Yea I don't expect to be able to make it to 60 with a Rod.
Turns out that yes Herbalist's Spade is very similar to Rod of Annihilation for the ratio. There is a 40 weapon damage cap on caster melee. it used to be 20. The game mechanics page on the wiki still says 20. However the RoA page says it's now 40.
So RoA is effectively a 40/40 one hander and Herbalists Spade is a 39/43 two hander. So Yes for min maxing this shitty str build, you would go RoA with something in the secondary slot that gives str.
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