It really is! The kick skill has far too many uses for me to pass it up with most builds.. I'm not saying its OP or anything like that, I'm just saying it was genius to include such a mechanic. Well done devs!
It's definitely not OP in my opinion. The huge loss of damage is a no-go for me. I just take Psi (pretty much an essential utility spell line) up to 2nd level for the Psychokinetic Push (which is also better), if that's why you're using it, and 3rd level for the heal crystals. I'll take an actual damaging melee skill any day, in addition. Yes, even staves for my more wizardly types. It takes forever to finish anything off with Unarmed unless you spend a lot of your skill points on it, and my casters can get by with zero in Staves and still do decent damge enough for killing wounded monsters and getting the extra Sag/spell power and melee damage from them.
You waste points on staff mastery on a wizard build? I haven't done a non-promethean mage seriously yet, but that sounds awful. You realize you can use weapons without taking the skill for it right? It's only a small loss of efficiency.
I never take Staves no matter what my Mage build is, though I might consider it if I ever go Viking Wizardry. The Mage bonuses on the Staff skill is negligible, and the bonuses on the Staves themselves applies regardless of whether you took the skill or not. Also, Orbs provide much better Mage bonuses than Staves do: if you're a pure Mage, go double Orbs.
Unarmed Combat is amazing for making tanky-type characters or archers since you can yield two shields.I can kill all monsters in 1-3hits and receive minimal or no damage except the arch diggers on level 10,those are hard.
Even if you say you need Melee backup, you still don't need to take the Staff skill to use staves to bash things. And in any it's probably still better to equip two Orbs and pull out a strong melee weapon (which likely is not a staff) for backup if you really need it.
All i can say is Double Staff really hurt. Btw, if you want to do a full mage you can easily skip melee skills, but for a throwing/archery i really suggest Unarmed. Even just the first level in it help you really much on the first and half the second level
Yes, I use staves with my casters. Until higher levels, mana regen is terrible and doesn't support blasting everything.. especially if you don't have Promethean. I can cruise by fine on killing trash mobs with the default level 1 Staff skill and save my mana for larger fights. Otherwise, I'm practically out of potions all the time, from downing them, and I refuse to hit the space bar 100 times to regen regularly. While you can still hit stuff without the skill, the penalties don't help. It can also make for a good melee caster mix.
