Exactly, I haven't really seen a staff that would benefit from the Tenebrium upgrade. Staff of Magus is actually dependent on the 2 handed weapon proficiency
+1 for crackly evil staff of ominous purple doom though
One of my thoughts is that staves could add their elemental damage to the damage done by spells of that element, but that runs into the problem of tenebrium again...
Maybe a theoretical tenebrium staff always adds its tenebrium damage to any spell of any element...
At the very least, mages would have a reason to upgrade their staves.