This shit remains some of the most creative animation on all of youtube, bar none. I've never watched one of these and not felt like, amazed at what their team is able to come up with.
Also god I hope someone makes a 'block staff mod'
okay now i can't stop thinking about this hypothetical mod. some ideas under the cut:
making most of the staffs do what they do in the animation would not be feasible, of course. but some things that i think would be straightforward and useful:
iron pushes blocks like a piston. clicking on one face of a block with an iron staff acts just like if a piston had pushed that face of that block, subject to all the same constraints (10 blocks maximum, can't push obsidian, etc). this is more or less what obsidian did in the animation but i think iron is more thematic.
slime is the opposite of iron, pulling a row of blocks. unlike sticky pistons, i would want this to actually pull the entire row rather than just one block.
redstone powers a block for a short time as if a button attached to that block was pushed, no surprises here.
any wood planks would allow clicking on any kind of wooden block and changing it to match the style of wood the staff has. granite, andesite, and diorite could work similarly.
diamond destroys blocks in the animation, and i think it's reasonable to keep that, but i would probably have it dig in a straight line (one click destroys maybe ten blocks). netherite was a stronger version of diamond in the animation, so it can do the same thing, probably digging out a 3x3x10 mineshaft.
hay bales could maybe breed animals? i think that some staffs should click on mobs instead of blocks and this is an obvious way to do that
magma blocks mine and smelt things. that is, clicking a block with a magma staff drops the item that would be dropped by smelting that block. this is pretty similar to the animation.
there should be a staff that gives buffs to mobs and players, probably either lapis or gold. maybe lapis gives combat buffs and gold gives mining speed and movement buffs.
there could also be a staff that works like a reusable ender pearl (or like terraria's rod of discord), probably purpur? but could also be end stone. maybe both exist but the end stone one has lower durability or shorter range.
some other materials that should get staffs are cobblestone, dirt/grass, sand, emerald, and quartz. but i'm not sure what they would do.
i think it would make sense to limit staffs to only being "material" blocks (no crafting table staff or chest staff or brewing stand staff).