If I talk about age old things, I still remember when Elemental Archer was added to the server and how for a while everyone was playing it, and I couldn't form a party without 2/3rds of its members being archers of some kind with it. So, allow me to ask, when was the last time you saw an Elemental archer on this server? Back then there were no free RCR periods, or RCR to begin with, so if you wanted to try out something new you had to level up the character from scratch, which of course meant that a lot of players were playing Elemental Archers for quite a while. But eventually, all fads will fade, either because the build or character concept doesn't suit individual preferences, or because something even more interesting popped up.
The same process happens today, but it runs its course much faster. After all, when a big new change gets implemented, you often get a free RCR period, which allows people to try out new things for a brief while to see if things are to their liking. Therefore, after giving something a spin for few hours; they can either RCR back to the old character or let that new character gather dust in their vault as they focus on some another character. And after the Polymorph changes arrived, for a while people were really talking about how they could use those cheap Epic Throwing Axes alongside with the Shapechange forms of 'Erinye' and 'Arboreal Elf' to land considerable amounts of ranged damage, with or without EDM, and little by little the fad faded out. After all, you do not need to Shapechange to to be an archer, and even if you make use of a carbon copy of the most generic Arcane/Elemental Archer build there is; you can still make your character look unique enough through character customization -- where as Shapechange only affords that one and same model for all players under the same form. Thus as it is with all possible additions to server; for as long as that something is not absolutely better than every other imaginable alternative -- it is most likely only used when a player can come up with an in character reason for a character to be, or to use, something. Which is why I brought up the whole 'Beast of Malar' in the build discussions -- it is a character concept, and not just a fun build to try out for a day or so.
Oh, and that brings us to the video posted by mrm3ntalist, who did cast Elemental Shield at one point, and I am not sure if he managed to deal any damage with it. Too high AC, too much displacement, etc. Elemental Shield only deals damage if your character suffers at least one point of damage. Thus what can I say, the whole gameplay loop of it looks a bit too dull and boring for my tastes. Which is why I tend to go with much lower AC, thus more hits will land, DR gets chewed out far faster, but at the same time Elemental Shield will land far more damage at your enemies. It literally is a race to see whether the enemy can kill your character before they kill themselves, I just find it more exciting, more fun, if I actually have to flee with just 1 hitpoint left.
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As for the question about the extra +12 damage, Northlander Hewing?
