I only know the difference between the staff types which is covered as ice fire and shock. You can read what they do as an effect for ability's in the destruction staff skill tree as for the added effects. What I believe and have seen so far is that they add damage to a target and its just that now mind you some targets are week or strong to specific types there is also magic damage and unresistable damage as well so it really depends on who or what your fighting to be honest.

Copenhagen wrote: »

Wondering the same. I currently equip two daggers, one enchanted fire & the other frost. Does this then partially slow them as well as burn? Or are the elements just for the glowing effect?

No, it doesn't add a burn effect or something similiar. However, the bonus damage may be quite effective against certain enemies.

From what I've seen when playing certain creature types are weaker to certain elements. Vampires and Werewolves are particularly weak to fire. I've found lightening to be effective against mages and cold to be effective against heavily armored creatures.

During loading screens occasionally you get information alluding to certain creatures being weaker to elements and some being strong (even immune?!?) to others.

All elemental weapons do indeed have a hidden special on-crit effect. (Well not super hidden, the two handed line has a passive that says it increases there chance of applying, but its otherwise not explained anywhere).

Pretty hard to tell what they do without a combat log.. But lucky theres an addon I got that lets me see em (google combat log statistics)

Fire:
Ignires the enemy and does a bit more fire dmg then normal (~20% more), then lights the enemy on fire, and applies a DoT, iirc, 3 ticks of 100% of the regular fire damage. Seems to be a 100% proc on crit (or close), with that 2handed passive. CLS put this at 2-4% of my dmg output when I had a nice crit rating, so pretty decent.

Shock:
Disintegrates the target - deals about 800 damage. (On a lvl30 weapon) Ultra rare effect though, only saw it 5 times in the course of a day of heavy battle. I'd guess about a 1-3% proc, and only on crits (so overall is sub 1%). CLS showed it as a sub 1% of my total damage output, so yea not that impressive.

Cold:
Dunno, never saw anything special. Does turn enemies into ice statues if you crit kill them, but no special damage increase or slow effect i've noticed. If it does slow, its such a minor amount that i've never noticed. Or only affects movement speed, and not attack animations (so only useful for ranged weaponry really).

Poison:
Not tested heavily enough, only had 1 poison wep, and replaced it too fast.

Disease:
Never found a disease two hander. Can add on with a enchant i guess maybe.

So yea overall, seems like fire kinda rules right now. Disintegration is fun and all, but too rare to be effective.

Each Elemental Damage type by itself are not different, they all just do 'spell damage' (weapons do physical damage)
If a mob is killed (last hit) by elemental damage, each has a different 'death' triggered.
(Fire = ash, poison = green corpse etc etc)

Every mob has different resistances so some different elemental damage spells can be more or less effective then others.

Each elemental damage 'can' have a secondary effect but this is not always the case.

Fire (secondary = DOT)
Cold (secondary = Slow)
Shock (secondary = Stun)
Poison (secondary = DOT)
Disease (secondary = DOT)

Not every cold elemental damage will slow a target, but most do.
Unresistable damage ignores all spell or armor resistance.

When a target is hit with a spell, its effected by both the mobs spell resistance (this is like the armor value but for spells) then the damage is multiply by the resistance for that elemental type.

Unresistable is not classed as a elemental type, so its not effected by either.

Having a look at all resistances, I think there a few damage types they did not make it in game.... yet

Seconded, where did you get, or what addon is that, showing you that giant pile of numbers.

oblivion resistance? sounds cool