Evoker Staves for Melee?

[MainiacJoe]

Is this worth doing on any of them? I'm thinking Air, maybe Death, that's probably it. My hunch is that you want them for their enhancer effect instead of for their melee damage, but that there is a certain Evocations & Spell Power breakpoint where whacking with it becomes better than skipping a turn to switch to a better weapon. Plus the one-handedness comes into play if you've found a good shield and want to train that skill.

[Baldu3]

They all do a lot of damage with the relevant skills leveled up, so they're perfect to tab through the hordes of chaff that arent immune, which helps save mana for spells for actual threats.

[le_nerd]

Because they take so much experience they are more of a supplemental weapon, although in extended they are fine. You need fighting/defenses/staff skill/evo/elemental skill for them to do their thing, instead of fighting/defenses/melee weapon.

IIRC air staff got changed a while back to also have AC checked; and supposedly staff of death should do more damage than a pain weapon but I am sceptical of that.

[dowan]

They're not really very worth training for specifically, but if you've already got good evocations and the relevant magic skill, it's probably worth throwing a little XP into staves. But generally it's not a good idea to spend XP for a better way to kill non-threatening enemies.

[sanka]

A typical kiku pain weapon is better then the staff because it is faster (and it also has enchantment).
Melee weapon skill is still useful if you use a staff. It will be faster, which matters a lot.

In my experience a normal weapon is generally cheaper in xp and deals more damage, but if you have 14 spell skill/8 evo skill anyway (and has the staff) you could level up the staff to has a nice backend weapon without switching. Later you may improve to a lajatang if you are lucky enough to find one.

[Siegurt]

A typical kiku pain weapon is better then the staff because it is faster

While the rest of your post is more or less correct, this sentence makes no sense, staffs are no slower than other weapons (unless "typical" means quick blade? )

[MainiacJoe]

Well base speed on enhancer staves is 12, so 6 min delay, and any short blade can get at least 5 mindelay.

[duvessa]

It's also better than the staff because it does more damage

[MainiacJoe]

I'm concluding from this that melee with a staff is no reason in itself to train either the spell school or Evocations, but that if 1) you already have other good reasons to train these and 2) you don't already have a better weapon, then you may as well whack popcorn with it.

[dowan]

I think that's pretty much right.

[Doctor Shambango]

I won a three-runer with the elecky one a few months back, and it knocked most folks sparko.

rElec opponents are uncommon till you reach Zot.

Then not.

[and into]

Yes. Staff of fire, ice, or air can do very good damage. The skill investment to access that melee damage is a great deal if you got the magic/evocations and only need the 12 levels of staves to hit min-delay. If not, there are probably more efficient ways for your character to get good melee damage.

Earth might sometimes still be worth the staves training, but the damage is consistently worse than the others because it checks monster AC.

[Utis]

Correct me if I'm wrong ... but what type of character doesn't benefit significantly from 10 or 12 Evo regardless of evoker staves, by late game? For me the question whether to use the staff for melee or not would depend solely on whether I had good reason to train one elemental skill into its twenties or not.

Personally, I'd even melee with a staff of death rather than a pain weapon, even though the latter is moaroptimal. Just to avoid having to press ' all the time. Not really because I think the repeated loss of a half tempo would be worse than the slightly decreased damage. But because it annoys me.

[and into]

It is rare that you don't find any good evocable items in the course of the game, but a more common situation is that you don't find good evocables until middle- or late game, i.e., past the point when pretty much every character would want to invest some experience in melee capability. Even if you find evocables early you might simply have higher priorities than training evocations. It is a question of prioritization as you progress in the game, not what your dude looks like at XL 27.

(Of course, by the same reasoning, there's nothing really wrong with using a dagger of electrocution and training some short blades in Lair, then much later training staves and switch to using a staff of fire in melee. Even if your character isn't using daggers at all by XL 20, the experience is hardly "wasted," if it helped you survive to XL 20!)

[Utis]

First off, my qualification of a "good reason to train one elemental skill into its twenties" is kinda important. Depending on species and dungeon finds (spells on the one hand, weapons on the other hand) I wouldn't necessarily want to do that even for elementalist starts.

(Of course, by the same reasoning, there's nothing really wrong with using a dagger of electrocution and training some short blades in Lair, then much later training staves and switch to using a staff of fire in melee. Even if your character isn't using daggers at all by XL 20, the experience is hardly "wasted," if it helped you survive to XL 20!)

Exactly! A character who has, say, 22 in Fire isn't likely to have 20 in polearms in order to swing a glaive. If I do train an elemental skill into its twenties, because of spells, then by late game at the latest it's very likely that I already have the 10 or 12 evo necessary and all I need is the 12 in staves. Which at that point is a marginal skill investment. Even less, if my intermediate weapon was a polearm or maces&flails.

It's been a long time since I checked evoker staves in fsim. But if I remember correctly, their melee damage output with high elemental skill and decent evocations isn't that much behind half decent glaives etc. So for a elementalist caster a suitable evoker staff is very likely to be the best melee option. And at that point the opportunity cost is almost neglegible.

Of course, and here I agree with you, that's all assuming that I have other reasons to meet the requirements, independent of the evoker staff. If I'm in Lair and I have no reason to train evocations, I wouldn't do it.

[duvessa]

First off, my qualification of a "good reason to train one elemental skill into its twenties" is kinda important.

I don't think good reasons to do that actually exist

[TonberryJam]

Plenty of places you can train that staff up. Orc, Elf, Lair branches. Almost never need to train my primary skills in those places. Dungeon, Lair, Depth, Vault, Crypt take care of that.