Magic VS Elemental Shards

BriarFoxy - Raging Tide

I was pondering whether to use Elemental shards like Rubies and others for damage on a weapon instead of Magic (Sapphire) shards.
I was questioning what a Magic shard does so I wrote a ticket to support to define the items.
My Question was:
Does a Flawless Sapphire Shard (Magical Attack + 25) give +25 attack on each element or +25 divided between all 5 elements?

My thinking was that Magic is an attack against a character's elemental or magic resistance.

First I had to restate my question 5 times before support would even start to give me a straight answer.
The answer they gave was double speak babble and they had no clue how it worked so I told them that they were pathetic and to make a game but do not know how it works creates a really bad situation and it a wonder that the game even work at all (They Love me now).

Now reading some of these posts leads me to believe that Elemental shards do Melee damage and not elemental damage which does not make sense to me.

By looking at the results of your testing (No shards/Elemental shards/ Magic shards) tells me that perhaps a Flawless Sapphire Shard (Magical Attack + 25) would give +25 to each of the 5 elements (25+25+25+25+25=125) making it more than a Flawless Ruby Shard (Fire Attack + 50).


To further the investigation I am wondering if sharding armor with elemental stones like a Flawless Ruby Shard (Fire Defense + 66) would give more fire protection against a boss that had high Fire attack? But this would require a whole set of armor just for that type of boss.

I find it hard to play this game when I do not know how the add-ons effect the stats before you go and add them which makes it very expensive if make a wrong assumption.
So at best if I do not want to spend a lot of time testing I will have to make an educated GUESS so I can play the game and not have to do Beta testing all day.

Mayfly - Dreamweaver

Elemental shards are good only for whacking on stuff that's physical immune, and adds nothing to magic attacks. For casters, it's sapphires all the way. See the Wiki.

Sakubatou - Sanctuary

BriarFoxy - Raging Tide wrote: »

My Question was:
Does a Flawless Sapphire Shard (Magical Attack + 25) give +25 attack on each element or +25 divided between all 5 elements?

First I had to restate my question 5 times before support would even start to give me a straight answer.

First off, this thread is 3 years old and responding to is a necro which is against forum policy. If a thread hasn't been responded in within the last 30 days best to start your own thread rather than bury a response on the third page of a dead thread amidst other discussion where no one will find it.

Second... wow. No wonder they had to ask you to restate your question so many times. You can read the skill descriptions to find out how your attacks work, or you can use the pwpedia-Damage that Mayfly linked, or your can do a google search or forums search and find prolly 50 threads on the subject.

I'll just give you an example though:

Cyclone
Summon an immense cyclone around the enemy, inflicting metal damage equal
to your base magic attack plus 100% of weapon damage plus 1372.6. Has a 92%
chance to reduce the enemy's movement speed by 40% for 8.0 seconds.

No element is assigned to your magic damage until you select a skill. Look at your character screen (hit c) and the magical attack value, prolly something like 8345-9615. Your weapon damage is what is printed as the magic attack range on the weapon itself, so with an r8 weapon+5 it'd be 814-1048. This skill does (8435+814) to (1048+9615) damage as metal damage.

If you look at Plume Shot, it uses your magic attack values but deal it as physical damage.

If you look at another classes skill like Pyrogram it uses the magic attack values and deals it as fire damage.

Its not the shards or class that dictate the element of the damage, its the skill. Adding something like a ruby shard would not increase your magic attack damage and so would not increase the damage the skill dealt. The fire damage of a ruby shard would only effect melee attacks from that weapon.

...

Now, the reason sapphires are so preferred is sapphire add + magic attack to our weapon damage. That r8 weapon with its value of 814-1048 would become 839-1073 with a +25 sapphire shard. Our base magic attack is composed of weapon multipliers. Every 100 magic our base magic attack is increased by 100% of our weapon value, so if you have 400 magic and you add a +25 magic shard to your weapon damage that gets multipled 4x. If you have Spirit's gift that adds 60% to your weapon damage then you get 25 x .6 more damage, also. In the end, that sapphire shard gets multiplied several times.

Kniraven - Lost City

Omfg at the sheer amount of freaking ****** in this thread.
I think I'm having an aneurysm. I'm surprised i didn't seizure or go into shock as result of stupidity overload....


1.) Element shards only effect auto-attack melee damage.

2.) Element shards will not allow you to attack through physical immunity as they are additive on top of your regular physical damage and do not come into play at all if your normal attacks have no effect.

3.) All magic attacks fall under a categorical element. Most often this elemental damage is purely a result of your own magic attack. To say that +50 magic attack gives you 50 to each element is incorrect and stupid.

Whatever magical attack type you are using receives it's damage from your magic attack stat with possibly an additive amount of the same type from the skill.

4.) Garnets do not affect plumeshot.

Clergywoman - Raging Tide

there are basically two options for an endgame cleric.
sapphire shards for stronger heals and attacks, and
-3 channeling for faster casting - support spells can never be fast enough. b:chuckle
a combination of both can be seen often on weapons of indecisive clerics.

citrine shards are viable options for squishy clerics that are far from endgame, of course.

Aeliah - Dreamweaver

Clergywoman - Raging Tide wrote: »

there are basically two options for an endgame cleric.
sapphire shards for stronger heals and attacks, and
-3 channeling for faster casting - support spells can never be fast enough. b:chuckle
a combination of both can be seen often on weapons of indecisive clerics.

citrine shards are viable options for squishy clerics that are far from endgame, of course.

Ditto. I personally chose -3% shards, and I've never regretted it. The -channel on r9rr gear, combined with the -20% channeling on magic shell, means you can fire off attack and heal spells incredibly fast, overwhelmingly your enemies and pulling back your allies from the brink of death.

Should qualify though that sapphire gems/-3% channeling gems are for weapon only. In armor you can put hp gems, or physical defense gems, or more endgame shards like Diamond of Dragon or Jade of Steady Defense.

Sakubatou - Sanctuary

Aeliah - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Ditto. I personally chose -3% shards, and I've never regretted it. The -channel on r9rr gear, combined with the -20% channeling on magic shell, means you can fire off attack and heal spells incredibly fast, overwhelmingly your enemies and pulling back your allies from the brink of death.

Should qualify though that sapphire gems/-3% channeling gems are for weapon only. In armor you can put hp gems, or physical defense gems, or more endgame shards like Diamond of Dragon or Jade of Steady Defense.

Keeping on with the necro'd thread but I found this interesting. Barb, BM, and Sin forums beat the "which shard" threads to death but they're reasonably uncommon in cleric forums.

I appreciate your perspective because I know you're a beast, but I'd always considered clerics to have "fast enough" channeling since most of our skills are 1-2 seconds channel times, but we lack dph. With some of the 650-750 magic builds, that +100 on an Icebourne gem becomes +770 mag attack (7x magic multipliers and lvl 10 spirits).

I also found it interesting you called JoSD more endgame than garnets. Obviously they're better at cutting magic damage, but that's not something we're too weak at, and Garnets should flat out beat JoSD against phys attacks. Not to mention how many skills ignore def levels nowadays. There is just this mythos that JoSD are the best in every situation in PWI.

Eoria - Harshlands

Sakubatou - Sanctuary wrote: »

I also found it interesting you called JoSD more endgame than garnets. Obviously they're better at cutting magic damage, but that's not something we're too weak at, and Garnets should flat out beat JoSD against phys attacks. Not to mention how many skills ignore def levels nowadays. There is just this mythos that JoSD are the best in every situation in PWI.

There's only like...four attacks that bypass def levels? o.o;;

In any case, tbh, it's not only phys damage you have to worry about at end-game.

ovenusarmanio

moved this to it's on thread, in the future please do not necro threads. thanks.