Whatever, let's just do it.

The mere existence of this vertical descent plane crash of a staff is a symbol of disappointment.
It is the ultimate summation of deception, uselessness, and redundancy.

We literally see Crystallians in the Haligtree inflict rot buildup with their magic.

Crystal sorceries are underwhelming as is, and adding a tinge of status to them may have been exactly what they would have needed to stand out and perform.

So I understand not wanting to add rot buildup to every single sorcery from a gameplay standpoint. That's both excessively overpowered and way too much work.

But it actually makes less sense not to give rot status to crystal sorceries with this staff.

No, no, it only counts when you're bonking ♥♥♥♥ with it.

The only advantage this staff gives you is the ability to power stance crystal stabs without going into NewGame+ so that you can double up the bonus on all the massive damage crystal releases shooting into the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ floor.

80 int in Faith and you can't even climb to 320 scaling, what do lava sorcerers even get out of bed for?

If we aren't considering what an enormous disappointment the Rotten Crystal Staff is, this is objectively the worst sorcery catalyst.

It gives a boost to sorceries that either underperform with the boost or overperform without it.

It's only obtainable by farming some of the most annoying mobs the creative team has ever unearthed from the recesses of their ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up heads.

And if you're being outclassed by the Prince of Death Staff, then we're really in bad shape.

The only reason I would still rank the Rotten Crystal Staff lower is because at least this one isn't misleadingly bad.

At least this one doesn't have a little text blurb at the bottom of the menu that says it deals fire damage when all it does is give the soldiers mildly uncomfortable hot flashes or something.

There are a few things I personally detest more than brutally great visual design on what's one of the worst weapons you could get your hands on.

Come to think of it, there are quite a few of those.



Boosting thorn sorceries and having innate bleed buildup when you whack people with it seems like the two greatest reasons this staff should have at least considered dipping its toes into some Arcane scaling business.

But instead, it only scales with Faith, badly.

When comparing staff scaling, this one has a scaling modifier of 2.28, which, don't get me wrong, it's still an S. It's not like it isn't doing work, it's still good.

But are you really taking that over the Regal Scepter's 2.88 or Lusat's 3.3?

It's actually one of the lowest in the game, second only to the Meteorite Staff, which literally can't be upgraded.

Whoever the Blood Star is, it had better start rethinking some of its life choices before the DLC comes out and I start itching for its head mounted on my wall.

This staff shares the same exact scaling as Staff of the Guilty, only with Intelligence.

Dedicating an entire catalyst to boosting two sorceries is one of those things I'm afraid to point out because the DLC can always just add new ♥♥♥♥ to make me look like a moron.

It's not like they haven't done that before.

But that's exactly what makes this staff so unappealing.

An extra boost to a certain sorcery class is only helpful if I have a variety of choice.

And even saying this magic subtype has two feels like a courtesy when one is basically just a more long-winded version of the other.

Not that they're bad spells or anything, they're actually quite decent.
It's just pointless to have them boosted by a staff with scaling that's easily outpaced by the staff the game literally starts you with.

If the boost was actually of any significance, then maybe I'd reconsider.

But a meager 20% only brings the damage up to par with what it would be on most other catalysts with better endgame scaling.

No, stop giving damage buffs to magic types that only have like one reliable damage spell.
Stop it.
Night Comet is already slanted enough.
It doesn't need more damage.
It needs a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ reality check.
It needs a bed and a therapist.

And shafting the spell buffing this hard on a staff that's exclusively used for casting one spell over and over again only tells me that they have no plans to nerf it either.

So take that as you will.



It has scaling that beats out the Digger's Staff despite it falling behind at 60 intelligence because it has such low base spell power.

And it only barely edges past Digger's Staff for me because of the downright silencing of human rights that is a 30% damage improvement on Night Comet.

If we could pick up two of them in the same playthrough, it'd probably be 15.

Moving on to catalysts with actual utility.

Despite it being so powerful, you can't even use it properly until you've run through the game at least twice over.

And then it very quickly becomes the only staff capable of handing out damage that contends with the health sponginess of NG+3 and onwards.

Split scaling kills this staff, period.

It puts this staff in a very awkward spot where its use is entirely determined by where you are in the journey of the game.

Specifically, how many journeys you've completed.

At which point, build variety is completely stifled by the fact that this staff has objectively the highest scaling when all your stats are as maxed out as they possibly could be.

And you solve your smallest problems by laser frying them into ash and bone paste just because you can.

There's no real reason to even go for this staff if it's your first playthrough, because chances are you'll have another one somewhere in your pocket that can get to roughly the same or slightly lower spell buffing power without all the stat upkeep.

This might sound weird, but the Demi-Human Staff has a visual design that I actually kinda like, even though I respect it considerably less than most others.

A staff that's all elegant and proper feels easier on the eyes than a blood-caked tree branch, you know, sure. But all that really means is there's no risk involved.

It may be symmetrical on all its sides, but it still looks like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥' fence post from Unity Engine's stock asset pool.

It's pretty invaluable when you're first starting out because of the low intelligence requirement and high base spell buffing, meaning it's almost always a good idea to at least pick it up.

But I'm only ever picking it up with the knowledge that it'll need replacing by the time I get to Altus.

Sure, it can outperform most of its competition at the right levels with the right amount of upgrades, but it almost never matters.



With early game intelligence, it only starts beating out the Meteorite Staff at around plus nine, at which point your intelligence will probably be high enough to start paying attention to other options with better mid to late game scaling.

Meaning, inevitably, it gets replaced either by the Academy Staff in the mid game or Lusat Staff or the Regal Scepter in the end game.

So the only case for this staff is just being able to cast low-level sorceries on Faith builds.

But Scholar's Armament and Shield both have a pretty astounding amount of value in this part of the game.

So I can't in good conscience say the staff is worthless.

An astoundingly mediocre 329 scaling at 80 intelligence.

It can be dropped by chance by noble sorcerers at Caria Manor.

I could say much more about it, but I refuse to put in more effort on this paragraph than the item description does.

18 intelligence isn't a huge deal unless you went Confessor for some god awful reason.
Leaving this staff in a mostly accessible spot.

It's not really that out of reach from starting position if you don't mind all the red, pustulating syphilis on the floor.

And it's the only staff with excellent scaling right out of the box.
And even at the minimum required intelligence, it still outperforms the Demihuman Staff by around 12.

Making it the single best choice for early to mid game.



Its inability to be upgraded fittingly gives it probably the single hardest drop off in performance the more you upgrade other choices, coming in dead last compared to other intelligence scaling staffs once you hit 80.

It's got a really beefy 30% damage boost at hands to all gravity sorceries.

Further raising the bar on how outrageously stupid the damage on Meteorite of Astel can climb.

But unless you roll everything over to NewGame+ and grab a second one, there's little reason to keep it around.

Question, would you pay 50% more for something if they promised they could ship whatever you're buying to your house two weeks quicker, but then the more you used it, the more the average shipping time just returned back to normal?

You probably wouldn't.

In fact, you'd probably start a petition to televise the CEO being eaten alive by wolverines.

This is one of many dilemmas of an Azur staff user.

Find it in Liurnia, get excited because it's unlike any staff you've ever seen before, and become immediately disinterested in it once you see the stat requirements.

Granted, the scaling bonus it gets towards the end game does fare quite nicely as it surpasses even the academy staff once you hit 73.



But introducing a staff that needs 52 intelligence this early is like giving us a box of donuts without telling us all the filling was crammed into the two in the back.

It's one of the more efficient staffs regarding spell scaling alone, but the most you're ever going to wring out of your casting speed is at 70 Dex, meaning you're only getting the full casting speed bonus if your dex is around 30.

And just because I can afford to pay 50% more FP per spell doesn't mean I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ want to.

I would rather it just have a slightly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ scaling with less FP per casting at that rate.

Plenty of people respect it, but very few people actually love it enough to consider it a main catalyst in their build.

It mostly gets criticism because the Arcane stat doesn't lend itself to sorcery builds as well as it does Faith builds.

And a lot of this criticism is generated from the fact that arcane kind of just leaves frostbite status completely in the dark.

This ultimately limits you to exactly two status ailment sorceries, which are the 2 Aberrant sorceries.

You can always go the split scaling route, but 80 intelligence and arcane totals out to a hair-raisingly uninspired 373, which is exactly what you get on the Regal Scepter with 80 intelligence by itself.



This is the crux of why builds that split themselves between Intelligence and Arcane always tend to come up lacking in some department, leaving much to be desired on a staff that's almost always able to be replaced by something.

On the plus side, the incredibly low stat requirements means it can be used on an Arcane character pretty much right away.

And in all honesty, those 2 Aberrant sorceries become pretty throttled when being cast from this particular staff.

Usually I expect starter weapons to have all the stopping power of launching a chewed up piece of bubblegum through a straw, but it has a pretty nice amount of force behind it for such an unassuming piece of balsa wood that looks like it could be sold at a children's toy store for 10 bucks.

340 scaling with 80 intelligence isn't all that bad.
It's not good.
It's not good by any means, but it's not bad.

Like most weapons the game throws at you towards the beginning, you're always going to find better options somewhere else.

But as mediocre as this staff is and always will be, it can last you for a fairly decent amount of time.

The place at which you get it makes for some awkward pacing because by the time you reach Liurnia to buy it from the merchant, you'll have likely already found another staff that'll serve you just as well, especially if you're only hunting them to cast low-level sorceries on a mostly Faith or Arcane-interested build.

At which point, 16 intelligence starts to feel like barely too much to ask for as a requirement.

Not sure if people will agree with this or not, but the existence of this staff completely invalidates the regular glintstone staff.

More than that, actually.
It raises the question of why the regular glintstone staff even occupies space in the game's files to begin with.

They have the exact same sorcery scaling, weight, and even the amount of physical damage it does when you bop someone with the tip of it.

They're not even that cosmetically different.

The glintstone on the end is just bigger, the shaft is considerably less red for some reason, and it's more equipped for sword fighting.



Are you trying to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tell us something, Miyazaki?

Additionally, 15% is quite a meager bonus for sorceries, but with the sword spells, I guess it's somewhat justified because most sorceries that fall under that class are already comically spoiled for damage as it is.

You can always carry it in your ♥♥♥♥♥♥ hand and benefit from the spell boost that way.



You know, that one piece of advice that people are starting to get tired of hearing.

You need me to remind you that fire damage resets frostbite a couple more times for you?

The Glintblade Staff has slightly higher scaling than its Glintstone counterpart and almost catches up to the Astrologer Staff with 337 scaling at 80 Intelligence.

But the secret to why this staff tends to be preferred over most others in the mid-game is the particular subtype of magic it improves.

Glintblade sorceries are already invaluable because of your ability to somewhat determine when they fire via spatial control, but the real utility here is the military payload of damage thrown out by magic ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ glintblade, which also gets a 15% damage boost.

The glintblade staff might be the single most overlooked staff on mid-game intelligence builds.

The Academy Staff is nice and all, and if you're running anything that isn't a glintblade build, you might as well just switch that one anyways.

But for glintblades, there really is no better staff you could ever use.

And 15% is still a pretty hefty bonus when all the glintblade spells can mulch whatever they find to begin with.

Save the obvious choice, the regal scepter has the highest scaling of any other staff at 80 Intelligence with an added boost to full moon sorcery that's probably less appreciated than it should be.

But at the end of the day, if I'm going into any deal where 60 Intelligence is expected, it better have some prime ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ benefits lined up for me if you're charging an extra 20k runes on top of it.

I suppose if you want to maximize casting efficiency, this is the staff you would likely stick with, since the only other intelligence focused staff that outperforms it would be what's obviously first on the list, spoilers, I know.

Additionally, the spinning weapon Ash of War is incredibly useful on melee builds that utilize spells like Gavel or Piercer.

And if the full skill ends up connecting, you can squeeze out some astounding damage out of it at high intelligence levels.

It's a great staff with some great utility, but the stat requirements all but guarantee you won't even remember it exists until you've hauled ass up to the mountaintops, at which point you've probably just become used to another staff.

I have very few complaints with this staff.

It remains consistently within top three or four options for mage builds, no matter what place in the game you're in.

• Fairly modest stat requirements when compared to other catalysts of similar efficiency,
  
• very little heavy lifting is required to get it,
  
• and the scaling doesn't have any of that backloaded ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that convinces you it's gonna be worthless forever until it sneakily surpasses every other catalyst in the game at 75 Intelligence.

That's the only way this staff is ever going to be outpaced, because the three staffs capable of doing so have exactly that problem.

Fortunately, this does mean you'll have plenty enough of a selection for when the going gets tough and everything starts hitting for five ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ damage or whatever the in-game scaling is.

After all is said and done, it's as reliable as it is frighteningly powerful in almost every environment, and I genuinely feel sorry for anyone that's ever skipped out on such a triple-decker beefcake of a staff.

The only major complaint I have is you might just run into some trouble actually upgrading it to its full extent, because the placement of Smithing Stone 8s pretty much force you to wait until the very end of the game for a +25.

Okay, so listen, it may not seem like it at first, but the Crystal Staff is placed exactly where it needs to be.

The 48 Intelligence sounds rough, which it kind of is, but going full speed ahead and considering it your one priority to just upgrade the hell out of this staff and push your Intelligence up to 48 to be able to wield the staff could be the single best decision you make for a mage build.

If you've already been decisively putting points into Intelligence, then heading into Liurnia with around maybe 30 shouldn't be too big a problem.

The reason I would encourage this staff over any other mid-game option is because it's upgraded with Somber Stones, which are much easier to find and don't force you into an uncomfortable position where you're bicep deep in the ass of the Haligtree with a +21.

The resource investment you put towards upgrading it is remarkably less tedious, and you can easily brute force it to a +9 and still have it outperform the Academy Staff, making it the single greatest option mid-game and onward.



At 80 Intelligence, the scaling climbs up to 367, which is directly comparable with Regal Scepter without the need to force yourself through a magic-resistant brick wall of a boss that you probably aren't too interested in fighting if you're going full mage.

And it's not even like you need to be running it with the sorceries it buffs, because a 10% boost on a spell that isn't Shattering Crystal is so throat-clearingly negligible that it almost never matters anyway.

Yeah, that's why none of these lists ever feel that exciting.
You knew exactly where this was going to be.

The appeal of Lusat's Staff has always been about transforming beginner brainlit sorceries into neighborhood-leveling weapons of mass destruction.

When you have so many low-FP sorceries that hand out damage climbing into the thousands per cast, like Carian Slicer, Magic Glintblade, Shard Spiral, and like 15 others that could easily be listed here, 50% extra FP is such an inconsequentially small price that it's almost not even worth being in effect.

No one's casting Ralluna's Dank Moon with this ♥♥♥♥.
You wouldn't need it.
It's pointless.
It's a waste.
413 sorcery scaling is meant to turn your Pebbles into missile salvos and nothing else.

And when approached from that angle, it is miles ahead of every other staff while compromising as little efficiency as possible.

I would waste more time writing this paragraph trying to convince everyone this is the best staff, but I think everyone already knows.

Like, is there even a point?

It'd be like finding a section in your biology textbook that tells you how dangerous it is to squirt snake venom in your eyes.

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