Staff without Death Magic?
You’ll live. Ever since the marks were made larger by default and Greater Marks is now Master instead of adept, it isn’t that required anymore though I still prefer Staff Mastery for faster cooldowns. But many builds don’t need the staff traits at all.
for there you have been and there you will long to return.
I use staff, and haven’t used the death line at all since they moderately increased the mark radius.
The good think about staff is you can use it in any build simply for all the utility it offers, even if the dps and the autoattack are bad. I am one of the necros that always has staff as second weapon set and i am really glad that i dont have to skill in death magic anymore for the radius increase.
So yes it is ok to skip death magic as staff user and when they finally change the 5 and 15 point traits in death magic it may be worth going into death magic again.
I still LOVE greater marks, big unblock-able marks are underrated.
But that being said, I rarely take the trait. Going 20 points into Death Magic is not worth it with most builds. Now that marks are bigger by default, and the trait was moved into master, i find it a lot less appealing.
I always grab staff mastery when I play condi-spec. Its too important to rule out for a mere 10 points.
only reason i’d go for death magic trait line is for the unblockable marks.
The 25 point trait in Death magic is probably one of the strongest in our whole kit. Assuming there is any toughness in your equipment at all, it allows you to get a similar amount of power from Death magic as you would have from Spite, while also gaining all that precious toughness.
If you really like staff but don’t want to mess with death magic, why not just take spiteful marks and soul marks? Those two combined make staff pretty nasty. Yes the recharge reduction is always nice, but honestly you can live without it. It’s only 20%.