Elemental Shards

kairos716

I was, for the 3+ years of playing an archer, under the impression that elemental shards (fire,wood,metal,ire,etc.) did nothing for the bow(and arrows) and that Blazing Arrow was the only elemental buff(maybe frostblade too?) that applied to our bow and arrows.
However, lately I have been noticing that a few 10x archers have been sharding their bows with elemental gems up to g11 gems. In my mind I came to 4 conclusions:
1) They're bored of the game and just playing around with the gems and/or like the glow from them.
2) People don't bother to read forums/PWpedia anymore or don't really care for maximum damage output
3) There's some new information/change about elemental shards that I have not heard/read about and they're actually "good" now.
4) They're just either ignorant or stupid or both.

So, which one is it?

Walpurga - Dreamweaver

1) maybe
2) Most likely
3) Nope. As **** as they always are
4) Addressed in point 2

Another possibility: They got perfect elemental shards from AEU and are using them as placeholders.

kairos716

Using them as placeholders is a possibility too I supposed but then wouldn't putting flawless or immaculate garnets be more helpful as place holders? It still makes me cringe when I see g11 elemental shards on a g16 bow or even worse a r9 bow...

Walpurga - Dreamweaver

Free AEU shard bro

Cheaper than flawless garnets, important when you're dishing out 2 billion coins for gear

Decus - Dreamweaver

You're better off with flawless garnets, but people don't want to look poor I guess >.>

PotatoHeadQR - Dreamweaver

Deity or gtfo

LodeJunior - Archosaur

Elemental Shards do add elemental damage to melee damage which is consistent with what was documented and Bow+arrow is classified as melee damage as well. I have proven that it works on my sin's dagger having elemental shards' attack on physical immune mobs in SOT and Lunar. However, the damage added does not go through the dex damage multiplier but is affected by attack levels.

Badonkajonck - Archosaur

kairos716 wrote: »

Using them as placeholders is a possibility too I supposed but then wouldn't putting flawless or immaculate garnets be more helpful as place holders? It still makes me cringe when I see g11 elemental shards on a g16 bow or even worse a r9 bow...

I have a an element shard in my bow purely for place holding. It's an incomparable ruby shard, lol. Reason for it was working on getting a cube neck at the time. Working on getting a better one.

Walpurga - Dreamweaver

LodeJunior - Archosaur wrote: »

Elemental Shards do add elemental damage to melee damage which is consistent with what was documented and Bow+arrow is classified as melee damage as well. I have proven that it works on my sin's dagger having elemental shards' attack on physical immune mobs in SOT and Lunar. However, the damage added does not go through the dex damage multiplier but is affected by attack levels.

Condensed Thorn/wizard's frostblade are both affected by Garnets