Who’s grand idea was it to allow all elemental damage types on shards? Half of my shards are either holy damage, arcane damage or poison damage. Like, what use is that for a DH?
Sorry, don’t mind me. Just venting. I can’t seem to roll a decent shard if my life depended on it…
What ? no strength roll ? 
Dex is evading me on Sliver of Terror
Assuming all tier 2 shard stats are equally weighted (which seems to be the case from my experience), it should be about a 1/30 chance to get a specific level 2 + level 3 combo on a weapon shard, since there are 10 level 2 affixes (7 elements + % damage + attack speed + CHC). So 1/10 for level 2 * 1/3 for level 3. Or 1/24 for a helm shard since there are 8 level 2 affixes there (str + dex + int + vit + armor + all res + melee + ranged).
It took me over 60 level 3 Lies upgrades to get an IAS + stacking pet Lies that I needed to hit a hydra breakpoint. Thankfully, it turned out to be a really sick roll (300 damage/146 CHD with 15 IAS!!).
It can take a long time to get the one you want.
For most builds, the difference between elemental vs. chc or % damage isn’t huge though. Elemental is optimal in most builds, but it’s only by a few percent more damage. So eventually you’ll want one with an optimal roll as you optimize your gear, but using % damage (for bow/crossbow + quiver) or CHC (for dual-wield) as a placeholder isn’t the end of the world.
Same for helm shard, you’ll probably want your mainstat on it (especially at lower paragon where it has a larger relative benefit), but vit is still decent. The melee and ranged reduction ones are also quite strong defensive buffs. The armor and all res rolls are trash.
Wow, I was venting when I created my post but this is really good info that’s nicely summarized. Thanks for that.
I did some checking on various Dregs of Lies (on Inna monk, but still). Apart from one dregs with 145% crit damage and 7% crit chance the difference between one with 14% AS or one with 15% damage and one with 24% elemental (fire) is almost 9% more damage (in favor of elemental).
Dual wield will favor a global stat (elemental or crit chance) on shards, as % damage or IAS only applies to the weapon it’s on. So for dual wield, you effectively get half value from % damage or IAS shards (it applies only to one weapon and then you average the damage between the two weapons for most skills that alternate hands). For dual wield, the only really viable alternative to elemental is CHC.
Build with only one weapon (e.g. 2-hander or 1-hander + off-hand builds) get better value from % damage and IAS shards. For 1-hander + off-hand builds, the difference should be more like 5% for elemental vs. % damage. And potentially even less for LoD builds with more than 50% elemental before the shard. For example, for LoD Frozen Orb with Black Hole: Absolute Zero (+3% cold damage per stack) + Frostburns + Blackthorns/Swampies, with more than 10 Black Hole stacks (this is fairly easy to hit), the crit chance and % damage shards actually straight up beat elemental since you’d already have so much cold damage.
Very true. I should have mentioned that I tested with two fist weapons.
Checking again with a Daibo the difference between elemental and non elemental shrinks to about 2,5% in favor of elemental.
There’s not enough information in your comparisons. How much elemental damage do you have on your gear? How much crit chance, attack speed? Which affix did you use on your sliver of terror soul shard, attack speed/crit chance or fire/lightning damage? Does the Diablo have % damage? What’s the damage range? Etc.
All of these play a factor, and therefore the results will differ. Bottom line with what Tinn was saying above, the values are so close when applied properly that in most cases it matters very little which choice you make. The devs did an amazing job balancing the options here. No route will give you a GR’s worth of a difference than another.
The dregs shards in comparison were all of the 0.5% per hit stacking effect kind (up to 100 and down).
… and also the character had already 40 (or close to 40…not on PC now) fire % from bracers and squirts.
The stacking effect on dregs has no relevance, as it’s an independent multiplier. What effect rolls on your sliver of terror (helm shard) as well as how your weapon rolls and the amount of attack speed/chc/chd your character has, will effect how much of a bonus you’ll get from the rank 2 effect on dregs because it all has diminishing returns. Some classes/builds would prefer one stat over another (in the case of monk, you don’t want attack speed on dregs due to the diminishing returns from running flying dragon).
All I’m really saying is that it’s a little more complicated than just “elemental damage or salvage” as there are cases where that’s not what you want and ends up being worse than another stat. It’s unfortunate how many people I’ve ran into that destroyed really good shards otherwise.
The sliver of terror in helmet would have been one with 1057 in dex (mainstat).