Physical or Elemental?

[dwaynegand]

Some classes have skills that inflict both elemental or physical damage, or even both. They also have skills to boost the damage of physical and elemental skills. Conjurer, Ritualist, Summoner, and Evoker to name a few. Now I know that Strength boosts the physical damage and Intelligence the elemental damage. The wolves Strength of the Wild increases physical damage of spells as well as your attacks, so spells like Volcanic Orb, Meteor Rain, and Distortion Wave all get affected. Yet for the Summoner and the Conjurer, neither mastery raises Strength, so I would think that they were made to be elemental. And while the Ritualist and the Evoker get a boost to Strength, their Intelligence is still higher, so I would think the same thing for them.

What do you think? How do you decide if a class is better meant for physical or elemental damage when both are available?

[Assscent]

Try both and double the fun

[dwaynegand]

I would think it odd that a class that does not gain any bonus to Strength from masteries would be best suited for physical damage. Summoners, Conjurers, Evokers, and Ritualists just scream 'caster of high intelligence' to me.

[Aimee]

Summoner (earth + nature) only has the pets basic attacks deal physical and piercing damage when you dont upgrade your pets at all. Not a single skill other than the pets have physical damage. The pet physical damage is only for early game damage scaling and for players who want to use pets as support and later respec mastery points.

Same is true for Conjurers (earth + Spirit) does not have any skills with physical damage. Only the coredweller again has a little bit for its basic attack if you dont upgrade it. And the Outrider that does not even benefit from pet items and lasts a short while (and is mostly elemental as well)

So no, these masteries dont benefit from physical damage, dont gain strenght for a reason and you should focus on the damage types these masteries give (the most of).

Physical damage on some pets does help with some very specific builds, however non of the ones you mention here.

As for Dream Mastery (Evoker and Ritualist)
There are only two skills that give physical damage, Dream Stealer and Distortion Wave.
Dream stealer is the upgrade for Phantom Strike, a active skill that teleports you in melee range with an enemy to deal damage. This is obviously a skill for warriors and rogues, so giving it physical damage only makes sense.
Distortion Wave is also a skill that deals physical damage and also reduces armor, clearly a skill made for more warriors/rogues/rangers. While the slow and electrical burn is more geared towards casters.

Masteries in TQ dont just focus on a single playstyle. Dream can be used both for physical damage as well as summoners and casters.
Earth has skills that helps melee characters, as well as summoners and casters.
So its certainly not strange that some masteries have multiple damage types.

[dwaynegand]

I've seen some builds on Youtube for someone named Icefrzzy who has made a bunch of physical damage builds, some for the Summoner, Ritualist, and Conjurer. Feel free to check them out because they look quite powerful.

[Psixi]

Mastery bar attributes are irrelevant to what they can made for. They're more of a guide line. Nothing in Dream scales with intelligence, aside from Electrical burn and vitality, which are already poor choices (the latter without spirit of course).

Nature has absolutely no spells that can used as a main type of damage, it's main stat is intelligence, but nothing in Nature actually scales with intelligence. Pet's don't scale with player attributes, none of the buffs do, even plague's 1 damage per second doesn't scale with intelligence. Nature does not care about your attributes or build, it doesn't even use them. It's a supportive mastery.

Dream can do the same exact thing

Don't use attributes from bar to decide what it should be good at, look at tooltips and synergies, so damage types, scaling. Then consider attribute last, when min maxing equipping items and spending AP.

It's pretty easy. Let's just take earth for example,

It was actually made with just fire in mind, Anniversary Edition added all the split physical things. So in that case, definitely elemental, if we keep in mind
1. Damage Types (Fire)
2. Multipliers (+% Fire, Burn)
3. Bar (INT)
Then you can see it's elemental focused

That completely changes, depending on what you take as a second mastery. Warfare? That's a physical based mastery, then Battlemage is clearly physical, both masteries synergise with physical damage.

Summoner? Well I've kind of already explained the gist of it, nature is a support mastery. So it's up to you to decide at that point, either Elemental or Physical. It supports both - why?

Nature is just buffs, health, and plague reduces resistances to both Physical, and Elemental damage. If nature didn't have +% phys damage from wolves, and -54% physical resist, then I can see it leaning towards just elemental. It's pretty easy enough, look at synergies.

[dwaynegand]

Well Strength of the Pack does increase all physical damage and stacks with Brimstone. So would physical be best for a Summoner?

Same with Ritualist as there seem to be more skills that inflict physical than electric burn?

For the Conjurer, I think elemental is better because the total bonus you get to elemental damage from Earth Enchantment and Unearthly power is higher than the total you get to physical from Brimstone and Unearthly Power.

Brimstone and Lucid Dream both increase physical damage, while fire and electric burn each only have one skill that boosts them. Although the bonus to fire from Earth Enchantment is much higher than the total from Brimstone and Lucid Dream, only slightly higher than Electric Burn.

Lots of classes using Earth can benefit from either fire or physical depending on their other mastery. I agree about the Battlemage being physical. The Juggernaut could also be physical due to Defense having Colossus and Defensive Reaction, as well as all those shield skills that inflict physical damage. The Wu, Stonespeaker, Magician, and Avenger are all better suited for elemental, though the Avenger can also have physical, piercing, and bleeding, and the Magician can also use piercing and bleeding with Throwing Knives.

Later, I'll post a list of what I think is the best damage to use with each class based on synergies.

[Aimee]

Originally posted by dwaynegand:

snip

I assume you are new to TQ and are trying to optimize builds, based on what you share here and your hidden profile.

I think one important thing to note, is that you wont be taking every single skill from both masteries. In fact every mastery has different build paths you can take and you decide what you want to play.

For summoner (earth + nature) the most popular build would be a summoning build.
The core dweller is your tank, the wolves are damage dealers and subtanks, and your nymph is the support and damage dealer.
This is one of the builds where you can use +pet damage bonuses that focus on Physical, since the core dweller and wolves both use it.
However and here is the big catch, core dweller and nymph also use elemental and its their highest damage stat by far.
This means you can also build for Elemental damage and get about the same result.

If you were to combine either earth or nature masteries with a summoner build that uses Storm, you would go Elemental instead since the storm pet will not only use elemental damage but also buff it.

If you instead use Earth as a defensive and buff skill and not as summoner, you would make a melee warrior type of character instead.
If you take earth for the damage spells, you want to go caster build with another mastery that gives caster skills and buffs.


What path you take and goal you ahve for your character, hugely determines what damage you focus on.
And as already mentioned, your own stats dont apply to pets at all.

[Aimee]

Originally posted by dwaynegand:

Well Strength of the Pack does increase all physical damage and stacks with Brimstone. So would physical be best for a Summoner?

Earth Enchantment gives elemental damage, and a flat bonus to any damage. This would also work with an elemental build.
Brimstone giving a flat percentage damage, means its flexible. You can use it as summoner, as blaster caster, and as warrior. And means you can get a good result with all of them, not that one of those builds is mandatory or optimal.

[dwaynegand]

Well right now I want to start off with one build per class since there seems to be so many different ways to play each one.

[chris.ferrantegerard]

Some mastery combos have pretty obvious builds paths, while others may be more hybrid or can be built to scale with different damage types or approaches. Many Earth skills have both elemental and physical components so can be scaled with both Int or Str stats. So you can have a build using Int/Dex or Str/Dex or a hybrid of the three stats. Hybrids tend to be more complicated to build so you if you're just starting out you may want to avoid hybrids and play simpler combos until you have more experience.

For Evoker for example, one popular build is a Psionic Beam stave spammer (requires Atlantis for Dream 40 skill talent). Pretty simple to play, spam LMB, cast support skills, CC, etc. Another option is to make a reflect build. Toss on some gear like Icescale MIs, get enough CDR and casting speed to keep stoneform up 100% if required and let everything kill themselves while you're immune. My own Evoker build was a hybrid auramancer, using stuns early on to mitigate damage then stoneform spam in late legendary.

Summoner played as an actual summoner build, pets don't depend on your stats so you can build with either Int or Str. Int can scale up your elemental damage on Earth spells. Int gear has easier access to CDR to reduce spell cooldown. Str can scale up your physical damage on Earth spells. Str gear has more armour and you can use 1h + shield so you can make a tankier caster type character.

[dwaynegand]

Here's what I came up with so far:

Physical Builds: Assassin, Battlemage, Berserker, Conqueror, Contemplator, Corsair, Daoist, Dreamkiller, Guardian, Harbinger, Juggernaut, Monk, Ritualist, Slayer, Spellbinder, Spellbreaker, Templar

Elemental Builds: Avenger, Conjurer, Diviner, Druid, Elementalist, Esoterist, Hermit, Magician, Oracle, Prophet, Sage, Seidr Worker, Shaman, Soothsayer, Sorcerer, Spiritualist, Stonespeaker, Thunderer, Wu

[dwaynegand]

Classes using Hunting will also be using Piercing and Bleeding damage together with either elemental or physical.

Unless it uses Spirit or Storm, Dream classes are best used with physical damage.

I don't think Vitality damage counts as elemental damage.

[Aimee]

Originally posted by dwaynegand:

Classes using Hunting will also be using Piercing and Bleeding damage together with either elemental or physical.

Rogue also uses poison and bleeding, and weapons used for rogue normaly have a high piercing rating.

Originally posted by dwaynegand:

I don't think Vitality damage counts as elemental damage.

Correct Vitality damage is not elemental damage, elemental damage only counts for fire/cold/lightning.
However Intelligence does increase Vitality damage, just like it does with elemental. So if you play with spirit mastery for example, having high Int will increase your life Drain spell damage for example.

[dwaynegand]

Would elemental damage also include electrical burn from dream?

Poison Builds: Disruptor, Illusionist (with piercing and bleeding), Trickster (with piercing and bleeding)

Bleeding and Piercing Builds: Bone Charmer, Brigand, Dragon Hunter (with elemental) Haruspex (with physical), Pigrim, Ranger, Warden (with physical), Warlock (with vitality)

Elemental and Physical Builds: Evoker, Paladin, Runesmith, Thane

[dwaynegand]

After adding together bonuses from skills that increase damage, I came to the conclusion that this is the best damage type for the following:

Vitality: Diviner, Soothsayer (with Pets), Spiritualist, Warlock (with Bleeding)
Elemental: Conjurer (with Vitality), Summoner, Evoker, Runesmith
Physical: Paladin, Thane