Greater Elemental Flares

[Light]

Is there one particular type of these that is generally the most OP? I'm guessing if you want something that works everywhere it's between earth(vibe) and void(gravity), am I totally wrong? Which type has the best crit/damage tables? I dunno how much it matters but it's going onto a maul. Would really appreciate any info from someone who knows about these things.

Cheers!

[Riltus]

Is there one particular type of these that is generally the most OP? I'm guessing if you want something that works everywhere it's between earth(vibe) and void(gravity), am I totally wrong? Which type has the best crit/damage tables? I dunno how much it matters but it's going onto a maul. Would really appreciate any info from someone who knows about these things.

Cheers!

Impact (earth) is slightly better than vacuum (void) because of R5 HEAD and NECK fatal criticals. Impact is also a bit better than the other damage types when creature specific and environmental factors are ignored.

Flare HP damage for each of these 5 damage types is the same across the board. Also, more often than not, a creature will be stunned by the weapon attack prior to the flare. So, a stun round comparison has reduced significance. Next you have to consider the maximum flare critical rank. If these are capped at rank 7 then critical ranks 8 and 9 can be ignored. When a comparison is made of the remaining factors (knockdowns, injury severity, fatal criticals) then impact (earth) is the winner with vacuum (void) a close second and the other three not far behind.

Mark

[Donquix]

earth (and void) is a great general purpose flare. there's a lot of random stuff immune to fire or cold, little is immune to getting brained by a rock.

the reverse of that, of course, is not much is WEAK to earth flares. Versus fire or ice have a collection of things that it works great against (trolls obviously being the big one with fire), you also get icemule hunting in general there.

I lean towards fire for that reason. You pretty much always have a troll around your level that you end up hunting, all the ice things in icemule / the glacier in TI, GoS warcamps, etc. But if for whatever reason you don't see yourself doing any of that regularly, i'm +1 for earth as well.

[BriarFox]

Lightning flares also have the unique ability to target the nerves, resulting in heavy stuns and low threshold crit kills.

[Light]

Really appreciate all the info from you guys, thanks!