Elemental Staff Weirdness

[Crispleaf]

I'm wondering if anyone knows a reliable source of information regarding the elemental staves you can use at level 51.

I say "reliable" because the staves have hidden powers of somekind, and it's all too easy for people to make stuff up when it comes to hidden powers

I'll explain the reason for my curiosity:

I've had a dark staff for sometime now, primarily for healing mp faster between battles with my white mage. I haven't bothered with a light staff because I'd planned on getting an Asklepios wand (however that's spelt).

But recently, I've leveled red mage to the point where I can use these staves for spell casting. An ice staff (with +10 elemental magic skill) seemed like a must-have, and they were really cheap compared to all the others. I got the second cheapest staff, a thunder staff, to experiment as well.

My ordinary fighting weapon is a crimson blade which increases intellect by 5.

Now, the notorious hidden ability of the staves is that they can enhance magic of the same element. So I wanted to see if I could do better damage while equipping my crimson blade and +5 intellect, or if the staff was better.

I started a fight with a Tabar Beak outside Jeuno to see what would happen.

When casting thunder, I did the best damage with the Thunder staff, followed by the Ice staff (presumably because of the elemental magic skill bonus), and then the crimson blade. It seems the intellect the blade granted was no match for the power of the staves.

But this was the weird thing. I tried the same thing with Blizzard. Since the thunder staff's abilities are to raise dexterity by 4 and increase critical attacks by 15%, and I wasn't using a thunder-based spell, I would have expected that I'd get the most damage by using the ice staff, followed by the crimson blade (with +5 intellect), and then the thunder staff.

Instead, while the ice staff did by far the most damage (no surprise there), it was the thunder staff that did the second best damage, not the crimson blade.

I found this very weird because there's no indication of how the thunder staff enhanced my magic better than the 5 intellect granted by the blade.

That's why I'm wondering if there are any good sources that might be able to explain what happened.

[Fayin]

The bonuses you get from high INT don't compare to the direct bonuses confered by the staves.

To put it a way that's easy to understand, 5 STR is good, but 5 Attack is better.

INT lowers the chance you'll be resisted and pushes the max damage up by a small amount. The elemental staves increase their elements damage by a moderate amount, and reduce the damage of the element it defeats (IE: ice staff weakens wind spells).

I don't know what the exact bonuses and penalties are unfortunatly. I do know that the staves have a direct inpact on the effectiveness of the spells of their element and the element they defeat as well as increasing or decreasing the avatar perpetuation cost depending on the element of the summon. So if you had an ice staff equiped, Shiva would cost less to maintain, and Blizzard would be more effective while Garuda would cost MORE to maintain, and Aero would be WEAKENED.