Elemental Weapon and Imbue

[Suggestion]

I am running a artificer on HC and with the new imbue changes it seems that Elemental Weapon does nothing. It is supposed to give me a +1 imbue, but I don't see anything when I check my damage. What exactly is it supposed to be doing and how can I check it?

[misterski]

I am running a artificer on HC and with the new imbue changes it seems that Elemental Weapon does nothing. It is supposed to give me a +1 imbue, but I don't see anything when I check my damage. What exactly is it supposed to be doing and how can I check it?

Check the + tab on your character sheet. Imbue dice is under General Combat. Also do you have an imbue toggle activated? Elemental and Greater Elemental Weapon were changed to only grant imbue dice. Imbue dice only work with imbue toggles.

[Suggestion]

Ok I see it. While Elemental Weapon used to be a useful spell, not only for the artificer, but also to cast on other party members now it seems Elemental Weapon is useless unless you are a Battle Engineer with Thundershock Imbue (and other options at higher levels) and generally useless to cast on other party members at low/mid heroic levels.

Edit I also should add that Elemental Weapons now only adds electrical damage (with Thundershock Imbue) where it used to add any one of several type of damage which makes it even worse.

[GoldyGopher]

Ok I see it. While Elemental Weapon used to be a useful spell, not only for the artificer, but also to cast on other party members now it seems Elemental Weapon is useless unless you are a Battle Engineer with Thundershock Imbue (and other options at higher levels) and generally useless to cast on other party members at low/mid heroic levels.

Edit I also should add that Elemental Weapons now only adds electrical damage (with Thundershock Imbue) where it used to add any one of several type of damage which makes it even worse.

Elemental Weapons now adds a +1 Imbue Die of damage. For a pure Artificer as you point requires Thundershock Imbue from the from the Battle Engineer Enhancement Tree. For those that are multiclass if you have another imbue running it is a +1, and it still can be handed out to other party members and is helpful at all levels if they have an imbue running.

[Suggestion]

On HC I am running a pure arti. On my main server I usually run a warlock with a little rogue which also doesn't benefit from imbue so I am trying to figure it all out.

[Maelphistez]

Ok I see it. While Elemental Weapon used to be a useful spell, not only for the artificer, but also to cast on other party members now it seems Elemental Weapon is useless unless you are a Battle Engineer with Thundershock Imbue (and other options at higher levels) and generally useless to cast on other party members at low/mid heroic levels.

Edit I also should add that Elemental Weapons now only adds electrical damage (with Thundershock Imbue) where it used to add any one of several type of damage which makes it even worse.

Personal preference, I would like the Dev team to look at changing the imbue system just a bit. I like the imbues available to different classes within their Enhancement Trees and I think those should be left alone. However, I think that there should be class related imbues that can be passed out via spells, admixtures, etc. Think of it like this, within the Divine Disciple tree could be a spell that imbued a weapon with d4 Holy or Light damage. This spell wouldn't provide any benefit if you already had an imbue toggled on, but if you didn't it would add the imbue to your weapon and allow any +imbue dice you have accumulated to work. Different combinations could be like:

Alchemist -> d4 poison imbue
Artificer -> d4 Electrical imbue
Dark Apostate -> d4 Evil/Negative imbue

I would make these all "rare" spells or tree-SLAs to prevent people from imbuing from scrolls.

[droid327]

Any arti who's not a caster should be using the imbue, and any who are casters never benefited from EW anyway

Yes it's a small nerf to party mates with no imbue at very low levels where 1d6 non scaling damage actually makes a difference....but for most of the game it's a huge buff since that 1d6 now scales with the appropriate power, and most martial builds can fit an imbue

[ismikes]

Ok I see it. While Elemental Weapon used to be a useful spell, not only for the artificer, but also to cast on other party members now it seems Elemental Weapon is useless unless you are a Battle Engineer with Thundershock Imbue (and other options at higher levels) and generally useless to cast on other party members at low/mid heroic levels.

Edit I also should add that Elemental Weapons now only adds electrical damage (with Thundershock Imbue) where it used to add any one of several type of damage which makes it even worse.

Yeah they really need to fix this spell.

[DJSnapple]

After playing again after being off for about 6+ months, the imbue changes that affect spells like Elemental Weapons are legit stupidity.

Dont fix what isnt broken

[elvesunited]

Any arti who's not a caster should be using the imbue, and any who are casters never benefited from EW anyway

Yes it's a small nerf to party mates with no imbue at very low levels where 1d6 non scaling damage actually makes a difference....but for most of the game it's a huge buff since that 1d6 now scales with the appropriate power, and most martial builds can fit an imbue

My Pure artificer repeater build has 11 imbue dice at cap. Nice ( and significantly better than what it used to be ) but hardly game changing. As such I always prefer deadly weapons over elemental weapons. Weapon damage is where the meat and potatoes is. Imbue is just some extra seasoning.

[Nandos]

If you want imbue on your Rogue, dip into the Assassin tree and take Venomed Blades. It is very low in the tree and you can also get bonus dice for it.

[Jeromio]

My Pure artificer repeater build has 11 imbue dice at cap. Nice ( and significantly better than what it used to be ) but hardly game changing. As such I always prefer deadly weapons over elemental weapons. Weapon damage is where the meat and potatoes is. Imbue is just some extra seasoning.

A pure repeater arty can get to 21 or 28 dice at end game and have +3 or +4 d77 extra bonus damage from Shiradi (with the 15% chance effect). You can power the dice with spellpower... and it will be a lot more damage than just "some extra seasoning".

[LightBear]

You can power the dice with spellpower... and it will be a lot more damage than just "some extra seasoning".

I did notice that as well on a spell casting bard, every now and then I had do do a final cut to make sure a mob plunged to the floor before the next spell was off timer.
And the damage numbers of the imbues were impressive.

I also have to say that I have not yet fully looked into the imbue system on a single live as I have not come around to one yet.
But what I've seen so far is that your mileage might vary throughout the various levels.

[Oxarhamar]

Any arti who's not a caster should be using the imbue, and any who are casters never benefited from EW anyway

Yes it's a small nerf to party mates with no imbue at very low levels where 1d6 non scaling damage actually makes a difference....but for most of the game it's a huge buff since that 1d6 now scales with the appropriate power, and most martial builds can fit an imbue

Deadly is going to have larger returns than 2 imbue dice

[droid327]

My Pure artificer repeater build has 11 imbue dice at cap. Nice ( and significantly better than what it used to be ) but hardly game changing. As such I always prefer deadly weapons over elemental weapons. Weapon damage is where the meat and potatoes is. Imbue is just some extra seasoning.

Deadly is going to have larger returns than 2 imbue dice

LOL its a necro but since it happened twice...

OK sure, but if you prefer Deadly now, then you definitely preferred Deadly over the old version of Elemental Weapons...so its still not a nerf, which was my point

[Oxarhamar]

LOL its a necro but since it happened twice...

OK sure, but if you prefer Deadly now, then you definitely preferred Deadly over the old version of Elemental Weapons...so its still not a nerf, which was my point

It’s not much of a necro imbued discussion is still rather fresh

It’s not about preferring deadly or not it’s about which will give more damage to a repeater Atri

The nerf comes in when you can no longer select the element also before deadly the game doesn’t start at level 16 healing mobs that you could damage before is a nerf

Elemental imbued would have been better if they kept it able to change the element of the imbue

YW

[droid327]

It’s not much of a necro imbued discussion is still rather fresh

It’s not about preferring deadly or not it’s about which will give more damage to a repeater Atri

The nerf comes in when you can no longer select the element also before deadly the game doesn’t start at level 16 healing mobs that you could damage before is a nerf

YW

OK then you just defeated your own intial argument lol

If you use Deadly -> no nerf, because you werent using EW anyway
If you use EW -> no nerf, because then you're using an Imbue and it gives you more damage

Like I said months ago, its only a nerf in a very narrow case where it doesnt really matter - party mates with no imbue at low level where the old non-scaling EW was not completely trivial...and, really, at that level the game is EZ mode no matter what for even a moderately min-maxed character.

[Oxarhamar]

OK then you just defeated your own intial argument lol

If you use Deadly -> no nerf, because you werent using EW anyway
If you use EW -> no nerf, because then you're using an Imbue and it gives you more damage

Like I said months ago, its only a nerf in a very narrow case where it doesnt really matter - party mates with no imbue at low level where the old non-scaling EW was not completely trivial...and, really, at that level the game is EZ mode no matter what for even a moderately min-maxed character.

Incorrect

Elemental has been nerfed using Deadly when it’s more powerful doesn’t negate elemental nerf at other levels the game isn’t only past lvl 16

Another example is not being able to buff characters that don’t have an imbued to begin with

While imbue went up in damage (situationally) it’s gone far down in versatile

[Fisto_Mk_I]

Deadly is going to have larger returns than 2 imbue dice

Incorrect for Shuri-throwers, mebbe also incorrect for some other builds.

[droid327]

Incorrect for Shuri-throwers, mebbe also incorrect for some other builds.

Deadly is going to give you an extra 1d10+2 on an endgame heavy xbow (for comparison). That's +7.5 damage. With, say, 300% ranged power and 16-18/x3 19-20/x5 crit=1.7x crit bonus, that's 51 added damage

2d6 imbue die is 7 base damage. That breaks even at 629 spellpower. Of course you have to adjust for resistances vs elemental damage, vulnerability to physical (e.g. LGS debuffs), and your own actual RP and SP numbers...but for spellpower imbues, its not out of reach.

For RP imbues like Inqui, that's an extra 2d10 = 11 base damage, and at 2*300% RP that becomes 66 damage, so that ends up ahead too...but 2d6 wouldnt. Arti wouldnt be using a 2d6 RP imbue though, so that only applies to teammates like Paladins that'd have higher weapon die and lower imbue die.