Good staves are rare and generally are under the curve in terms of power. They don't skill up their respective school of magic, spamming a staff of fireball will eventually leave your actual destruction skill lacking, but they gain more charges based on their respective school of magic. Use the staff and both you and the staff cease to increase in power. Don't use the staff and both you and the staff increase in power, anyone else see the flaw there?

If you have magicka available to cast fireball and have a staff of fireball there is no advantage to using the staff over casting the spell. Both have a "casting time", both do the same amount of damage.

Staves can become a fallback if you run out of magicka but restore magicka potions are readily available.

What are your thoughts on staves?

The advantage is you do not use your pool of magic/you can cast a stave when you run out of magic.

They are back-up. A dual wielding Fire staff can give me reliable output damage and I usually make sure my Destruction is high enough so I can profit of it. I just wished I could use them as walking sticks or at least, see them sheathed properly.

Give two staffs of fireballs to your follower and watch the fireworks. The first time the explosions started, i couldn't stop laughing.

Demiser_of_D, I've noticed that NPCs seem capable of ignoring the "casting time" of staves and can actually spam them. The player cannot do the same though.

It would be mainly for those who don't use a certain school of magic. Plus why would you want to focus in Alteration (or whatever school) just if you were going to use a certain spell.

I would still love to be able to buy or own an unenchanted staff.

But yes, I do agree. Staves should level up the skill they are related to, perhaps not as much as casting the spell yourself, but certainly a little bit.

The Staff of Magnus, for being immensely powerful, is actually pitifully weak.

Am I doing something wrong, or can I not swing them to hit someone in close quarters?

Also, I bought a staff of chain lightning and I do as much damage to my companion as to my enemies!

Aargh!

R

Paralyze staff is my favorite to use but that's more entertainment value, probably have summon in the other hand or something.

The problem is that magic itself does not scale with skill. A mage with 20 desctruction does the same basic damage with say flames spell as a 100 skill desctruction mage does. This is completely stupid as weaponry does increase with skill, so it leaves mages at a severe disadvantage in damage output. Its only with perks that the damage increases for mages, the skill level only determins what spells you can learn, thats it. And the perks for damage increase are crap to, with only 50% increase where as weaponry gets 100% increase with perks. Its a bloody stupid system in my book.

Thats also why staves are so crap to use for the player.

They're better then they were.

Worth remembering.

Weapons get far more than 100%. Yeah, magic is underpowered.

I think they ought to in general augment whatever spell(s) you have equipped. So the staff on it's own could act as a torch (magelight) and blunt weapon - toggleable, and equipping a spell while holding the staff will modify the effect of the spell based on the properties of the staff.

I'd like to see some staves that just amplify your spell damage and/or reduce spell cost. Some of them could require two hands to use, with secondary attack being a melee block, and primary attack doing roughly the same thing that dual casting would (though thinking about it, the only two handed staff casting animation I've seen was in Dragon Age 2, those would take some serious work.) I still think the current staffs have their place, especially at lower levels when magicka management is more of an issue and your spell repertoire is limited.

I do miss staffs in Morrowind a bit. Lovely clobbering weapons.

I mean stuff like http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Felen%27s_Ebony_Staff_%28item%29#Felen.27s_Ebony_Staff had some neat effects. Or the Wizard Staff that had a long duration Levitation spell in it.

And you could make them yourself, and have them either cast on strike, or on target, or on self, constant effect, anything.

I remember an early release mentioned that they would increase the Enchanting skill, which actually makes sense, but I suppose that wouldn't have worked too well in the grand scheme of things.

Problem with that is, the staves are almost non-existant at lower levels when you need them. By the time they show up you already have plenty of mana and spells at your disposal so they end up as inventory fillers or novelty usage. And the higher level staves are so rare its pointless to bother with trying to get them unless they show up right under your nose.

Magic was an afterthought in Skyrim, and the playtesters didnt bother to verify a pure mage was viable on higher difficulties. It needs a reworking and at least a scaling to skill level.

I like how the characters magically extract staves from their posterior orifices. It reminds me of this movie I saw on RedTube once.

just another thing to patch. and patch. and patch.

@steampunk: I really expected that you would be able to perform some melee with staves. you can perform a light melee with a bow...but its fatigues characters horribly and I don't even believe it does much damage.

Staffs should be replaced with wands, which level skill at a slower rate than spells and Fighting Staves should come back. Imo.

Exactly.

Maybe they could be equipped both one handed and two handed, like current spells.

Provide bonuses to whatever spell is equipped in the hands (damage/duration/regen/cost/aoe, etc...). If held two handed, then they should be better than dual casting a single spell from the hands. If one handed, the staff should be better than single casting the spell from that hand.

With no spell equipped you should be able to swing them as a blunt weapon at the very least (and block!)

There needs to be the incentive to use them over bare hands, so acting as a conduit to amplify the power would make using them more attractive.