Ice Staff  

You've misunderstood the significance of these staves. You should really read through the forums to get a better understanding of why they're so good (See the Arcane Tome of DOOM). The "Air Element +15" on the staff is defense only. It has nothing to do with the damage bonus from the staff. As you know (I hope), wind is weak to ice. What you apparently are not aware of is the hidden effect on these staves. The NQ staves add 10% (15% for HQ) to the damage of that particular class of spells, in this case, ice based spells. Now seeing as wind is weak to ice, you are actually causing your wind based spells to do 10% less damage. As fas as INT vs. Elemental Magic Skill, there is no competition. Elemental Magic Skill is almost always going to be better than INT (except on low level mobs where you're not going to get resisted and thus don't need the EMS). Elemental Magic Skill doesn't add damage to the spells, it increases their accuracy or chance of sticking (not getting resisted). You should consider investing in the entire set of elemental staves and putting them into your macros. You have one of three choices: you can either unequip (via macros) your staff while casting wind based spells to prevent the 10% loss of damage, you can choose to leave it on and take the 10% hit but still receive the effect of the EMS+10, which will probably help more than hurt on high IT mobs or you can bite the bullet and fork over the money for the entire set of staves. Again, I would strongly suggest taking a look at the Arcane Tome of DOOM. It has a lot of interesting information that will help you get a better understanding of many aspects of playing BLM.

damn thing goes for ~300k on Asura, thanks for being the biggest gil buying and selling server! >.<

Edited, Fri Mar 25 09:47:12 2005

I'd suggest you /slap the person who told you this.

The only thing i can think of is a lot of ppl probably trying to craft the aquilos staff for gil and selling off these ice staffs. Why the ice staff? cuz its probably the most popular elemental stave. (this is just my guess though, i really have no idea what im talking about.)

bought mine a month ago for 125K, sold it for 40K the other day...and i gotta say, after using it for a month, I HATE this staff...it's cool at 51, but then collect your BLM AF gear and watch how much INT bonus you lose...I got resisted left and right forever and tried coumtering it by spending as much as i could on +1 everything else to make up for it. It doesn't matter if you do 10% more damage on any spell if you only hit your spells 20% of the time. EXP'ing was a ***** with this staff, and if i'm soloing, i use a scythe... I gotta say, for the glamor these present, I felt like a total noob for ever wasting money on this staff...and twice as dumb that i bought a pluto staff >< cause that was worthless except for resting... Some things are cool to flash that you can afford, but these staves aren't worth the trouble they caused me. as a blm, i have to say, keep your INT high. it's far more effective, keeps MP efficient, and your battles end quicker. this is from a blm standpoint...reading below it may be a more effective tool for smn+shiva, but i don't know about that. so far light and dark staves are the only ones i see as worth it... i hear about pld's walking around clubbing **** to death with earth staves, but if i was a pld? sheesh, use a sword, you're not getting hit in the areas you farm anyway...but what do i know? no one ever listens to a mage :P