question about earth mastery

[Zalera33]

does 'earth enchantment' and 'brimstone' (give fire damage+burn damage+%damage) only work on physical damage dealing weapons? i'm using staff weapon with lightning damage in it (16-34 lightning damage)

[chris.ferrantegerard]

Earth Enchantment applies to all weapons. The base skill adds fire damage to your staff attacks and buffs fire and burn damage. Brimstone synergy adds a burn DOT and increase physical damage. You're probably best off using a fire damage staff to get the most benefit from EE.

[wulfster42]

Nog the only possible reason i'd say to use a different type of staff (if using a staff) would be if you Also have storm mastery (in which case you can use any of the types you want!!).

The fire bonus works very well with Rune since not only do you add elemental damage, and boost damage with int, but the explosive runes AOE is half fire, and gets boosted significantly from the earth skills.

IF your using a staff, you have no physical damage, so don't waste time on brimstone (same for other types of staff as well....but again, just get a fire staff). Volitivity is also worth maxing btw if your using a staff.

IF your just starting a new Earth/blank char, I highly recommend going with a throwing weapon early on, the low ones you can wield right away. They attack WAY faster than a staff and if you toss on +fire rings and put a +fire rune on your knife, you'll pretty much one shot everything once you max Earth Enchantment. Then go straight up for core dweller (10 points invested) and put 1 point in him (all you need for quite awhile). You can do all that easily before level 8 when you can choose another mastery, and it'll give you most of the int you need to wear int based equipment as well.

From there for a very easy early start, snag rune mastery, put 1 point in runic weapon and max magical charge and runeword explode. That combo will basically destroy everything you encounter through normal difficulty. Eventually snag reckless offense until you have more then anough +attack speed to hit 160% or so (unless it's been fixed dual wielded thrown weapons max at 140 attack speed, so it's more efficient long term to have just 1 (and a shield) and full attack speed (since you cap at like 30% chance to have it go off).

[Zalera33]

right now i'm collecting necromancer set , which deals awesome damage against living creature but it has very low damage against construct and mechanical (26-34 life damage). I have fully maximize volcanic orb, earth enchantment, summon core dweller, and flame surge. I'm still confuse whether staff normal damage is counted as physical damage (related to strength) or magic damage (related to intelligent) and whether i should touch brimstone skill since i'm building a mage character focused on damage and energy regeneration

[Renfield628]

Staves only come in element, multi-element, poison, and vitality damage. There is no physical damage staff as far as I know.

[Assscent]

Originally posted by Renfield628:

Staves only come in element, multi-element, poison, and vitality damage. There is no physical damage staff as far as I know.

Well no, there are staffs for physycal builds, with physical or bleeding damage, like the Wrath of Thalassa, Staff of the Covenant, Goroggos, or Fafnir's Heart.

(https://tq-db.net/en/category/staff)

[wulfster42]

Int for staff damage. You want Violatile but not brimstone. You don't need to max core dweller if your in normal. By act 3 you get a quest that boosts his hp a bunch.

Eath + fire staff works fairly well through normal because you do significant fire damage per shot (especially with the right rings/ammy/relics etc. You need attack speed though badly as your initial speed is really slow and you don't have good AoE for awhile as well.


IF your really gonna go with staff attacks dream has a new tier ability that makes psionic touch rock for staves. Still doesn't really do good AoE damage, but you kill quickly with it.

I liked fire + runic personally (think I posted about it above). Worked very well with a thrown weapon + shield long term. High damage, decent defenses, and core dweller kept things off me most of the time anyway.

Fire + nature isn't horrid as well if you wanna go pure pet early on, but still have a good fire (with pet damage) staff as backup. Rings/Ammy's can boost pet damage significantly, especially early on, and then you just max your fire enchant + violatile + valcano skills (besides core dweller). This nets you 5 perma pets (core dweller, 3 wolves + nymph). You can get all 5 out very early in normal, and then have 2 rings/ammy/staff with + damage and damage % boosts. Your pets will literally eat everything up before you even see it (set em all to aggressive and attack speed to very fast). Vs a boss your just plant a volcano under the boss and fire with your staff while your pets obliterate it (through normal). Meanwhile later on when your int gets high and your staff starts doing significant damage etc, you can switch to doing more damage yourself, and remove the bonus damage from your pets (at higher difficulties they get a nice multiplier to damage and tanking anyway.

[Renfield628]

Originally posted by Assscent:

Originally posted by Renfield628:

Staves only come in element, multi-element, poison, and vitality damage. There is no physical damage staff as far as I know.

Well no, there are staffs for physycal builds, with physical or bleeding damage, like the Wrath of Thalassa, Staff of the Covenant, Goroggos, or Fafnir's Heart.

(https://tq-db.net/en/category/staff)

Thanks for the correction. Charon is extremely weak to physical damage and those would be great tools for his encounter.

[Zalera33]

i pick earth + storm mastery which makes my hero as elementalist, but i find it weird and useless because both have their own damage dealing abilities that doesn't synergize each other. Both have nuke abilities and damage amplifier independently, which i don't need when playing solo

before i get access to core dweller ability (spawn pet), auto attack melee enemies are the hardest for me (such as the cyclops , horn-blowing centaur which usually hanging out with 6 normal centaurs, and also the minotaur king in knossos labyrinth during act 1)

[sarcastic_godot]

Ragnarök has brought in quite some stuff... ...e.g. the Faxi Staff[www.tq-db.net] and the Carnyx Staff[www.tq-db.net]. Troll mages sometimes drop their Troll's Branch[[/url], piercing + bleeding damage staves, and boy can those hurt. [url]Staff of the Chosen[www.tq-db.net] does pierce and poison.

These rarefied thingies open up new staff build options: Dream or Spirit with Hunter or Rogue masteries, which used to be pretty meh in terms of synergy. Now, using a poison or bleed stafff... ...yabba-dabba-doo. Atlantis also brought some more MIs and uniques to that pool.


Fafnir's Heart[www.tq-db.net], however, is at its core a vitality base damage staff, just has all that extra bleed damage. No hum, my Spirit staffmancers love both...

[Renfield628]

Originally posted by Zalera33:

i pick earth + storm mastery which makes my hero as elementalist, but i find it weird and useless because both have their own damage dealing abilities that doesn't synergize each other. Both have nuke abilities and damage amplifier independently, which i don't need when playing solo

before i get access to core dweller ability (spawn pet), auto attack melee enemies are the hardest for me (such as the cyclops , horn-blowing centaur which usually hanging out with 6 normal centaurs, and also the minotaur king in knossos labyrinth during act 1)

Legendary - Minotaur Lord is going to take your lunch money as an elementalist if you did what I did. I beat him with the run, let em whiff a hit, get distance, shoot, repeat method. And it was only possible because I carry an extra movement speed increase dancing ensemble (166% movement speed increase, it's not my fighting gear though). Needless to say it was not fun and I died many times. And in hindsight, it was the incorrect method. For in truth there are multitudes of easier tactics possible with the elementalist:

- With extra tough mobs, keep aggro fixated onto core dweller by tapping ice shard or use your staff. Also make sure to get 1 point in heat shield and buff core with it. Only 1 point in heat shield earns a +15% physical resist buff. It lasts a good while too.

- Later as your skill points develop, get the wisp's eye of storm buff maxed out for double elemental damage for your whole party, including scroll summons.

- Get RR (reduce resistance) with squall's max out obscured visibility ability. You can get RR on a staff attack also by wearing rings or ammys that are socketed with monkey king's trickery relic, but you have to land a staff attack once to apply it.

- Scroll summons come in different flavors. Storm witches synergize the best with an ele build obviously, but you can carry extra pet bonus gear load outs (staff, 2 rings, and ammy) that will buff maddened god and behemoth respectively as all pet bonus gear (ritual, wraithlord, and allfather) can come in different damage flavors. You just have to match them up and make sets.

- Get freezing blast because you will need brief moments of respite to manage and entertain large crowds. Elementalists are squishy toons but can be very powerful if they can maintain control of the room.

As for my current elementalist, I have just recently transitioned from an ice sharder battlemage to a fully summoner/crowd control mage. That is possible early on in the game with ritual pet bonus gear but it will be weak because you do not have the skill points or upper tier pet bonus gear to really make it strong. That comes later down the line. I am about 75% done with legendary mode and have just now transitioned.

[Elriadon]

Originally posted by Zalera33:

i pick earth + storm mastery which makes my hero as elementalist, but i find it weird and useless because both have their own damage dealing abilities that doesn't synergize each other. Both have nuke abilities and damage amplifier independently, which i don't need when playing solo

before i get access to core dweller ability (spawn pet), auto attack melee enemies are the hardest for me (such as the cyclops , horn-blowing centaur which usually hanging out with 6 normal centaurs, and also the minotaur king in knossos labyrinth during act 1)

Yeah, Elementalist was the second character I completed the game with (first was Ranger) and it's true that Storm and Earth don't complement very well. They give a lot of similar abilities with different damage types that don't combine that well. It doesn't help that it's best to focus on a single element to get the most damage, and since both trees have different damage types, that's hard to do.

It felt like like the optimal way to play an Elementalist was basically just playing as a single mastery (most likely Storm, since it's imo the overall better mastery) and use the other one only for the mastery level stat bonuses and its summon.

You can certainly make it work as an Elementalist using damaging abilities from both trees, but you will most likely need great gear with CD reduction and such and even then, there are a lot of better options for mastery combinations. I think that Storm and Earth are much better combined with the other magical masteries rather than each other. Though Core Dweller is a very good summon.

[sarcastic_godot]

Originally posted by Darel:

Originally posted by Zalera33:

[...] elementalist,[...] doesn't synergize each other.[...]

[...] Storm and Earth don't complement very well.[...]

There are better synergies: If you have Ragnarök, both Storm as Earth synch nicely with Rune. Also, Storm + Dream is lovely... ...and Earth + Dream makes for the IMHO best Auramancer.

[Elriadon]

Originally posted by suicidal_godot:

Originally posted by Darel:

[...] Storm and Earth don't complement very well.[...]

There are better synergies: If you have Ragnarök, both Storm as Earth synch nicely with Rune. Also, Storm + Dream is lovely... ...and Earth + Dream makes for the IMHO best Auramancer.

Indeed.

[wulfster42]

I mean, I do think storm compliments an earth primary character extremely well, perhaps the best combo if your gonna be a fire caster.