I'm usually all for lessening requirements on standard stuff like magian staff upgrades, but I agree with the people saying this doesn't really need an adjustment. I thought it would take me a while but after just a couple weeks I have all 40 for the three staves I care about at the moment without even really having to worry about it. And I started with a only a couple geodes a piece at update time.

As people have said, you just have to get a little more creative than just looking at the last high AH price and complaining about it. I logged on during my household chore periods and sat next to AH. Every 5 minutes or so I'd grab the keyboard and bid 1-2k on the ones I needed. I was staggered that for whatever reason there were many times this worked and I ended up paying less than 100k for each upgrade, which is not at all bad these days.