Acuity or regular flares?

[drauz]

At what point does acuity become better than regular flares (fire, earth, lightning)? Is there a particular flare that is considered "best" assuming there are no environmental restrictions or immunity?

[Astray]

I'd say it all depends on what you hunt and where. Lightning is hands down a great flare in general but fire is perfect for trolls. I haven't really seen anything of note involving earth flares. Outside the e-bow.

[drauz]

I guess I will wait to see what the Sea of Fire zone is going to have before I decide what flares to put on my runestaff.

[Maerit]

I'd say it all depends on what you hunt and where. Lightning is hands down a great flare in general but fire is perfect for trolls. I haven't really seen anything of note involving earth flares. Outside the e-bow.

Earth flares are great for stone / earth creatures. It's often why they're called "vibe" flares because they initiate a vibration flare effect on these creatures.

As for the OP's question - you take into account what you're casting. Acuity is powerful for sorcerers who use spells that increase their damage based on the warding failure amount. The higher the warding failure, the higher the damage if you're using the right spells. 702, for example, does significantly more damage based on the warding margin.

702, 711, 717 (whether it instantly dies or flees), and 719. I'm not entirely sure about 705, but it probably follows the same basic pattern. Basically, you're going to deal more damage when your acuity procs with just about any warding spell, and it increases your AS with bolt spells.

The benefit of Acuity is not always as visible as raw damage flares, but it stacks with Ensorcell flare and they activate independently of each other allowing for a lot of additional warding damage. In addition, the warding advantages suffer from no environmental disadvantages, which is why a lot of higher trained sorcerers prefer Acuity over say Lightning or Fire since those flares can actually cause negative side effects in certain hunting grounds.

In the lower trains, Acuity is probably less noticeable. Fire and Lightning are primary flare effects (especially Fire due to how many different kinds of trolls exist in the earlier trains, but then they start to disappear as you level). Acid and Void are great alternatives because they have high crit power and suffer from no environmental triggers. Earth is weaker than most flares, but has a place when fighting stone creatures. Unbalance, Grapple, and many of the other "rare" flares are probably less useful to sorcerers in general since they focus on disabling - which sorcerers are masters of doing on their own.

[crb]

if you could actually get a 10x acuity or something staff at a low level it'd be incredibly noticeable.. but good luck with that.

All told, there is nothing as sexy as 10x acuity and T6 ensorcellment flaring at the same moment. Not even Hannah Davis in a Leia Bikini.

If you didn't go with acuity I'd stick with disruption or disintegration - simply because nothing really is immune to them and no areas will make them back fire or whatever.

Realistically you're unlikely to be able to get acuity past about 6x anymore. I think there are only 3 10x such staffs in game.