Staff needs Implicit Spell Damage

As a staff-wielding caster you are missing out on at least 100% additional spell damage from a second wand or two scepters.

Why dilute the affix pool of Staves with Spell Damage if it is not a competitive option for a spell user?

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Lo4f wrote:

As a staff-wielding caster you are missing out on at least 100% additional spell damage from a second wand or two scepters.

Why dilute the affix pool of Staves with Spell Damage if it is not a competitive option for a spell user?

It is a stat for hybrid builds.

Jawsofhana is correct. It's a weapon designed for the magic and strong melee class. Since melee skill damage is based on weapon damage, the weapon focuses on the melee aspect. Spells have their own base damage, so you get a mix of the two. Being able to get spell damage on staves is just a bonus to the spell side of the hybrid. You can also get physical/elemental damages.

If you want a templar that focuses on spells and forgoes melee, you can just use wands. If you want just melee, you can use an axe or mace. If you want both, you have staves.

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WhiteBoy88 wrote:

Jawsofhana is correct. It's a weapon designed for the magic and strong melee class. Since melee skill damage is based on weapon damage, the weapon focuses on the melee aspect. Spells have their own base damage, so you get a mix of the two. Being able to get spell damage on staves is just a bonus to the spell side of the hybrid. You can also get physical/elemental damages.

If you want a templar that focuses on spells and forgoes melee, you can just use wands. If you want just melee, you can use an axe or mace. If you want both, you have staves.

"Hybrid" spell and melee character? Haha good joke.

Appreciate your responses.

I agree with Strill that a hybrid melee-caster is not a competitive option, but accept that certain players may enjoy this style of play anyway.

After further consideration, it became apparent that even with extra implicit spell damage staves would still be missing the extra 6 mods from offhand and thus be an inferior option for the player concerned with maximizing their potential.

Keep on sweepin on hybrid exiles. Don't forget those half-damage novas.

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Lo4f wrote:

I agree with Strill that a hybrid melee-caster is not a competitive option, but accept that certain players may enjoy this style of play anyway.

Oh certainly. I recall a dev comment somewhere that Templars were originally intended to be hybrid melee/casters.

As it is now though, I'm not sure how that could happen without some kind of keystone specifically for it, because everything about spells and physical attacks, from the stats that support them to the skills that deal the damage to the attribute bonuses necessary to equip the gems is all mutually exclusive. Mutually exclusive bonuses encourage specialization, not hybridization.

Also,in addition to the other problems you mentioned, staves have much MUCH less block than shields.

I think part of the disparity with the choices available for the templar include the fact that there isn't currently any synergy between strength and int, especially as far as the active skills are concerned.

Once some of the Str/Int Hybrid gems show up, it may be a different story

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Mark_GGG wrote:

Not everything - templars can use elemental damage bonuses on both spells and attacks, since they are best placed to use elemental damage with weapons and spells usually deal elemental damage anyway, but you're right that in general there aren't enough bonuses affecting both for a character to use both spells and melee and still be as effective as one focusing on one or the other - the templar is still the best placed to try that route, should someone want to.

It's not just the bonuses. It's the fact that you can only use one attack at a time and that you need to split your stats between two attributes and that Armour and Energy shield are specialized for conflicting strategies.

Having the Elemental damage bonuses be the common stat which bridges the gap between melee and spell attacks also seems problematic to me since those stats are in low demand for me as a level 71 witch. The ubiquity of Added Chaos damage at the moment greatly weakens Fire/Cold/Lightning damage bonuses, and I can only see three passives on the entire tree labeled "Elemental Damage", all located near the Templar start point.

I think one of the things that contributes to that as well is the fact that Physical Damage and Spell Damage mods on weapons are present in much higher quantities than other offensive mods on weapons, and are thus an absolute necessity which restricts hybrids. I presume the high amounts of these damage mods are to dilute the relative effect of damage passives in the tree, which are also present in much higher quantities than other offensive passives. The problem is then that while a good weapon for a caster requires a single top-tier spell damage mod with an assortment of other medium-tier spell mods, a hybrid character requires a top-tier spell damage mod, AND top-tier physical damage mod on the same item.

This emphasis on huge non-hybrid-friendly increased damage mods on weapons both dilutes the relative effectiveness of the increased elemental damage passives that a hybrid is supposed to rely upon, and makes it exponentially more difficult to find a good hybrid weapon than it would be to find a good specialist weapon.

One could make staff work as 2 items, and by that I mean you have stick and staff head, each having its own mods, with 6 sockets in stick and none in head, will be similar to bow+quiver. This can work for most 2h weapons too