Legendary Item are worse than elementals

[ssun]

Most legendary items including most weapons and armor are worse than elemental ones. Weapons need to primarily do damage and armor needs to primarily shield. Having additional effects such as increased movement doesn't make legendaries worth it.

Plus even with T5 items you can't max out most legendary items.

[MajinNight]

Elemental armor > Leg. armor
Elemental weapon < Leg. weapon
Some legendary effects like shield leech are more OP then u think.

[was_fired]

Legendary Shield Leach is the single strongest weapon perk since it gives 100% of your damage back as shielding. The other legendary effects are a lot more balanced since 60% extra damage vs 30% extra for poison isn't a huge difference and Legendary shield penetration is sometimes actually worse than the elemental version since it can result in less overall damage.

The leather flat damage bonus seems to be weaker in most cases for Legendary weapons which is unfortunate.

[Imricdaelf120741]

+1 for Elemental armour superiority. Some max level legendary heavy armour is decent, but the vast majority of it isn't worth it, even to trade for it. +1 movement has been nay'sayed since the beginning.

As for weapons, it really depends on a multitude of factors.
What is the weapons purpose? I.E. stat stick, high damage output, leech, etc etc.
What materials will the weapon be made from? Leech on a low damage character is a moot point.
What do you, as a player, like to focus on in combat skills/roles?

Generally, most [physical combat] legendary weapons are superior to their elemental counterparts.
Generally, most social/spiritual legendaries are lackluster. Yes there are certainly some good ones (chain lightning, some argue RB4 is good). However, the majority of legendaries for both social and spiritual challenges are...underwhelming when compared to physical weapons (or social/spiritual skills).

As a rule of thumb, forget legendaries even exist until you can reliably craft or trade for them.

[ssun]

Yes legendary shield leech is OP but shouldn't legendaries always be superior to elemental if constructed from tier 5? Otherwise why are elementals always better than normal? Seems like a balance issue.

[dergefata]

It's just the result of the amount of essence currently available. The fairly ridiculous input/output ratio for cooking 5th tier matierials is probably the first step in a longer plan to increase the total amount of essence possible for an item.

As it is, an Elemental-tier weapon will cap on essence with 5th tier mats and the +15% feat bonus, on a Good Quality result. Legendary will not. But, there has been mention by the devs multiple times that there exist plans to incorporate a building to increase essence yields during item creation.

For any given number of bars (ie out of the 5 bars of quality an item can have) Legendary will be superior to Elemental. It's just that right now, especially using mats in slots that aren't the highest-capacity for the item, you can reliably get more quality bars for Elemental than for Legendary. You're comparing apples to oranges, but another whole truckload of apples is on its way.

[Lorska]

What dergefata said is correct there are already placeholders in the code for that essence increase (forge)

I think it's almost possible to max out essence on legendary but only by using the best material types and the highest grade materials at masterwork quality and max research bonus.

[Imricdaelf120741]

Originally posted by ssun:

Yes legendary shield leech is OP but shouldn't legendaries always be superior to elemental if constructed from tier 5? Otherwise why are elementals always better than normal? Seems like a balance issue.

Specifically to armor. The reason for this, is because Ele armor provides significantly more rainbow shielding for the cost.
Elemental armor provides rainbow shielding.
Legendary armor provides stat boost (+1 movement), increases to max life/social/faith (based on essence type, and its a small boost), and rainbow shielding.

I'm not in-game right now, so I can't put an example down.
The gist of it is, an Ele armor provides far more rainbow shielding than a Leg armor using the same materials.

A decent Ele medium armor with 30 shielding, as opposed to a typical early Leg medium armor with 10-15 shielding. There's simply no contest until end-game or post end-game.


As for weapons, the above two posts are right.

[Wendek]

The elemental armors also increase your life/sanity/faith depending on their materials used, though. An elemental armor made of T5 leather/metal will give you 100 shielding and something like +12 flat health and +12% health. If you can somehow make one and then a good 2-handed sword, you can reach 200+ shielding for your physical fighters.

[metalvile]

Legendary armors are good for a single purpose; slapping them on characters who have lower movement speed than the rest of your party so that they do not slow you down. Typically there are only 2 types of characters who do this; Dwarves and Children.

The child situation can often be rectified by slapping a boar or horse pet onto them, but you may want to use a different type of pet for any dwarves you may have since they're almost always combat characters. This is the one situation where legendary armor can feel worth it to get the movement point. That being said, legendary shields also add a movement point, so you can use one of those instead if you prefer.

Apparently legendary armor used to carry the Retaliation skill in earlier builds of the game, the damage from which was modified by the standard weapon traits based on materials used. I can theorize a half decent strategy of using metal legendary armor to have true damage retaliation damage enemies who are faster than you, and then counterattack using poison/shield leech weapons for big damage.

[Myth Alric]

I actually like that some times it is better to go for elemental stuff rather than legendary. If gives you options. Though I do agree that I would almost never take movement speed increase over stats. Some other items are a lot better though.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by was_fired:

Legendary Shield Leach is the single strongest weapon perk since it gives 100% of your damage back as shielding. The other legendary effects are a lot more balanced since 60% extra damage vs 30% extra for poison isn't a huge difference and Legendary shield penetration is sometimes actually worse than the elemental version since it can result in less overall damage.

The leather flat damage bonus seems to be weaker in most cases for Legendary weapons which is unfortunate.

But the base damage is so absurdly low with Legendary weapons though ;(

[XenoReaver]

Originally posted by Lampros:

Originally posted by was_fired:

Legendary Shield Leach is the single strongest weapon perk since it gives 100% of your damage back as shielding. The other legendary effects are a lot more balanced since 60% extra damage vs 30% extra for poison isn't a huge difference and Legendary shield penetration is sometimes actually worse than the elemental version since it can result in less overall damage.

The leather flat damage bonus seems to be weaker in most cases for Legendary weapons which is unfortunate.

But the base damage is so absurdly low with Legendary weapons though ;(

The effects of the weapons more than make up for it.

[Jean-Maurice Nya]

Legendary items are awesome guys... They are made for high level specialized characters. Elementals become inefficient with their rainbow shielding as you increase the quality of your legendary items, because the bonus in physical/mental/faith increase a lot as you increase your stats. Like for crafting or gathering.

Elemental are good if you can do some at the beginning. Afterwise, you specialize your gear to match your character's specialization, and it is always better with legendary gear and top tier materials.
The crafting is quite well balanced as it was in the Awakening.

[was_fired]

If you manage to get masterwork legendary armor with the max quantity wild tier 5 materials then you will produce something stronger than any elemental armor and can nearly max it (but not quite).

For weapons your best bets are:

1. Wood: This one is complicated. In general elemental wood weapons are better until pure Tier 5 equipment HOWEVER if you always manage to attack damaged non-unliving with your poison weapon it will almost always do more damage in its legendary form than as an elemental weapon.

2. Metal: Elemental is stronger than legendary since a 1.5x multiplier WILL give you more damage almost almost all enemies than simply bypassing their armor. This is doubly true when fighting pirates with spears since every time a new pirate is played they get a new point of armor for you to trigger your 1.5x multiplier against when performing a first strike.

3. Leather: The +3 stat bonus to damage for elemental is sad, and leather is always sad. The only reason for leather weapons is when you're making wands and artifacts that you want to be usable in physical combat.

4. Stone: Legendary is always better than elemental provided you do enough damage not to die. The jump from a 50% to 100% multiplier on armor is huge and I don't think any weapon's natural damage can overtake this.

5. Bone: The best bone weapons are artifacts so make your choice based on artifact abilities and as such it's best to make your choice based on these abilities instead of how much you will heal based on damage. If you do need to restore health during a physical fight things have gone very badly because that's what armor is for.

6. Gems: Elemental is better for gems since splash damage isn't reliable enough to matter in the first place. This is even more true since this ability does not correctly trigger for ranged weapons due to a bug so you'll never get the extra damage that it advertises.

[Bimdur]

When it comes to weapons you must first ask your self how often are you using your weapon? Personally I use skill more then 95% of the time with the exception of really early game. So weapon should be balanced vs skills better.

Personally I really like the secondary bonuses, specially movement. With extra movement you can better pick your fight and even get one to two more fight per turn. More fights equals more experience.