Talk:Sapfire Daggers/@comment-91.12.15.159-20140808170912/@comment-98.156.57.25-20160301074943

" you essentially  lose  damage regardless of whether the physical is higher than the physical  and  majick totals of an equally-stat'd weapon because you lose that bonus 30% magick damage.   '' What I'm trying to say is, pure strength builds using pure physical weapons with Vehemence and Clout are actually inferior to balanced/strength/magick builds using phsycial/majick weapons simply because of the 30% bonus majick damage from Attunement and Acuity." ''

Wat. That's not how math works. I've seen a couple of people hint at this on the wiki and it's bothering me enough that I figure I should say something. Because your damage is split between physical and magical, and because the augments only increase one of those damage types, by going with a balanced build you're actually reducing the individual effectiveness of those augments.

For example, if you have a weapon that's dealing 500 physical and 500 magic damage then Clout and Vehemence are increasing that physical damage by 30%, so 150 damage. However, when you look at the overall damage of the weapon, you've only increased your damage by 15% (1150 vs 1000). Conversely, if you have a purely physical weapon that does 1000 damage, then those same augments are granting you 300 bonus damage, or the full 30%. Now these are fake numbers simply for the sake of having easy math, but the point is that because each augment is only being applied to a portion of your damage, you're getting less out of those augments. You can counter that loss by equipping Attunement/Acuity in order to boost the magical portion of your damage, but you're effectively using two additional augment slots.

So essentially what I'm getting at is that by going with a ballanced build, all you're really doing is requiring that you use four augment slots in order to achieve what a pure physical or pure magic spec is able to do with two augment slots.

When you consider that defense/magic defense are flat damage reductions, then splitting your damage is even more costly. For example, if an enemy has 150 defense and 100 magic defense then a character with 500 strength will do 350 damage in an attack while a character using an enchanted weapon with 250 strength 250 magic would deal 100+150 =250 damage. Again, fake numbers for the sake of easy math. In reality, the combined physical/magic stats of a balanced character generally exceeds that of a pure physical or magic character. However, because hybrids have to deal with both defense and magic defense, and because your damage is being split, your actual damage ends up being lower than you might expect. As a result, by going with a hybrid build, your damage may end up lower than a pure str/mag build simply because you have to overcome both defense and magic defense.