Staff of poison

[nicooo]

Is the extra damage on this thing the same as having the venom brand? To put it another way, would I be able to take on something like a hydra or stone giant with enough evocations+poison skills?

[Tiber]

No. The staff of poison is better in the sense that it sometimes poisons things with poison resistance, but worse in the sense that you need to invest in two skills to take advantage of it, and a staff has low base damage. Beyond the early game, I don't personally think poison damage is that significant, at least considering you have to be in melee range to use it (though I admit I haven't played a poison-based build). I'm not saying the staff of poison is bad (I've never really used it), I'm just saying that if you think you need the added poison damage to take on something in melee, you should probably keep your distance.

[ebarrett]

If you have enough poison skill to make the extra damage somewhat relevant, I think you're probably poisonclouding or poisonarrowing everything to much better effect anyway.

[XuaXua]

I still think scrolls of enchant Weapon should work on spell staves, which should be deployed with random +/+ instead of being +0/+0 all the time.

If nothing else, it would make encountering more than one of the same staff of x more interesting.

[Tiber]

I still think scrolls of enchant Weapon should work on spell staves, which should be deployed with random +/+ instead of being +0/+0 all the time.

If nothing else, it would make encountering more than one of the same staff of x more interesting.

I personally would like to see randart staves.

[JeffQyzt]

Consider: The Staff of Fire "Paradox" {frost, rN+, MR, +Inv}

With good evocation and elemental skill, the elemental staves are already powerful. This could lead to some quite over the top artifacts.

[Tiber]

Why would a staff of fire have a frost brand? The fire part is the brand. And you could always mess with the formula, like maybe they're limited to only 3 good effects (but no special limits on bad).

[nicooo]

Why would a staff of fire have a frost brand? The fire part is the brand. And you could always mess with the formula, like maybe they're limited to only 3 good effects (but no special limits on bad).

I guess that's why it's called Paradox.