Azal's Staff is a Staff and one of the available Weapons in Dark Souls 2. Azal's Staff is a powerful catalyst that has S scaling for both Sorceries and Hexes. However, it has a slow casting speed, low durability, and uses more stamina per spell than other staves.
Staff of Azal, sage of Forossa.
Rather roughly crafted, but imbued with the magic of Azal. Greatly intensifies spells, but also drastically reduces spell usage.
This staff, unfit for the inexperienced, is evidence of sage Azal's prowess.
How to get Azal's Staff in Dark Souls 2
- DLC Crown of the Ivory King.
- Treasure from a corpse starting at the Lower Garrison bonfire. Past 3 Crystal Golem enemies, near a gap in the bridge of the Loyce Knight area. You will have ascended an elevator following an encounter with a Covetous Demon.
DS2 Azal's Staff Hints and Tips
- Upgraded with Twinkling Titanite to +5. CAN NOT be infused
- S scaling for both Sorcery and Hexes, it outclasses Sunset Staff and Staff of Wisdom when wielder has 65 Int + Faith
- Extremely slow casting speed. highly recommended to equip Clear Bluestone Ring +2
- Extremely fragile, only 4 durability, highly recommended to equip Bracing Knuckle Ring +2.
- Alternatively, use Repair Spell or Repair Powder regularly.
- Increases the damage for spells / hexes cast by 20% but also reduces maximum spell uses to 1/4. This also applies to the spells / hexes cast by catalyst weld on the other hand.
- Only sorceries and hexes that specify staff as the catalyst would be boosted.
- Despite the slow casting speed, it has slightly better tracking once cast, the delay can often catch people offguard.
- Dark Orb, Dark Hail and Affinity cast from this staff can be quite devastating if the delay tracking is executed well.
- 578 magic and 597 dark at 50int/30faith.
- Uses almost twice as much stamina per spell compared to other staves.
- Recommend being used as the offhand buff weapon. Can also be utilized by low level characters without enough stats for this stave but already satisfied the stats requirement of other catalysts.
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DS2 Azal's Staff Upgrades Table
| Attack ValuesBonus | Parameter Bonus | Auxiliary Effects | Damage Reduction (%) | ||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name |
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| Regular | - | 133 | - | - | 133 | 100 15 |
- | - | S | - | - | S | - | - | 25 | 30 | 20 | 20 | 20 |
| Regular +5 | - | 160 | - | - | 160 | ^ | - | - | S | - | - | S | - | - | 25 | 30 | 20 | 20 | 20 |
Dark Souls II Azal's Staff Table Key
Please see the Upgrades page for details on Upgrade paths, ore and blacksmiths. You can see the Stats page for detailed explanations on what they do.
| Requirements/ Parameter Bonus |
Attack Values | Damage Reduction (%) Reducing the elemental damage taken in % |
Auxiliary Effects | Others |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Strength |
Physical |
Physical |
Bleeding |
 Durability |
 Dexterity |
Magic |
Magic |
 Poison |
Weight |
 Intelligence |
Fire |
Fire |
 Petrify |
|
 Faith |
Lightning |
Lightning |
 Curse |
|
| Magic Bonus |
 Counter Strength |
 Stability |
||
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 Poise Damage |
|||
| Lighting Bonus |
 Cast Speed |
|||
| Dark Bonus |
 Range |
Parameter Bonus: Strength, Dexterity,Magic, Fire, Lightning and Dark bonuses - The scaling multiplier applied to the [Attack: stat]. Scaling quality is from highest to lowest as follows: S/A/B/C/D/E.
The higher the player's [Str, Dex, Mag, Fire, Light] stat, the higher the [Attack Bonus: Stat] is (found on the player status screen). The higher the scaling letter, the higher the percent multiplier applied to the [Attack: Stat].
This resulting bonus damage is added to the base physical damage of the weapon and is shown in the equipment screen in blue numbers as a "+ X".
Durability: The weapon's HP, when the durability hits 0, the effectiveness of its attacks become weakened to the point of almost uselessness. When an items durability is low, a message will come up saying "Weapon At Risk!" at this point the weapon does not perform at it's best.
Weight: How much the item weights when equipped.
Stability: How well the player keeps stance after being hit
Attack Type: Defines what kind of swing set the weapon has.
Regular(R), Thrust(T), Slash(Sl), Strike(St)
AnonymousPeople here love to (rightfully) bash this staff for uselessness. However, there are ways to mitigate its downsides, which would allow the player to use this staff both in pve and in pvp.
There are 3 critical downsides to using Azal's staff: 4 Durability when 70 is the norm, 15 Cast Speed when 110 is the norm, and 1/4 Spell Uses when equipped.
TL;DR: carry Repair Powder (but you won’t really need it much), have at least 50 ATN + Clear Bluestone Ring+2 + at least 2 pieces of cast-speed armour, use Southern Ritual Band+2 and duplicate spells, and equip powerful spells with large scaling.
That way, you will have 13 spell uses per Repair Powder, normal cast speed comparable to ~20 ATN on other staves, enough spell uses to not fret about them, and absolute dominance with both Sorceries and Hexes at the same time.
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First, durability. The number 4 makes you believe that you can cast like four spells with it, but that is not true. It is capable of casting 13 spells, breaking at the 14th. That is because Durability is not an integer value, but a floating point one, meaning that each spell cast consumes not 1 durability, but ~0.3. Just be careful to not bash anything with it.
Still, if you intend to use it for prolonged periods of time, it is good to have Repair Powder in quick-select. Each use will replenish the staff's durability completely, which grants you another 13 casts of the most powerful staff in the game, so actual Powder consumption is fairly low. Don’t use Bracing Knuckle Ring, better save that ring slot for something more useful, like the Southern Ritual Band.
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As you can see, 13 casts is still not too big a number, so don’t go off firing weak but plentiful spells like Soul Arrow from it. In ds2, the more powerful a spell, the better it scales with the staff's AR. For example, Soul Arrow deals 50 + 0.87*(staff's Magic AR), while Crystal Soul Spear deals 600 + 2.0*(staff's Magic AR). This means that there will be little difference if you cast Soul Arrow using the Lizard Staff or the Staff of Wisdom, but when casting Crystal Soul Spear, that difference will be night and day.
And Azal's staff, of course, is the most powerful of them all. Even at its lowest requirements of 35 INT / 18 FTH, it has the same Dark AR as Dark Sunset Staff, and it only keeps getting stronger with more investment in Dark, leaving even dark-infused Sunset Staff behind. If we compare it to the Magic Staff of Wisdom, by the time we get to its required 50 INT, the Azal's staff already far outclasses it, not to mention that you can used Azal's staff at 35 INT, whole 15 levels earlier than Staff of Wisdom.
Azal's Staff is for strong spells only, and with those strong spells, even at its 13 casts limit, it can serve you better than the usual meta staves.
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Next, cast speed. 15 is indeed terrible in usual circumstances, but if a dedicated spellcaster switched to this staff from their usual catalyst of choice, they would notice that their cast speed hasn’t suffered too much, not nearly to the point that a jump from 140 to 15 would suggest. There are several reasons for this.
One, cast speed only affects the delay before the cast, i.e. the part where the character holds the catalyst to their forehead and mumbles wordlessly. Once that part ends and the actual casting animation starts, the speed of that animation is fixed, cast speed doesn’t affect it.
Two, cast speed seems to be additive rather than multiplicative. The precise way it works has not been found yet, but roughly speaking, the stat Cast Speed is a flat multiplier of the spell’s in-built cast speed. If you have 200 CS, you cast 2x faster. The catalyst’s cast speed just adds to it on top. So, if you have 231 CS and a 140 CS catalyst, you get 371 combined CS, or 3.71x faster casts. Consequently, if you have 231 CS and a 15 CS catalyst, you get 246 combined CS, or 2.46x faster casts. As such, fully outfitted Azal’s staff is comparable to Witchtree Branch without any CS-boosting gear.
Which is why 15 CS is, while unfortunate, ultimately not that big of a deal.
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Lastly, spell uses. Having a quarter of normal spell uses is not easy, but it can be played around.
As a start, having at least 50 ATN will not only greatly serve your cast speed, but also give you many spell slots, which can be filled with duplicate spells to replenished the missing uses. Equipping Southern Ritual Band+2 or Black Witch Hat will give even more slots. In general, different headwear can help in different ways. Zullie’s hat gives slots, Saint’s Hood and the like give +1 spell use to every equipped spell, Crown of the Old Iron King will restore at least 1 spell use or 20% of all uses at most every 2 minutes. Combine all these ways to increase spell uses in a way you find most suitable.
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As you can see, Azal’s Staff requires very careful and meticulous considerations, but that doesn’t mean it should be dismissed outright. In fact, the lowest character level needed to use it effectively is just 80, though it shines brighter and brighter with higher levels.
Indeed, this staff is unfit for the inexperienced.
- Anonymous
This staff is amazing since it doesn't retroactively reduce your max spell uses if it isn't directly in your hand. Meaning if Azal's staff would reduce spell usages from 6->2, you can start with another staff and 6 usages, shoot 4 and then switch to Azal's to fire the last 2 charges with much greater damage, circumventing the main downside.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
So, it's like a shittier version of the tin crystallization catalyst drom ds1? The catalyst I never used despite less downsides than this one. I'll stick with the black witch staff.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Theoretically good for one-shot spells, maybe along with tearstone ring hypermode?
- Anonymous
Basically every single attribute except damage sucks. Absurdly low durability, takes away 3/4s of your spells, can't be infused, high requirements, and a relatively high weight for a staff. The damage is easily the best in the game, but it doesn't at all make up for the taking 3/4s if your spells, let alone everything. It makes it so incredibly niche that it's basically unusable in every scenario except for ultra glass cannon builds. It would probably be way better if it was actually able to use climax, the only spell that actually synergizes with it.
- Anonymous
So this thing is basically a high risk high reward staff? Might as well be a roulette on a stick.
A little fact Azal is Arabic word it means 'eternity' making it mean eternity staff.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
honestly this is my favorite staff for only 2 reasons, the first being i (usually) play a lvl 499 sorcerer so this cutting down on spell uses and cast speed is a great limiter so i can get some real challenges again in pvp, plus winning makes me feel greater with the "fit for the inexperienced" bit reminding me to never stop dueling mfs to make future and past me proud for not leaning on just spells
also this thing roids crystal sorceries the **** up on top of engraved gauntlets lmfao 4.0 weight is more than worth it
4
+15
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