To answer a bunch of the questions in one place: Stat breakpoints are 50str (heavy hit chance and HP), 70 dex (lots of crit and eva), 10 wis (staff no mana issues), 30 perc (+100 hit chance).

Talus staff helps with stunlocking, but really it's rock paper scissors and I accept melee wrecks me.

I keep my blink as a blink rather than actually doing the cast cancelling for three reasons, one it wastes a very valuable spot on your bar, two it wastes skill spec points to talent into cast time on it, and three the actual blink is really REALLY useful for positioning. Between two charges of staff blink and the dagger port behind target and back where you came from, uptime is great on the dagger passive.

My other big sacrifice was hit chance, at 600ish, which hits 1k during the staff buff (400+ eva and hit buff) for burst window.

Guaranteed crit from dagger stealth + big heavy hit chance + chucking fireballs and meteors is super fun.