Note: I am writing this out of personal experience.
Patch: 8th April 2015 (Patch version 1.619, I guess)
What is the Nova Staff?
The Nova Staff, or infamously known as "Noob Staff", is an energy-type weapon with a unique soul mechanic that allows stacking bonuses by collecting souls of fallen enemies. It has five firemodes (Slow Bolt, Rapid Fire, Lightning, Thunder Strike, Chain Lightning) and is equipped with a melee thrust. It feeds its energy through an energy-crystal. The RuneStorm developers probably had a concept of the fight between good and evil in their mind, so the Nova Staff and Dark Star came to life. Dark Star is a devil-themed stave with offensive strength, while Nova Staff is angelic-themed and has its strengths in defensive stats.
Firemodes
(hint: consult the "bwstats" command ingame for more numbers)
Slow Bolts: fires a projectile that a direct hit turns an enemy briefly immobile. Causes weapon to sway.
Rapid Fire: fires projectiles that deal a fixated amount of damage.
Lighting: Hooks onto an enemy within range, damaging, blinding and immobilizing them. Has backlash on prolonged fire when used on an enemy. Able to heal teammates which doesn't deal backlash damage. Drains energy very quickly.
Thunder Strike: fires hitscan lightning that deals at least 100 base damage on hit. Requires soul charge to prevent backlash damage. Causes weapon to sway.
Chain Lightning: Fires a constant stream of lightning and jumps over to nearby enemies, damaging multiple victims at once. 6 Damage per hit. Requires soul charge to prevent backlash damage. Drains a full soul bar in around 4 to 5 seconds.
Weapon Special
When collecting enough souls (five without depleting them), the user can activate Nova Staff's angel mode. It grants its wielder flight and no penalties for hipfire.
What are the pros?
It draws its strength mainly from the vampirism feature, which seems to be the core element of this weapon because all of its firemodes (+melee) can leech health. Your current soul charge determines the vampirism rate (the more souls, the higher the vampirism rate). You can leech beyond starting health, going even further that it starts adding armor when the max health cap is reached. An advantage of the Nova Staff is its special function, activated by a push of a button (only if you collected enough souls) which grants the user flight. It's very useful to escape from tight situations, cover great heights or surprise the enemy from above. Another advantage is it's inability to become unavailable, thanks to its melee that requires no energy to operate.
What are the cons?
The weapon requires precision, timing and patience. Nova Staff allows no room for mistakes, has weak hipfire capabilities and punishes you for firing from hip with swaying and extreme spread, you must be sure to aim and hit your shots if you want to benefit from its bonuses. The splash diameter of slow bolt is very small, you're better off with direct hits. One miss of slow bolt renders you totally vulnerable for a short time, missing rapid fire shots dimishes your chances to survive in 1v1 fights and one miss with melee may result in a quick death. You need to predict your shots and lead your enemies. You can't just switch firemodes and hope to kill someone, there is a delay when switching through modes right after firing. I often ended up as being a freekill because I switched firemodes in the middle of a fight.
When does Nova Staff shine?
The Nova Staff's strengths lie in duelling and surprise attacks. It operates best at short to mid-ranged fights.
Where does it fall short?
Nova Staff has no crowd-controlling abilities and struggles in fights against multiple enemies or high-DPS weapons. Not recommended to use for long distances.
Graph: Nova Staff's Tier
Let me explain. The graph depicts here me using the Nova Staff over the time and which tier I would rate it at a given point of time, drawn by a white line. I did this because I fall into the category of a player with mediocre skill whose score is constantly fluctuating for the better or the worse.
![Image](http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff304/RT-13/nost_graph_zpsvmhtnywj.png)
X-axis is the time played with a weapon. In general, the longer you use a weapon, the better you will become with it. But this one includes personal factors: developed strategies, dealt damage, accuracy, adapted skill and knowledge about the weapon.
Y-axis shows the score when using the weapon, which increases the more skilled a player becomes with a weapon. It is influenced by kills and deaths, negative nets lowers the score while positive increases them.
The colors of the graph's background stand for the weapon tier.
Red area (overpowered): weapon outclasses most weapons and counterplay becomes difficult to (almost) nonexistant.
Rose area: (strong): weapon is effective but has specific weaknesses that allow limited counterplay.
Green area (balanced): weapon rewards effort and has distinctive weaknesses that allow counterplay.
Dodger blue area (challenging): weapon requires effort but is not impossible to use and its weaknesses are very distinctive.
Blue area (underpowered): weapon requires much effort to use, weaknesses outweigh its strengths and are exploitable by the majority of weapons.
Red line: Optimum balance.
White line: is a tier marker which shows the current state.
In Conclusion
Nova Staff has a learning curve and takes time to get used to its negatives and precision-demanding nature, but rewarding once you master them. It's an excellent duelling weapon and a situational pick, showing most of its strengths in 1v1s, but falls short against multiple enemies or strong weapons.
General Tips
> When using the Nova Staff, never bite off more than you can chew. Fighting single enemies is fine, but two or more is not. Pick your fights and always have an escape route ready when things should go wrong.
> Gain the upperhand before you engage into fights. Nova Staff simply offers no offensive bonuses compared to Dark Star. Surprise your enemy with a slow bolt or a successful melee strike first, then you can try to fight them head-on.
> Always reload whenever possible. Nova Staff has a very limited charge on the energy-crystal, you might have to manage your ammo. Train your accuracy and learn to predict shots if necessary to waste fewer charge and increase your chances of success.
> If an enemy starts escaping, don't run after them unless you are dead-sure they will die on your next attack. Enemies will search their nearest teammate to heal themselves and on average it takes five seconds to find one. Their movement pattern will also become erratic to make them hitting more difficult, so either make your shots count or let them just escape for now. Chasing might lead you into more enemies.
> After killing an enemy, determine your current situation and decide when to pick up the souls of fallen enemies. If you are on low health or when enemies are around, let it be there for the time being and pick it up later. If you die, you will lose all souls you've collected which is as good as a waste of effort.
> Choose when to fly or use the special firemodes, because all of the special features drain soul power. Flight allows you to cover long distances, but you can become a target practice for snipers. Special firemodes increase your offensive capabilities at the cost of soul power, use them to cripple enemies who are prepared to fight you.
> When fighting an enemy, be sure to push on if you can. Unlike Dark Star, it doesn't give its enemies a sense of danger when hit by slow bolts that adds burn or something else. Instead, they will just shoot back in most cases. You should keep pushing on to make them realize they are being damaged right now.
Personal Opinion
I picked up the Nova Staff because it was like a relic of bygone times. In the well-established meta of assault rifle dominance, it just sits there in the list, unused and even the Dark Star has a higher number of users. So why not shove the middle-finger up the current meta's ugly ass and use something else? It has a stylish appearance, is unique and not a generic rough-damage bullet-hose with a bottomless magazine. When used for the first time, you will surely get overrun. But if you stick to it and learn to compensate its negatives and learn to avoid its punishments, you grow more attached to this weapon and think it's rather good and why it doesn't have any users. I have been using the Nova Staff for roughly a month or even longer in its current state. I would say with enough effort and practice it is balanced after all, even if it's in a supposedly nerfed state. It feels like holding a rare, powerful gem that demands a worthy wielder.
Closing words
With this review, I wanted to show you guys my view on a weapon, how I feel like using it, finding out its strengths and weaknesses and such. I want to encourage players trying different weapons other than sticking to the meta of strongest-spam-wins, or at least spark an interest of challenging themselves by using weapons they don't know of. I believe this is a post about gameplay, since I am pointing out its flaws and strong spots. I hope I could give you an insight about the Nova Staff, thanks for reading (if you did).