Tree of Savior Forum

Ele. atk vs m.atk and Elementalist skill scaling

Class and Rank Wizard
#1

So i’ve seen a lot of people claim that elementalist skills scale well with m.att. And that it’s better to stack raw m.att than elemental property attack.

However, they always fail to be specific or give evidence for this supposed scaling. Quick-cast is also not an answer to this because is a multiplier at the end of the damage formula i.e m.att and elemental property damage are both multiplied equally

AFAIK, meteor is the only skill that has a “true” scaling of > 1 with magic attack. When I say true scaling, I mean the damage increase for one damage instance of the spell. So for example, Hail’s true scaling is 1:1 but it’s overall scaling with m.att is much higher because each hit applies the bonus m.att. Consequently, this also means each hit applies bonus elemental property damage.

I guess what I’m trying to get at here, is why are people saying m.att is so much better for elementalists? Sans meteor and elemental weaknesses/strengths, elemental property attack should be better than m.att because it also applies to additional lines of damage?

Of course my whole argument can be invalidated if there is some hidden true m.att scaling that I’m unaware of in certain skills. For ex. if Hail scaled 150% with m.att instead of just 100%.

tl;dr

  • all ele skills sans meteor has a true scaling of 1:1 with matt, no difference from ele.att.
  • quickcast amplifies TOTAL dmg so both m.att and ele.att gets amplified
  • attribute multipliers apply to both m.att AND ele.att so again no difference.
  • ele.att applies to all lines of damage whereas m.att does not. so therefore it’s actually better?
  • unless ele skills have hidden true scaling over >1 with m.att then ele.att is absolutely the same if not better than m.att – ele weaknesses notwithstanding.
#2

afaik Elemental properties attacks do not enter in multipliers calculations, not from Attributes and not from Quickcast, that’s the reason it’s better to go for raw matq.

I’m not 100% sure of this as I haven’t tested it for myself.

IF they get multiplied all the same it doesn’t matter much, will be up to what the best defensive gear gives (which will make a specific type of ppt attack useless) and what type of monster you are attacking.

#3

Well I tested it out and quickcast definitely amplifies elemental property dmg. Like I said it’s a multiplier at the end of the damage formula so it multiplies everything.
As for attribute multiplier, this i’m not too sure. I will give it some additional testing to make sure.

EDIT: Just did a quick test and attribute multiplier does ALSO increases elemental property damage. So from the looks of it, sans elemental weaknesses, there is ABSOLUTELY no difference between elemental property damage and m.att.

#4

There is. Magic attack is reduced by enemy magic defence. Elemental attack is reduced by enemy elemental property, and elemental defence.

#5

I said in my original post to ignore elemental weaknesses. However since you mentioned mdef then wouldn’t m.att be even less valuable because every mob has mdef (And they get pretty high at latter lvls) whereas not every mob has specific elemental resist?

#6

False. Read this thread.

#7

Yes. If you manage to get Holy or Dark elemental bonus damages, you will get true damage boosts since holy and dark elements don’t suffer any penalties. ~200 mobs are Dark element, and weak to holy.

However increasing elemental damage is difficult. Increasing magic attack is possible by statting INT.

#8

Actualy if you think about it every target has a fixed mdef value, so you always remove that value entirely from your m.atq. This means any bonus matq you can find will deal it’s full damage potential since your current damage already took in consideration all of the target’s m. def.

That being said Property attacks can have their values reduced by defenses you wouldn’t even need to consider if you didn’t have those, while m. def will ALWAYS be applied to your attack, which makes m. atq bonuses damage “fixed”

#9

hmm, that is very true. I forget sometimes that mdef in tos is not a multiplier like in most games.

#10

Defenses are worse if you have multi-hit skills. Consider a single hit with 1000 damage. Enemy magic defence is 50, so you hit 950.

Consider 10 hits of 100 magic damage. Enemy defence 50 is applied to each hit, so you deal 500 damage less. However 10 hits will multiply your damage bonuses by 10 too.

Edit: the best way to boost damage is through Blessing. Since Blessing is unaffected by enemy defenses.

#11

Not exactly the case for ToS, since single hit skills usually don’t have enough power to outweight a multi-hit skill.
Besides, as you level up and get better weapons, the difference in damage between those skills (which was basically just their base damage) will get lower and lower.

Actually it is one of the worst possible boosts alongside Concentrate, because they don’t scale with attributes or other % buffs. That is why they got status scalings.

Answering the OP:

The difference is just as you can read at that Damage Guide thread. Matk will be a “neutral” increase of damage, while elemental will be increased/reduced an extra time if needed (first based on the element of the skill and then based on its own element).

Based on that, assuming you have the chance to get the same values of matk and elemental damage, Holy and Dark damage would be better than matk, because they are never reduced (unlike the other elements) while also having the chance to be increased (unlike matk). Holy damage being better than Dark, but that is being too picky.

#12

Final answer is: people say magic attack scales best because it is easiest to get, and to stat through INT, and the INT per rank bonus.
Holy, dark > magic attack.
Stack sacrament buff, and Blessing (most available through pardoners).
Headgears with Holy damage, Dark elemental damage.
High weapon magic attack.
High Attributes.

I agree. The new blessing scaling is much better now. Love the extra damage when there’s a high SPR blessing 15 in the party.

#13

Hey,

check this out for details for your questions.

The general formula is:
(((((Skill Attack + Effective Attack) + (random(0% … 100%) *
Magic Amplification)) * (100% + T0)) - ((Effective Defense * (100% +
Level Penalty)) + Elemental Resistance)) * (100% + (0 or 50% if crit)) +
(0 or Critical Attack) + Extra Elemental Attack + Enemy Specific
Damage) * (100% + T1) * (100% + T2) * (100% + T3) * (100% + Enhance) +
Bonus Damage

Quickcast is a T2 scaler and thus does scale elemental damage.

1 Like
#14

Sorry to burst your bubble there, but meteor is t1 and very much affected by defense AND scales any elemental damage.

#15

ty - corrected.

Sometimes hard to go through all possible info’s :wink:

#16

Hi, just like to point something out here.

Attributes scales differently with Elemental attack compared to M.atk. Instead of multiplying the entire value by the attribute’s amount, you instead get a magic-amp effect.

Lets take the most common example:

Arde Dagger - +153 fire atk.
Assume you have 500 matk total from your gear/stats.
Quick Cast with attribute
Magic Missiles lvl 5 (373 atk)
Lets assume the target has no mdef for a simple example.

With 0% attribute:
[(500+373)+153] * 1.5 (QC) = 1539 damage

With 50% attribute:
{[(500+373)] * 1.5 * 1.5} + [153 * 1.5 * (1~1.5)] = 2194~2309 damage

You can easily see this effect by comparing a skill without any enhance attribute vs one that has it.

This is why, IMO, Matk is better than Ele.atk in a direct comparison.

#17

Idk where you got that weird idea, but ele. atk scales perfectly with enhance attributes.

#18

From actual testing.

Take off as much magic amp gear as possible, use one of your skills that has no attribute (like Earthquake for example).

You should notice that the only variance you see in your damage will be equal to that of your magic amp. If your magic amp is 0 (by not completing certain collections), you will always do the exact same damage against the same monster.

Now spend some silvers getting lvl 10 attribute for that skill (Earthquake for example), and you will notice that your damage variance (with an arde for example) becoming much wider compared to your actual magic amp.

The ONLY time this has not been true was with OOB from Sadhu, and I suspect this is due to the fact that you are mainly using a normal attack in OOB’s spirit form and not actually casting a skill itself.

#19

Hmm, I dont have any magic amp on my Wiz, and all elemental damage was perfectly scaled by anything.

I will try it later and post my results.