Earth magic tree and physical resistance

Can I get a definitive "yes or no" on if the Earth Magic tree helps you resist physical blows? I have been opening myself up to the fact that I'll need at least 2 or 3 of the magic trees around 80 to 90 attunement to have good resistances, but does the Earth Tree help with resistance?

I really don't want any guesses here, please. Does anyone know this to be true or not based on actual experience and/or data?

Thanks.

 

yes, take a look at the passives skills on the right side of the tree. They have +resist and such. They do effect my characters stats that you see on the character avatar "c".

 

Interesting... so the Earth Tree maxed out like crazy is definitely a really good idea. That's probably my next target. Fortunately I'm about 25 to 30% there already because I have a few of the skills really high level already. Thanks so much for your feedback, Starman.

 

I wish there was some sort of magic mirror you could walk in front of, or use that could give you a snapshot of what your character would be like with X skill at 100, or X tree at 100 attunement. There are a ton of times I wonder things like this, and have to resort to asking people that "know"... and then just trust in that as I literally spend a hundred plus hours raising some skills (and my XP penalty upon death too). This would be an awesome feature. Maybe something the Oracle could do for you for a fee?

 

Aye, I love earth, been earth over a year now even before it got a bit of a bump in power. Im almost at 1000 raw skill in it now. Its one of the most balanced trees in the game right now. It should not take another nurf any time in the future since it took a bit of one in R42 (Chris working on the usual balancing, up and down until he finds a medium)

 

The passives don't get buffed from attunement as far as I know, so I can look and tell you what you will get at gm in the passives. Pretty much for all magics I can tell you what they will be like with gmed skills.

 

So... are you like a tree hugger, then? lol

 

I understand what you're saying. I know we can see the numbers any time. That's great, but it doesn't allow me to REALLY know what I can and can't do with X level of X skill/attunement.
I guess what I am after is something like this: Your avatar goes in to see the Oracle, and the Oracle, for a fee, gives you a chance to have a dream sequence of sorts where you tell it what skills you want, and how high... your screen goes all fuzzy for 10 seconds and then you are suddenly in a state where you HAVE these skills at the level you want, but will never gain XP, or any loot from anything you kill in this state. Nor will you ever see another actual player, or be able to interact with vendors, etc... You can go anywhere you want, and fight anything you want, but your character is in sort of a dream that you wake up from whenever you tell it you want to, or after one hour, whichever comes first.

This way you could actually experience what we THINK we need to level, so we don't constantly guess at what thing we need in this tree to be good against that mob, etc. I hate this constant guessing about what I need to do to maximize the return on my investment (of time). I fear having skills leveled up high and giving me super high XP decay upon death, only to possibly find out later that I never needed that, or it is only helping me a little bit.

 

OHH, umm, if you have dev+ access, when the QA is up, you might be able to ask a dev to set your skills for ya, and test it there. That is the only thing I can think of that you could do now to have that effect.

 

Also, it sounds like you're refuting what Starman just said. So now I have doubt that I need Earth attunement to be able to resist physical attacks. Do I simply get my two Earth innates as high as I possibly can, and ignore the other skills that I don't desire, then?

 

you only need the earth Passives to help resist physical damage. you only need to level the other skills up if they are a pre requisite to unlock the passive

 

Thanks for chiming in. This is why I wish we had a way to experience it before we "dive in." I appreciate your feedback.

 

I don't think star was implying that attunement buffed the passives, he was just saying the passives give defense.

 

aye, agreed, and I forgot to mention that the +resist is only for melee too, thanks.

 

So, you are saying that you believe Earth attunement has NO impact on the physical or damage resistance. Correct?

 

aye, roger! What you put in the skill is what you get. Same goes for the great earth shields, what you see in the skill is what you get, attun only effects the power mostly of the attack skills like Stone Arrow.

 

We're currently in a period in which we can get 100% of XP back from any skill that was at or above 80 at the time of the R42 release, correct?

 

yup! Ive used it on some skills and it actually accumulates XP to the pool and drops the skill really fast. you gotta watch it real close because you will drop below 80 real fast.

 

I think I want to drop Earth tree completely except for the innates, and I GMed stone fist a long time ago. I don't particularly need Stone Fist AND Ice fist at 100. I think I'll put all but 20 points of Stone Fist right into the Earth innates.

 

yep! offline mode. no rules against editing your char stats there.