02-20-2005, 02:45 AM
I think wands are very useful for priests and warlocks. In my opinion they carry the following advantages:
1. Wand damage is unaffected by target passive defenses (dodge, parry, etc.) or armor values.
2. Wands are less prone to streakish results then staves.
3. A slow wand can be used in conjunction with a very fast one-handed weapon such that the melee weapon will still swing even when repeatedly activating the wand as soon as the cooldown refreshes. A fast weapon would be optimum for a firestone regardless.
Although the damage display only shows wand damage at the listed value (after adding in wand mastery) I have noticed countless times where I have scored damages higher then the listed maximum damage. I'm guessing that stats boost wand damage (agi?) rather then the existence of many monsters with negative resists. I also believe resists affect wand damage similar to direct damage spells. When I leveled on creeper type elementals I noticed that my nature wand would constantly get quite a bit more partial resists then my fire or arcane wands.
The slower skilling rate of wands does make it very tough to keep wand skill near cap but I still prefer its use to staves. I have a hypothesis that the chance of skill gain is based on the speed of the weapon. The listed speed of the wand is used in that equation rather then factoring it in with the additional unlisted wand cooldown resulting in a noticeably slower skill-up speed of wands compared to other weapons.
1. Wand damage is unaffected by target passive defenses (dodge, parry, etc.) or armor values.
2. Wands are less prone to streakish results then staves.
3. A slow wand can be used in conjunction with a very fast one-handed weapon such that the melee weapon will still swing even when repeatedly activating the wand as soon as the cooldown refreshes. A fast weapon would be optimum for a firestone regardless.
Although the damage display only shows wand damage at the listed value (after adding in wand mastery) I have noticed countless times where I have scored damages higher then the listed maximum damage. I'm guessing that stats boost wand damage (agi?) rather then the existence of many monsters with negative resists. I also believe resists affect wand damage similar to direct damage spells. When I leveled on creeper type elementals I noticed that my nature wand would constantly get quite a bit more partial resists then my fire or arcane wands.
The slower skilling rate of wands does make it very tough to keep wand skill near cap but I still prefer its use to staves. I have a hypothesis that the chance of skill gain is based on the speed of the weapon. The listed speed of the wand is used in that equation rather then factoring it in with the additional unlisted wand cooldown resulting in a noticeably slower skill-up speed of wands compared to other weapons.