Xcom files: How good is the staff of heart grip

[Woscowow]

I've been playing the Xcom files lately and loving it, finally have some soldiers with decent Psi skill and wanted to try out some new weapons.

The staff of heart grip seems amazing damage wise, but from what I can tell it only has 15% accuracy, which (to me) seems way too low to at all reliable. Is there some calculation for the accuracy of psi weapons that I'm not aware of, or something else I don't understand? Or is it just intended to be a 'hail mary' kind of weapon?

[Stone Lake]

Heartstaff is a rare/unique instance of psi-weapon. 15% refers only to the bonus, the base accuracy (of psi-weapons) depends on PST * PSK value of your soldier/attacker, as in
PSATK = 0.02 * PST * PST + RNG[0..55] + bonus (15% for heartstaff) - distance
Enter battlescape, select psi-action and hold alt to view approximate psi-attack (less by 30, because assumes 30 psi-def).

It also depends on psi-defence of your target, which is commonly (for most):
PSDEF = PST + 0.4 PSK + 0.33 Morale + 0.2 Bravery

If your PSATK > target's PSDEF, the attack works.

The takeaway is 1) staff is almost as likely to work as psi-amp 2) both should only really be used by guys with at least high (90/60+ PST/PSK) against guys with low PST/PSK (e.g. hybrid assaults, mibs). Meaning, you need first train (and max out) your troops in psi-lab to use it.

As for where it's useful. It ignores armor and can strike without LoS, so probably some heavy target / multi-level assaults. It's one of the best weapons for dreamscape that you can happen upon later. It should be useful underwater, but aquatoids are resistant (more accurately, have high PST) and I don't remember if it's effective or not - probably you need really strong psionics.

[psavola]

As said Staff of Heart Grip is an awasome psionic weapon in the hands of capable users (and the right setting to use it). The unfortunate thing is that it depends on RNG when and how many of these you will be able to get. If you get unlucky RNG, you might end up getting lots of comparatively inferior Dagon's Staffs.

This is to the point that I have many times been tempted to purposefully redo the HQ attack multiple times to churn out Dagon Sorcerers and loot their Heart staffs. But the extra work of going through the battlescape and manually retrieving them and then aborting (i.e. laziness) has so far prevented me from doing so.

[grayboney]

In mid-game before using psi amps, it is reaally deadly when it is in the correct hands. Wielder's pst and psk should be quite high to be effective or cast will do nothing.

This weapon is especially good when the mission has multi-floors. You can crush enemy's heart at different floor even without seeing it.

[betatester]

You can get one from the osiron crates which you can get from Land survey.
So a little bit of reloads before the opening of the crate or more money.
Yes always have an opening of Land survey in eve every bases most of the time and land survey transfer available every 48h