What's the Point of Elemental Damage on Physical Weapon?

[Gamebot]

E.Damage on P.Weapon is pretty common concept in many games, but I have not once used them in DOS2. I can't imagine myself changing weapons for different enemies because I'm too lazy. I only need either pure physical or pure magic damage because I can always chew throw weaker armor(physical/magic) and kill enemies before stronger(magic/physical) armor goes off. Does anyone use them in 4p play?

[Gamebot]

Main problem of E.Damage on P.Weapon is that there's always another pure P.Weapon with a rune slot. It makes my decision pretty simple - Just wait until legendary pure P.Weapon comes out and buy it.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1155398711
I'm not denying that E.Weapons can be effective in certain situations. I'm just too lazy to use them.

[Sai Kyouji]

Originally posted by Chosokabe Wariamu:

Yes. A fair point.I would agree the resistance/ healing problem is certainly one to consider. But I still see no particular harm in scraping off some magic armour points while I'm backstabbing with my rogue.

If the physical breaks first - well and good - if the magical falters, then it's just another tactical consideration - I'll be doing less damage (and healing some)...but doing damage nonetheless.
Rogue usually moves on after a first strike anyway.

Look, let's agree to disagree. I don't even know what you mean by seeing no harm when I already pointed out several harms to you. Maybe it's just preference at this point. If you like it, you can keep your point, alright?

As for me, Im tired of partly healing my enemies as I attack them, especially bosses with thousands of hp while my crit heals more than a hundred back each time I do a few hundreds.

The only good I see out of elemnetal damage EVER is the fact that if enemies have no magical damage, they act as piercing damage. But to be fair, when enemies have on magic armour, they would already be charmed by my Summoners. So it's all pointless.

Originally posted by Gamebot:

Main problem of E.Damage on P.Weapon is that there's always another pure P.Weapon with a rune slot. It makes my decision pretty simple - Just wait until legendary pure P.Weapon comes out and buy it.

Or better, wait till Divine Weapon comes out : D

[Chosokabe Wariamu]

Originally posted by Gamebot:

Main problem of E.Damage on P.Weapon is that there's always another pure P.Weapon with a rune slot. It makes my decision pretty simple - Just wait until legendary pure P.Weapon comes out and buy it.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1155398711
I'm not denying that E.Weapons can be effective in certain situations. I'm just too lazy to use them.

That pretty much sums it up I think. They might be the right tool for a certain job but they're certainly not a must have overall ( or indeed a must avoid!) :)

[Chosokabe Wariamu]

Originally posted by Sai Kyouji:

Originally posted by Chosokabe Wariamu:

Yes. A fair point.I would agree the resistance/ healing problem is certainly one to consider. But I still see no particular harm in scraping off some magic armour points while I'm backstabbing with my rogue.

If the physical breaks first - well and good - if the magical falters, then it's just another tactical consideration - I'll be doing less damage (and healing some)...but doing damage nonetheless.
Rogue usually moves on after a first strike anyway.

Look, let's agree to disagree. I don't even know what you mean by seeing no harm when I already pointed out several harms to you. Maybe it's just preference at this point. If you like it, you can keep your point, alright?

As for me, Im tired of partly healing my enemies as I attack them, especially bosses with thousands of hp while my crit heals more than a hundred back each time I do a few hundreds.

The only good I see out of elemnetal damage EVER is the fact that if enemies have no magical damage, they act as piercing damage. But to be fair, when enemies have on magic armour, they would already be charmed by my Summoners. So it's all pointless.

Originally posted by Gamebot:

Main problem of E.Damage on P.Weapon is that there's always another pure P.Weapon with a rune slot. It makes my decision pretty simple - Just wait until legendary pure P.Weapon comes out and buy it.

Or better, wait till Divine Weapon comes out : D

We're not fighting at all! :) - I see your good points & it may well be that our differences are marginal and purely preferential! Just trying to offer an alternate perspective. I'm certainly not so convinced by my own that I want to keep arguing them! - I do like Damashi's point about setting off surfaces though - i hadn't thought of it.

Best of luck & Regards!

[Sai Kyouji]

Setting off surface does like 50- damage ...

It was amazing in DSO1 but ...

[Chosokabe Wariamu]

Originally posted by Sai Kyouji:

Setting off surface does like 50- damage ...

It was amazing in DSO1 but ...

You certainly are persistant! and clearly not convinced :) - but not everything is about creating raw damage. Apart from the AOE utility there is the crowd control options afforded by shocked etc. and the various other strategic possibilities it offers. Still - the OP has his answers and formed his opinion. There's little to be gained continuing the investigation.

[Banana]

Setting off surface means... well, if you attack in closed range, means your own character would be inflicted damage as well.
And yes, a lot of times you heal your enemy, and seriously, there are many geo/pyro resistance 100%, rather just use air/water

[wendigo211]

Yeah, playing on tactician, setting off surfaces tends to hurt your meleers worse than your enemies (they have more HP and armor than you do). That's not to say it can't be good on a bow user, and the poison+ fire wand dual wield set up does pretty good damage (at least early on). But I don't want my axe wielder setting off poison explosions when he's in the blast radius.

[Nomad]

Elemental damage on physical weapons is bad as far as dealing damage goes, however, they can be mildly useful for setting oil aflame, shocking water ect at times. If you are talking about a weapon with rune slots i definently recommend going for the runes that add physical damage rather than the elemental runes. Picky, i know, but the physical runes scale with warfare and provide a stunning damage boost with high warfare.

[Sai Kyouji]

Originally posted by wendigo211:

Yeah, playing on tactician, setting off surfaces tends to hurt your meleers worse than your enemies (they have more HP and armor than you do). That's not to say it can't be good on a bow user, and the poison+ fire wand dual wield set up does pretty good damage (at least early on). But I don't want my axe wielder setting off poison explosions when he's in the blast radius.

You forgot setting the water you stand on in electricity lol That was the worse thing for me beside turning cursed blood into necrofire

[Banana]

I think mage kill my companion more efficient than enemies kill them.
How many times you use your dagger with fire cut those poison zombie or other stuff end up it become blow up and hurt your melee fighter too!
Using elemental damage just make things kinda messy, ooooo dont forget the curse fire!!!
I wonder why they dont do like... or put talent like "friendly fire off"

[Gamebot]

Originally posted by Vio Lau:

I think mage kill my companion more efficient than enemies kill them.
How many times you use your dagger with fire cut those poison zombie or other stuff end up it become blow up and hurt your melee fighter too!
Using elemental damage just make things kinda messy, ooooo dont forget the curse fire!!!
I wonder why they dont do like... or put talent like "friendly fire off"

This is why I'm using ranger in my party now ; 2H / Ranger / Pyro Geo / Aero Hydro. Both 2 mages are holding shield and pouring tons of spells with E.Affinity, and it becomes hazardous environment pretty quickly. Mages have high resitance, and 2H can use frost armor and warfare skills, but rogue really doesn't have place in this party. I put every grenade in 2H and every arrow in ranger, so I don't actually need to 'hit the floor' with elemental weapons to make fire floor or poison puddle.

I've tried some elemental weapons today... but... I don't know... Maybe it could be more effective in Lone Wolf play. I really can't understand what Larian was thinking when they make these elemental weapons.

Also 'Elemental Ranger' really doesn't work well for the same reasons we discussed above.

[Ashera]

If you're playing with lonewolf don't bother worrying about the elemental damage stat at all.
It's absolutely useless if you are by yourself or with one other.
However, if you use a group of 4 and go 2physical damagers and 2magic damagers, it simply helps gets the magic shields down. Why not ? No down side to it.

I just wish they made spells do like 30% damage to armor, and physical attacks do like 30% to magic armor. Just so having one mage and one melee isn't so pointless.

[xystrus]

Don't you love necro threads? I wanted to post a summary, because it seems like this topic confused some folks. In general, elemental damage on melee weapons is bad, because:

• In general, the elemental damage fills an effect slot that might have been filled by something else that might have been more useful to you, e.g. crit damage, initiative, or even more physical damage. If you're into gaming vendor saves, better to reload your saved game to roll some other property on the weapon (though on some weapons the magic damage may not be an optional roll). If the weapon always rolls with extra damage, but the type changes, the ideal case is to roll it with piercing damage. Again, this may not always be possible.
  
• In most cases, the extra damage is useless: It hacks off a few points of the target's magic armor. But unless your party is doing split damage (i.e. some do physical AND some do magic, which is usually a bad idea because it's less efficient), or the target had no magic armor to start with, you're never going to get through the magic armor, so the magic damage has no practical effect. You're just slowing down how long it will take to kill the target with physical damage.
  
• Your target is much more likely to have resistance, immunity, or even healing from magic damage than from physical damage. So it can actually be harmful, healing your target for some of the damage you did.
  
• You're melee; if your magic damage ignites a surface your target is standing in, you're probably going to take damage too because you're standing in the same surface. Later in the game / at higher difficulty levels this damage will probably be worse for you than for your target.

The only times the extra damage can actually help you is when your target already had no magic armor (in which case you'd have been better off having your mages control/kill it), or when it can create a surface you're immune to (e.g. you're undead and it's poison--but watch out for your target to ignite it with fire). In the vast majority of cases, magic damage on a melee weapon has either no effect or a negative one. OR, you're in an all-magic party, and your melee weapon is a staff.

[LukanGamer]

magic damage weapons are good. only comment will add to this necro since it has plenty answered and just need to make sure future viewers know it is.