Staff/ElA: Skippable attacks?

Pretty much as the title says. Working on a new character, and trying to determine how I want to build it, and all the attacks look nice, but seven on my bar seems a little hefty. As usual, I've got a few theories, but want to know where they collide with people's experiences. Of the seven, the three that seem like they may even be "maybes":

Mercurial Blow - Looks weaker numerically than the other single-target hits, but I'm not sure that the other three are enough to keep things seamless, even with Guarded Spin tossed in occasionally for additional defense.

Innocuous Strikes - Guarded Spin is nice for the Defense boost, and it seems like the Perfection system would demand judicious use of Eye of the Storm for maximum effectiveness. Hence, Innocuous ends up as "the other AoE", even though it looks quite powerful.

Eye of the Storm - Contrary to the above, if I have Perfection backwards, and it's more about keeping up high combo levels than using the "spenders", I could keep the two cones and leave EotS out.

Any suggestions?

I took all of he powers in both sets on my Staff/Ela. You'll find that you have a 4-power ST chain and a 3-power AoE chain.

Now, like many sets, the low DMG, fast ST attack is 'skippable', although it is a nice way to generate a quick Combo Point and/or finish off a mob with just a sliver of health left. The other ST attacks are long-ish in their animations, so 1 fast attack is kind of nice. The other thing about M. Blow, which made me keep it over an Epic or Patron PP attack, is that it obviously doesn't require weapon re-draw. I find redraw a very annoying slowdown in my attack chain, so if one of my 3-4 core powers required redraw every time, I would hate it.

Innocuous Strikes is a solid dmg, wide-ish cone, and really helps Staff shine at its strongest suit, which IMO is AoE dmg. I don't think you'll want to skip this one.

Eye of the Storm shouldn't be skipped.

On the Ela side, I am thinking about respec-ing out of Power Surge, only because I hardly ever use/need it, and I loathe powers with crashes. Not sure what I would take instead, since it is only single-slotted (and a nice mule for my Shield Wall IO). I never have any END issues, so I certainly wouldn't take Superior Conditioning. Otherwise, i'm happy with all of the powers in this set.

That's my 2 inf. I am sure other people with some Staff/Ela experience will offer their opinions as well.

You can skip either Mercurial or Precise, but I took Precise on my Staff/ElecA. The only other primary you could skip is Taunt, but that's a personal preference thing. You really want everything else.

On Electric Armor, Power Surge is entirely skippable on an IO build. But you will want everything else.

Honestly, you don't need an epic pool at all. Just not necessary. Your forms and secondary cover your END needs and by focusing slots on your primary/secondary, you'll easily be able to soft cap M/S/L and even E/N, while still maintaining huge resists. Don't forget you've got a damage aura in there also.

I will take advantage of this already open thread to ask for advice for alpha:
Spiritual or Agility?
I heard /Elec love spiritual. More heal and recovery more often is good.
Thanks!

I took Agility.

It provides almost the same +Rech at higher tiers, and with IOs, it was fairly easily to get enough +Rech for Perma-hasten (although I do use a couple Purple sets in my build). With the +endmod from Agility, not only do I NEVER have end issues, I can basically bottom out mobs end bars with a single Power Sink. Throw in +Defense over +Disorient from Spiritual, and I think Agility is the clear choice for Ela.

Agility all the way. I actually was stupid/persistent (your choice!) enough to unlock 4 different Alpha's to T3. Agility gave me the best bang for my buck out of all of them.

Ah herding...don't have much use for that but I get it now.

Staff's best single target chain is precise-serpent's-precise-sky. Staff's aoe chain, for approximately the same amount of recharge, is guarded-innocuous-guarded-eye. As you can see, the only skippable thing in a high end staff build is mercurial blow. On my staff/elec, I took it anyway as a place to put kinetic combats and also as a big help to my chain when exemplaring. Your mileage may vary on that.

It feels like a lot of the pre-release talk of staff being best on stalkers has everyone severely undervaluing innocuous strikes. As I've said before, it's basically a good single target attack that happens to hit five targets in a giant cone. With the fury of the gladiator proc in guarded spin the aoe you can put out with staff is bordering on ludicrous. It would be a shame to skip a big part of that.

I totally agree that epic pools are redundant for this combination, but as for the alpha I will say one major advantage of going scrapper instead of brute is that musculature is just beautiful for staff/elec. For those who are addicted to taunt auras, well as of today you can have that too.

The only thing I skipped in Staff is Mercurial Blow. It seems helpful in the lower levels, but as you get higher and you unlock your other powers and gets some recharge you may not need it. Some people use it to slot Kinetic combat sets.

In Elec, I skipped the last power.