Unfortunately the dps on staves are painfully low, so you hit like a wet noodle. On top of the fact that even with Aerothurge, trying to get through Magic Armor is a pain due to said poor weapon dps and also because of enemy elemental resistances causing you to do anywhere from 20%-100% less damage or perhaps even healing the enemy.
Hybrids are sub par at best right now.
My understanding is that Staves are actually doing fine in melee.
I put together a list of the average damage per AP for each of the default "white" weapons at level 8.
Ranked highest to lowest we have the following:
Weapon:Damage = Average(min, max)/AP
Mace:15 = AVG(29, 31)/2AP
2xSword: 15 = 1.5*AVG(19, 21)/2AP
Staff :13.5 = AVG(25, 29)/2AP
Bow:13 = AVG(25,27)/2AP
Spear: 12.75 = AVG(24,27)/2AP
2xDagger:11.625 = 1.5*AVG(15,16)/2AP
XBow:11.5 = AVG(33,36)/3 AP
2xWand:8.625 = AVG(11,12)/2AP
If we normalize the damage against the highest (15), we get the following for comparison:
Mace:1
2 Swords:1
Staff: 0.9
Bow: 0.867
Spear: 0.85
2 Daggers: 0.775
XBow: 0.767
2 Wands: 0.575
I only considered dual-wielding for 1-H weapons as the damage is strictly better than mono-wielding.
Most weapons have at least a useful niche, with Wands being inexcusably lower than everything else.
So, it appears that Str weapons are the top DPS, with Staves as a close second and with the option of a ranged shot and 4 different elements.
Bows are respectable, but have increased range.
Odd that Spears do less damage than bows and less range while using the same Stat, seems bad.
Daggers are poor, without help. However, if one has Backstab Talent and always uses it, that goes up to 1.1625, or 1.55 if using 2 200% crit damage daggers, which are not uncommon. This does prevent regular crits, however, which other weapons will still benefit from, and imposes an extra convenience cost to get behind targets, which will likely cost some amount of DPS in extra movement AP, and also costs one of the few Talent points characters receive.
XBow is 2nd lowest. It does however fit the niche of highest damage, giving it some synergy with Snipe/Guerilla or other Active Bow Skills. Not worthwhile for basic attacks, however, and Guerilla was nerfed too hard to be desirable.
Which leaves wands as being unacceptable garbage DPS. They take a hit for being ranged, and take another hit for being able to apply statuses. However, due to Magic Armor, the statuses won't get applied until as much as half of the target's effective health is gone, so these weapons are quite poor.
Back to the point I'm addressing, Stave damage is actually nearly the highest, only beat by Str Weapons, but they also maintain a ranged option.
Sure, enemies will have elemental resistance, but enemies also have elemental weakness. Attentive players using Staves can swap to the appropriate counter and actually end up doing more damage.
Lastly, melee-staff is in no way a hybrid (aside from possibly 1 point of Warfare for access to those skills). All staff damage is buffed by Intellect, and weapon-based skills now solely scale off of the weapon's damage (no more Str double-dipping), and there are also multiple skills to buff staff Damage, including Two-Handed and either Pyrokinetics or Geomancy if using the appropriate element. This difference will become much more pronounced once more content is released, as the 10 point skill limit will be reached, but Staff users will have another skill option to max that stacks multiplicatively with the other. E.g. 10 points Two-Handed and 10 points Pyrokinetics means a Fire Staff gets (1.5*1.5) = 225% increased damage.
Furthermore, staff users have the added benefit that Intellect will also buff almost every ability in every Magic School while equally increasing Warfare ability damage as much as Str would for a traditional fighter.
