What Makes One Element Better Than Another?

I've been looking through the forum and wiki, and I can't really figure out what makes one element better than another. I'm playing an assassin, and I saw that thunder is usually associated with assassins because of their quicker attack speeds.

> Thunder is all about hitting fast, most thunder gear will have a high attack speed.

Yet, I haven't seen how it is actually related to quicker attack speeds. Does it mean that when I find thunder weapons, they'll probably have a quick attack speed? Can't all elements have quicker attack speeds? I was also wondering if there were any other things that come with elements, or is it just that an element like thunder usually is found on weapons with higher attack speeds? Please let me know. Thanks!

 

You're exactly correct, thunder weapons typically have faster attack speeds. Don't worry about it too much, what elements embody isn't that important, especially in late game

 

There's a few parts to this I want to answer.

I would say try to ignore statements like these, no class is really associated with any element, like you could play an assassin with a fire/air dagger, a bow with a water bow, or a mage with an earth/thunder wand and they would all be pretty good (assuming you build them right).

Thunder can also be slow melee or spells, if you want it to be!

Short answer, yes.

Long answer, kind of.
This was the case because of element identities. Many items were made with these element identities in mind, although as Wynn is growing and items/building is becoming more complex, more and more exceptions are popping up. You'll mostly see these elemental identites in earlygame (eg. Earth = main attack damage and negative walkspeed, Air = walkspeed and mediocre damage) although as you approach endgame, you'll see many exceptions that makes these element identities harder to identify.

For this specific identity (that thunder means higher attack speed), you'll probably notice quite a few weapons that don't fit this (for example, Anvil Crawler is locked into super slow). However, for the most part, many do (Cataclysm, Blur, Lightning Edge, etc).

Yes. The important thing to notice here is that these identities aren't rigorous.

There are other element identities, yes (for example, fire is related to health regen)

As a conclusion though, these aren't strict guidelines. Thunder items can have slow attack speeds, and fire items can have negative health regen.

The most important thing to know for elements is their mapping to skill points
(eg. Earth -> Strength, Thunder -> Dexterity, Water -> Intelligence, Fire -> Defense, Air -> Agility)
and also that Earth/Thunder (ET) are offensive in nature, and Fire/Air (FA) are defensive.
Water is pretty much a necessity in spell builds, however, at endgame, it is possible to construct a build without intelligence using spell cost items.

 

Thanks! So, it sounds like they do have some rough guidelines that can be useful, but the more important factor is their skill points (which sound like they might be more useful later game?)

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Building on that, it sounds like powder bags are useful for building on top of items that already do a certain type of damage, or something similar?

 

deciding on what powders to put on your weapon (and rarely, armor) can be a bit of a tough decision, and it's actually not related too much to element identity, more the powder special/the type of damage that works best for your build (in fact, the thunder powder special, Chain Lightning, is generally agreed on to work the best at super slow due to how stealing chances work. You can read more about that here https://forums.wynncraft.com/thread...eds-are-preferred-for-mana-life-steal.250895/)

 

Ah, okay. So, would this conclusion be right:

Elements have general guidelines that may help you choose one element to use over another (e.g. you know thunder weapons are likely to have a faster attack speed, and since you like faster attacks, you decided to build for thunder (armor that will compliment thunder weapons-- so, thunder armor typically) so that any future weapons that will likely be faster from their thunder element (if they have it) will do even more damage). As for powders, it really depends on the weapon and what element you are already playing.

 

basically, except you wouldn't exactly "build" towards thunder for faster attacks, you'd build based on weapons/gear while considering elements.

Endgame builds use a combination of elements, and usually, this combination has an identity that I would say mostly overrides individual elemental identities, for example,
ETF is great for heavy melee, which is basically just stacking main attack damage with negative attack speed for hard hitting but slow hits, which goes against the identity of thunder being fast.
TWF is a very commonly used and good spell archetype, but when mana steal is used, usually the attack speed is intentionally lowered to ensure good mana/life steal chances.
On the contrary, ETA is usually used as a "tierstack" archetype, where a super slow weapon gets stacked with added attack speed, to make it super fast and thus deal lots of damage with fast hits.
(for the above, the letters correspond to elements, for example, ETF = earth thunder fire)

So I would say the "element guidelines" aren't the best thing to base your choice of elements off of, it's also the items you have access to, the quality of the items you have access to, and your goal in making the build (in terms of offensive/defensive, playstyle, etc).

Note that this is mostly endgame. You'll notice that these "guidelines" are a lot more rigorous at lower levels.

So as a conclusion, I would say, its better to think of these element guidelines as patterns, as in the grand scheme of things, you're much better off considering other things when making a build (for example, do I want spell damage? Do I want main attack (or melee) damage? Do I want heavy melee? Do I want tierstack? Do I want to use mana regen or mana steal?)

 

No element is better than the other, at least in theory. In practice, however, Strength and Dexterity are relatively bad compared to Agility and Defence, and Intelligence is (usually) the best to put skill points in. Strength and Dexterity scale relatively badly, and since they don't stack (when dexterity activates, the dmg isn't boosted by Strength), they're usually worse. ETW is pretty bad compared to TWA and EWA and EWF and TWF, as they're pretty much separate. However, the elements in general are relatively even.

 

The elements mostly depends on what area your in. For an example in Nesaak it would be better to have a fire weapon because the monsters there are weak to fire :)

 

At lower levels elements rarely matter, since not many mobs have def of are weak to elements. In Newsaak, you’d be better off with Earth, since mobs in Ice Barrows have a massive weakness to Earth. I don’t claim to understand it, I’m merely stating facts here.