Nice mainly I just wanted to get people talking about it I've been playing for only. 6 month's Don't get me wrong It's my favorite style in the one I play the most.. I guess what I meant by defense Ark. Is the fact that there's 2 blades it seems that if you're not careful your BP can get drained pretty fast. I do love that you can hit with the other end of the blade even if it's not meant to be the intended strike. And I guess its lack of openers I guess would be In relation to the range. . And is far is the half swings I'll definitely take your word for it but it brings me to my original point that there's little to no Guide material on the staff. Every guide I found literally just skips over staff.
The increased defense arc on staff just means it's harder to backwhack and shoot in the ass than other styles.
The thing that drains your BP fast is getting interrupted in this patch. Staff itself is pretty tanky with higher damage than blue style. Just be patient and learn to perfect block and single hit spam = insta OP in this shit patch.
Some good halfswings are WA, SA and the side ones like A are fast too. To test the halfswing timing, hold a direction like WA or SA + reload and swing in the air. You can also test it on dummies.
What you want to do with staff is stay close at all times because range is literally staffs only real weakness and even that can be overcome if you're good at PBing. So stay close and carefully use halfswings and then occasionally (often after your opponent has tried to slap you and failed), you can unleash a big combo. It's currently in a better place than it was in the past where it was uber OP, now it is just slightly OP.
EDIT: 2 hit combos are powerful with staff as well, if you can swingblock well enough to avoid getting slapped close range. For example, WA+SD is good. Or SA+WD