Staves vs. Wands + Foci

Well, I've noticed in my forum travels that a lot of people say they see no reason to use staves vs. wands and foci. Now, earlier today, my friend and I noticed you get 15 energy from Galigords Stone Staff without any earth magic. This led us to discover you get full benefits from staves without actually having any skill in them. Thus, I can get away with using my earth staff as a smiter elementalist and have no penalty for no earth magic, and still have 87 energy without going and buying a more expensive smiter green staff or normal staff. This doesnt work with artifacts, since you get considerably less energy from not meeting the requirements. Im just wondering if there's a good reason to use wands instead of staves. You cant get +20 enchanting with a rod or artifact.

with rod and artifact you could get +40% recharge speed and casting speed.
that is very significant. you can also get the +15energy (-1 regen) mods on focii and wands.

personally i use staves but these are the reasons that i have used wands and focii in the past.

Depends on your requirements really doesnt it.. For my protection monk i cant use a staff because a have a well known collectors item that increases my energy by something ridiculous like a total of 30..

All i want now is a wand that gives +5 energy and ill be away.. plus i like some of the offhand items, specially the look of the storm artifact

I use staffs for 1 reason and 1 reason only, looks sooooo much better on female eles and monks

which well known collector's item is this? where to get this?
I don't know this 'well known' item....

EDIT: nvm, found it. +12 energy, +15 energy & energyregen -1.
after 45 secs, it wears out the +15 energy bonus.
and since PvE /PvP tends to be longer then 45 secs, I think I'll pass.
Or someone must be able to give a good explanation why this item is very good.
As secondary weapon maybe? switching over when in Energy need...?

If i were going to create an ultimate build weapon, i'd base it around a staff. However, based on how difficult it is to find perfect or near perfect staff upgrades I tend to stick to wand + foci, and currently use two purple ones (a flame wand with 10-20 dmg, 6% chance of faster casting, +3 energy <50% health and a healing ankh +12 energy, +4 armour against ele dmg).

Also, it is far easier to get a Rago's Flame Wand and a decent offhand item than the corrosponding gold items + upgrades a staff would require (seeing one drop for someone else is so annoying).

20% + 20% isn't 40%, it's 36%.

eh same difference, anyway, theres no way that i know of to get both mods on both items. any screenshots would be appreciated.

assumed or proven knowledge?
not to offend. it just sounds like a pain to test this.

Cant say i ever recall mine wearing out.. and as i have always got my eye on the energy bar im sure id notice some dropping off..

Its go for me as i can run in to a battle with channelling on and cast a shed load of protection skills fast and not have to wait for a regen to cast more.. thats why its valuable to myself, and many others... its build dependant tho really

pardon?
maybe they don't stack. i which case you get simply +20%
maybe one is applied before the other resulting in 44% increase.
maybe they are both applied to the base speed giving 40%.

not sure where the 36% is coming from. but am willing to learn...

i know for sure you can get both on a focus. never seen both on a wnd though. best i've seen is 20% casting speed on death (i think) so you can get +~40% casting speed and +20% recharge speed. still significant.

edit: i know i'm taking about casting speed and you are talking in telms of time yes? thought so.

Basic mathematics.

lol @ icedbear. basic math... right. anyway, its like this, you have 2 separate 20% chances, so 4% of the time they'll both go off and therefore youend up with 20+20-4=36. oh and no, icedbear wasnt talking in terms of time. didnt think so. and as for wearing out, he doesnt mean go away, just that +15 versus -1 regen mathmatically wears out after 45 seconds to a minute versus how much you would have regened over the same time period.

wat kind of maths is that?
im sure the update didnt make 20+20=36 did it?

EDIT: so ur saying them both going off @ the same time dosnt count as a bonus

um check my post again. .2*.2=.04 which is the chance both will go off and cancel one of them out. that leads to minus four which makes 20+20 MINUS 4 like i said in my last post. it counts, but one of them had no effect. its like 20+16 basically because the first 20 overlaps with 4 of the next 20

You have two separate 20% chances that the skill recharges faster. The total chance is calculated this way:
You have 20% chance that the first faster recharge happens. If it does, it doesn't matter if the second one also happens.
In the 80% when the first one doesn't trigger, you have 20% chance that the second one does. 20% of 80% = 16%.
20% (for the first) + 16% (for the second if the first doesn't happen) = 36% (total chance of faster recharge).

So if 2 of the recharge/cast speed mods go off @ the same time they get cancelled out? i thought ull have both fast cast rate and the spell would recharge faster as well ^^

no they dont get canceled out. ok. the first one has the full 20%, but for the second item, 4% of the time, the first ones going off anyway, thus the second item isnt helping. thats why there is -4% to the second item.

I could swear I've seen two different increased recharge rates back when I used to use a fire ele. This always lead me to believe that you had the approx. 40% chance (36% or whatever it comes out to be exactly) of getting a recharge increase, but also something around a 4% chance of getting an even faster recharge. It's rare, but I have seen Meteor Shower recharge insanely fast, faster than it usually would with just the normal recharge speed increase.

I can't prove it however. I haven't recorded it and carefully timed it or anything. This is just an observation I've had. It's been a long time since I've used fire on my ele, and I don't really notice the effect with any other element. I'd assume that to be due to the shorter recharge times everything else seems to have.

Hopefully I'm not just insane and someone a bit more meticulous can verify or debunk this.

No, i think they're speaking about the same mod triggered twice. with a 20% fast recharge wand and a 20% fast casting + 20% fast recharge foci you would get these chances of getting a bonus :

Chance of fast recharge : 36%
Chance of fast casting : 20%
Chance of both fast casting and fast recharge : 7,2%

If Jenosavel is right and effects can stack then the bonus would be like this:

Chance of fast recharge : 36%
Chance of super-fast recharge : 4%
Chance of fast casting : 20%
Chance of both fast casting and fast recharge : 7,2%
Chance of both fast casting and super-fast recharge : 0,8 %