Look at he text, I bolded and enlarged the keyword: Equipped creature has ", : This creature deals 1 damage to target creature or player" and "Whenever a creature is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, untap this creature." While the staff does give both abilitys they are actually independent of each other, evidenced by the quotation marks surronding both phrases, if they relyed on each other they would be in quotion marks together
But the real value comes from the reprints
This doesnt count as your Free Roll for the turn
There are several characters and several key moments
Oh, and when it comes to defenders buying you time to build up to when you can establish dominance via combo or control, nothing is better than these guys because they give you a card to keep digging to find that needed mana, combo piece, or removal
Farhaven Elf + Wood Elves Wood Elves is generally better than Farhaven Elf, since it can fetch nonbasics and even puts lands into play untapped