Staff of the Dreaded Gaze - Thoughts on usefulness and value?
 

Looking for community/veteran input and feedback on this item's usefulness and worth, it seems pretty baller but is it truly?

if that's the one with clicky Fear - my necro had it on live, and decided it wasn't worth it.
Played with it for a day or two and then sold it.
The cast time is too long to be truly helpful. You never know when your current fear is going to drop, and necro snares don't last that long, and overall i prefer to be either sitting medding or moving around to avoid adds/stay in range of target, rather than standing casting this thing.

It's a lot of mana saved for certain styles and today I saw one for 20k in EC Tunnel. That seems like a pretty nice deal to me.

correction - somehow I thought it was 12 sec cast time, and no other stats. (is a there a similar item like that?)
with 6 INt 40 mana and 7 sec cast - its actually pretty nice ;)
I had mine on LIVE when it was already late PoP, so I had better things equipped - like a Book with FT3 on it

Obviously the statistics are quite meaningless compared to the real utility of the item which is the Fear clicky.

It also looks pretty badass, it seems kind of like the poor necro's epic :p

For a mid-level Necro I think this is a good and useful staff. It is not only mana-free fear, it also frees a spell slot. The stats on the staff are in line with what a mid-level Necro would want and the staff looks cool.

As a 60 Necro I'd consider this a somewhat useful utility item at best.
The Positives:
* Mana free fear
* Frees a spell slot
* Staff looks cool
Negatives:
* Running out of mana is very rarely an issue
* Running out of HP IS an issue, and thus the stats on this staff suck at high level. I personally use a Staff of the Waterwalker, with 10 INT and 100 HP.
* Potentially frees a spell slot, but at high levels, fear will be used much less often than at low levels and will probably be memmed less than half the time.

So is it baller? For a level 35 Necro, pretty much (but unaffordable and uncampable). For a level 60 Necro, not really.

Bottom line, I'd kind of like to have one, but I'd never pay 20K plus for it in million years. I'd camp it an a whim, now and then, and have done so (but not with my Necro because of the loss of VS faction). Ultimately, I consider this a nice twink item, or a good item for someone for whom looks count a whole lot.