Yeah you are right I goofed when I calculated the damage difference. I wasn't using anything like a 5/0, I just entered the numbers wrong. it's closer to 25%.
Still, why even have a mage if you are going to be spending half your skill points just to do pathetic weapon damage instead of spells, when you could instead roll an archer for like 4 times the damage if not more?
As far as that point at the end of the fight where you no longer care about CCing enemies, if things are THAT easy you may as well just skip your mages turn and let someone else finish the enemy in a single hit.
Even with the damage conclusions though, I think that Dual Wands are actually the no-brainer choice. Not for damage, but for attributes. It's an easy +4 int or Con (or whatever random stats a drop rolls), compared to the +2 I could get from a crafted staff. It's also 2 "free" master level spells that I don't have learned (but do have 4-5 ranks in the spell school), if I choose the right wands.
Since you are almost definitely going to be using wands anyway, because of the above, putting a trivial number of points into the wand skill to get it to rank 2, just so that it costs a reasonable number of AP, isn't a bad idea. You aren't making a wand mage, your just making use of the resources you have to hand.
Edit: there might actually be a reason to use wands w/ high wand skill I hadn't thought about. Wands can come with up to 3 different debuffs each in the 20-30% chance range. 2 wands fireing for 3 ap with 6 30% chances to debuff the enemy seems like a pretty interesting strategy. However, it does mean giving up the +4 int you get from crafted wands unless you are ridiculously lucky in finding rare wands.
Last edited by Sotanaht; 03/11/15 11:19 PM.
