.  Glories are also quite capable of dishing out damage without the SoW boost where the Staves will be lacking; this is a common scenario in a deck relying on a 3 card combo to pull off.  So Glories do the dirty work while Miracle and Sancs allow them to continue beating the opponent into submission.  Taking this further, Glories can receive the aid of Shard of Sacrifice since it's not absolutely necessary for Sanctuary to be present.  What type of support will the Staves receive?  Heals are pretty much a given, Carapace sounds like a reasonable addition as well.  Other than this you're not going to find much support which is a problem because the Staves, unlike Glories, are not fantastic damage dealers even with the SoW bonus.  Heals will not stand up to the incredible strength of Miracle, and Shard of Sacrifice is nearly off-limits because the Staves will inflict damage while it is active.  If you're going to add Life creatures to this then you're sort of going against the entire purpose of why you'd want a deck like this to begin with, which is to render creature control useless.  I'm really not sure if you would ever want to take this type of strategy into a duo scenario because of the amount of cards needed to pull it off to begin with.  Aside from this, the only truly competitive use of SoW that I'm aware of is for use in Mono Aether which I suspect performs notably better than Glories (though I'm not in either League to confirm this).  I've seen it used with Anubis but it just doesn't preform as smoothly as the others.  So I'd put the potential of SoW + Jade Staff below both SoW Glories and Mono Aether, possibly higher than SoW Anubis depending on the build; that doesn't strike me as a good reason in and of itself to remove the current Adrenaline synergy.

If I'm running a Rainbow based stall then healing via Jade Staff is likely the furthest thing from my mind; of course the strategy is going to vary considerably.  Speedbows are going to want Discord, Vamp Dagger, Gavel, Longbow, etc. for damage output.  Timebows are going to want Eternity and Pulvy (possibly Eagle's Eye as well) to prevent deck out and eliminate threats that interfere with the deck's win conditions whether they be deck out or damage output.  The issue with using this in a Rainbow based stall is that the deck has several other types of weapons that would likely serve it better.  I would still prefer to take the risk of having a Sanctuary or SoG get Deflag'd over relying on Immaterial weapons to heal me each turn because 1)  I could be using Pulverizer, Eagle's Eye or even Trident to cause considerable damage to my opponent's strategy at that moment as I see fit 2)  Multiple Staves would mean you also need to rely on drawing Animate Weapon or the Staves from your deck and could also cause a very clogged hand if you're unable to play something due to lack of a part of the combo.  With Timebows using a lot of Hourglasses and Sundials this is unacceptable.  Entropy Mark stalling Rainbows would run into a similar problem due to a reliance on Supernova to start anything; in this case SoG is superior even with less healing because you are able to play the Shards off of a single Quantum Tower which also frees up your hand space.  And then we still run into the issues of wanting a more useful weapon such as Pulverizer in its place.  If you're running a Life based stall then there just aren't many options for you to use to counter the opponent's cards and win (lack of control), so you're going to have to out-heal the opponent in several cases and either eventually win through slow, but steady damage output or deck-out.  Additionally, I know that if I'm facing a Life-based stall that there are probably bigger threats I should be concerned with than a single weapon healing my opponent for 5HP each turn.  The only exception to this would be if I suspect my opponent has worked Adrena-Staves into their stall, in which case I would no longer need to worry because the Staff can no longer be targeted by Adrenaline.  If I'm using a Firestall with Deflags then I might use them on the Staves first without the Immaterial status, but it honestly won't make much of a difference either way.  I also have yet to see a single well-built Life Mark Rainbow stall emerge despite the obvious SoG bonus.  This is not because of the fact that SoG is destroyed more easily than something Immaterial, but because you lose the advantage of fast Supernova usage or the ability to readily supply your Hourglasses with more drawing power.  So for Speedbows it's not fast enough, stallbows it's not useful enough...you'd probably face the same or similar issues with a combination of the two.

[eaglgenes101]

As I'm seeing it, the archetypal life deck is supposed to be a deck that sends lots of creatures out and frustrates the opponent with lots of healing while the swarm chips off damage.

Anyway, I suggest the staves having a detachable head so you can keep healing even if you replace the weapon.