The number one source of damage in infinite archive is focused efforts. On any class.

Lord_Graas wrote: »

I mean does this vision buffs Fatecarver or Abyssal Impact skills while in the Infinite Archive?

Focused Efforts buffs status effects like Burning, Poisoned, Sundered, Concussion, etc. Fatecarver does magic damage and any and all magic damage has a chance to proc the Overcharged status effect. The status effect chance is fairly low for AoE skills like Fatecarver, but it is there. So Focused Efforts will not buff Fatecarver but would buff any instances of Overcharged that came as a side effect of Fatecarver.

Cephaliarch's Flail does physical damage, and any and all physical damage has a chance to proc Sundered status effect. Tentacular Dread does frost damage, and any and all frost damage has a chance to proc Chilled status effect.

Focused Efforts is the best damage vision in IA. But it does require you to build for status effects. Some skills and sets are guaranteed to apply status effects. Elemental Susceptibility guarantees Burning, Concussed, and Chilled. The Arcanist class set from IA applies random status effects. The Shattered Path mythic makes your light and heavy attacks apply random status effects. Even if not guaranteed, the weapon trait Charged increases your chance to apply status effects.

Basically, Fatecarver and Flail will get you through first few Arcs of IA just fine. But going deeper, there is simply nothing in IA that will make Fatecarver and Flail on their own do enough damage to take on the trash with 100 trillion health in higher Arcs. You need to either focus (no pun intended) on skills that always apply status effects, or focus on sets that can make your Arcanist skills more reliably apply status effects.

Also, many of the Verses in IA have crazy high status effect chance. Like Magical Multitudes will apply Overcharged like 4x per second if in right spot under enemy. Swift Gale applies Chilled like 6x every second if you hit a big enough enemy point blank. Flame Aura applies burning like crazy when enemies step in it.

And with enough Focused Efforts, your status effects can be doing like 100,000 damage per tick.

Lucasl402 wrote: »

Grinding IA is never worth it. The trash overland sets that dominate the drops are just inventory clutter and no sets in IA justify the time it takes to get the gears. Maybe if IA was new content it wouldn't be so bad, but nothing in IA is new content.

I mean, I went from 110k DPS to 130K DPS running Spat/Null/Velothi

Always grab Focused Efforts. I keep a Maelstrom Inferno staff in my inventory on my arcanist. Sometimes it’s better than 2H in content due to positioning… but for IA, I’ll bring out the destro for ele sus once I have 2 stacks of Focused Efforts.