A staff is a shaft of wood as tall or slightly taller than you are, sometimes crowned with a decorative crystal or some other arcane fetish. Fashioned either as a quarterstaff or a walking staff, it is also imbued with arcane enchantments so that you can channel your spells through it. Unlike other implements, a staff also functions as a melee weapon (treat it as a quarterstaff ).
When used in melee, a staff applies its enhancement bonus and critical damage dice just as a weapon does. However, you must be a member of a class that can use a staff as an implement to apply the enhancement bonus of a staff to the attack rolls and the damage rolls of any of your powers from that class that have theimplement keyword and to use a staff ’s properties and powers. If your class can’t normally use staffs as implements, or if you’re not using an implement power, a staff is simply a magic quarterstaff.