Rune weapon does work on single throwing weapons?  My gladius fires up immediately, but even after a room of undead, the small torch, or a skeletal dart doesn't seem to charge Rune Weapon.
 I'm looking forward to eruption in particular, and have just taken the first level of "throwing a grenade" with the volcanic orb branch.

I can see why fire ele's have an reputation in the early game. He is outperforming my champion, hunter and diviner, though I suppose I am getting a bit more street-wise. And the odd bit of hand-me-down gear doesn't hurt either.

Don't forget to manually assign Rune Weapon to your left mouse button for your second weapon set as well! That might be the cause of your problem.

Rune Weapon definitely should work with a single thrown weapon as well.

It would just be nice to have another LMB skill for staves.  We have Ternion which gobbles energy and I think Psionic Touch works with staves, but that's it.  Melee/ranged has Psionic Touch, Onslaught and Marksmanship.  None of the other caster masteries have an LMB skill which is a shame.  Since it works with everything else, why leave staves out?

I actually think that Flame Surge and Ice Shard are pseudo-LMB skills, actually, or at least substitutes. Now if only the game allowed it to bind them to the left mouse button...

I'm not an expert of the game, by a long shot, but I'll give you my two cents.

Long story short: for a melee Stonespeaker (or any Stonespeaker, really), I'd go for Transmutation. I'll elaborate below.

First of all: With +4 to all skills, Transmutation gives you 99% conversion. Some of your damage stays physical, and you can keep your Transmutation lower if you still want physical, but personally I don't really see the point. If you're going to focus on intellect, then might as well go for full conversion. And with a Stonespeaker, I see little reason not to.

The thing is, in my personal opinion, both Rune and Earth are decent at supporting another mastery with good physical damage output. But on their own, they don't provide much in this way, at least definitely not enough to go physical over elemental. Especially because most masteries have so amazing returns on your invested intellect that it's almost a crime not to put the majority of points into that.

Rune, of course, gives you your Elemental Charge as well as Transmutation, and a flat elemental bonus damage is already pretty powerful. There's Runic Mines, there's Runeword: Explode and Runeword: Burn. One of them gives you physical damage as well, but you shouldn't overlook what looks like a humble burn damage on the other.

So what does Earth give you? At the first glance, it doesn't boost your weapon damage much. Earth Enchantment provides only an almost negligible flat fire damage bonus, and the percentile increase of fire and burn damage shouldn't affect much - although with full Transmutation, it should increase 33% of your weapon damage already.

Brimstone provides some meager increase to physical damage, which shouldn't concern you, but wait - what's that hiding in the corner? When maxed, Brimstone adds 98 burn damage over three seconds. With +4 to all skills (or at least Brimstone), this becomes a whopping 182. It's affected by your intellect. It's affected by any modifier you have, such as Earth Enchantment, it should stack with the aforementioned Runeword: Burn (damage-over-time from the same source overwrites itself, but different sources should stack to my knowledge). Not to mention Volativity! It's pretty insane. It's quite easily overlooked, but with Anniversary Edition, Earth has become one of the best damage-over-time masteries in the game. And it relies on intellect.

Both Volcanic Orb and Eruption are boosted by both strength and intellect, but only intellect increases the burn component of Volcanic Orb. You likely want to use these spells often, especially if you're planning to go melee.

That said, a melee Stonespeaker might be quite challenging. I transitioned to throwing weapons even before finishing Normal. It's quite easy that way - you get to distribute the burn damage, and to use your utterly insane DPS to bring enemies down before they reach you. Rune or Earth don't provide too much in the way of survivability, though, so if you rely on melee, you might get in trouble.

You'll probably need a maxed Energy Armor and a way to cast it consistently; this means equipping some armor or jewelry with energy cost reduction and perhaps an alternate weapon set to help out. You might want to pay extra attention to your resistances as well (me being me, I dual-wielded Chakrams of the Sun and mostly ignored resistances, but I'm not a good example). Pierce will likely be problematic.

As for attrbutes, you'll likely need about 250-300 strength and some 420 dexterity in the very end. I'd put the rest into intellect.

As for the Stone Form discussion: it does change things if you plop an Eruption under yourself before activating Stone Form. Molten Rock, Ring of Fire, and the retaliation from Elemental Charge also help, and so does the burn retaliation from Heat Shield. Mobs can die to the combination of these more quickly than you'd think. But you're right, at times it just won't work out well. (Hint: Stone Form doesn't prevent you from switching weapon sets or drinking potions.)

I don't find Stone Skin useful enough to warrant more than one point, either.

That'd be very interesting, especially since this build does not come with any native chance to pierce, being a Rune based archer, rather than a Hunting based one. That also makes Gusir's "level 8 Volley" really usefull. In combination with Thunder Strike it'd be absolutely lethal. Even if Volley won't proc of it, having both passive as well as active multi-shot capabilities, is a huge asset. Considering how Thunder Strike behaves so far, I wouldn't be too surprised if it can proc Volley though. That'd give you an occassional 15 arrows per shot 

Also keep in mind that according to tests made with Jagged Silk and Hoi Polloi, separate instances of Volley from different sources (your own skill tree and one or more items) stack. So any character with Hunting and maxed Volley and Gusir's Gifts is going to spread arrows like a madman.

Normally I'm not much into resistances on items for the sake of resistances, but look at this thing.



178% fire resistance, wow. Looks pretty good for bladeflinger Sorcerers, too. Other knifethrowers as well.

On the other hand, what even is this thing. It looks completely absurd.

One little thing that only occurred to me recently:

The description of Soften Metal states damage. Not Fire damage, just damage, which implies to me that it deals physical damage. This means that even Ring of Fire benefits from strength, and that fighter characters also have a decent shot at damaging their foes with Soften Metal.

At least if I'm interpreting things correctly. But Flame Arch clearly states that the additional damage it provides is fire, so I don't see why Soften Metal wouldn't do the same if it was fire damage.

I think I'm going to go start a new game with a Battlemage sometime soon. It seems there's an amazing number of synergies ripe for trying.

All good points. Honestly, I didn't even remember to compare the stats gained before and after Anniversary Edition.

One really handy trick I discovered by accident, if you want to rely on Stone Form a lot: Falcon Cape. Falcon Cape is really amazing for my Stonespeaker, personally, which is why I know about this. But let's see what it offers.
- 40% Elemental Resistance. Quite okay. Nothing to write home about, as your fire resistance will likely be off the charts, but the other two might be useful in a pinch.
- 10% Chance to Avoid Projectiles. Pretty good, no matter what kind of character you're going for.
- +10% Total Speed. More useful for fighters than for casters, as the impact of this on attack speed will generally be higher than that of casting speed. On the other hand, casting speed is quite difficult to get reliably, in my experience, and you need to sacrifice other items to get enough of it (I'm still using a Star Stone instead of another Seal of Hephaestus or something similar on my Stonespeaker), so maybe a few items with bonus to total speed might go a long way. Increased run speed is always welcome.
- +2 to all skills in Rune Mastery: Really nice if you're a Stonespeaker, does literally nothing if you're anything else with Earth.
- +1 to all skills in Rogue Mastery: Same as the above, just with Magician.
Okay, but what is that below all of this? That's right, a skill.
- Grants skill: Level 14 Refresh [Activated on low health]
That's right. Activated on low health. Activate Stone Form, have your Ring of Fire, Heat Shield and Molten Rock do the work for you, and when you get out of it, get hit and wounded, the automatic Refresh will reset the recharge time of Stone Form! I think that the built-in Refresh has quite a high recharge time, but then with enough recharge reduction you can pretty much reduce Stone Form's recharge below its duration, so all of this is moot. Just throwing it out there.

Stone Form actually works well with a lot of skills, I believe. A list I've quickly compiled:
- Earth: Ring of Fire, Heat Shield, Summon Core Dweller, Eruption (technically Volativity, as it should boost both Eruption and Ring of Fire)
- Storm: Static Charge, Storm Surge, Reflection, Summon Wisp, Squall - Obscured Visibility
- Spirit: Deathchill Aura, Summon Liche King, Summon Outsider
- Nature: Plague, Call of the Wild, Sylvan Nymph, Refresh
- Warfare: Counterattack, Ancestral Horn
- Defense: Rally - Defiance
- Hunting: Study Prey - Flush Out, Herbal Remedy
- Rogue: Lay Trap, Poison Gas Bomb, Envenom Weapon
- Dream: Trance of Empathy, Trance of Wrath, Distortion Field, Summon Nightmare
- Rune: Rune Weapon - Magical Charge, Seal of Fate - Aftershock, Guardian Stones

Some of these work well, others not so much. There are potential anti-synergies here. Using Stone Form and Storm Surge together capitalizes nicely on the fact that while you'd take no melee damage from the hit, you are still being hit and therefore Storm Surge activates. On the other hand, the stun effect prevents them from hitting you more for a short time, therefore they won't take as much retaliation or reflection damage (although Ring of Fire of course still applies).

A few are obvious. Summons still attack while you're in Stone Form, so those of course are on the list. Poison, damage-over-time effects, and prolonged resistance reduction all play nicely onto your passive damage from multiple sources. Additional retaliation damage works, as well as reflection (as the reflected damage is determined before resistances or absorption would kick in).

However, one that truly stands out to me from that list is Trance of Wrath. It periodically deals pretty hefty Electrical Burn damage to all around the character, the only effect similar to Ring of Fire in that it is not retaliation damage or reflection but simple damage dealt automatically and periodically by the caster, therefore buffed by Intellect and all percentile bonuses to Electrical Burn damage. On the top of that, it reduces resistances! The skill disruption is not as relevant as you'd be in Stone Form anyway, but I feel that an Evoker might be really interesting when combining these four spells to kill enemies simply by being around them and getting attacked.

I'm not here to pretend I know about pets, though. While yes, your idea with a Summoner and letting your summons do the job sounds good, but I've never had a petmaster, so I won't leave further comment on that. It seems to me that Earth and Nature complement each other in a number of other ways, though, anyway.

One thing to keep in mind that is while you're killing basic mobs really fast, they usually do the same to you. It's usually avoidable by killing them still faster (it's what Earth is best at, after all), it's always reassuring to see a horde of Melinoes jump at your Core Dweller, rather than you. There are bosses that kill it really quickly, though, so keep that in mind.

A note to tend is that I'm fairly busy these days. I'll try to update this as soon as I can, but I might take a while. Some of the statements above I haven't rigorously tested, but I'm fairly certain about most of them.

Introduction

So you want to burn things. That's good. Commendable. I don't have a whole lot of experience writing guides, but inspired by @CrocMagnum and his write-up for Rune, I thought I'd try my hand at one. After all, while I haven't gotten far with all of them yet, I've tried the majority of Earth's combinations (Stonespeaker and Conjurer in legendary, Avenger in epic, Summoner and Juggernaut in normal, though I honestly don't have immediate plans to continue with the latter). An Elementalist was my first character ever in Titan Quest (way before Anniversary Edition), and I'm planning to play through the game with one again now that I know better. Any feedback is welcome!

Overview

So what do we know about Earth? Why is it good? Why would we want to play it?

Personally, when I create a character, or plan it, I consider both masteries. Usually (but not always), there's a primary mastery, which roughly determines the way the character's supposed to be played, the way it should achieve its goal, and a secondary, supporting mastery, which usually augments the primary mastery's skills using synergies, provides additional survivability or efficiency. Sometimes there's no distinct hierarchy, but most of the time one of the masteries is more important than the other, at least the way I'm developing my characters.

As far as my opinion's concerned, Earth makes a fantastic primary mastery for casters, and a decent and interesting secondary mastery for fighters. Without further ado, let's look at some generic things.

The mastery itself, when maxed, provides +90 Intellect, +48 Dexterity, +720 Health and +192 Energy. Some of these values are unusual; the Intellect is roughly average as caster masteries go, while Dexterity is nothing special, either. The health bonus is by far better, however, than anything offered by any other caster mastery, but in exchange the energy is the lowest among them. Earth itself also doesn't offer anything to reduce your energy consumption (other than Barrage, which only works for Flame Surge specifically), it is recommended to get some through your supporting mastery or items, if you're planning to go heavy on casting.

Anniversary Edition has affected Earth quite a bit. Many Earth skills deal both physical and fire damage. The former is now boosted by Strength, while the latter has always been increased by Intellect. This offers you a choice; while I've found that the skills generally scale better with Intellect, if you're planning to choose Earth as a secondary mastery for your melee character, you'll find that your increased Strength will still benefit most of your skills, which opens up nice avenues for a hybrid character.

Another remarkable change is damage-over-time. Since now these are increased by their respective attributes, burn damage by Intellect, specifically, with the arrival of Anniversary Edition, Earth has ascended into one of the best damage-over-time masteries, sharing this position with the poison-bleed-focused Rogue and the electrifying Dream. Unlike poison and bleed, burn damage devastates the undead, and you'll find that the combination of physical and fire damage is usually quite complementary in itself, as few enemies are resistant enough to both.

On the other hand, Earth remains good at which it has always excelled: instant damage and destroying crowds. Pyromancers are adept at dealing high amount of instanteous and prolonged damage, and are able to do so to large amounts of monsters at the same time. This gives us one of the best masteries when it comes to dealing with hordes and swarms (which is most of the time in the game), although it might be a bit more lacking against bosses. This is also something to keep in mind when picking your secondary mastery.

Earth also offers pretty good survivability overall, as far as caster classes go. Heat Shield provides a fixed 15% physical resistance, and Stone Form is one of the best panic buttons in the game. The Core Dweller is an incredibly resilient summon who also has the innate ability to redirect attackers to itself. Its attack strength is a little bit lacking, but killing stuff is what the Pyromancer is there for, anyway.

Skills

Earth Enchantment, Brimstone, Stone Skin

Earth Enchantment: If you picked Earth, you want to burn things. This helps you burn things. The flat fire damage bonus is really heavy early on but its effect diminishes later as it doesn't increase with additional skill points. It provides an increasing percentile increase to both fire and burn damage, however, and I personally believe it is a no-brainer skill to max, even reasonably early, even if you don't care much for the increasing radius.

Brimstone: Increased physical damage is good, as two of Earth's skills deal physical damage, though the amount is not much. If you're a caster, I'd personally maybe just put one point into this (with one notable exception), but if you rely on weapon attacks a lot (or like to throw knives), the huge amount of flat burn damage is going to massively increase your DPS if you have decent Intellect and some bonus to burn damage. In this case, I'd max this skill as well.

Stone Skin: Personally I find this underwhelming. Flat armor bonus isn't really worth the skill points in my opinion, especially later on, and the bonus to fire resistance is negligible (and if you're focused on Earth and fire damage, your items should give you ample fire resistance anyway). I usually put one point into this, but I can also easily imagine that it's just as good if you skip.

Flame Surge, Barrage, Flame Arch

I'm going to discuss the three skills in one. Long story short, I see this skill as a replacement for your weapon attack (for casters). However, it is quite unimpressive as far as those go, mostly due to the limited range. Ternion Attack and Ice Shard both outdo it by far in my opinion, but if your supporting mastery offers nothing of the sort (Nature has none, and Dream has Psionic Touch, which might not cut it, either), it's a decent option. As such, I'd either max all three skills with a character who relies on it, or ignore it entirely with everyone else.

With some recharge reduction from items, you can reduce its recharge to zero, which makes it actually pretty amazing at dispatching melee attackers as far as your casting speed is good, although it leaves you vulnerable to archers, other casters, and possibly enemies with thrown weapons (luckily, you have other skills to deal with them).

Flame Surge might be of interest to melee characters taking Earth for reducing the target's defensive ability quite nicely, allowing for harder-hitting criticals.

Volcanic Orb, Conflagration, Fragmentation

I'm going to begin with this: This is an amazing set of skills, and I believe that all three are worth maxing out, pretty much no matter what you do. The mix of physical and fire damage means it's going to scale, no matter whether you invest more heavily into Strength or Intellect. Even Volcanic Orb alone affects a respectable area, which Conflagration increases further (with the addition of some sweet, lethal burn damage) and with Fragmentation, the affected area skyrockets. The recharge is quite low, and with some reduction it can be really easy to dish out a frightening number of fiery orbs of death. The speed at which the orb travels is quite low, which takes some getting used to, but also can be used to your advantage by lobbing the orb at enemies and using the travel time to set up the traps the affected enemies will run headlong into. Another important thing I'd point out is its virtually unlimited range. You can use it on the corner of the screen when you're zoomed out as much as it's possible, and often you can use it on monsters you can't possibly reach otherwise.

Ring of Fire, Soften Metal

Something of an oddity. This is going to steadily reduce the health of enemies around you. At first it doesn't look like much. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that this is not retaliation damage, this is not damage reflection: this is fire damage which the Pyromancer automatically deals to all enemies within range. Which means it scales with Intellect, it scales with every fire damage boost you have.

With both skills maxed (which, admittedly, is quite the investment), you're looking at 80 fire damage every second. I personally find that respectable. However, it also costs 16 energy per second at this point. Is it really worth spending that much for some supplementary damage? Why is it good?

There are a few other skills in the mastery this will have nice synergies with.

Heat Shield

It gives a fixed 15% physical resistance. I'd say it's worth putting one point into it just for that. It also gives some fire damage absorption, which is not all that important, but fun. To my knowledge, it stacks with your resistance multiplicatively, and that way can increase your effective resistance above the 80% cap. Which is usually not really important, but it's fun owning Surtr because you take only a few percents of damage from his attacks.

What ultimately makes it a bad investment, however, I believe, is that if you are any serious about using fire (especially if you're using weapon attacks, because once again, huge flat burning damage bonus), you should be using at least one Seal of Hephaestus (seriously, it's too good to pass up). Which grants you a level 11 Heat Shield, and I find it's simply not worth the skill points to compete with that.

Still, having one skill point in it might useful. Your Heat Shield and the Heat Shield from the Seal use different cooldowns, so you can consistently supply an ally (or your Core Dweller, when playing alone) with your extra Heat Shield.

Stone Form, Molten Rock

Panic button extraordinaire. Instant invulnerability for six seconds (eight if you're taking the synergy). What's the catch?

You don't get to do anything. So your enemies keep swinging at you. When the Stone Form ends, you'll not be any better off, and they will still be there.

Or will they?

This is what I've been alluding to under Ring of Fire. You can pop an Eruption and activate Stone Form, but when you're using the latter as a panic button, you hardly have time for that. However, Ring of Fire provides constant fire damage. Heat Shield adds burn retaliation, and Molten Rock has fire retaliation. You might have other retaliation effects from items, too. The Core Dweller can help out a little. Separately, they can be pretty unimpressive, but they do add up. I have killed Fafnir this way; keeping Stone Form up, having him bite at you can whittle down his health remarkably quickly, in fact. It still takes a while, but then it's Fafnir.

Sadly, all of this is moot against ranged enemies and casters. But oh well. It's not your focus, just a nice extra.

Summon Core Dweller, Inner Fire, Wildfire, Metamorphosis

Ah, the fabled Core Dweller. I'd put one point into each skill as soon as they're available, but it seems to me that until the very end of the game, it's more or less safe to leave them that way. Putting some more can help with your pet's survivability, but seeing how you should be able to eliminate your attackers pretty quickly, it shouldn't be a top priority on the list.

Volativity

Two words: max this. No matter what you do. If you're taking Earth, you're probably interested in at least two of the three damage types it boosts. The chance of the proc is good, and the damage bonus is phenomenal. This skill is fantastic, and worth every skill point put into it.

Eruption

Another insane skill. Once again, mixed physical and fire damage means it's going to scale decently whether you're a fighter or a caster. It has a nice radius, and an amount of fragments increasing with the skill level, which spread its deadly influence even further. If you're a caster, you'll probably want to max this. Popping an Eruption under your own feet and then entering Stone Form is a pretty nice way of destroying clusters of melee enemies, but it's also very useful for stationary groups of archers and casters, slow-moving bosses, but even faster ones considering that it affects a rather large area.

Notes

Still work in progress; I'm most likely going to update this following recommendations and other ideas I might have in the following days. Thanks for reading!