Sacred 2:Ancient Magic
Ancient Magic
Increases damage for non-weapon based Combat Arts (Spell Damage Based Combat Arts) and reduces the opponent's damage resistances/immunities.
- Damage +X% (refer to table below)
| Skill level | 1 | 10 | 20 | 30 | 40 | 50 | 60 | 70 | 74 | 75 | 80 | 90 | 100 | 110 | 120 | 130 | 140 | 155 | 170 | 185 | 200 |
| Damage, +%: | 4,9 | 20,8 | 35,7 | 48,4 | 59,2 | 68,5 | 76,8 | 84 | 86,6 | 90,4 | 97,5 | 110,5 | 121,9 | 132,1 | 141,1 | 149,1 | 156,5 | 166,1 | 174,6 | 182,1 | 188,8 |
| Opponents' Immunities, -%: | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | 47,4 | 49,3 | 52,4 | 54,9 | 56,9 | 58,5 | 59,8 | 61 | 62,4 | 63,5 | 64,5 | 65,3 |
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Mastery
- At Level 75 Ancient Magic reduces opponents' immunities (Damage Mitigation) against damage from Spell Damage Based Combat Arts (unlocks the "Opponents' Immunities -%" skill bonus).
Properties
- Ancient Magic Mastery's effect seems to cause a percentage decrease in a target's mitigation against each of the 5 types of damage. This will allow a character to do increased damage to enemies with high mitigation against specific sources. The Mastery bonus won't be noticeable against non-resistant enemies.
- For example, a Fireball cast against a highly fire resistant monster like a Fire Elemental will do significantly less damage than the CA screen indicates because of the monster's fire damage mitigation and armor. A fireball cast with Ancient Magic Mastery active will decrease the fire mitigation value of the monster by a percentage before calculating damage, allowing for increased fire damage.
- The Ancient Magic Skill allows to partially ignore the target's Damage Mitigation and DoT -% modifiers for Spell Damage Based Combat Arts. This skill causes relative decrease of these modifiers as it affects only actual modifiers the target has.
- Does not affect enemy armor values in any way.
- Characters that do not have access to Ancient Magic will be unable to pierce resistances, and must either increase damage values to compensate or select another damage type. Ice Elementals for example are completely immune to Ice Damage without Mastered Ancient Magic.
- Ancient Magic Mastery only affects damage from Spell Damage Based Combat Arts, not damage from weapons or weapon damage based combat arts.
Notes
Ancient Magic decreases Damage Mitigation modifier by percent of target's mitigation before Temple Guardian's Fiery Ember\Icy Evanescence CAs and High Elf's Crystal Skin Buff decrease Damage Mitigation modifier by fixed percentage: thus opponent's immunity (100+% Damage Mitigation) can drop below 0 (the enemy gets more damage than indicated in the CA's description)
There are two modifiers that save player's characters and monsters from damage over time: those are DamageOverTime -x% and Damage Mitigation +x%. Effects of these two modifiers are layering, which means that 50% of Damage Mitigation and 50% of DoT reduction would decrease damage over time by 75%. For example creatures, who are completely immune to Ice damage, while being affected by Ancient Magic Mastery would suffer 25% of incoming Ice DoT, as incoming damage would first be reduced by remaining modifier '"Damage over Time: Ice -50%" and then by "Damage Mitigation: Ice +50%".
There is not that many enemies in the game with high mitigation values, so the Mastery part of this skill isn't as great as it might seem at first.
Breakpoints
- The bonuses are increased in steps as shown in the Ancient Magic full table.
The damage bonus at a given skill level x is given fairly precisely by the following formulas:
- 200*(x+1.5)/(x+100) Pre-Mastery
- 300*(x-32.5)/(x+66) Mastery
The immunity bypass bonus at a given skill level x is given fairly precisely by the following formulas:
- 74.8*(x-33.2)/(x-9.0) Mastery
The bold marked numbers are the smallest upper bounds of this progression, which will never at any skill level be exceeded.
As an example, damage at x=75: 75 is the first mastery level, so we take the mastery formula and we have
300*(75-32.5)/(75+66) = 300*42.5/141 = 90.43
This value compared with the table value is a good example of the precision the formulas offer.
