So I'm looking through Lilith's Talent Tree Elemental and I see two skills that interested me the most. One is Radiance and the other is Phoenix. Both skills have a maximum of +12 (at level 60-69) to their respective elemental damages, fire and shock. The part that puzzles me is how much damage is this actually doing considering even at level 5, 12 damage is nothing to brag about even per second.

If this is true then together I would be able to do an amazing (sarcastic) 24 damage per second to any enemy I come near after killing someone in phasewalk. With this in mind, I would find these talents to be completely useless besides Phoenix having the chance to not use ammo. So what is the actual damage I can do with these talents, because I'm hoping they do more.

  • @Foxtrot definately cant wait to try out Zer0 – Paralytic Apr 10 '12 at 14:10

As yx. says the damage they deal isn't 12, the 12 is just an arbitrary number to make it easy to gauge how much of an improvement any given level is.

In practical terms, Phoenix has a real chance of killing weak, unshielded enemies on its own; stuff like Bandits. It does rather heavy fire damage to enemies all around you. I strongly recommend Phoenix. The fire wings you get also look really sick; you won't be seeing them but they're cool to show off in multiplayer.

BTW, the real power in Phoenix's not using ammo skill is that it makes you reload less often, though I've noticed it also glitches reloads so sometimes you have to manually reload, especially with revolvers.

Radiance is actually pretty weak. It does mediocre damage against shields and almost no damage at all to health.Even against Guardians I found it extremely underpowered, and your Phasewalk is often better spent moving to a better position rather than standing near enemies. I think the problem is more in how extremely underpowered Shock is as an element.

It is important to note that Radiance does damage over time very slowly; apparently it lasts minutes unlike standard Shock effects, so if you hit and run a lot it could be useful. This is probably why the damage seems so weak; it's spread over a long time. Phoenix does its damage very quickly.

Remember respecs are cheap in borderlands, respec to try out max level Radiance and Phoenix , I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by Phoenix.

  • if that were the case i feel that the two powers together would be devastating. – Paralytic Apr 10 '12 at 12:18
  • @Paralytic Ehhh, try them out. Radiance is really really unimpressive. I've rarely had it actually drop an enemies' shield. – Ben Brocka Apr 10 '12 at 12:19
  • im pretty low level so might take me a bit considering my lack of time. But i definately plan on trying it out since i definately do enjoy using my ability to kill things. – Paralytic Apr 10 '12 at 12:20
  • @Paralytic the damage they deal should be relative, but at low levels enemies tend to die faster so it may be more useful. For instance I noticed melee was actually pretty good damage below level ten, it's useless at level 69 – Ben Brocka Apr 10 '12 at 12:23
  • @Paralytic I prefer the shooty type for Lilith, but you'll need to find some good SMGs first. – l I Apr 10 '12 at 12:24

They're not really just 12 damage. Its rather hard to explain, but weapons can have up to level 5 elemental damage. Your radiance and phoenix skills can have up to level 12 elemental damage. The amount of actual damage it deals to enemies depends on their level compared to yours, but its definitely more than just '12' damage. Other than the fact that phoenix causes all nearby barrels to become hazardous to your health, its does do a lot of fire damage to any enemy that's near you.

  • i get what you mean by the elemental multiplier, so what your saying is i have a potential maximum of 12 elemental multipliers per talent. Each multiplier for elemental damage is 20% so your saying it deals 240% damage of something? – Paralytic Apr 10 '12 at 11:25
  • @paralytic I don't know the exact numbers but I do know it deals more than just 12 damage. – l I Apr 10 '12 at 12:12
  • that percentage came from the borderlands wikia for incendiary and Shock, i guess shocks multiplier is 50% tho. – Paralytic Apr 10 '12 at 12:25

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