What is the most powerful beam spell combo?

Question

Was wondering what the most powerful beam spell combo is in Magicka. I know of a few strong beam combos but it's hard to tell which is the most powerful in terms of raw damage.

My personal favourite is Arcane+Steam+Steam+Lightning+Lightning. It seems to be pretty effective.

Has anyone done some experimenting or some damage calculations? It would be cool to know which is the most powerful. Thoughts?

Answer

It's quite a straightforward and well known weakness of Magicka's design - the steam/lightning/arcane beam.

I'm also reasonably sure that since lightning gains the great bonus from wet targets, having it on three instances instead of two would give you a slightly more effective beam. Id est, Steam+Lightning+Lightning+Lightning+Arcane or "QFAAAS".

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Are there situations where Stamina or Magicka Damage is really useful?

Question

On first glance these enchants seemed really great. Ideally I'd pepper a dangerous mage from afar with a +Magicka Damage bow. And then engage it safely in melee. But in practice I find that if I don't kill the enemy in a reasonably short time, I am dead anyway.

Furthermore the loss in damage compared to straight health damage doesn't seem to be worth it. A 20 base damage sword with +20 Frost damage to Health and Stamina will inflict roughly 40 damage to Health per succesful blow. Whereas the same sword with +20 damage to Magicka, or +20 damage to Stamina, will really only inflict 20 damage to Health per succesful blow.

Do you find these enchants useful? Am I misunderstanding the effects?

Answer

You're right, the Damage Magicka and Damage Stamina enchantments aren't terribly efficient.

Absorb Magicka and Stamina have their place, but in general, you'll find opponents regen Magicka to fast for Magicka damage to be terribly useful - generally, by the time you've done enough for it to be really effective, you've hit them enough times to kill them anyway. Stamina is a bit more useful - an opponent with low Stamina will have trouble blocking and power attacking, which can shorten a protracted battle, but given the magnitude and base uses of the enchant, you're often much better off using an Frost Damage or Absorb Stamina enchant - you'll find them to be much more effective overall.

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Sneak damage modifier stacking

Question

• Sneak attacks do 6x damage with one-handed weapons
• Sneak attacks with daggers do 15x damage (end perk on skill tree)

A dagger is a one handed weapon, so does this mean either;

1. Daggers just deal 15x damage
2. Daggers deal (15x + 6x) 21x damage
3. Daggers are op and deal (15x * 6x) 90x damage

Answer

Consider the text of the perk itself:

Sneak attacks with daggers do 15x damage

The perk is concise and to the point: Daggers do 15x damage. Not, "increased by 15%" or the like, just, "do 15x damage".

This holds up in game, where Daggers do 2.5 times the sneak attack damage of other one-handed weapons.

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How do trench-mounted flak cannons affect enemies?

Question

In Trenched, the Flak emplacements will only attack ariel targets. However, there are some machine guns that have the Flak ability, and their descriptions indicate that they are for anti-air use. Is their effectiveness reduced when attacking ground targets? If so, do they deal 0 damage, or just a reduced percentage?

Unable to find this information out either in-game or elsewhere on the internet.

Answer

Flack machine guns still seem to do full damage on ground targets. Try running an assault mech with 3 scythes on one side and 3 razor of the gods on the other. The scythes will only very slightly outgun the razors against ground targets which is what you would expect given their slightly higher dmg output. Against air targets or small ground targets like knobs the razors will beat the scythes. I think the flack abillity does bonus damage on air units but hits ground units with the normal base damage. I might be wrong and perhaps their is a slight penalty but it doesn't look like it from experience.

The Razors tend to also leave nice little piles of scrap. I usually run a combo of scythes and razors down one side of my mech if I use machine guns. All in all the Razor of the Gods is probably my favorite machine gun but the scythe is a close second and is better for all ground unit battles.

One thing I have noticed is that the Razor of the Gods puts out a much larger and more numerous cloud of bullets than the scythes which is odd since they are supposed to have the same rate of fire. I'm not sure what is up with that, but it does make it a lot easier to take out crowds of small targets.

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How much extra damage does using an enemy's elemental weakness inflict?

Question

In Chantelise, I'm trying to figure out if it's worth it to use up one of my equipment slots with an elemental crystal when I could be stacking up another weapon or defense item instead. How much extra damage will I inflict on an enemy with their elemental weakness? Is this is a constant percentage or does it vary from enemy to enemy?

Answer

Elemental attacks deal strictly around double damage compared to normal attacks of the same strength. So for example, on normal attacks with absolutely no equipment, you will deal maybe 9 damage to a caterpillar. With the Wind Crystal, you'll deal 18-20 damage per hit. You can tell the enemy's element based on the color of your targeting circle.

However, keep in mind, the elemental crystals come with their own special benefits. For example, the Wind Crystal changes your combo into a 5-hit instead of a 3-hit, while the Water Crystal gives you a round-about spinattack when charged up (hold the attack button). Mastering the extra attacks is key and often gives you a greater advantage than pure stats do as their damage is not the same as a standard combo. As well, since you can only equip a certain number of each kind of equipment, elements give you even more damage on top of maxed attack equipment (should you go all out).

Also keep in mind that elemental damage allows you to defeat skeletons and other special enemies using just your weapon, not requiring the use of actual spells.

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