Originally Posted by
hoticehunter
I'd like to take a moment and talk about just how cool these new "mono" element armors are: Molten Robes and Stellular Armament. They aren't just Fire or Water, they're Fire/Fire and Water/Water.
In order to fully appreciate that, let's look at how armors usually are. There's Mono, Dual-close and Dual-separate. By dual-close and dual-separate, I mean something like Air/Water for dual-close and air/spirit for dual-separate.
Each have their own advantages and disadvantages, although you have to really stretch to find an advantage for monos. Before I get to pros and cons, I want to talk about something else.
Except for when you match with an anti in a guild war, you never have to worry about the element that you're fighting will change. You know that you can fight that Water/Fire raid boss with your Air/Water armor without having to worry that it will change to Air/Earth. It's the same thing with the epic boss, story zones, and allied guild war fights. You know the element you'll be fighting and you can match up against it accordingly.
So getting back to pros/cons, we have this:
Mono: Pro: Can only ever take 50% extra damage. It's literally impossible for someone to match up against you such that they do double damage. Cons: Huge. It only gets 1 guild elemental bonus, it can only ever do 50% bonus damage. Can only go on 2 knights. Main and the specific elemental knight.
Dual-Separate: Pro: If it takes double damage, it will at least dish back 50% bonus making it useful for arena matches. Gets double bonus from guild elemental bonuses. Can be worn by 3 of your knights. Con: Can't get double damage without taking 50% damage.
Dual-close: Pro: Can deal double damage while taking normal damage. Gets double guild bonus. Can be worn by 3 of your knights. Con: Can take double damage while dealing normal damage.
Because of what was discussed above, the con of dual-c is virtually entirely mitigated. You're just not going to fight a water/fire raid boss with a fire/spirit armor. That's stupid unless you have an incredibly limited selection of armor. This means that dual-c armor is way better than dual-s armor because against raid or EB fights, you can potentially get double damage at no penalty. Taking extra damage is bad. In the grand scheme of things, using a dual-s to deal double and take +50% damage is barely better than being neutral, and with pets now, it may even be better to be neutral so your pet can get more damage in. I'd have to calculate that. You want to do double take normal or do 50 take normal before doing double and taking 50. So against raids or EBs, there is literally no situation aside from a limited armor selection where dual-separate armor has an advantage over dual-close. Dual-c armor is simply better.
Now, against arena fights, dual-s is better because you don't know what you'll fight and you can't take double without being able to also dish back +50%. But, at least in my experience, arena is trivially easy with just T50 rewards, so that's a moot point.
Now that I've set that all up, let's finally get to the dual-monos. Why are they so cool? Because they're so much better than even dual-c armors. They still get double guild elemental bonus and they are still able to do double damage (both according to what gree has said concerning Molten Robes in the news message at least). Now, the thing is though, while a water/air will only deal double damage to fire/water, a water/water will deal double damage to: Mono fire, fire/water, fire/spirit, fire/earth, and fire/air. And, I think it's likely that a water/water will deal triple damage to a fire/fire (+100% from water 1 hitting fire 1 and fire 2 and another +100% from water 2 hitting fire 1 and fire 2). However, they have the drawback of taking double damage from anything that's good against it, and possible triple damage from an opposing dual-mono. So, continuing from the above water/water, it would take double damage from mono air, air/water, air/earth, air/spirit, and air/fire.
This makes it a poor choice for guild sentinels and and guild masters who want to fight in guild wars, because dual-monos can be matched against so easily.
Furthermore, dual-monos can only be worn by two of your knights. Which is actually kind of interesting. For the reasons laid out above, dual-monos are the armors you want. At least for raids and EBs. They're so versatile in being able to do well that they can replace a lot of your armor. 1 water/water armor replaces both a water/air and a water/fire because that water/water will do just as well against both a fire/water and fire/spirit raid. However, because only two of your knights can wear a water/water at any one time, you still need a variety of armor. You'll still want at least 1 of each pair of dual-close armors (1 each of spirit/earth, earth/air, air/water, water/fire, and fire/spirit) because while you could use, for example, two water/water and a fire/fire for a a fire/spirit raid, that wouldn't be as good against any mono or dual-mono raids. You would still want a third knight to have water against a pure fire or fire/fire raid.
So that's kind of cool. They're the best thing you can have, but you can't have only them.
