If I use a Non-elemental jewel on my Reaver "Calamity"(which has Dragon element), will it increase my Raw damage or must my weapon have totally no element at all, only then the Non-elemental work?

Your weapon has to have 0 elemental damage on it to get use out of that gem. If the weapon has hidden element and you aren't using free element skill(the elemental damage is still greyed out), you're good. But a weapon that has actual straight up dragon or fire damage, the gem does nothing for you at all, which is why raw trumps so much in this game.

In addition to what the above poster said, if the weapon is a Bow or Bowgun, it cannot have the ability to shoot any type of elemental/status shots for it to benefit. It can only shoot Normal/Pierce/Spread/Power. Nothing else.

@vortextk:

So equip the non elemental jewel on my Reaver Calamity is pointless then and has totally zero effect. What kind of weapon people normally equip the non elemental jewel on? Shall I equip Dragon Jewel to raise Reaver Calamity's Dragon elemental?

@crayzor: This might not be 100% up to date, but back when the game came out the meta was all about Diablos weapons with non-elemental jewel.

@crayzor: Well since we are talking longswords, THE weapon to use with non-elemental is Divine Slasher. It's kind of a hassle to get since you have to do a lot of the same two arena quests, and even then it kind of needs handicraft to stay sharp. But with non-elemental it does the big damage. It's my favorite weapon personally.

There aren't really any other longsword I would recommend using that jewel with. You can replace it with something better like weakness exploit, critical boost or a utility decoration like protective polish.

For Reaver Calamity I would focus more on affinity/crit skills. The damage on it is already amazing, so negating the -25% affinity penalty it has and/or increasing the sharpness with handicraft is more useful than trying to boost the damage even further.

After all that said, you definitely want to keep non-elemental around for other weapon classes. Usually the diablos/barroth tree has some good shit combined with that. The diablos hammer and charge blade come to mind.

I wouldn't bother with any elemental attack decorations. I made some sword n shield builds with maxed out elemental damage on them(which usually only takes 2-3 levels out of the possible 5) for fun just to do it, but it's rare or possibly never a situation where that's better than things like attack/affinity/crit boost/weakness exploit.

@tobbrobb:

I heard a lot of good thing about Divine Slasher too but never really try it because of 1) the hassle and 2) both the raw damage and elemental Dragon are lower than Reaver Calamity. Because of that, I never really understood why people prefer Divine Slasher over Reaver Calamity. Is the negative affinity really that bad? I mean it just 1 out of 4 chances you getting negative crit from my understanding of affinity. For my Reaver Calamity build, I didn't bother increase the affinity because I normally put on 3 Bazel alpha armor(lvl 5 earplug) set on my characters for the earplug because I really hate it when my character stagger because of monster's roar.

I thought non elemental jewel won't work on weapon with element. Diablo hammer and charge blade both have Ice element so wouldn't using non elemental jewel on then won't increase the raw too? Am I misunderstanding something?

@crayzor: They have hidden elements (indicated by the parenthesis around the number). It is not active unless you use the Free Element jewel to unlock it, as long as you don't they count as non-elemental weapons.

@crayzor: like I said, if the element is grey, it does NOT do elemental damage; it only will if you use free element skills to unlock it. Divine slasher has better raw with the gem and white sharpness. Sharpness dictates what you bounce off of AND damage. Every color higher of sharpness is a higher multiplier for damage. If you want super big high damage long sword action, divine slasher is what you want period. If you want to use nerg sword cause you like it, do it cause basically nothing in the game is such a dps check that nearly the best weapon won’t suffice

@ares42:

I've been playing this game for more than one hundred hours and only now I realize about this hidden element. Will non element jewel still work if I use my free element jewel on my weapon with hidden element. Let just say I have Diablos Shatterer 2 and I use both non element jewel and free element jewel on it, will both jewel work at the same time?

If your weapon is doing elemental damage, elementless will not work. If you use free element, the elementless jewel does nothing.

@vortextk: Alright. Just to clarify. I might have a serious misunderstanding on how element and raw damage work all this time. Let just say I use Wrathful Predation(Devil Jho's Dual Blade) and attack a monster 10 times, among the 10 damage number display, how many of it consists of Raw and how many of it are elemental? I always thought weapon with elemental damage and raw damage have their damage combine together.

The damage IS combined when you hit something, I don’t see where anyone said different? It’s just that elemental damage is really bad and is weak and generally unhelpful compared to elementless jewel(and raw damage in general) in most cases.

@vortextk: Ok, thanks. Glad I still right on this. So if I use both free element and elementless jewel on my Diablo Shatterer, the free element will negate the effect of elementless jewel, is that right?

@crayzor: yes

@crayzor: If you are curious about the reasoing behind why affinity and Divine Slasher are recommended, it's pretty much just a math question.

The damage on the weapons is so high already, that adding more raw or element will be a very slight percentual increase. It's just a flat addition of a small number on top of a big number. But affinity and sharpness give multiplicative increases, which means they only become stronger as the damage value of your weapon gets higher. Critting to get a 25% increase on damage every third hit or so ends up being more damage overall than the consistent extra 6dmg (5%) or whatever you would add with a flat bonus.

Negative affinity also dramatically decreases your damage output. A negative crit reduces your raw for around 50 for every miss, so if that happens 25% of the time, it really hurts. Compare that to the 15 bonus damage you choose to have instead and it becomes a very lopsided risk.

@tobbrobb:

Thanks. I learn something new again. I thought affinity only include when you deal damage on monsters, never thought even if it miss,it also included as part of the affinity.