Question about sharding weapons

MANray_ - Sanctuary

I apologize if this subject has been brought up before.

Since i started playing i've always sharded my weapons with aquamarine gems (adds wood damage) on the theory that since all of my damage is wood anyway, i would receive a greater bonus than using a saphire shard while being subject to the same elemental resistance reduction.

Recently i came upon a post on another thread where someone stated that elemental bonuses from elemental gems only apply to melee damage. I decided to test this with my old weapon and found out that neither phys or mag attack values are affected at all by elemental shards. Is the extra damage applied later on as a modifier or not at all? Does anyone know how this works? and lastly, is saphire really the only way to go when sharding magic weps?

thanks in advance for any attention you may give my post.

Peritia - Lost City

My understanding was the elemental gems would add a certain amount of damage to your attack, of the element and quantity described by the gem. As it's a bonus amount, it won't affect P.Atk or M.Atk.

While I believe the assessment that they do not affect magic is correct, I can't recall ever seeing proper statistical analysis to prove it. It would need two identical characters with identical weapons, one unsharded and one with elemental shards. If indeed they have no effect on casting, it should be fairly simple to observe and proven to less than the uncertainty from the gem within a few thousand casts.

Assuming this is correct, Sapphires really are the winner. They affect both spellcasting and pet healing. Garnet and Amber shards have uses for Foxform, but since you still need pet heal you'll often at best see them alongside sapphires.

tweakz

Slots on weapons are limited to 2. To get a significant raise in atk, it would take some expensive shards.

Suppose a mob has 7,573 HP, and you're hitting it for 1,982 and killing within 4 hits. You'd need at least 2424 per hit before you started killing in 3 hits. -That's 442 points to be divided up in 3 hits for a needed 147.33 to make a difference. This doesn't even factor in defenses or your pet's atk.

At your level, for the small amount of time you'd be using it, is it worth it?

MANray_ - Sanctuary

Thank you both for your answers. I think i'm going to have to test this myself. As i've already sharded my current weapon it should be easy enough to get some data from it as is, then purify it n get some more numbers and finally use a saphire to see if i definitively get better results with it. Think a couple of omas for each test would be enough?

I'm not too concerned about the effect sharding would have on my pet heal as already i'm overhealing most of the time, and the difference would only become a factor if tanking a boss is a touch n go thing. However to have better damage output is something i'd be interested in, not to mention aquamarines are significantly cheaper gems than saphires. You're right Tweakz, the difference doesn't amount to much at my level but (hopefully) i'll eventually reach a range at which it does.

I realize that general wisdom is usually right about this sort of things and that any testing i do will very likely only confirm it, still i think the effort is worth it.

Blancheneige - Heavens Tear

Well, since I had some time to loose and a level 5 wood shard taking up room in my inventory...

I got a wand with one socket. Wands are good to make damage tests because they have a very narrow damage spectrum.

So I went to see poor old Ape Dryad in the mountains near archo. Killed the poor thing 6 times. 3 times with an unsharded wand, and 3 times with the same wand with a +wood shard. I only used venom scarab, without debuff.

Without shard :
lowest damage : 6093
highest damage : 6136
average damage : 6116


With shard :
lowest damage : 6092
highest damage : 6136
average damage : 6115

Draw your own conclusions as to the effect of shards on magic attacks.