Do not limit yourselves to just staves. While they *often* have the best stats for a weapon you must realize that sometimes the results are not as good as a mace or dagger + good offhander. I see one handed weapons that I can use in my level range that out damage my current staff. Sometimes you may use different weapons in different circumstances (i.e. group/solo) A good example is the gear from SM, especially if you're Horde. If you do SM enough you'll probably come out with a Hand of Righteousness which is a 1 handed mace with +8 spi +14 healing spell/effects, a prophetic cane which is offhand +12 int +5 sta (quest reward), and an Illusionary Rod which adds 15 int 10 spi and 7 sta if I remember correctly. For soloing I used to use the Rod for it's higher DPS, higher stats as I rarely had to worry about healing effects that much. However, I still use HoR/Proph cane (or Mordresh's skull depending on situation) while grouping for that bonus to my heals. I don't need to worry about my DPS and since all my spells are heals the +14 to heals helps me more than the few stats I lose. Now that doesn't mean I don't go melee with my mace while everyone's on a mob, I typically do to add that extra bit of DPS instead of just standing around. But I'm not as concerned with my DPS in this situations as when soloing because now my DPS is just a little bit of bonus damage added to the group's. I'll admit I let my dagger skill fall significantly behind, but hopefully I'll be getting that sweet mana regen / +11 int dagger from Mauradon soon and I'll have a reason to level it up.