Houseguest slots are limited, so if you are looking for an 'active pub' feel, you have to kind of 'fake' it with other items like target dummies, soul shriven, and undaunted trophies.
As for overall ideas, you might want to check out existing builds via the in game 'Home Tours', or the addon EHT Housing Hub. Housing Hub actually lets you search on keywords like 'tavern' so it could be very useful in this case.
If you use discord, you can also check around for some of the Housing Related discord servers out there like Housefolio, and housing guild related servers. You'll be able to view tons of builds, and possibly have access to a lot more builders via the discords.
If you use twitch you can also try hopping into some of the housing related eso streamers to ask in chat.
TBH, I have never understood why the ability had that property. It definitely feels like a relic from an ancient age.
Because it was; before hybridization, ZOS toyed with classes and sets getting 1-2 skills with dynamic scaling or ignoring armor. This was also before CP 2.0, which was very hybrid unfriendly. Back then, you lost like 4k penetration, 11% magical damage, 20% direct, in addition to not having the right resource/damage/crit, so any skill that didn't match your side of the coin, hit like a wet noodle.
With update 5.0.5, the same year as the Javelin change, they gave dynamic scaling for Sorc on Streak, NB's Summon Shade, DK's FoO, etc. I bet this was the year they made the Storm Fist monster set have the shock portion ignore armor, so stamina players could actually use it (this effect was removed with hybridization/cp2.0 at some point).
They noted in update 5.2.5 that the armor ignore for Javelin was to give the abilities a unique auxillary effect.
Largely never noticed or bothered about these, but I've always loved the look of the Dark Elf staff, I was so disappointed when I first found it and asked about the style.
Looking through them now, the Breton staff is also really nice.
They look awesome and we got other arenas and trial styles, such as Maelstrom's. I always wanted to get those staff styles, for instance. What do you think?