Take a look at the following staves. There is no way the unique Falling Sky is even gonna come close to my Endless Winter staff.
For one, the unique staff is locked to two single enchantments, no more can be added with Fallen Embers.
Second, the fixed enchantments are terrible. 7% of 100 focus (1 Homing Frost cast) = 7% bonus to Homing Frost.
If I exalt this weapon the bonus can go to 10%, which is still terrible. Even if I were to pool up to 200 focus, which puts me in significant danger by delaying my damage and leaving mobs alive and un-CC’d for longer, it’d be a single time 20% boost to Homing Frost followed by a 10% boost to the second cast.
In comparison, my plagued quality staff is providing a non-conditional 20% boost to rune damage. And even if you nerfed this by half, the Endless Winter staff would still be better for overall damage output, as the benefit can be used for lower cost spells without pooling focus.
Even more importantly, this is a single enchantment comparison. Plague quality crushes it even further if you compare the fact it has 3 more enchantments, both buffing my survival, focus gain, and damage on dodge if I can get some decent rolls.
Falling Sky’s second enchantment is worthless. If I’m casting a spell, with their long animation locks, my stamina has already regenerated to full by the time I come out of animation lock due to the long aftercast periods. So the 39% stamina refund is pointless/wasted.
Then there’s the fact that these rare unique weapons can roll terrible base stats. Look at the focus gain. It’s at the lowest tier of 6 focus per attack (compared to the upper tier of 10 for staff that my Endless Winter has), and this focus gain per attack cannot even be improved with exalting or fallen embers. The weapon was bricked the moment it dropped. Unique weapons should always roll the highest possible base stats.
Focus gain is pretty much EVERYTHING for caster builds. In 4 attacks one staff has generated 16 more focus without taking into account focus gain increase stats over Fallen Sky. This is almost a full lower tier spell cast.
The really bad enchantments wouldn’t be so terrible if, say, unique weapons instead allowed 4 gems+ 2 of their fixed enchantments (even though one enchantment is still worthless). And even worse, gem drop rates still feel super rare and uneven, so you’re not even guaranteed to get max life or max focus or increased x elemental damage available to slot in.