Your Favorite Staff?

[Chopper]

It's very difficult to get accurate figures for complete 'killability' of any staff.

I have run probably around 100 rounds past round 65, so past max spawn speed.

The Ice staff has an effect of around 7 seconds, with say an 1/8 second delay between the shots changeover. It's this changeover that can kill you for no apparent reason.

I'll repeat - as a new shot starts, there is a slight moment when you are not protected by any Ice wind. You can go down in this time. It happens incredibly rarely, but it does happen.

Regarding killability. There are 20 zombies spawned, the Ice shot kills all of these, and then anywhere from 5 to 16 extra.

Those are the lowest and highest I've had, so 25 with 1 shot or up to 36. 31 seems average to me. I've spent a lot of time watching those numbers climb, but never actually in anything more than a casual observation.

These are educated estimations, but the 31 is pretty close IMO. This only works past max spawn, and the range is mainly due to the way they respawn.

Wind staff number should be in theory very similar, but you have to abort the wind staff much quicker which can cost you kills as part of a HKR (hoard, kill, repeat)

strategy. Wind staff is unsuitable for anything except partial camping, whereas the Ice staff is almost permanent camping until the effect ends and then rehoarding.

Edit - testing of these is very very difficult. MMX gives a good way of completing it.

However, to complete the testing you have to 'burn' a game.

Past round 70 or so, to really perform these tests you have to ensure full ammo for each round to test. The issue is that on a normal game, you won't have max ammo until a few shots in every other round. I'll have a think about whether I can do it, but not sure I can spend the time to firstly get to 70, then do a few rounds of testing and ultimately end the game.

[TheBSZombie]

I think the best way to do it would be to build the ultimate staff you want to use to test. Get a max ammo with it, and stash it away never to use it again till desired round. Then make sure you use up all the ammo that round without getting any max ammos.

This would have to be done 4 times. One for each staff. But it wouldn't be as simple as that. The best strategy for the ice staff is not the best method for the lightning staff. So that creates bias. Would you make the experiment have the same strategy for each staff so there would be no bias? But if you do that, you are taking out one of the best advantages of the ice staff. So that would be bias in itself. Plus like chopper said, no one wants to play 70 rounds then test this out. Especially multiple times. I said earlier that you would have to do it 4 times, but in reality, if you wanted to get accurate results, it would have to be done about 5 times per staff with multiple people to reduce variability in the data.

This isnt even all the things we would have to look into. So like MMX said, it will be hard to do something like this.

[/i guess me taking ap stats this year has already paid off so far ]

[MysteryMachineX]

You guys make good points.

ChopperNator, is not having a staff really "burning" the whole game of Origins? Can't you kill the old-fashioned way? Or can't you do something like shoot 'em up and have a robot stomp them?

Here's an idea, Chopper. What if you only test one staff at a time? You do Kagutsuchi, and you write the amount of kills on whichever round. Then you still have three staffs with ammo. When you get a Max Ammo, next, you'll have all four staffs of ammo again, and then you can do the next staff. As long as you record which round you did it on, we could statistically curve the data using the zombies per round formula.

This is just hypothetical, of course.

[Dahniska]

As other people have pointed out, Ice is the best staff for actually killing your zombies. It's always a 1-hit kill (as far as we know) on a single charge and the charge lasts quite a while (allowing for some additional kills). And it has a total of 99 shots (33 charges).

I did a test the first time I got to 60 and recorded it, killing hordes in the Crazy place with each staff. Me and another friend of mine have been to 60 twice in 2 player. He used the fire a lot and I would help merge our trains.

The wind staff always kills, and it kills faster than the Ice does. Problem is, while the tornado from a charge lasts a few seconds, it's harder to spawn trap zombies with it because of how slowly they get sucked it. So it's less effective.

Fire is strong (effective kills up till about round 60). It does have limited kill power though, and from watching it do the train killing over and over, it seems to do damage over time (as far as the fire pits from a charge go). The longer a zombie is in the fire pit, the more damage it takes until it dies. This becomes more and more obvious the further you go, and this is why in the 60's your zombies will walk slowly while being burned from the pit. Shooting the double charge (3 fire pits instead of 2) just allows for more damage since there's 3 fire pits, but still same damage with each of them.

Lightning is just bad. Slow killing, and on top of that, even with a double charge it does so little damage to zombies that the charged ball of electricity will wear off before it can kill a zombie in the late 50's.

How does this tie into your conversation? If you want someone to test Fire and Lightning, after a certain round you'll run out of ammo after taking out a few trains. It'll be hard to measure the effectiveness of these two.

[James Dean]

Mine is Ice and Wind; although I do like them all.

[BriggzyJ97]

Lightnings my favourite as its ammo, large rounds and power makes it best for me

Ice to me is unusable as it takes way too long to kill them. If I want an insta-kill weapon I want it to kill them Instantly

Same with Fire but its a little better

Winds quite good until it becomes 2+ hits

All of the charge shots are quite similar in my opinion, apart from fire which seems a little bit worse

[DuDe1490]

I dont see how you people say the wind is a one hit kill....upgraded or not by round 30 it only makes zombies shake around and grab their head...

Fire is so far my favorite i can upgrade it by round 11 or 12 and it kills the panzer 1 upgraded shot to the feet

Ice isnt that good....get cornered and shoot them and they STILL hit you all iced up and frosty...unlike 2-3 shots from the fire killing them all

Lighting...I LOVE THIS STAFF but...it is not one i prefer for higher rounds...more for just a "fun time" staff...watch zombies get shocked and hear original zombie moans from the wunderwaffe-DG2...

So in order for me

1.Fire-The Master Of Staves

2.Ice-The Powerful Pupil

3.Lightning-All Around Fun Time

4.Wind-THE DISGRACE

P.s. I HATE THE WIND STAFF,low ammo not powerful just NO

[MegaAfroMan]

Most people here are refering to the charged shot of the Upgraded staves.

If you aren't getting instakill wind shots with a charged ultimate wind staff, then you need to adjust your aim. It creates a tornado, shoot at the ground.

[DuDe1490]

Charged is perfectly fine but think, it takes the entire mag (or maybe half...havent used it in a while) and it doesnt hold enough ammo all together

[ThrowAmonkeyBomb]

Haha Jay. Thanks. I'm glad I'm someone's favorite. I always tried to keep things professional.

Which is the reason we didnt get along;)

:lol:

[Aymeric]

Thunder is vry funny but... at round 44 it's so bad :/

The best for me is Ice !

[Dahniska]

Kind of shocking how many people like Lightning when it's so bad.

Ice is by far the best as far as usability and (imo) has the coolest look when it kills them and the coolest look as far as design goes.

I'm surprised Fire isn't more popular. o.O