Zhou yu dynasty warriors 6 weapons

Is the Staff just a bad weapon?

So, I'm only in Chapter 2, Rank 25, and unlocked the Padao, Longsword, Staff, Gauntlets, Spear, and Rings.

Usually I love Zhou Yu's weapon (the Staff) in almost every single Dynasty Warriors game out there, but my god, does this weapon feel insanely weak.

I have all of the weapons leveled up to 5 so far, and for the most part, they're all pretty decent damage wise, and being able to break enemies shields, but the Staff just isn't doing it for me so far.

This has got to be by far the weakest, and most useless weapon I've seen in this game so far.

It has almost Zero Potential for taking out groups of enemies, unlike almost every other single weapon, because you're stuck with really close distance combat (and I'm using the Range Gem +20% as of now), all the moves I end up using on officers just bounce me back, therefore delaying the shield break potential, I'm really not too sure what this weapon is actually supposed to be good at.

(And