These always confuse me. And that’s a lot of skills in the game, so…
Like, random example, say I’m building a new character and I have a soldier who rolls on physical damage, i want to get maybe i dunno nightblade’s phantasmal blades or demolitionist’s grenado. High impact (phys damage and fire damage) and Heartseeker (+% bleeding but adds vitality damage) throw me off and I can’t help but feel it’d be a waste to use those since the vitality/fire damage would be a waste on me.
But then on my main character, a cold spellbreaker, I make good use of a maxed out blade spirit even though the skill itself does a ton of physical damage(as in, not “magic”, so on cunning not on spirit and most importantly not on cold which is what i go for).
Like, speaking of my main character, I build only towards cold damage, that’s bad right? I do play almost only multiplayer with friends though… Like some skill/skill enhancer i ignored in the nightblade tree go with poison damage as well, or the arcanist’s trojan shard does cold+lightning.
What’s everyone’s take on this? How do you approach building a new character in this regard?
It’s generally not worth it (and difficult too due to the limited pool of damage multipliers available) to build a character around one single damage type for the reasons you highlighted above. You are not taking advantage of the other damage types found on gears, skills and devotions.
You are better playing both around physical damage and fire damage at the same time, or bleeding + vitality or whatever else combination floats your boat.
Due to the sheer amount both in variety and quantity of skills/gears/devotions available, it’s also unlikely you will maximize all your skills’s damage. Max the ones that match your damage type, keep the the ones that don’t around for their utility, and leave the ones that don’t benefit you out.
Thanks!
What about dealing both spirit and cunning damage? Like physical+fire, is it less worth it than, say, fire+ice (they’re both on spirit) or is it not a big deal at all?
I’ve read people saying spirit and cunning not being worth it at all in spite of physique.
A little offtopic, maybe, on that note: considering hardcore and the above, do you put all points in physique or only most of them? And what if you go for physical+fire damage, you go for some cunning points in that case to help out with offensive ability and gear requisites?
Don’t you mostly want a damage type that you have a lot of resistance reduction for?
Don’t physical bonuses factor in before physical to elemental conversion? So they aren’t a waste? I wouldn’t avoid damage conversion to the damage type and resistance reduction sources that you have stacked.
It’s the other way around: conversion is applied before +%damagetype (except damage bonuses on the skill itself and its modifier chain). You always want to convert TO the type you have the most bonuses for.
Generally you want to only stick with one or two damage types.
With the exception, of course, of elemental damage which is in fact 3 types, but most modifiers as well as -resistance buffs amplify all three, making elemental quite powerful.
It is best to know which combinations are easily found on gear and/or devotions and stick with those combinations, for example: physical+pierce, cold+pierce, aether+chaos, aether+lightning, chaos+vitality, chaos+fire, chaos+vitality, cold+vitality, vitality+bleed, pierce+bleed. These may seem rather intuitive, generally elements which are specialized in by the same mastery tend to be found together (cold+pierce in NB or chaos+vit in OC), but there are some exceptions… for example cold and poison are very rarely found together on standard gear despite them being both NB elements.
In specific cases, physical+vitality is not going to combo well at all (I can only think of dread armor of azragor as the only piece which boosts both), so you’d best skip phantasmal blades.
Fire+physical has a few specific legendary pieces that are designed for such a build, but generally they are quite few. Also no constellations give fire and physical simultaneously. (fire+lightning is far more common); since grenade is mainly physical damage, you’d best stick with the main skill plus the modifier for +% crit damage, and leave ulzuin’s chosen alone (since it will convert 10% to fire whereas as a soldier you want physical damage)
In contrast cold+lightning has a whole set dedicated to it (Trozan’s set) and devotion (tsunami), as well as any gear which gives +elemental damage will also boost both elements. If you are using TSS, you can simply find gear with +element damage mods and then you can make good use of the substantial lightning damage TSS has.