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Like most people here, I retained the information from the base game and DLC1 that "Imbue Element" sucks. Over the past week or so I've been doing a lot of testing with Imbue and found that this is an extremely outdated notion. I will explain when it becomes worth it to Imbue and why, and the tests I used to determine this.
How does Imbue work?
Imbue adds an element to your weapon, this much is obvious. How this works though, is that it (and all hybrid attacks in this game) strictly adds a certain amount of magic damage to your physical (and Souleater/Holy Fang) attacks. There is absolutely 0 negative to an Imbue, only a positive. There are no either/or situations in this game for Imbue. You do not lose any damage even if they heavily resist your particular Imbue element, you would simply gain less magic damage in this case. That's the first thing that needs to be cleared up.
To re-iterate, Imbue does NOT help your spells at all. Please don't imbue on a pure spell-casting Sage.
Why was Imbue bad, and how has this changed?
Now, back in the base game and the first DLC where it was pretty difficult to have a large amount of both stats, you most likely had a low level chaos effect Imbue, and we were desperate for %-based damage boosts like Near Death Damage Dealt, Imbue gave us very little benefit. This used to be the case. A physical attacker with 170 str and maybe 70 Int wasn't seeing much use and didn't want to give up their limited %-based passives for it when they could only reach maybe 100-150% total damage passives.
Now, several things have changed:
- We have higher stats across the board and more mastery points. Any job can reach 100 INT with 0 investment now.
- Aether, & the rift exist: Aether himself can grant Int (up to 60 at level 30, Black Mage & Mage affinities. Several monsters grant affinities that are boosting INT as well even if you weren't really aiming for them. Monsters can also be fed and potentially give more INT.
- Bahamut, Alexander, Azure Lore & Ifrit exist: The first increases all your stats, so if you only cared about Str, or maybe Agi, guess what, you're getting Int too! Alexander decreases all stats, so both their physical and magic defense are getting cut anyways. Azure Lore? Same concept as Bahamut. Ifrit just boosts your combo ability damage overall and doesn't care about the type.
- Black Mage 400/600 exist: The 30 INT from building 20 BLM600 stacks is a nice boost to magic damage. More importantly, Black Mage 400 allows any physical job using an Imbue to build Max MP. This is amazing, especially since Light/Dimension Bringer are currently the meta.
- Blessing's exist: All blessings grant stats as long as the gear is equipped. You're very likely gaining a decent amount of INT from your relics without even trying to.
- Liberator 600 exists: If you're taking your NPCs and have given them Liberator 600, they are giving you a portion of all their stats. Obviously this includes INT. To gain the most out of Liberator 600 you ideally also want them to have as much Str & Int as possible anyways (so they can give you as much as possible regardless of whether you're a physical, magic, or hybrid damage dealing job). That's another new source of INT. My NPCs have around 250-300 str/int in the rift each, so they're definitely giving me a decent amount.
- Fusion exists: Anybody can smith full chaos effect INT on all their gear and maybe gain a full 100-130 more INT on their gear. Not everyone would or should do this but this is an option. (Even just a small bit on your accessory is nice) Not only this, but you can now easily fuse a V-VIII Imbue Element because you're sure to find a few down the road.
- Again, fusion exists: Most players are smithing a ton of damage dealt passives on all their gear. Imagine an endgame player with 200% Damage Dealt for their weapon, and another 150% total between Near Death, Physical, Magic, etc.). Look at it proportionally. An VIII Near Death Damage Dealt effect on a 2h weapon is 22%. Proportionally this is minor compared to the 350% total damage dealt you already have. Instead, cut out that 22% from the weapon and grant yourself 12% Imbue Element (I don't know the math behind the Imbue %'s, but I've heard before, but not personally verified, that Tyrants grant 20% assuming no Improved Effect. From my testing with Aura Edge, the short Imbue from that seems to be slightly stronger than Tyrant's Enchant, maybe 25%).
Now also imagine a fully physical player who had 40 Int outside of the rift, decided to give themself 60 int through mastery, had a decent Aether and some other rift affinities already granting Int. Even moreso if they take Bahamut, Alexander, Azure Lore, or Ifrit. They don't even need to necessarily smith INT onto their gear or feed monsters. Suddenly they have 150-250 INT, potentially even 300-350 if they do smith INT / feed monsters. Again, this is all entirely possible while still having 350% or even more various damage dealt passives.
- In the rift, most enemies either have extremely high Stamina or extremely high Spirit (or the rare enemies like WoL who just have both). All the Iron Giants, Cray Claws, Black Knights, Skeletons, Flans, etc. that have really high physical defense are extremely vulnerable to magic damage, and, if your physical damage is not yet strong enough to really push past their defenses you may end up seeing the magic damage you've imbued help you do almost double damage.
Okay, you just said a bunch of stuff but what about the numbers?
I did testing with my Dark Knight against the Test Goblin while they had Enemy Stats 40. My DRK had 313 STR & 265 INT, and was using the katana with the highest physical attack / lowest magic attack. Only about 75% Near Death Damage Dealt (its fully smithed with Str, HP, & Int), about 190% Souleater damage. The following were my damage tests (for all these tests, Dark weakness was not built up on the goblin. Which means damage could potentially be higher, but most physical jobs won't be investing in the Spirit required to inflict weakness in the Rift.):
- With no buffs, with the NDDD still on my weapon: my Basic attack did 7.3-7.7k & Souleater did 11-12.4k damage
- With Focus level 4, with the NDDD still on my weapon: my Basic attack did 12-12.6k & Souleater did 15-16k.
- With Focus level 4 & Mighty Strikes with the NDDD still on my weapon: my Basic attack did 14.5-15.3k & Souleater still did 15-16k (Mighty Strikes doesn't affect it).
- With Tyrant's Enchant (no Focus or Mighty Strikes) only: my Basic attack did 9.8-10.4k & Souleater did 17.1-18.3k
- Now, replacing my 22% NDDD with a 12% Imbue Dark VIII Mighty Strikes & Focus 4: My basic attack did 16.8-17.5k and Souleater did 18.8-19.5k damage.
Comparing the 3rd & 5th line it's obvious to see that the Imbue drastically increased both my entirely physical katana damage & the INT/HP scaling Souleater (again, only Souleater/Holy Fang do this. Spells & magic damage do not gain a benefit from Imbue). Remember that I'm only doing basic attacks, and that when you count for Katana abilities (which I have about 130% damage dealt for), the NDDD I've lost out on is pretty insignificant. Also keep in mind that this is out of rift, and in Rift I could end up having about 400 Str & Int each on this job.
Why not just use Tyrant as a subjob?: Because with Imbue you can have any subjob you want. Gain more safety with Ninja, gain even more damage with Monk, gain utility with Thief, Knight, Lancer, White/Red Mage, etc.
Conclusion
Please, do not sleep on Imbue. It grants you Max MP options, it grants you a way to pierce the defense of those high physical defense enemies, and it potentially grants you a ton of damage if your INT is even above maybe 150 or so. But what about high Spirit enemies that take only a little magic damage?: They will still take some extra magic damage. Maybe not a lot, but they do. The 10-22% additive percentage based damage you'll lose from your weapon is not going to be enough to change that. The Imbue will almost certainly still outperform as long as you have even a bit of Int.
I've now personally put Imbue on my Dark Knight, Summoner, Berserker, & Pugilist builds and have seen great increases in damage. Void Knight & Paladin I don't need Imbue as Sacred Blade & Aura Edge already do this. Note that my Berserker, Pugilist, and Paladin builds do not have any Int smithed on their gear, just some mastery point INT and my blessings maybe giving a bit, and they still benefit greatly from this.
If you're skeptical, I urge you to test it out for yourself.
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