Anyway, to sum up this giant battle:
LordofBones thinks INT on a weapon is *teh devil* and needs to be eliminated.
Tanist defends it by saying OS perfectly allows mage/warriors and thus it's no problem.
Then a major discussion about staves and Staff of Malgus (personally I think it could use knocking down to 3AP) including massive flames.
Now you're up to date on the last 5 pages.
PS. Dexterity increases defenses, so it makes sense for a STR-based character as well in certain configurations... despite some claim it's not.
Pity you got both sides of it wrong. I said that staves were terrible because they didn't synergize with anything, they're an Int weapon that doesn't benefit Int skills, they can spawn with bonuses to attributes that don't benefit from staves (i.e. Scoundrel and Marksman) and the Staff of Magus is a waste of AP.
As for Dexterity itself, I just tested this with Scarlett. 1 Dexterity gives 5 OR to Dex Weapons, 5 DR (i.e. evade, which is difficult to quantify, you start with a base of 60, and with 14 Dex Scarlett has a further +45 to it), and a 5% chance of success with Dex skills. Staves aren't Dex weapons, so that leaves you with two other benefits, but from what I've seen and tested that extra 5 doesn't make or break anything.
Basically, staves are a problem because they're an Int weapon that's useless to Int users, and itemization has issues because they can appear on weapons that otherwise don't benefit whatsoever from the stats.
