Combat mechanics

Elemental Mastery & Affinity

Your Elemental Mastery and your five Affinities are never used raw. The game divides each by a hidden value that grows every level — which is why the same gear feels strong at the end of a rank and weak at the start of the next, and why a point of the right Affinity is worth far more than a point of Mastery.

The formula

Elemental damage is multiplied by a ratio: your offence over their defence.

            1 + (YourXAffinity / TheirBaseElemReduce) + (YourElemMastery / TheirBaseElemMastery)
ElemMult = ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
            1 + (TheirXAegis   / YourBaseElemAdd)     + (TheirElemRES    / YourBaseElemMastery)

where X is the hit's element. Two layers add up: the Affinity of that one element and the general Elemental Mastery. A Physical hit (no element) is scored the same way with Physical Mastery against Physical RES — a separate stat with its own hidden base, not Elemental Mastery. Base Elemental Reduce equals Base Elemental Add on every row of the game's table, so the page calls both "Base Elemental Add" below.

What the number on your Character screen means

Each Affinity is shown on the Character screen in points, and the formula uses those points exactly as shown: they are divided, never rescaled first. Water Affinity's own description reads: "Increases Water DMG dealt by the caster's skills. When against enemies of the same level, increases by approximately X." The client fills in X as your Water Affinity divided by your own Base Elemental Add, the hidden value in the table below; the other four say the same for their element.

The damage formula divides by the target's hidden value instead. Against a target of your own level the two are the same number, so the percentage the game shows is exact. Against a higher-level target the divisor is bigger and the bonus smaller; against a lower-level one, larger. Elemental Mastery is shown the same way, divided by your own Base Elemental Mastery, which is why its percentage looks so small at Champion.

At Champion I's cap (level 110) Base Elemental Add is 6,693 and Base Elemental Mastery 82,698, so:

• 1,000 Wind Affinity adds 1,000 / 6,693 = +14.9% to the offence side of a Wind hit, and nothing to a Fire hit.
• 1,000 Elemental Mastery adds 1,000 / 82,698 = +1.2% to a hit of any element.
• 200 of each of the five Affinities adds 200 / 6,693 = +3.0% to a Wind hit (only the Wind 200 counts) and the same +3.0% to a Physical hit (the average of the five).

Both land in the same 1 + … sum, so they add rather than multiply: Wind Affinity equal to its divisor and Mastery equal to its divisor together give 1 + 1 + 1 = ×3 on a Wind hit before the target's Wind Aegis and Elemental RES divide it. Affinities are not on the equipment roll tables; they come from relics, Fantomon and skills.

What "Base Elemental Mastery" is

It is a stat, but you never see it — the game's own config marks it Catalog = Hide. It is a per-rank, per-level constant: the expected value for a character at that point in the game. Your actual Mastery is scored against it.

Worked at one rank

At Expert III (level 100) the base value is 10,987:

The hidden divisors by rank

Base Elemental Mastery (the divisor)Base Elemental Add (Affinity divisor)

The values at each rank's level cap; within a rank both climb a little every level. Base Elemental RES equals Base Elemental Mastery on every row, and Base Elemental Reduce equals Base Elemental Add. The last two columns are what 1,000 points add to the offence side against a target at that level: the Affinity of the hit's element, or Elemental Mastery.

The Champion wall

One transition dwarfs the rest. Promoting out of Expert III multiplies the base value by ×4.56 at the same level (10,987 → 50,061), and by the time you reach Champion I's own cap it has risen ×7.53 overall. Every other rank-up in the game falls between ×1.04 and ×1.7.

A tunable the developers left in

The normalisation is written as (rating / ownBase) × (ownBase / theirBase)^k with k hardcoded to 1.0. As written that exponent is a no-op, but it is plainly a dial for how much the level gap matters. If elemental scaling ever shifts without a stat change, this is where.