Earth Damage

Another question about Earth Damage bound to a weapon (I looked through the forums with Search but couldn't find anything useful).

The manual says Earth Damage negates armor.

Yes?


Yes, I'm the kind of guy that reads manuals.

yes it does.. armor is resistance to physical attack and not elemental. to have armor vs earth damage or any other elemental type you need to have +elemental armor bonus

In the guide, I believe that's reference to the spell Obsidian Flame which ignores the armor of an opponent.

Skills/spells that use certain types of damage can ignore armor or have armor penetration, but when applied to weapons it does not contain that same trait (for example, lots of Air magic spells have 25% armor penetration, but using a shocking weapon or Conjure Lightning does not add the bonus trait of 25% armor penetration.)

Ah, that cleared things up, thanks.

So there's not really a valid reason to have elemental damage, except for PvE monsters vulnerable to a specific elemental attack or PvP players with resistances to physical attacks?

It bypasses any mods that give +armor to anything besides the element your using, (or +armor to all elemental damage)

So, for example not many people use Geomancer's armor so having earth damage will make all those people running around in Judges, Pyromancers, Aeromancers, etc, etc, etc. less effective without much risk of running into the counter to your damage.

*hugs his Ebon hurtstick*

not sure this in 100% correct. as i understand this and i could be wrong

if you are a fire elemtalist and you attack a warrior that has armor + resistance to earth than 100% of the fire damage will go through the armor because you have no resistance to this type..

with Air getting the 25% armor piercing and you are fighting someone with Air resistant armor your attack will still go through becasue you are piercing the resistance for 25% of its resistance.

Like i said i could be wrong but thats the way i understand it. the manual says that armor has no resistance to elemental damage? that is the solo reason to apply a elemental type damage to your weapon. the only thing that armor is good for that is non-elemetnal is for physical attack. Does this make sense to anyone else? or im i confusing myself here?

if this is not the case why bother adding any elemental resistance to yoru armor at all?

Example: a warrior has on a 50AC basic armor set and the other one has on a 80AC basic armor set (basic is physical resistance armor) the elementalist cast Fire Storm on both of them. both warriors are hit for the same damage.

Armor protects against all damage (besides spells that ignore armor period). Certain armors have bonuses. Some add resistance to physical attacks, some add resistance to elemental attacks, some add resistance to holy attacks, etc.

so why are there weapon upgrades that change the damage type of your weapon? what purpose do they serve in the game?

Certain enemies have weaknesses against certain elements. Plus enemies in PvE and PvP can have strong defenses against physical damage. Switch it up a little and you can catch them off guard.

To use conjure flame/frost/lighting, which adds up to +13 dmg per HIT, you have to use a weapon of same elemental damage type.

yes this part i understand but this is the only common reason i can see the reason for having a weapon that has a elemental upgrade on it.

Because it works like this. Say you have a Warrior with 80AL, and +15 versus physical attacks. If you're attacking him with just physical damage, he effectively has an AL of 95. However, if you were attacking him with a weapon that did Earth elemental damage (An Ebon whatever), he wouldn't get that +15, because its Earth elemental damage, not physical damage. So he'd have 80 AL.

So basically, elemental attacks let you get around the bonus resistances something may have. (Ie. An elementalist in 60 AL Pyromancer robes has 75 AL versus Fire attacks, and 60 AL versus everything else.)

That make sense?

To verify, this is exactly right, but a lot of people are confused by it.
We have a clarification of damage types in our FAQ, but maybe people need more clarification about how to use elemental weapons to their advantage? Give us feedback so we can improve the FAQ.

(I've come across this question three times today, and I thought we had enough info about this topic up already. Apparently we don't.)

Since this topic is up...

Is it worth having elemental damage on melee weapons for general use? And don't bring pvp into this answer, I'm asking for pve. My warrio has a firery dragon sword atm, found a butterfly sword with earth damage today on monk. better damage on the weapon but is it worth switch over to? Is fire better than earth in pve? water? air? Does anyone know what your gonna get the best overall use out of?