Staff of Magus | Divinity Original Sin 2 Wiki

Staff of Magus is a Special Skill in Divinity Orginal Sin 2.

Staff of Magus Spell Book Location

• This skill is granted automatically when you have a Staff equipped.

Staff of Magus Requirements

• Costs 0 Memory

Notes and Tips

• The damage type of this ability will change to whatever element your Staff is.
• Staff of Magus cannot benefit from Elemental Affinity, even if the staff element matches the surface element.
• Useful for finishing off creatures or manipulating elemental surfaces at long range without putting another skill on cooldown.
• The staff's element changes how this skill interacts with environmental effects. Depending on the element, it may additionally behave differently depending on what is selected as the target: a direct point on the effect surface, a creature (either dead or alive) positioned on the effect surface, or an object positioned on the effect surface.
  • Fire element will explode oil and poison surfaces regardless of which of the three specific target types is selected. It will not under any circumstances evaporate water or blood surfaces on its own, however regardless of what it's targeting, it will melt ice surfaces in a tiny radius around its impact point.
    • With the Crafter's Kit mod from Gift Bag installed, you can combine the staff with a fire source and oil, and it will gain a small amount of fire damage as well as a chance to inflict Burning. If you had already combined it with poison, you will retain the chance to proc Poisoned, but will lose the poison damage. If it was already a fire staff naturally, it will additionally say that it gained the ability to melt any ice it strikes. This is already an innate trait of the staff, however. Note that any amount of fire damage, no matter how small, is enough to ignite flammable surfaces. These benefits extend to Staff of Magus even if they aren't shown.
  • Air element will electrocute water, blood, and steam surfaces regardless of the specific target.
  • Poison element is capable of turning every connected piece of water, blood, steam, and blood steam into their poison variants, similar to Contamination. Note, however, that this will only happen if you target a creature (dead or alive) which is located somewhere in the water/blood/steam. Targeting the water/blood/steam directly or an item on the surface will not have this same effect.  Regardless of the specific target, poison element Staff of Magus will not directly interact with flaming surfaces.
    • The trail of blood that Raise Bloated Corpse leaves behind while moving can be used to connect disconnected liquid surfaces, in addition to the blood pool left by its self-destruct skill. The trail stays fully connected in combat even while the Bloated Corpse is under the effect of both Favourable Wind and Haste. Naturally, since the Bloated Corpse starts out sitting on the body it's summoned from, that same body becomes a valid target for this contamination feature.
    • Note that characters with Leech may unintentionally foil this tactic while regaining hardly any HP.
    • You can combine the staff with a poison source, and it will gain a small amount of poison damage as well as a chance to inflict Poisoned. If you had already combined it with fire, you will retain the chance to proc Burning, but will lose the fire damage. If it was already a poison staff naturally, it will additionally say that it gained the ability to corrupt liquids and steam. This is already an innate trait of the staff, however. These benefits extend to Staff of Magus even if they aren't shown.
  • Water element will not interact with elemental surfaces whatsoever.
    • Technically, they are capable of freezing liquid surfaces, but the frozen area is so small that it's mechanically inconsequential.
• Due to the nature of Staff of Magus' elemental surface interactions, from a utility standpoint water element staffs are the weakest as they have no elemental utility, meanwhile poison element staffs are the strongest due to their niche Contamination-like effect, on top of being useful for directly healing undead allies without always risking explosions as one would with wands.
  • Beyond this, if the battlefield has liquid/vapor surfaces adjacent to a source of fire, using this trait will immediately corrupt all liquids into poison and then immediately afterwards result in all of it exploding.
  • A slight improvement on this utility may be to combine a poison staff with a poison source to get a chance to inflict Poisoned, and then if you have the crafting Gift Bag installed, combine the staff with a fire source and oil to additionally get a chance to inflict Burning and the ability to detonate poison via chip fire damage.
• While many builds opt to use wands for their more straightforward properties, compatibility with shields, and ability to directly create a small elemental surface for 2 AP, staffs have some less-obvious properties that make them potentially advantageous in other aspects. Unlike wands which are considered neither melee nor ranged weapons, staffs are melee weapons and so enable usage of Warfare Skills that require a weapon. Staffs are additionally compatible with both the Opportunist and Ambidextrous Talents.
  • While compatibility with Warfare and Opportunist are mostly useful for battlemage niche types, compatibility with Ambidextrous should not be understated. It effectively functions as permanent Elemental Affinity for all types of spells simultaneously, provided the user regularly collects and craft scrolls. Even without Ambidextrous, scrolls are worth keeping and using anyway as they have no cooldown, never require source points, don't take up memory slots, and in some cases cost fewer AP than their corresponding spell to begin with. The fact that Ambidextrous also works on grenades is pure gravy, as it enables cheaper surface generation than wands (such as for use with Elemental Affinity) as well as cheap CC. This compatibility with grenades also allows Ambidextrous to be useful from the start of the game, as while scrolls are not terribly accessible then, grenades such as Firestorm Grenade, Water Balloon, and Poison Flask are. Beyond this, Resurrect scrolls also benefit from Ambidextrous, which is worth keeping in mind especially for the early stages of the game before you get ahold of the Glowing Idol of Rebirth.
  • In addition to the synergy between Ambidextrous and  Elemental Affinity, both talents have synergy with Far Out Man, as it impacts spells, scrolls, and grenades.
  • In summary, while staffs appear lackluster on the surface, they do have their own mechanical advantages when used in conjunction with select talents, and as such are capable of providing far more utility and flexibility than is possible with wands.

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