i had same question, now im at 130 and best advice i can give you is to use onehand+catalyst to get decent damage, you can put gems (dont remember which one) in belt, rings, catalyst and amulet for decreasing transfer time and put one rage spender like bleeding edge or something like that. For now, there is no really reason to use pure mage builds with staff, cuz hybrids much more effective

The damage on your staff does not increase the damage of your spells, so it doesn't matter what number is on it. The damage of the staff affects only default attack damage (left click). It used to affect spells as well at some point of early access but they butchered it for some reasons and didn't compensate on flat damage affixes either. That's why any other spell build than ailments suck balls. Hopefully it will get fixed some day.

damage on the staff is irrelevant ...

.... added dam in sockets and stats are what counts on staffs ....

Staff is pretty horrible at the moment. I tried to make a Basic attack Staff build. Damage scales horribly.

Staff only gets 3 sockets. If you want more spell damage, get an one-hand and catalyst = 6 sockets.

they really need to buff Staff.

yeahh , they need buff staff , add new basic implicit : spell damage or whatever , the flat on the staff should go on skill spell or something like that ,