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Earth or Shadow?


ilovefredi1

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Both elements are viable as long as you're willing to put in the effort for the right gear. In the end it comes down to the play style you're more comfortable with.

 

Earth is more of a burst based style due to their reliance on minimizing their Fury cooldown and maximizing Wrath uptime where your DPS to an extent is based on your ability to ani-cancel until you have the gear to consistently spam Cleave. Some downsides include: harder to move while doing damage, demanding a lower ping, and most of your damage doesn't come into play until getting Primal Force Soul Badge and Skyrift Mystic Badge. You do need Tiger Bracelet at some point but you don't get nearly as much out of it without badges. Earth doesn't lose much if anything with Riftwalk but a part of me still thinks it isn't at its best until we get Haesin weapon which is literally just Riftwalk with elemental damage stacking.

 

Shadow goes more for sustained damage since for the most part ani-cancelling isn't nearly as important but with the right gear offers a burst comparable to high DPS classes which is then taken to a whole new level with party buffs. It's possible to move around while maintaining damage with Shadow build and you can maintain said damage at a much higher ping but at the cost of more importance on getting Magnum Soul Badge, Pulse Mystic Badge, and Divine Dragon Bracelet. It's also arguably more complex to play since you have 2 major rotations to maintain (maintaining Willpower buff as well as a DPS rotation) that depend on what gear you have. There's an interesting experiment with going Riftwalk but ultimately the raid weapon (Raven/Aransu) suits Shadow best.

 

Keep in mind this only applies until Vortex Temple, a lot changes with the Legendary Mystic Badges. Both elements are still viable at that point but Earth arguably gets it easier than Shadow. Aransu badge and VT 8 set mostly just play into their strength while Shadow's new rotation with Dynasty badge gets a bit clunkier until they get Limitless Soul Badge while at the same time the cooldown reduction on Fury isn't necessarily worth giving up the cooldown reduction on Execute. Fortunately as a Shadow user my damage still went up a modest amount as a result of getting my badge and I can still burst on par with people that have True Transcendent Soul when I have Cosmic 5 but the change in rotation makes it feel like I have to re-learn how to play the build until I can get my fused badge.

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  • 4 weeks later...

A friend of mine is a shadow des and im an earth des. Both of us have high VT gear, his is higher due to having luck in a rancor drop (my group has only seen one and a ton of barbs) And we both do comparable damage. He has tried earth, but found it hard to use since the lack of mobility + damage affected him since he has been shadow since it became really popular in BT. He did say that the VT shadow gear really messes up your rotation since you lose pulse effect when using the VT badge. And having to re-learn how to manage your execute cd is a challenge but once you do learn it, its not much different thing normal.

 

Now, on the topic of weapons. Both Earth and Shadow will use the raid path weapon. Reliable sources in a few discords that i go to have stated that KR is shifting their dps spread to suit raid path weapons over non-raid path. With the highest weapons leaning nearly 30% in favor of raid path. Their reason is...can you raid and are not cheap ~~> Do big damage.....you cant raid ~~> lose about 30-40%. This does include Earth Des and Haesin weapons. They finally saw that there was no reason for a few classes (mostly just single specs) to go with a totally different weapon to do their maximum potential. The hard part is, on paper, alot of times those non-raid weapons will show to be higher, but the overall scaling will be lower.

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On 1/26/2018 at 4:52 PM, Duriensbane said:

A friend of mine is a shadow des and im an earth des. Both of us have high VT gear, his is higher due to having luck in a rancor drop (my group has only seen one and a ton of barbs) And we both do comparable damage. He has tried earth, but found it hard to use since the lack of mobility + damage affected him since he has been shadow since it became really popular in BT. He did say that the VT shadow gear really messes up your rotation since you lose pulse effect when using the VT badge. And having to re-learn how to manage your execute cd is a challenge but once you do learn it, its not much different thing normal.

 

Now, on the topic of weapons. Both Earth and Shadow will use the raid path weapon. Reliable sources in a few discords that i go to have stated that KR is shifting their dps spread to suit raid path weapons over non-raid path. With the highest weapons leaning nearly 30% in favor of raid path. Their reason is...can you raid and are not cheap ~~> Do big damage.....you cant raid ~~> lose about 30-40%. This does include Earth Des and Haesin weapons. They finally saw that there was no reason for a few classes (mostly just single specs) to go with a totally different weapon to do their maximum potential. The hard part is, on paper, alot of times those non-raid weapons will show to be higher, but the overall scaling will be lower.

Could you give some links as proof of the aransu being stronger/changed for earth dest? Im rather interested in that

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23 hours ago, Phytolacca said:

Could you give some links as proof of the aransu being stronger/changed for earth dest? Im rather interested in that

Your main evidence is gonna be in the form of translated patch notes from the KR server. Those are readily available on bnstree. The change to raid weapons is already live in NA, we just don't have Aransu 9 yet.

https://bnstree.com/news/Hy-ZMtxEb/6.28-kr-patch-summary

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  • 9 months later...

earth need two things ping lower then 200ms for speed and vt badge for super high dps soo you can get in end game dungeons anything else really is fine as long you have those 2.

you can gear up slowerly but start in that order(erring if its ravens-bracelet-weapon-ring if raven or higher) rest doent really matter .

as for badges vt badge is 2k now days and from 500-900 if clan raid (its about the leader really if lucky he will give it for free to help you gear up for the clan) and get badges supprt you mighty cleave cd becuse  the real earth destro DMG comes from that not really from rmb.

shadow is more ping carrying element easy to use more dmg per but more then gear like accessorys you really need badges they are high priority then the rest of the gear if you wanna do shadow destroyer not vt but more like normal one you need legendary badge from two that you spam (f) tons of time more like (rmb-f..endlessly) kinda compo thats how you do high dmg even with middel geared player.

in pvp or 6v6 both are awesome but shadow is more triky becuse even with low ping its still move slower then earth you get openings more and shadow if you not exp with useing you fouces youll wastedfouces for nothing alot.

earth is best for anything but about speed more then anything else if you not lower then 200 ms tops earth wont really suit you in pvp or pve.

give the simple combat mode a try mabey itll make it more fun for you both elemants (shift+f3).

 

 

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