Short Questions Thread

Ask any questions you have about Median XL here!

Since we're having a little discussion on the screenshot thread, is a rare better than a shrine craft? (assuming to get the max out of everything, and getting the best results on both)

well, as he pointed out, yes. but you'll never roll that.

EDIT: EVER.

It's not even necessarily a yes even if the rare in question is perfect and got a double MO - for many builds (casters) the second shrine bonus can be superior to 2 more random modifiers. This is most obvious on pieces like belts, gloves & boots. but it also applies to weapons I'm pretty sure.

long story short, compare rerolling effort for both rare and crafted version, rares take 50x times more tries if you consider luck trial roll. Also, rares take more time to roll because 1 oil is 5x times bigger than a shrine charge and it requires you to constantly put new reagents into cube (assuming no bot).

In this case, rares are in a disadvantage, and there's more, there are chances for your item to be fucked up and have less than the highest amount of sockets.

It's 100% better to roll crafts than rares.

The only exception where rare items are usable is when we talk about eth weapons. These have the potential to beat any craft, but it turns out... they are too rare.

I definetly think ethereal bows are my favorite items.

What kind of damage is feedback damage? And what modifiers should I look for in order to increase it?

if you're talking about %damage reflected modifier, it's based solely on damage taken. if, as i suspect, you're talking about damage from sorc skill, it's based solely on your mana. no %damage modifiers affect it afaik.

Yes, I was talking about damage done by sorc skills such as immersion and mana sweep. I guess I'll have to look for %mana and +mana then. But what kind of damage is it? I guess it's magic damage but I'm not sure. Thanks.

Edit: And what about %energy factor?

It can be magical, physical or both. The skill descriptions will tell you (the word 'Damage' alone stands for physical damage, btw)

Thanks Marco. So Immersion and Mana Sweep do physical damage and Arcane Torrent does both physical and magical. Does %energy factor increase the damage of those spells? Because the doc says that "direct damage spells gain a damage bonus from energy" and those benefit from %energy factor. The spells in the mana tree are direct damage, but they don't have "energy: adds [elemental] damage (diminishing returns)" at the end of the description, so I don't know.