Talk:Sapfire Daggers/@comment-91.12.15.159-20140808170912/@comment-71.173.164.23-20150307100406

I know this is an old post but I've been using the wiki now for a while and felt like I should contribute something. It seems there are many questions regarding builds and mixing strength with magic, what's more effective, and what weapons to use with which build. I'm going to attempt to clear a few things up since I haven't seen this posted anywhere and I just happen to be on this page.

For testing purposes I used a low-level Ranger alt with Galvanic Razors, a Plain Longbow, and normal attacks. The enemy in this test is the Phantasm in Soulflayer Canyon (physical and lightning immunity). Obviously, normal attacks barely did any noticeable damage with both the daggers (physical and lightning) and the bow (physical). I had my pawn use Holy Affinity on myself and, once again, attacked using normal attacks. I then equipped a pair of Kunai, followed by Snagdaggers, and did some normal attacks. My observation was this:

Unenchanted normal attacks did no noticeable damage to the phantasm save the 1/4 life they randomly lose when first struck (this seems to be a one-time phenomenon). The Kunai, albeit very slowly, was able to kill the Phantasm with its dark damage. Holy-enchanted Galvanic Razors, Plain Longbow, and Kunai would 1-hit the Phantasm. Holy-enchanted Snagdaggers did not 1-hit the Phantasm.

Snagdaggers have a physical score of 220 (closest to the physical score of Galvanic Razors at 228). I used these because I wanted to see if the Galvanic Razors' lightning damage and the Kunai's dark damage was being factored in while enchanted with Holy Affinity. It seems that, even though the Phantasm is immune to lightning, the holy enchantment seemed to replace/override the base lightning enchant on the Glavanic Razors. This was the same case for the Kunai, as both were able to 1-hit a Phantasm and the Snagdaggers were not. Interestingly enough, the Plain Longbow has a slightly lower physical stat than all daggers tested and was able to 1-hit the Phantasm (possibly due to its bludgeoning damage). My conclusion is this:

It doesn't seem to matter how you build your character- high strength, high magic, or a nice balance. What matters is the weapon used and the element it possesses. For example, you can make an Arisen with 806 strength and 333 magick (tested on my Assassin) or one with 341 strength and 768 majick (tested on my Majick Archer) and, as long as you are using an elemental weapon, the damage you do will be near identical on the same enemy with the same attack. When using a majick weapon with Vehemence, Clout, Attunement, and acuity, your physical and majick damage increase by 30% each. However, if you specifically use a weapon with no majick damage, 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. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule (pure physical will reign over enemies immune to magick while pure majick with reign over enemies immune to physical). In the case of the Magick Archer, Vehemence and Clout are useless with the majick bow since it does entirely majick damage. To get the most out of a Majick Archer, use physical/majick weapons; Vehemence, Clout, Attunement, and Accuity; and build for as much majick stat as possible to increase the majickal damage of the daggers and bow. What this accomplishes is more damage with the majick bow compared to low-majick stat builds and pretty much the same amount of damage with physical/majick daggers.

My recommendation would be to use the Sapfire Daggers (for superior damage with the above four augments totalling more than the Framae Daggers) but keep a pair of Framae Daggers in your inventory for enemies immune to magick. The fact that Sapfire Daggers are fire-based is irrelevant when enchanted with Holy Affinity since it seems to override the fire enchantment. Also, the idea floating around that the Majick Archer's dagger skills (mainly Immolation) is based entirely off of your physical stat is absurd. If you use Sapfire Daggers, BOTH your physical and majickal scores are used to calculate the skill's damage, so once again a high-majick build is nice since it also buffs up your majick bow damage. You could also go with a balanced build to sacrifice some majick bow damage for some more dagger damage if you wanted.

Sorry for the wall of text, but I hope that helps. I put myself through some grueling testing just to provide you with this information.

It's also worth noting that the exact OPPOSITE build would be best for a Strider/Ranger/Assassin using bows since bows are 100% physical damage and having a high base physical stat drastically increases the damage you would do with them compared to a balanced/majick build. Of course I would still recommend using a physical/majick weapon like the Sapfire Daggers since you can still benefit from Attunement and Acuity with them. Just remember to always take a Mage/Sorcerer with you capable of casting the enchantment you'd like.