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Seems to me that lots of uniques do not have sword/hafted modifiers, so they are best for DW. However, as you have shown, there are a few that do... Dual Wield Swords of the Blood Dryads + Inquisitor with Purifying Chastisement... = incredible damage

Same dude. I never have enough. It also generally forces me to get Enhanced Perception on my characters so I have enough money to finance my rune habit. (I tend to always have at least 2 buffs on my characters, I FEEL your pain). I noticed the same as you, runes everywhere in Silver. I noticed this in Sacred 1 as well. I believe then I used to eat tons of runes then too (Ghost Meadow LOL) . Although, Sacred 2 is a bit different. Actually on my first character I kept Astute Supremacy Focus Maxed... Although, I didn't really use Levin array much or combat arts in general, so it was JUST for the levels of Doppleganger/Reverse Polarity. Henceforth I have changed this playstyle, but that doesn't mean I don't need runes. So, Gogo, what do you do for money then? This has to drain your wallet. I know that bargaining really doesn't help, it offers more expensive items! Blacksmithing doesn't save money because I feel it's buffs are HIGHLY inferior, and you have to keep it so high to even be useful. Thus, Enhanced P goes on all my builds (nearly).

I actually finally recognized this very pattern when examining the numbers for my self. (I am on my 3rd 75+ char too). I just logged on here and saw your graphs. They are VERY useful. Many thanks go to you for this. I can definitely see this being in the Wiki!

I can see why people are all about fire based High Elves, especially being that their percentage fire damage on her spells goes up with CA level. As for ice I am not sure that is the case... I guess then my next question is... why does the Inquisitor have damage lore as a primary skill?

I kinda noticed something fishy with using a trainer to test various skills. At one point (I don't remember specifically), but it was like that tactics lore was not affecting my weapon damage. Thanks for the heads up. Currently, I have a 60ish shadow warrior. He's kinda spread out, but doing very very well oddly. All three focuses, blacksmithing (one of the worst skills in the game I found), E.P. Tactics, Armor, Toughness (2nd worst skill in the game:)). My skeletons are doing now a (EDIT) 30-50% of my damage a piece (massive boost to overall damage output). Being that my attack speed is relatively low, this is a very decent damage boost and damage mitigation strategy. Then at 75 I get reflection too... Anyhow, I haven't really seen anything with tactics lore affecting skeletons, I just underestimated how levels of the skeletons really affect the damage in very fair ways (compared to other games... I won't mention any famous titles...) Nice to see Ascaron seemed to have done this aspect well. I definitely want to start a discussion on toughness, I am not seeing it's viability at all. That and blacksmithing, which seems to have to be at very high (75% of char level approx) to be along the same buffs as you can get from an NPC (albeit more expensive). If you are paying for damage, I want more damage, damn it! Haha, oh well, back to studying. I need to post more often. I also need to change my pic, I would rather not be a Seraphim anymore.

So, intially damage lore looks weak (for me). Then I got to thinking. I didn't really know the game mechanics. I initially thought it increased the chance no matter what to add all these status effects (amazing). Not true. It increases the ones that correspond to what damage you are doing. Ok, cool, but... My big question is spells? If I go and make a fire based high elf, or those Area of Effect spells on TG and Inquis, should I have damage lore? Basically, if I was doing magic damage to adjacent enemies, and they had a high chance to become weakened, holy cow would that be amazing... or if I were doing blazing tempest and had 100% to set abalze... Does anyone know this answer? Also, less pressing, and it seems like a bug anyhow. When I socket say a fang into my weapon, it makes my clustering maelstrom (normally 100% physical) show 100% poison (even with a 40% fang). Does that mean it does 100% poison? (I doubt this, but I wanted to check).

Hey guys, I have taken a break from the forums, thank you for the PM (seriously). My overloaded courseload as well as Spring Break abroad trip have taken my complete attention. I will try to give you guys basis on what I have found in regards to this rather quisitive combat art. Most of my findings have been from trainer usage. It's very easy to discover game mechanics. However it is not useful to find exact numbers/percentages. Let me review things and all the posts/discussions before I give a clear report. That way you guys don't think I am ignoring you or going AWOL. I actually just started a shadow warrior that is only devoted to the Astral Lord aspect. This should be interesting it is based on both buffs and skeletal tower basically. Intelligence as the attribute. More to come.

I was wanting to start a shadow warrior, but I have no clue how I want to build him. I was thinking of having all three buffs... Although that also runs into having many skills governing those trees and thus, not a very strong build. This could be further dampened by me not exactly knowing how nether allegiance works! I did some testing and it seemed that intelligence affected the damage of the skeletons. However the Astral Lord Lore didn't seem to be boosting the damage/critical hit oddly enough. So I was thinking, it must be a spell then? So then Intelligence, Ancient Magic (lolol), Astral Lord Focus work on it, possibly even combat discipline? I laugh at Ancient magic because it hardly benefits the shadow warrior at all, and to see the shadow warrior get it and not the inquisitor, just doesn't make sense to me. Being that the lore skill doesn't seem to work and clearly the mechanics aren't very transparent, I am not going near this class until I understand it better. Does anyone have any experience with the astral lord tree?

On a sidenote I don't understand how a temple guardian can make a ridiculously large radius burst into flames (and lower fire resistance concurrently). It doesn't seem to fit with what it should be able to do. What do I know? >_> In my response to that, if I were to make a temple guardian it would probably take fiery ember to massive combat art levels as well as always socketing a chunk into my weapon for some pretty destructive effects. We'll see when I get there. Hmm, I didn't even take that idea into consideration. That sounds less of an overpowered style of mechanics than what I was thinking... I was thinking straight %. If they have 0%, and I had -20%. They would in take 6/5 damage. However, this can get very powered very fast. If I was fighting something with 90% ice/physical resistance. Then I would be effectively TRIPLING my damage against that enemy. Your mechanic sounds a bit more feasible, especially because in Sacred 2 there doesn't seem to be straight % resistances that we are used to in Diablo 2 and Titan Quest. But what gets me is, then why would anyone choose spell intensity!? The only thing I can think of is that there are hardly any modifers for it anywhere mods/equipment/skill wise. In my eyes it seems that lowering resistances is ALWAYS useful, and Spell intensity is sometimes useful. If I already have a high spell intensity then my damage increase would be smaller than if I took the resistance mod. Generally there is a playstyle choice with mods, not a definite better or worse:)

Currently I am working on a ice/arcane high elf, which of course is not as popular to fire... Crystal Skin has two mods and I do not know which is better. Feel Cold - Reduces the opponent's resistance against ice damage. (20% + 0.5% per CA level reduction) Focalize - Increases the spell intensity of the aspect Mystic Stormite combat arts. (30% + 1% per CA level increase) My gut feelings says no to the resistances when glacial thorns does mostly ice damage and raging nimbus does around 1/3 ice damage. However, if the mod lowered physical and ice resistances, and it was capable to go beyond 0, then this is what I would want to choose. On the other hand, we have spell intensity. Which I have no clue how it affects "the full effect of my spells". Looks like a coin flip, and either one I really wouldn't know how it actually worked!

I was wondering the same thing, I did some testing on a new shadow warrior with some runes I gave him. It seemed as if ancient lore and intelligence was helping the damage of the skeletons. However, ODDLY the Astral Lord Lore WASN'T. This makes not much sense. Intelligence and Ancient magic raise the damage of spells, being that they aren't combat arts, but spells (nearly positive), that works. The Lore not working doesn't make sense. The Wiki is weak in general, nobody updates the combat arts on their specifc eccentricities. I try to add them in as I have played an inquisitor up to 72, soon to be higher since exams will be over soon. When I get to the High Elf and Shadow Warrior I will try to update some of the finer details (I always want the details, and with Sacred 1/2 not always explaining everything, I get upset). Hopefully there are other people working on this? I heard something about downloading lv 200 characters that are blank to test:) Is this possible or a working trainer?