Regarding the staff, I was always under the assumption that when I deactivated it, the orbs would disappear instantly. If this is not the case, I never noticed it.
The rationale behind using the staff in a pulse-like fashion is saving magic. You activate it and turn if off right after hitting the enemy or if you miss badly. Reasoning here is that you can't hit the enemy in its invincibility frames, so it's not useful to keep the staff on during those times. When pulsing it, usually by the time you use the staff again, you should be able to hit the enemy again. This allows you to get more bang out of the staff.
The same actually goes with the lens of truth in using it in a pulse method.
Maybe for this boss, it may not hurt to take a few test runs just looking at its attack patterns and learning how to read the attacks to see when you can get your hits in. It almost seems more like an endurance battle than simple tanking, with distance attacks being more useful.
Well, I'm thinking the next quest should be a shorter one just to unwind a bit
Edited by pixcalibur, 14 August 2015 - 03:21 PM.