Pretty brand new to the class and Just had one question. Does Force need to use multiple rods with the elements corresponding to the spells your casting or does Element Conversion make that pointless. Only asking because I've seen guides that tell you to have a rod for every element type and others saying that that doesn't matter due to element conversion in the Force Tree. Any clarification from fellow veteran Force players would be appreciated.
Elemental Conversion takes your weapon's element and converts it to a damage bonus. It's 50% for matching the element and the spell, 45% when not matching. it used to be 50% and 25%, so it was a lot more powerful to match elements. Now it's only like a 3% difference, so IMO feel free to be lazy.
So on a 13* weapon, you can get up to 60 element factor on it. This means for matching element techs, you get a 30% damage bonus. For non-matching, it's 27% damage bonus (60 * 0.45). 12* weapons and below have a max of 50 element, so 25% and 22.5% respectively.
@Cheltaran13 Thanks for the clarification. I can't imagine endgame rods are cheap and I really didn't want to have to farm the meseta required for 6 of them for each element.
I just had one last question if you don't mind. I'm trying to find a decent skill tree guide but keep getting contradicting information regarding Element Conversion. I put the full 5 points into the skill, but a recent guide says that you only want like...1 point into it for some reason, It's also the same guide I came across that claims you should have 6 differen't rods for each element. I'm trying to avoid buying a skill reset for force if at all possible. Thanks in advance for your help.
@Tetsuya986 Since each level of Element Conversion only increases the off-element bonus, it is possible to run it with only 1 SP and a rainbow set of Rods, but it is a lot more work and resources (and almost impossible once we get to 15*s). The full 5 SP with a single Rod is just more practical.
I assume they use those other 4 points for something else in the Tree, but I wonder what they deemed more important than a very high damage multiplier to warrant requiring more than one Rod.
@AndrlCh Yeah, I honestly don't remember. I'm just trying not to mess up my skill tree like i did on my braver. Thanks for the clarity, appreciate it. 
@Tetsuya986 said in Clarification on gearing for Force.:
@Cheltaran13 Thanks for the clarification. I can't imagine endgame rods are cheap and I really didn't want to have to farm the meseta required for 6 of them for each element.
I just had one last question if you don't mind. I'm trying to find a decent skill tree guide but keep getting contradicting information regarding Element Conversion. I put the full 5 points into the skill, but a recent guide says that you only want like...1 point into it for some reason, It's also the same guide I came across that claims you should have 6 differen't rods for each element. I'm trying to avoid buying a skill reset for force if at all possible. Thanks in advance for your help.
Yeah, I'd agree with @AndrlCh on this one. It sounds like that guide wants to save those 4 points to spend somewhere else, but if you do that then you NEED a rainbow set of rods, which honestly seems like more effort than it's worth to me. I'd rather spend the full 5 points in Elemental Conversion and run with a single weapon (usually light element).
If you want my advice for skill trees, I left a comment for someone else on another thread recently, page 3 of this one: https://forum.pso2.com/topic/2455/do-forces-do-the-worst-damage/31?page=3
Ignoring that they're used for 15* down the line, are nemesis and slave so much better than the 13* light and ice rods that we can ignore them or do their potentials edge them out for ice and light weakness specifically? Assuming +35 and comparable affix, I'm trying to figure if it's better to just use nemesis/slave with elemental pallettes or if the specialized rods being specialized makes a difference?
@Phailsaphe Using the same base stats, same Skills, no augments, a hypothetical 1000 potency single-hit matching element Tech for comparison, this is how they compare at +35, 60%:
Off-element, the Nemesis will be slightly weaker than either matching, but on-element it is always stronger. The thing is, the difference between off-element Nemesis and on-element for the other two is relatively minor, at least to the point that making those other two Rods may not be worth the resources for the damage bump.