Regarding staffs

[Mike]

So staffs are only good for 2 handed melee and for firing those purple energy balls? What can they do in terms of elemental spells??

[Highrule -1]

Nothing.

Staves are pretty poor in this game. Mages prefer wand/1h+shield over staves, and making a staff melee character means you need to make a STR/INT hybrid which isn't particularly good or efficient.

[EolSunder]

Staffs are very good in the game, mages can go different ways. Most are either a staff user, or a dual wand user.

Dual wand users usually build up wands and dual weapons, so they are less powerful in magic but more powerful in basic dual wand attacks which blast foes with 2x elemental bolts instead of the 1 staff bolt.

Staff users usually stick to the pure magic route and have staffs as backup. They can take 1 ability into man-at-arms which will give them some nice basic abilties that man-at-arms has, such as Ram, offensive power stance, which will do good with using a staff since its a melee weapon. You won't use it much for melee but it still will do great in certain situations (frozen, knockdown, etc opponents) that you can hit and do damage if close. But mostly, your just a mage chucking spells.

Staffs like wands also have their elemental property so you'll have 1 of each element staff to switch out depending on which foes you are fighting. Fire staffs for undead, water staffs for firery undead, stuff like that. Very versitile.

Basically the difference between using wands and staffs is the build you want. Pure mage? staff, more warrior dual welding wands to double blast? wands.

you can go wand/shield but any good mage isn't getting close enough to need that shield defensive bonus, but its personal choice i guess. Just decide based on your build. All 3 types of builds for mages work fine depending on how you use them.

Dual wand warrior build, wand/shield more defense build, or staff/man-at arms build. I've played all 3, all work perfectly fine. My favorite is staff since i always play pure mages, i already have a warrior and archer to do the fighting stuff, i use my 2 mages for... mage stuff.

[Highrule -1]

As I like to say, most things can work in this game (including staves) so I don't usually comment on peoples' choice of builds, but there's some objectively incorrect points in the post above;

Originally posted by EolSunder:

Dual wand users usually build up wands and dual weapons, so they are less powerful in magic but more powerful in basic dual wand attacks which blast foes with 2x elemental bolts instead of the 1 staff bolt.

Originally posted by EolSunder:

Basically the difference between using wands and staffs is the build you want. Pure mage? staff, more warrior dual welding wands to double blast? wands.

Originally posted by EolSunder:

you can go wand/shield but any good mage isn't getting close enough to need that shield defensive bonus

Pure mages would never opt to use staff over dual wands, wand/shield, 1h/shield or dual wielding melee weapons, and here's why:

***SPOILERS FOR OPTIMAL BUILD SETUPS, FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO FIGURE THINGS OUT BY THEMSELVES***

-Dual wands can be used to proc terrain effects. Strongest mage starter includes getting two levels of Dual Wielding early and using fire+air wands. The direct damage is secondary, this setup allows you to blow up poison/oil areas on ground and electrify water. Two points in Dual Wielding reduce the cost of an attack to 4 AP, whereas switching wands mid-fight would be 5 AP (change 2 AP + attack 3 AP). Even if you decide not to get Dual Wielding, two wands have more worth as stat sticks than anything a staff offers; you can get an early +2 INT from two +1 INT wands. This, in addition to crafted amulet+belt, Know-it-All and 5 points in INT at character creation enables a super early 15 INT mage, which means many of your spells now have 1 turn cd. And even if you don't do this, there's even a third extremely powerful stat stick setup: Leadership can spawn on very early wands. Two Leadership wands, crafted helmet, Righteous trait and two levels in Leadership gives you an early lvl 6 Leadership mage who, due to the minimal investment in achieving this state, is still fully capable of casting spells just like a normal mage.
-Wand/shield, Elemental Tortoise. Not only do you get immunity to all elemental damage, Elemental Tortoise can raise resists over 100%, meaning you regenerate from any elemental damage. Sitting in lava now means you fully regenerate at the start of each turn...
-1h/shield, as above, with exception that using a melee weapon gives you access to Melee Power Stance and Rage, both of which universally increase your damage, including spells.
-DW melee weapons, this is the BiS for endgame pure mages. Thanks to how broken Tormented Souls are, you can wield two endgame melee weapons with little to no investment into STR stat. Exact boost from this depends on loot RNG, but it generally isn't hard to get 5-6 SPD and 2 or more CON from two weapons. The SPD boost with negligible investment crushes endgame dual wands or staff in terms of efficiency. Using crafted daggers guarantees +6 SPD, but requires more DEX investment and has no additional benefits. Midgame (starting lvl 12 iirc) you can craft two +2 SPD daggers and with little DEX investment get a nice +4 SPD boost.

Staves are weak. That isn't to say they're useless, but when compared to their competition, there's simply nothing that staves excel at.


Edit: I'm not saying this is how you should play mages; having fun playing is always more important than playing as efficiently as possible. Never let someone ruin your singleplayer fun by telling you that you're doing it wrong. But, putting likes and like nots aside, this is my take on why staves are objectively weaker than their counterparts.

[Poob]

1. wands can't be boosted with crafting. You can boost staves with moonstone and elemental essence. You can add a fire to any staff and for triggering oil for example.
2. The staff 1 bolt ability does a lot of damage for how few action points it costs, and doesn't need any ability point investment. If you're good at casting spells you don't have the action points to do normal attacks anyways.

[BOT]

Like "Eoulsounder" said
Stuff build is more a build of using spells .. but in combination with krit.
But again. it falls off at around lvl 14-16 because the wands do almost the same dmg like the staff. and bye that time you have dual-wind lvled up that your atacks cost only 2 AP. meaning you will do more dmg with 2 wands then with a staff and a spell that krits.

other then that .. you can do more atacks bye that time and you can also cast spells if you need and the dmg of both wands count for sertains spells. you can also use 2 axes and cast magic spells .. the dmg of both axes/swords will count for sertain spells.

utherwise then that. staff is playable it will just feel a bit weak if you already played a couple times. it can make you strugle in some fights as a beginner, thats all.

[Poob]

when does dual wield attack cost only 2 ap? At lvl 5 dual wielding, it only saves 3 ap from original 6 ap of dual wands. Spending so many ability points into dual wielding has a big opportunity cost. You could've mastered another magic school instead of leveling dual wielding 5 times.

[BOT]

Originally posted by Poob:

when does dual wield attack cost only 2 ap? At lvl 5 dual wielding, it only saves 3 ap from original 6 ap of dual wands. Spending so many ability points into dual wielding has a big opportunity cost. You could've mastered another magic school instead of leveling dual wielding 5 times.

yes thats right.. but even when you master a magical school you still cannot use the lvl 4/5 spells till you lvl 9 / 12 / 15 there is only some spells you can use pre lvl 15.
meaning your other team member can use dual wield if you want.

dual wield reduces at lvl 4 or 5 the AP cost. you have to remember if you have 10 action points at the start of a fight. and an attack costs you only 3 action points.. meaning you are atacking 3 times and also times 2 weapons. it is way stonger then using 4 action points for a sell. because you used then 2 or 3 spells with your 10 action points in total.

if you want play a srcoundel or wizard with dual wiend it is strong. you are then focusing basiacly on dmg via atacking and not via spells. obviosly nothing holds you back from not using spells.