FIRE SKILL

[Nenhunter]

Im finding all the fire skills useless (for a str build at least) except for the imbue and passive. Any thoughts? (Might get the fire tower for coolness factor )

[dom]

0.o that's more then useful. Look around, most of the force skills don't have much to offer.

COLD:
Def buffs (physical)

LIGHTNING:
Running speed buffs
Parry ratio buffs

FIRE:
PHYSICAL DAMAGE BUFFS
Def buffs (magic)

EDIT: I started writing a guide a while ago, here's extracts.

2.2 LIGHTNING
The lightning can be divided into four parts:
i) Magical damage buff: The Piercing Force series is essential to any magical damage build. That is to say, INT heavy or Hybrid builds. (see parts 3.2 and 3.3)
ii) Magical damage dealing skills: The Thunder Force, Lion Shout and Thunderbolt Force series all offer imposing damage via magical outlets.
iii) Dodge ratio buffs: Both the Heaven's Force and Concentration series offer dodge buffs. (see section 4.2)
iv) Speed increase: The Wind Walk series are the only skills that can improve character running speed. This is extremely important and most people put atleast one point into the first book. Flys SRO Guide Fast leveling and the top 4 Builds (2) best explains it: A fast run is one of the most important things when it comes to leveling. Let’s do some basic math. If it takes you 6 seconds (one imbue) to kill a mob, and 12 seconds to get to the next mob, that would mean that you get one kill every 18 seconds. What if you could cut down the 12 seconds of walking down to 6 seconds? You will level 33% faster. That right there is an incredible increase in leveling.

The lightning branch offers much to magic based builds in Silkroad online, for this reason it is extremely popular and useful.

2.3 COLD VS FIRE
The cold and fire branches seem to always be compared. You could say that there's a war between people about which element is better. Bias aside, the answer to this argument seems very simple:

Cold offers a defensive edge with it's freezing and frosbite probablity, aswell as physical defence buffs. This element is suited to slowing down mobs and protecting players against physical attacks.

On the other hand, the fire tree boasts skills that induce burns and give physical damage increases , aswell as magical defence buffs. This element is suited to dealing physical damage and protecting players against magical attacks.

The fire tree can also suit a player who is dealing physical damage, perhaps for a pure str glaive character; while the cold tree better suits a player looking for a physical defence bonus as well as the ability to slow down mobs, great for a character specializing in pacheon skills.

2.3 CONCLUSIONS
Each tree offers something unique to the table (lightning: speed, magical damage, dodge; cold: freezing, frostbiting, physical defence; fire: physical damage, magical defence). The key to recognizing which is best is not by comparing statistics and numbers, but rather by selecting which goes best with your playing style. For instance, if I were a player that likes living on the edge and dealing massive damage, I would probably take the fire and lightning skills and exploit the power that is offered by their nukes. In this case the lightning magical damage buffs compliment the fire and lightning skills, making your choices compliment eachother is what makes a good build great.

[Freedom-Fighta]

You wont see any effect from the fire-body series till you are hitting upwards of 200 base damage on each weapon (this means 6 points using just level 1 fire-body wisdom)

By level 2 of Fire-Body Extreme the value is about 8 - 9% meaning 16-18 pts, but by then your blade will be hitting for upwards of 300, or 48-54. This is also applied to any bonuses (IE Heaven Chain adds a shedload of damage, meaning the percentage is very useful in all situations, you just cant really see it now).

On my blader I score about 3-4 points more with Fire Body Wisdom (level 1) on as opposed to off. Im using a level 23 equivalent (18+5), so the damage difference may be more noticable to me than to you.

[Nenhunter]

I dunno. I had lvled flame body wisdom to lvl 2 (still 3% tho) and used it, and got about a 20-30 increase. But then I used my imbue and it did 20-30 less dmg (who knos, maybe im contridicting elements or something, I was using a cold imbue). So I have concluded to using just a regular imbue.

[Freedom-Fighta]

The cold imbue will generally lower damage if you use a blade, I personally use a sword b/c i have a 18+5 (as mentioned above) and it deals better physical compared to blades of similar level.

In general, you wont be dealing enough with a level 1 cold imbue to make up for the negative bonus you gain from having so low a magical balance. My character has a 34% magical balance thus i recieve negative benefits from imbues as far as base damage goes. With my cold imbue, and Fire-Body Wisdom, I am capable of putting out 3-4 more damage using my cold imbue, and upwards of 25 more using my fire imbue.

As you get stronger fire imbues the value of having both will become more noticable, and please remember that magical damage is basically physical damage with a pretty ribbon on top. Sometimes the extra damage is negative, removing some physical punch, and it wil mostly be in our case.

Dont base your damage increase from Fire-Body Wisdom/Heat/Extreme on how much you deal with a low-level imbue, use your Fire Imbue (which should be MUCH higher) as a benchmark instead.

~Freedom-Fighta

[ShizKnight]

The reason it does a little less is because parry may make your attacks lower or higher. ATM, I can hit for upwards of 1200 with spells, and the damage increase is very noticeable with Flame-Body Power.

[Nenhunter]

yea, my fire imbue is definitely WAYYY better. It generally does around 450 dmg on a green mob vs. 260 dmg on green mob with cold. But the difference is, my fire imbue cost 266mp and my cold imbue cost 52mp , so which do you think I would pick to grind ^_^

[Freedom-Fighta]

I use my fire bufff, but no skills with it. Mine only costs 152 atm, but it is a notable difference (note this is when grinding, not the below calculations. All of the below assume ihave my imbue on)

62-72 w/o Fire-body
74-80 w/ fire-body

Average Crit w/o Fire-Body: approximately 112
Average Crit w/ fire-bdoy: approximately 140

The difference is notable, as aI said, only when damage climbs really high.

And besides, the Fire-Body series is such a low-level-to-max skill it is easier to resuscitate should you deem it not worthy than, say, maxing out the first of the hidden blade or killing heaven skills, only to find you dont like it that much.

Give it a chance. When you hit level 40ish, then decide if its worth it or not. Go smack a mangyan w/ the fire imbue and Fire-Body <w/e the hell u have by then> off, and then see the difference with it turned on.

Like I said, its only 8 resuscitation pots and approximately 160k if you dont like the series... which by then is pocket change.

[Nenhunter]

well, since you have illustrated so well by the way, lemme do so too ^_^

*note-all based on attacking earth ghosts and also without any skills

normal attack=200-250
normal+ fire imbue=400-450
normal+ flame body on!=230-270
normal+fire imbue+flame body on!=360-380(what the hell!)

as you can see, using flame body cause my dmg to take a dive. Oh yea, forgot to mention, im a glaiver ^_^

[Freedom-Fighta]

that is quite strange...

Perhaps its the fact that im using a sword thats doing it... i dunno...

EDIT: Meaning the fact that im using the high magic damage version of my weapon class is providing different numbers.

[Nenhunter]

maybe, but since everytime I use it I look at the little box and wonder when it'll go away, I might as well not use it ^_^

better delvl now before it cost too much ^_^

[Freedom-Fighta]

maybe, but since everytime I use it I look at the little box and wonder when it'll go away, I might as well not use it ^_^

better delvl now before it cost too much ^_^

methinks 160k and 160 curst harts is teh ezness if you start the curst hart quest now and wait till lvl 40 to test the skill..

but i see your mind is set, so oh the well...

I hope your results are satisfactory to you...

But you should also try skills... not trying to sway you, but that is one factor i did not include... IF you have any Percent Damage skills or lump-sum dmg skills it would add notably more.

[Nenhunter]

I dunno, maybe by lvl 40, i'll just get it again ^_^ as of right now i need to lvl my ghost spear to lvl 8 and I need the sp ^_^ and what do you mean %dmg skills? You mean one that attacks many mobs at once?