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CricketJam
06-12-2012, 01:30 PM
Why in the world would you do that?

Because I had a thought. (tl;dr below)

When Talay Mines came out, Lava Slinger quickly became my new favorite weapon and as a result, I moved my DPS gear to apprentice to make use of it. Naturally to my surprise, my 257^ 29k ranged damage Lemurian Halberd only dealt 115k damage per shot while my 263^ 14k physical damage Lava Slinger simply did more damage with 400k damage per shot fully charged on the tavern dummy.

Then it hit me. Why exactly am I even upgrading physical damage on the Lava Slinger? Since its damage is converted to fire anyway, wouldn't upgrading the superior scaling elemental damage be 3x better? Since all the Lava Slingers I got came with only electric damage for some reason, I decided to bench this staff and find a better, more suiting alternative. Upon searching for an answer, I came across someone saying elemental damage does not scale with hero damage and should only be used by builders. ...what? Immediately I tested this on the tavern dummy and the nightmare deeper well dummy and my elemental damage fell in half with a 2400~ hero attack point difference upon taking off my gear which proved this statement to be wrong (unless it only applied to pets with elemental damage stat like the monkey or something). Nightmare also reduced the physical and elemental damage by the same percentage. Not sure if a recent patch changed this since I saw said statement as I don't know where an extensive list of all the patches are. http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/578958403099918142/90C73B5CCE31B95A3407ED7DE500F5CD73F17818/http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/578958403099924671/F66B31D86458AE24C55CC2DAD2C47BB9FDA1ABDF/

Notice the difference in the tiny blue text.

Then there was the old argument I dug up about why elemental damage being horrible since you deal no damage to 1/3 of mobs due to immunes, but this was probably before the time of darkness traps and strength drain auras removing immunes. There was also if I recall correctly a nerf to elemental damage scaling from 273.5 to 144 an upgrade which may have put elemental damage on everyone's list of bad never do again. Another reason why elemental damage is rarely used is because it only really does well with Apprentice weapons because of their extra projectile shots and with them being in the minority of DPS classes nowadays, it's no wonder this isn't more widespread. However, I myself have not tested elemental damage with melee Squire or Monk weapons (ranged monk deals no elemental damage) which the majority of Dungeon Defender players are playing as primary DPS.

Squires and Monks simply deal so much damage because in Nightmare, hero weapon damage goes down and elemental damage pet goes up. Their superior scaling simply multiplies the already possibly broken elemental pet damage. Being able to hero boost the almighty seahorse damage to 700k x 6 easily takes down all my opposition like ogres and the Kraken which overshadows my puny 50k x 7 Lemurian Halberd. My 200^ Seahorse does more damage than me and that makes me feel kinda sad. <_<

So with my newly found knowledge of the majesty of elemental damage, I quickly raised up an Arronax with elemental damage and this is the result.
http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/578958403098697418/EC0909ACC20D0BB4E66902F5008F11D21D6AEAA9/http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/578958403100529641/9DA86E318691E9C9E9FB93B8896D99209A27CF97/

Yes, that is 15 million dps in tavern (18+ million if I get better at the whole partial charge thing since each shot does 1 million damage fully charged with recoil). In Nightmare, my damage easily keeps up with my seahorse and if I can get a monk boost, all the better.

With me in awe at this amazing damage with the weapon alone, I bravely trek into Nightmare rooms with my 2k Hero HP and 2.5k Hero Damage. I'm constantly kicked; even in rooms where they request people to have 2k+ stats which I clearly meet along with my 90% resists and every time, I question why? I usually chalk it up to my tower stats being bad and everyone just assumes an Apprentice is always going to be a Tower builder and nothing else. Then I run into a room where people let me stay long enough for them to really check out my gear and they outright laughed at me for going DPS Apprentice and how I went elemental damage. So I presented the above arguments above to no avail. "LOL he needs extra DU to deal damage to all monsters." I retorted with "You realize you're using a Lemurian Halberd right? Besides, who would dare fight outside of a strength drain aura in later waves?" I was promptly kicked after showing my superior damage. His monk boost did not prove he dealt more damage than me because it's a party skill where everyone can benefit from unless you're soloing.

So here I am confused about whether or not elemental damage is known among all the Dungeon Defenders of today.

tl;dr Elemental Damages are truly outrageous. They are truly, truly, truly, outrageous.

Fewd
06-12-2012, 01:50 PM
The one problem with this is that it's specific to that elemental type, similar to a Lemurain Halberd. From what I recalled, the elemental damage does not happen every time. I don't know if it was tested on a weapon that only uses that elemental type though. I'll check it out and see what I get.

CricketJam
06-12-2012, 02:02 PM
I'm not totally sure I understand what you're saying. Could you further elaborate?

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/578958403100939753/B262DB69903D6D0D82C15E4577B122ED08CA720E/http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/578958403100986530/0968A294917954B954A270060501F73845A2FFD4/

Also all these damage tests were done with Trans Apprentice weapons. I also tested mythical weapons but those indeed do not scale in elemental damage. I would be very disappointed if this elemental scaling was merely a bug that needs to be fixed. Would be a shame. This would be what Apprentices need to stand out.

Rominus
06-12-2012, 02:14 PM
With other weapons I am incapable of replicating your results (I tried several types of staff on my app).

I suspect this may be either a bug or specific only to weapons that deal exclusively elemental damage.

Edit: I tested on both myth and trans type staff, I was unable to make any difference in my elemental damage with my apprentice regardless of changing hero attack anywhere from 0-->1200.

Are you sure you are playing on ranked?

Fewd
06-12-2012, 02:16 PM
specific only to weapons that deal exclusively elemental damage.


I think that's what he is saying. I will test after this wave.

CricketJam
06-12-2012, 02:20 PM
To be more specific on the weapons I used, I used a Transcendent Arronax, a Kraken drop and a Transcendent Bone Staff, a random drop in moraggo. Both of which were only upgraded in elemental damage.

In hindsight, maybe using Lava Slinger as an example was a bad idea, but it's what sparked me into testing elemental damage.

Edit: Also the above 900k fire damage was done with said bone staff. Arronax and Bone staff do not change physical damage into elemental like Lava Slinger does. This is purely from upgraded elemental damage and the white numbers are the puny unupgraded physical damage. Also this is indeed ranked. How do I prove this? <_<

Rominus
06-12-2012, 02:27 PM
I've tried with a number of staves now, also tried with a handful of other class weapons (including a few trans squire weapons from aquanos) and I can't replicate any of the results.

Also; damnit now my fighting gloves are stuck in a dummy, any idea how to pick them up?

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/595846901703472164/7B807D8C654F5E2BA391ACCA571BD84D7B10D060/

:skeleton:

Fewd
06-12-2012, 02:34 PM
How do I prove this? <_<
It's already proven, the Trendy logo in the top-right shows that.

I'll have to try a few other staves on this. The highest that I've replicated was 144k charged attacks.

EDIT: Could you post a Screen-shot of the items?

CricketJam
06-12-2012, 02:42 PM
I would really lol if this is because of the recurring negative knockback on all the weapons.
Edit: Tested it with my other Lava Slinger that does not have negative knockback and it also shows the scaling electric element.

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/578958403101789641/004E1F78239D0DC76BF9D77364D39B9AEA0FC8D2/http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/578958403101793182/A1BDD480F0D797C6D591CEC9C537AF6D962B3CD2/http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/578958403101787034/9A994E68F18C128F93DD6C2BC9E294A0BE681E43/

Rominus
06-12-2012, 02:44 PM
Nah one of my weapons has negative too and I haven't been able to replicate.
http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/595846901703801251/6F235D1067735AAF33ABB2D88AB8DAD6D64FC061/

I was finally able to replicate it on a candlestick for my initiate though

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/595846901703870153/1DF6C661DE0F4AD014A3F3F6BC16E6A129AF1BD8/

But as that weapon specifically states, it adds heroic fire damage. I'm wondering if the weapons you are using just incidentally have heroic elemental and simply don't state it?

Fewd
06-12-2012, 02:53 PM
I found a weapon that mimics this, and to my surprise I was able to do 10m dps on a tavern dummy on my TOWER apprentice. Thanks for this idea, I'm definitely in debt to you.

http://i.imgur.com/oin7d.jpg

CricketJam
06-12-2012, 03:04 PM
That's interesting. So "heroic" is what determines what scales with hero damage? Animus Familiars state this and the 7.18 patch says "Normal (non-heroic damage-dealing pets (e.g. Tiger) damage increased (9x)"

Also, my Arronax, Bone Staff, and Lava Slinger indeed do not say Heroic in their descriptions.

Fewd
06-12-2012, 03:06 PM
Also, my Arronax, Bone Staff, and Lava Slinger indeed do not say Heroic in their descriptions.
Nor does mine, I upgraded a Supreme Electric Dowsing Staff, "Supreme Pulses to the Rythm of the Deep".

Rominus
06-14-2012, 05:55 PM
Bloodshot staff also work like this and have the (I think) best spread in the game. Its so filthy I don't want to post a screen shot =x

Kaniki Zenosake Urahaji
06-14-2012, 09:28 PM
All the weapons mentioned seem to be from the Shard Campaign/Challenge (besides the Lava Slinger which is from Talay) type of weapons, I'll go thru my collection of weapons and test this out on all Shard weapons and then all non Shard weapons, hopefully i can bring back some easy knowledge for all of ya. :)

Cure
06-14-2012, 09:33 PM
*Waits for new patch to come out lowering elemental damage*

Fewd
06-14-2012, 09:38 PM
*Waits for new patch to come out lowering elemental damage*
I cried a little inside after reading that.

Rominus
06-15-2012, 02:14 AM
because you can post a thread like this on the forums without drawing attention to it.

MacPimpin
07-03-2012, 10:33 PM
I think a little elemental and a lot of physical is still preferably though as a DPS App main, though in combination with a seahorse any damage type besides poison would work well too I think.

Jfoxwell
08-21-2012, 01:38 AM
I just startedswitching to upgrading elemental only but only on my squire lol

Count Duckula
11-18-2012, 12:54 PM
I tried on a jack o lantern staff and there was no difference. Just to make sure, I tried on my hunter with a fire blaster (forgot the name) and it does only fire damage so there were two red numbers. The smaller number went down after I respecced, but the larger number stayed the same, and I upgraded only elemental damage.

paparicado
12-28-2012, 06:09 PM
When you are choosing a DPS apprentice you have 2 options:

Option 1:you can upgrade elemental damage

Pros:Every point of upgrade will add more points and do more damage than a normal damage

Cons:Every monster have your own element,so if you are upgrading a element damage that is the same of the monster,it will do only normal damage

Option 2:you can upgrade normal damage

Pros:it will do damage in every monster

Cons:every point of upgrade will give less damage than elemental damage,and normal damage do less damage than elemental

So all is up to you,YOU CHOOSE :)

draemn
12-28-2012, 07:04 PM
Anyone find the pattern? Any weapons I upgrade in elemental damage only do (on tavern dummy) the same amount of elemental damage as the weapon's elemental attack... so if I get the elemental damage to 60k, it only does 60k/hit. This ends up being TONS lower than generic damage upgrades.

I haven't tried any of the weapons listed here yet, but some of the comments made it sound like those weapons don't always give high elemental damage.

WaxPaper
01-12-2013, 09:47 PM
Anyone find the pattern? Any weapons I upgrade in elemental damage only do (on tavern dummy) the same amount of elemental damage as the weapon's elemental attack... so if I get the elemental damage to 60k, it only does 60k/hit. This ends up being TONS lower than generic damage upgrades.

I haven't tried any of the weapons listed here yet, but some of the comments made it sound like those weapons don't always give high elemental damage.

The specific ones listed always do, as long as this isn't a "bug" that's been patched yet. One way you can test it is by simply auto-firing the staff on the target dummy, and if each hit does exactly the same amount of elemental damage as what's listed on the weapon, it won't scale and it's not one of these "special" weapons... Remember you have to auto-fire so the damage doesn't fluctuate due to charge-time.

Exitilus
02-11-2013, 09:46 PM
Its not a bug, and it is certain weapons. Just like some weapons scale much better with Hero Damage some weapons scale much better Elementally. For instance 1k Base Damage on a Generic Drop weapon < on Special Award (Enchanted Bishop) < on other Special Weapons (Obsidians). So just as Physical Damage varies from weapon to weapon with the exact same Base Damage and the Exact same Hero Damage Boost, the Elemental Damage also varies in the boost it receives from Hero Damage.

Specifically for Elemental Damage (which for the most part upgrades at 144, some at 182) the damage boost from Hero Damage stat is as follows:

Many Generic Weapon drops get NO Elemental Damage boost from Hero Damage stat. In Nightmare these will actually deal less damage than shown on the weapon because of the handicap. So 10k elemental damage in NM would be like 7.5k actual damage.

Some Special Weapons give a ~4 times boost to elemental damage. So 10k elemental base damage would be 38k (I just round up to 4 times but its like 3.75ish). From the testing I have done these are:
Goblin Overlord Charge
Spinal Column
Shambalay Lay Staff
Alternate Energy Core
Staffaphone
Obsidian Clava
Flaming Jack
Hand of the Queen
Gargoyal Staff

A FEW staffs will get full boost from the Hero Damage Stat with regards to Elemental Damage. From the testing I have done these include:

Enchanted Bishop
Bone Staff / Undying Rod
Bloodshot / Genie King
Tidal Staff / Arronax
Lava Slinger

On a side note, for some reason my North Pole which didn't have ANY elemental damage stat was doing about 200 Lightning Damage.

In my opinion if you want to go for Base Physical Damage then take the Classic's Eagle Crested Standard or the Obsidian Clava which give the best stats per upgrade.
If you want to go with Base Elemental Damage then take your pick from the type of projectile spread that you like or whichever staff you find with best stats/upgrades.
And of course there is always LOOKS because if you have the choice between a BEASTLY looking staff and a LAME looking one that might do more damage which are you going to go with?

For anyone who wants to do further testing just EXPORT to OPEN and then Play Local. Upgrade however you like and then reset it with another Export to Open and upgrade it a different way.

PS: If you are going to use a staff and upgrade the Elemental Damage then get a Pet to compensate. Typically I get a staff with either Electric or Fire and then throw on my Seahorse which shoots 6 Poison projectiles. However if you get one with really good stats that has Poison Elemental Damage you can also get standard pets (Drake - Fire, Gryphon - Lightning, Chinese Dragon - Poison). I have also seen some Animus with great DPS (these also have the benefit of shooting through walls!).

Good Luck and Enjoy!