Elements
Most spells in the game have an element that determines how will they behave when they're used.
Fire
Offense: Fire spells are all about doing as much instant fire and 
Burn damage as possible.
Defense: Fire offers very little when it comes to defense. In fact, it does the exact opposite as the few "defensive" fire spells there are, tend to boost your damage at the cost of your hitpoints (E.g. 
Fire barrier).
Utility: None
Shadow
Offense: A lot of shadow damage comes from damage over time effects and your pet.
Defense: Outside of your pet taking damage for you, shadow spells also let you leech hitpoints from enemies and restore your own.
Utility: Outside of various debuffs with many useful effects, shadow also allows you to use a pet which can copy abilities of any regular enemy in the game.
Ice
Offense: Ice doesn't do as much damage as other elements but in return, a lot of ice spells apply 
Slow or 
Freeze, giving you plenty of extra time to fight your enemies.
Defense: Ice offers percentage based damage reductions and slowing down enemy attacks. Slow and Freeze also make it much harder for melee enemies to reach you.
Utility: Most of ice utlity comes from Slow and Freeze.
Storm
Offense: Storm spells do a great amount of instant damage. Many spells also 
Stun enemies or have a chance to do so.
Defense: Storm offers almost no spells to reduce the damage you take but it has spells that let you avoid the damage completely. Either by a well timed blocking (
Flashward) or by dodging attacks thanks to high mobility (E.g. 
Teleport).
Utility: Outside of high mobility and Stuns, storm also allows you to move your enemies or interrupt their attacks.
Light
Offense: Light spells can deal high damage but many of them have either short range or deal increased damage if you're close to enemies.
Defense: Since you need to be close to enemies to deal good damage, light offers the highest defense out of all elements. Many light damage spells restore your hitpoints on hit and there're also shields, including the most powerful 
Divine aegis.
Utility: Light doesn't offer much utility outside of a unique debuff .
Nature
Offense: Nature offensive spells are different to the other elements as the projectiles you fire are mostly magical arrows and you also gain access to sentry turrets and traps.
Defense: Nature spells offer a lot of healing.
Utility: Sentry turrets and traps provide a lot of utility by themselves but nature also lets you use your 
Animal form to travel faster.
Elements in combat
Almost all enemies in the game have elemental resistances. You can view these resistances by hovering with your cursor over the enemy (or doing the same while holding ALT while in combat. For the highest amount of damage, it's a good idea to switch elements based on the enemies you're attacking. However, most of the times, you can brute force through resistances with high enough elemental penetration.
You can quickly tell if you're countering or being countered by enemy resistance by looking at your floating damage number.
- Yellow / red number - You hit neutral element
- Blue / dark blue number = You hit an element this enemy is strong against
- Orange / purple number = You hit an element this enemy is weak against
Frostbolt was able to do to it
If an element has a green number, this enemy has a weak resistance against it and your damage is increased by this amount (E.g. - 50% storm resistance = your storm spells do 150% damage, if you're attacking an enemy with +30% storm resistance (in red numbers), your storm spells do 70% damage. Elements not visible in the tooltip are considered neutral - you don't gain, nor lose damage if you attack the enemy with this element.
If the target's resistance is over 80% against your element of choice, it becomes immune to certain debuffs.
- Fire - Immune to
Burn - Shadow - Immunne to any shadow debuffs (E.g.
Plague) - Ice - Immune to
Slow (NOT immune to 
Freeze). - Storm - Immune to
Stun. - Nature - Immune to
Bleed and 
Poison
However, if you get enough penetration to weaken the resistance under 80%, you can apply these status effects anyways.
You can also quickly tell what kind of elements does the enemy use for its attacks by looking at its tooltip. If the enemy doesn't use any elements, this spot will be empty. However, if the enemy does, there will be element icons next to their damage number. These icons represent up to 2 most common elements in this enemy's attacks.
Outside of pure damage, the elemental resistance of enemies also affects spells in other ways, based on the element they use.
Burn damage is affected by resistances twice - first when applied and then again on each tick.
| Original damage | Resistance effect | If burn was affected by resists only once | The actual damage enemy takes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1000 | -10% | 1100 (+10% from 1000) | 1210 (+10% from 1100) |
| 1000 | +10% | 900 (-10% from 1000) | 810 (-10% from 900) |
| 1000 | +50% | 500 (-50% from 1000) | 250 (-50% from 500) |
| 1000 | -50% | 1500 (+50% from 1000) | 2250 (+50% from 1500) |
Increases/decreases the duration of all shadow debuffs by 0.5% per every 1% of resistance.
Note: Since damage over time effects do damage only once in a while, it's possible the extra duration won't do anything to their damage.
| Original duration in seconds | Resistance | Penetration | Final duration |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 seconds | +50% | 0% | 7.5 seconds (-25% from original) |
| 10 seconds | +80% | 30% (lowers resistance to +50%) | 7.5 seconds (-25% from original) |
| 7 seconds | +50% | 0% | 5.25 seconds (-25% from original) |
| 7 seconds | +50% | 150% (lowers resistance to -100%) | 10.5 seconds (+50% from original) |
Makes Slow stronger/weaker. Essentially per every 1% of resistance, your slow effects become weaker/stronger by 0.5%. This works in both ways - if the enemy is strong against ice (like +50% resistance), your slow becomes weaker by 25%. If you hit an enemy weak against ice (like -100% resistance), your slow becomes stronger by 50%.
However, nothing can be slowed by less than 10% or more than 80%.
| Original slow | Resistance | Peneration | Slow after resistance |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30% | -100% | 0% | 45% (+50% from original) |
| 50% | -80% | 20% (lowers resistance to -100%) | 75% (+50% from original) |
| 30% | +80% | 10% (lowers resistance to +70%) | 19.5% (-35% from original) |
| 80% | +80% | 0% | 0% (immune to slows) |
| 50% | -50% | 0% | 62.5% (+25% from original) |
| 50% | +80% | 30% (lowers resistance to +50%) | 37.5% (-25% from original) |
All Stuns last shorter/longer by 0.5% per every 1% of resistance.
| Original stun | Resistance | Penetration | Stun after resistance |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 seconds | -100% | 0% | 7.5 seconds (+50% from original) |
| 5 seconds | +80% | 30% (lowers resistance to +50%) | 4.25 seconds (-25% from original) |
| 5 seconds | +80% | 90% (lowers resistance to -10%) | 5.25 seconds (+5% from original) |
All healing on hit from light spells is increased / decreased by 0.5% per each 1% of the enemy resistance. If you hit multiple enemies at once with area of effect spells, the healing is based on whatever enemy has the weakest light resistance from the group.
| Original healing | Resistance | Penetration | Result healing |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1000 | 20% | 0% | 900 |
| 1000 | -20% | 0% | 1100 |
| 1000 | +20% | 40% (lowers resistance to -20%) | 1100 |
| 1000 | +80% | 0% | 600 |
| 1000 | -100% | 0% | 1500 |
If the target is strong against nature, your 
Bleed and 
Poison effects no longer have a 100% chance of applying but each 1% of resistance reduces this chance by 1%. If the target is weak against nature, applying Bleed now grants a chance to also apply Poison. Applying Poison applies Bleed as well. This chance rises as the enemy resistance decreases. For each -100% nature resistance the enemy has, the secondary Bleed / Poison is now guaranteed and adds an additional stack.
The secondary status effect always deals 50% damage of the original and lasts for the same duration.
| Enemy nature resistance | Your elemental penetration | Effect on applying Bleed or Poison
|
|---|---|---|
| +50% | 0% | Chance to apply the original status effect is lowered to 50% |
| +50% | 20% (lowers resistance to 30%) | Chance to apply the original status effect is lowered to 70% |
| 0% | 50% (No effect, enemy is neutral) | Original status effect is always applied |
| -50% | 0% | Applies original status effect and grants a 50% chance to apply the other one as well |
| -50% | 50% (lowers resistance to -100%) | Applies original status effect and always applies the other one as well |
| -250% | 50% (lowers resistance to -300%) | Applies original status effect and 3 stacks of the other one as well |
| -300% | 50% (lowers resistance to -350%) | Applies original status effect and 3 stacks (with 50% chance for a 4th stack) of the other one as well |
Elemental stats
Elemental power
Elemental power increases damage of all spells with this element by a simple multiplication. Unlike with elemental penetration, elemental power is much stronger when attacking enemies weak against your element of choice.
| Resistance | Elemental power | Damage taken |
| +90% | 10% | 110 |
| +50% | 20% | 600 |
| 0% (neutral) | 25% | 1250 |
| -100% | 50% | 3000 |
Elemental resistance
Elemental resistance decreases all damage taken from this element by a simple multiplication.
If the enemy hits you with a fire spell doing 1000 damage and you have 10% fire resistance, the damage taken gets decreased to 900.
Elemental penetration
Element penetration changes the way your spells interact with enemy elemental resistances. This is done additively by deducting your penetration from enemy resistance. E.g. The enemy is strong against fire (+90%) so your fire spells do only 10% damage. If you gain 40% fire penetration, it removes it from the target's resistance (+90% - 40% = +50%) and your fire spells do 50% damage now.
Elemental penetration increases your damage only as long as this enemy is weak/strong against the element. If they're neutral (this element is not in their tooltip), penetration has no effect.
Stacking penetration instead of power has generally a lot better effect when attacking enemies strong against your element of choice but if you never want to switch elements, it's a good idea to get 20 - 30% penetration regardless.
| Resistance | Penetration | Damage taken | Damage increase |
| +90% | 10% | 200 | +10% per 1% of penetration |
| +90% | 20% | 300 | +10% per 1% of penetration |
| +90% | 50% | 600 | +10% per 1% of penetration |
| +70% | 10% | 400 | +3.33% per 1% of penetration |
| +70% | 20% | 500 | +3.33% per 1% of penetration |
| +70% | 50% | 800 | +3.33% per 1% of penetration |
| +50% | 10% | 600 | +2% per 1% of penetration |
| +50% | 20% | 700 | +2% per 1% of penetration |
| +50% | 50% | 1000 | +2% per 1% of penetration |
| +30% | 10% | 800 | +1.43% per 1% of penetration |
| +30% | 30% | 1000 | +1.43% per 1% of penetration |
| 0% (neutral) | 25% | 1000 | 0 (neutral interaction) |
| -20% | 25% | 1450 | 0.83% per 1% of penetration |
| -50% | 25% | 1750 | 0.66% per 1% of penetration |
| -80% | 50% | 2300 | 0.55% per 1% of penetration |
| -100% | 50% | 2500 | 0.5% per 1% of penetration |
| -200% | 50% | 3500 | 0.33% per 1% of penetration |