To Ele Staff 5-8 or not.

Impossible to tell. I wouldn't mind a speed change, but can they even do that with the number of Estaves in existence (1-4 have to be included)? Can that really be done and applied to all instances by changing a single property of the Estaff object?

Yes, weapon speed is a property of the item type as a whole, rather than specific items. So they just have to change it on server & client, and everybody's existing weapons get slower.

Changing w.atk or other stats, that are specific to the item, can't be done as easily.