What is the point of using staves/wands?

I have a 50 lvl mage, with skills prismatic bolt lv10, fire/ice/shock brand lv8, hailstorm lv10. My question is, equipping a staff/wand doesn't affect the damage amount I inflict with prismatic bolt or hailstorm. So what is the point of using staves and wands? Is there a reason for using a staff/wand other than Staff Mastery and Wand Chaos?

Solution 1:

A Prismatic Bolt Embermage build is intentionally designed to not be gear reliant. Staves and wands are important in builds which use spells whose damage is based on a percentage of weapon DPS.

With that said, you can still receive some of the bonuses offered by the weapons or in fact use them to build up charge when mana is low. You do still receive all the side bonuses offered by your weapon which can make a huge difference in combat versus tougher foes.

Solution 2:

Also wand + shield has more survival chances for elite or veteran. As you get block and more defense. In my case, I'm using wand + shield and my dps is more balanced atm 1.7-1.8k and 28% crit chance. While if I use a staff, my dps would be bigger spread (tried it with a stronger staff, and my dps was 1.5-3.1k, same crit chance.

Anyway in elite I'm now (with shield) not 1 shotted xD