ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I've been looking around at the guides for various classes, and a lot of them recommend to go staff combat. Why is this good exactly? From the staves I've found they seem to generally do less damage than other 2-handers.

channel staff gives you a ranged weapon, and staves give proc power on their accuracy bous.
i think. some nightmare winner may correct me on that.

You are correct, Radon26. For every point of accuracy that you have over your target's defense, procs(shadow combat damage, reaving combat extra attack, arcane blade arcane combat, etc. ) will do 2.5% more damage. Two handed staves are quite effective on a couple of classes, namely arcane blade and doombringer. Reaver performs exceptionally with two one handed staves as well. Not to mention the fact that staves give a 30% bonus to a damage type of your choosing once you get far enough.

Thanks for that, very helpful.

Reavers, sun paladins, and Arcane blades, but especially reavers, can make good use out of staff as melee due to the proc stuff they have and the enhancements of non-physical damages (except a few types).

A few other builds for a few classes can make good use of Channel Staff, in particular Shadowblade does well with a staff from stealth because spells do not get reduced by stealth so you can be a ranged auto-crit nuker.

But staves are certainly not the be all end for all classes, but for certain builds they are a good choice. And keep in mind short staves exist for something like a staff and shield sun pally.

I wish short staves were a little easier to find, and a little easier not to mistake for 2 handers and accidentally transmog.

Someone posted, as an aside, that giving a staff to your alchemist golem was "funny". I couldn't figure out what that really meant. So how about it? Will golems use staves well? Will they cast channel staff to switch damage types when something has an immunity? (that seems like a lot to ask of a golem) Will they ever do better damage than the big 2 hander axes, mauls or swords? It doesn't seem so to me, but perhaps I'm missing something.

i am pretty sure golem automatically have the mastery talents.
weapon mastery, dagger mastery, staff mastery (, not sure about mindstars) and exotic mastery.
as far as i know, golems do not have channel staff.
additionally, if you give him a channel staff from an escort, he will not use it.
i tried giving him healing light, didn't work.

I've seen my Golems using Healing Light (and even Bathe In Light), so I'm not sure why yours would not do so.

well, while i was controlling him, i told him to auto cast it.
and worked as long as i was controlling him. when i left, it wasn't any more.
i don't think set the "priorities", but then i do not remember it being on the priorities...
oh, and it wasn't THE latest version.
it was 1.3.1 i think, or earlier. but it also was NOT 1,2,5. later than that... so might have been a beta verison...