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Explanations on Weapon Properties & How To pick good weapons.
This post will cover the various aspects of weapon selection and also offer some tips on the process of strengthening weapons. This post will not cover anything farming or Blacksmith related. If you want some helpful information on farming, check out my post on Rare Drop & Other Drop Rates.
CONTENTS:
- Attack Variance
- Elemental Attack
- Max Attack vs Max Element
- Weapon Effects
- Picking & Strengthening A Weapon
~ATTACK VARIANCE~
As I am sure you are aware, both the raw attack and elemental attack values can vary on all weapons. Sometimes you get an Object Eraser with slightly higher attack than normal. So now the next question becomes “How high does the attack power get?”. In other words, what is the Max Attack of a weapon?
For Elemental Attack, the Max Element value caps at 19% (23% on Rank 12). Any weapon can potentially comes with any element 19% (Drop Quality plays a part in this). For help on which elements are worth focusing on, refer to the following section on ‘Element Attack’.
Unlike Lost Song, the amount of attack difference from Base Attack to Max Attack is not a fixed value for all weapons. As such, it makes it hard to discern what is a Max Attack weapon until you have farmed for hours or consulted someone who has. Fortunately, I have made a DATABASE containing all weapons & equipment along with their respective MAX ATTACK values.
-DROP QUALITY-
The ‘Quality’ of a drop directly affects the kinds of variances you will get on raw attack, elemental attack and even weapon effects. For example, treasure chests will never give you weapons with Elemental Attack or Weapon Affects above 15% but drops from bosses will.
Also the Game Difficulty & Boss Level plays a part in the Quality of the drops you receive. The higher the difficulty and the level of the boss, the better the reward. This is most notable on them max attack power of the weapon.
The respective weapon rank also plays a part in determining what the max element or passive skill can be obtained. After analyzing the trend of weapon ranks according to their max element/weapon effect value, I have found the following:
- Rank 8: 18%
- Rank 9: 19%
- Rank 10: 20%
- Rank 11: 22%
- Rank 12: 23%
Therefore, if you want to build really good weapons, weapon drops should be farmed on the highest level version of a boss Online or in Hard Mode. (Online has considerably better drop rates so it is more desirable)
At the same time, you will never get a weapon that has both Max Element & Max Attack. There is a trade-off between elemental attack and raw attack and the result is that there are two kinds of noteworthy weapons:
- Max Attack with Half Element
- Half Attack with Max Element
These two kinds of weapons will be described in more detail in the “Max Attack vs Max Element” section of this post.
-WHAT ABOUT TRANSFORMING?-
You can bring any weapon in the game up to Max Rank by using the “TRANSFORM” option in the Blacksmith. Since all of these other weapons also have attack variances I have always been curious to whether they could become on par or perhaps even stronger than Max Rank weapons.
So after farming tons of chests In the Ghost Ship looking for Soul Remover, I found a Rank 8 Soul Zapper Axe with considerably high attack (The base is around 2200):
When I brought this Soul Zapper to Rank 10, it looked like this:
To put this into perspective, the Max Attack of Rank 10 Lang was (in version 1.10):
I was shocked, amazed and excited. This meant that any weapon in the game could potentially become a viable Max Rank weapon!
But then I remembered the “Drop Quality” component that plays a part in Weapons. Since this Axe was found from a Treasure Chest and is only Rank 8, its highly unlikely that I will find a Max Attack; Half Element or a Half Attack; Max Element version. On top of this, all of the Passive Weapon Effects will be limited to 17%.
But even so, this is for this Axe specifically. Rank 8 drops from High Level Sudden Quest Bosses should have the potential to become viable as Max Rank weapons (because these weapons will be able to have Max Attack; Half Element as well as 19% Weapon Effects).
But damn. This all got me thinking. What if there really is some Rank 5 Weapon that is potentially stronger than its Max Rank counterpart..?
Probably not…. right?
~ELEMENTAL ATTACK~
All weapons have a chance to come equipped with additional elemental damage. This is a form of bonus damage that is separate from your raw attack and is typically given as a percentage. This percentage is the amount of your raw attack that gets added as bonus elemental damage.
If a boss is weak to an element, Elemental Damage gets multiplied by 2. This makes it absolutely vital to have any form of elemental damage if you want to build a strong weapon. When you have a weapon with an element that a boss is weak to and the corresponding Enhance Element buff is cast, overall damage will be optimized.
But at the same time, there are 6 elements and every boss has its own unique weaknesses which makes picking any one specific Elemental Weapon a gamble. Because of this, you would want to have 6 equally amazing Elemental Weapons for every single Elemental Weakness along with a competent Buffer on your team.
But that takes an insane amount of time and is kind of redundant to say the least. So in most cases, it makes sense to focus on elements that are your character’s strength or elements that are used the most often.
-EVALUATING ELEMENT TYPES-
**This section has been revised to be in accordance with Version 2.00.
-PICKING AN ELEMENT-
Picking Your Character’s Element
Most characters in the game have a major element that they have control over. These characters also typically come with Passive Skills that enhance the damage output of these elements. As such, it is beneficial to give them weapons that correspond to their element (Especially for Solo play or when you play with an incompetent team).
However, it is highly possible that a Boss has a weakness that is not your character’s major element. In this case, a competent Buffer would buff another Element over your character’s major one. Since Elemental Damage gets multiplied by 2 on weakness, your character will in fact be stronger with a foreign element as opposed to an element that a boss resists.
But in this case, your nice Elemental Weapon ends up just becoming a normal weapon since another element is active (Only one element can be active at a time). That is why it is dangerous to pick only one weapon that corresponds to your character’s strength.
Picking The Element Most Frequently Used
Some characters have no major elements. But even so, they would still benefit from Elemental Attack. For characters like this, it makes sense to select the Element that is most frequently used.
A lot of things can affect the frequency of use of an element such as the bosses you typically fight or the kinds of characters your friends typically use. In this case, picking an element that you simply just end up using the most would be the best idea.
But even so, it would help if we had some kind of idea on each element in terms of how many Bosses are weak to them or resist them.
-TOTAL NUMBER OF WEAKNESSES & RESISTANCES-
In this section, I will list each element as well as its total number of Bosses that are both Weak & Resistant to it. Please note that this is not a tier list. If Sigmund is weak to Holy, who cares? He doesn’t appear higher than level 300 and he doesn’t drop anything of interest. That doesn’t make Holy seem any better, does it?
Note hat the total number of bosses in the game is 53 and each boss can each have multiple weaknesses and resistances. (This information is on the Boss Guides page.)
- Number of Bosses Weak to Ice: 17
- Number of Bosses Resistant to Ice: 15
- Number of Bosses Weak to Earth: 14
- Number of Bosses Resistant to Earth: 16
- Number of Bosses Weak to Holy: 13
- Number of Bosses Resistant to Holy: 15
- Number of Bosses Weak to Fire: 15
- Number of Bosses Resistant to Fire: 22
- Number of Bosses Weak to Dark: 12
- Number of Bosses Resistant to Dark: 23
- Number of Bosses Weak to Wind: 12
- Number of Bosses Resistant to Wind: 27
-BK’S ENDGAME ELEMENT TIER LIST (Version 2.00)-
This is more or less how I value elements in Version 2.00 due to the Mugen Dungeon. This tier list was made with regard to the entire dungeon as a whole in terms of the bosses that appear the most frequently. Don’t use this as the be-all-and-end-all for Elements. This is just my perspective on them.
TOP TIER:
- ICE
- EARTH
MID TIER:
- WIND
- HOLY
- FIRE
LOW TIER:
- DARK
~MAX ATTACK VS MAX ELEMENT~
Question: Which one of these is better? (Base Attack power of Object Eraser is 3150)
The answer: For general purpose use the Max Attack; Half Element is better. But when a Boss’ Weakness is Holy and Enhance Holy is buffed, the Half Attack; Max Element is better. (Especially if the boss resists Slash damage).
Ultimately, the decision depends on you and how many Object Erasers you are willing to make. It also depends on what you will generally use them for. But since I think it would be nice to see exactly what kind of differences each one has, I have done a little bit of the math that goes into weapon based damage output. If you can’t stand looking at math, I would highly advise you to skip the following paragraph.
-DOING THE MATH-
**To keep this as uncomplicated as possible, the only variables considered in here are Raw Attack, Elemental Attack, Enhance Buff & Boss Weaknesses. All other Passive skills and other increases will not be taken into account.
The calculations below assume that all increases are calculated with respect to raw attack only.
Max Attack; Half Element: 3799 + [342 Holy]
When used on a boss that is weak to Holy:
3799+[684 Holy]
**Elemental Damage is x2 on weakness.
When used with Enhance Holy:
342 Holy+(30% of 3799) = 3799+[1481 Holy]
When used with Enhance Holy on Boss Weak to Holy:
3799+[2962 Holy]
When used on a boss that resists Slash Damage by half:
1899+[342 Holy]
**For bosses that resist Slash but are weak to Holy etc., the above calculations still apply but now resultant raw attack will be 1899 instead of 3799.
When used on a boss that resists Holy:
3799+[34 Holy]
**When bosses resist Elements, elemental damage is reduced by 90%.
When used with Enhance Ice or any other element:
3799+[1139 Ice]
When used with Enhance Ice & Boss is weak to Ice:
3799+[2278 Ice]
Half Attack; Max Element: 3465 + [659 Holy]
When used on a boss that is weak to Holy:
3465+[1318 Holy]
**Elemental Damage is x2 on weakness.
When used with Enhance Holy:
659 Holy+(30% of 3465) = 3465+[1698 Holy]
When used with Enhance Holy on Boss Weak to Holy:
3465+[3396 Holy]
When used on a boss that resists Slash Damage by half:
1732+[659 Holy]
**For bosses that resist Slash but are weak to Holy etc., the above calculations still apply but now resultant raw attack will be 1732 instead of 3465.
When used on a boss that resists Holy:
3465+[65 Holy]
**When bosses resist Elements, elemental damage is reduced by 90%.
When used with Enhance Ice or any other element:
3465+[1039 Ice]
When used with Enhance Ice & Boss is weak to Ice:
3465+[2078 Ice]
~WEAPON EFFECTS~
Sometimes, weapons and equipment can come attached each with their very own Passive Effect Skills. There are 3 slots for these Weapon Effects and the effects themselves can range anywhere from inflicting debuffs and bad statuses to increasing your own characters strength. Since these Weapon Effects can be transferred between weapons by using the “SYNTHESIS” option at the blacksmith, the are an extremely valuable aspect of building great weapons.
All Weapons are able to have any kind of Weapon Effect but some have a higher probability of appearing on certain weapons than others. Example: “Boss Killer” is rather common on Maces but very rare on Axes.
It is also worth noting that the weapon selected to synthesize is absorbed into in receiving weapon and lost. It is also not possible to add or stack same Weapon Effects. If you should Synthesize a 16% Skill Connect onto a weapon that only has 3% Skill Connect the 16% Skill Connect will simply overwrite the slot instead of becoming 19%. This was explained in slightly more detail in my Menu & System Translation Guide.
For the complete list on these Passive Weapon Effects, check the DATABASE page.
The values listed for Status Ailment Passive Effects is hard to understand. It has to deal with the enemy’s respective resistance to that ailment as well as a probability factor. But it is not worth understanding because Status Ailments on weapons are completely useless. Bosses have ridiculously high resistance values and in PvP, players can simply wear Full Resist Talisman to nullify all Status Ailments. Don’t bother gathering these kinds of Weapon Effects unless you have a fetish for making Harpies paralyzed in the field (I’ve been there w).
The values listed for Stat Debuffs (Attack Down etc.) is in fact a raw probability on hit. This means that a 19% Attack Down will inflict the debuff roughly 1 in 5 hits. Which is an incredibly high rate. These Weapon Effects are definitely worth keeping because it can add a whole new level of variety to your characters. For example, Rain could now have access to Defense Down & Attack Down as well as all the buffs in the game.
Aside from these, Boss Killer, Cooldown Time and Skill Connect are the Holy Trinity of Weapon Effects. Get these 3 onto your weapons to turn them into incredibly strong and awesome creations.
~PICKING & STRENGTHENING A WEAPON~
Now with all of this information, the process to build a sick weapon is as follows:
- Get a Max Attack; Half Element or a Half Attack; Max Attack weapon.
- Get the 3x desired Weapon Passive Effects at 18%+. (Boss Killer, Skill Connect, Cooldown Time or Defense Down/Attack Down)
- Combine all of the above and strengthen your weapon to +10.
Of course, this is as extremely simplified version of the process and getting even a single component needed here can take days and days of farming. But never give up.
Give your Yuuki a Max Attack; Half Element 2Hand Sword with Dark plus Skill Connect, Cooldown Time, Boss Killer all at 19%.Then go brag about it on Twitter and irritate everyone because you earned the right to.
Thank you for reading.