Elemental Damage

[Medicine Man]

Greetings. I have a quick question regarding elemental damage adders and elemental skills. Sometime during the beta I remember reading that + elemental damage items would enhance damage for certain skills, but nothing about this is mentioned in the patch text (unless I'm missing it). If this is true, which skills are affected by items?

The amazon arrow skills benefited from + fireghtning/cold damage in 1.09, so I assume nothing has changed there. Do sorceress and druid spells now enjoy a similar boost?

Sorry about adding the extra forum noise, but I just don't trust the lying damage display ™. :)

Cheers.

[Guest]

Yes, I heard that too, and didn't see any major proof of it. Then there were 100 speculative posts around it, and people thought those speculations were true.

The amazon arrow skills benefited from + fireghtning/cold

That's Freezing Arrow = takes cold length & converts it to freeze length.

And Freezing Arrow/Exploding arrow both add their respective elements from any source to their exploison radius. So if you hit with the physical attack, the elemental damage from outside sources (cold or fire) gets "added twice". Or more times even because of several piercing exploisons hitting the same target.

[Swarmalicious]

Cold length, that is.

Is cold length affected by different cold sources (ie: frostburn, 1-2 dam charm, and, say perf saphire in weapon)? If so, is there a formula floating around?

Additionally, anyone care to elighten on the way 'slows by%', holy freeze aura, and cold damage interact?

I've been working on a character who specializes in slowing things down, the problem is, I have no idea what I'm actually doing. I've just kind of been like "It has cold damage? GIMMEE!" - and this has worked extensively - but some clarification (as always, esteemed lurkers) would be enormously appreciated.

Yer pal,

Swarm

[adeyke]

Skills have difference cold/freeze lengths. In the case of some (e.g. freezing arrow), the cold length of your items is also added to that. For non-cold attacks, only your equipment counts.

There isn't a formula for how much cold length items have. It's an invisible number on the item itself, which you can look up in the MPQs (or resources derived from the MPQs).

For example, Frostburns has 50 frames, all cold affixes on charms have 25 frames and a perfect Sapphire has 75 frames.

So if you had all of those, you'd have a 150 frame = 6 second frame.

Cold/freeze length is halved in nightmare and halved again in hell, so that'd be 3 seconds in nightmare or 1.5 seconds in hell.

[Swarmalicious]

Thanks.

[whyBish]

That's how I got my first A.B. HC bowazon to Hell in D2C.... FA wearing frosts/cold dmg belt/ 11 or 12 sec eye etc. she didn't do much other than pinning monsters in place for others to kill (or spamming some immo (pre-timer :) )) which worked really well with F.A. of decent length.

[Crystalion]

Greetings. I have a quick question regarding elemental damage adders and elemental skills.
...
Sorry about adding the extra forum noise, but I just don't trust the lying damage display ™. :)

Other posters have covered other factoids so I'll say a few words about v1.10 enchant...

I've just completed a bit of v1.10 release PvP tcp/ip testing (i.e. local, not bnet) and here is the "funny numbers omitted" version of the results...

Enchant adds fire damage to any attack skill that delivers direct "physically delivered" fire damage (i.e. the rule of thumb is that "after-effect" fires, like those burning from Immolation arrow, as well as pure fire effects, like Fireball, don't benefit). I have not recently tested the really odd cases (like Assassin Fists of Fire and Dragon Tail) so I won't comment on those here.

So, as others have noted, certain attacks, like Exploding Arrow and Immolation Arrow, benefit twice (from fire adders like Enchant) because they actually "hit twice" in some sense (to-hit arrow and then splash).

Despite NextDelay, I also noticed Strafe (PvP, one target, no summons, slvl 1) hitting more than once.

Multishot hit only once and clearly was dimishing the fire damage by the 3/4ths factor.

All the arrow skills carried the damage (of Enchant). Of the Jav skills, I tested most of them and only Lightning Bolt failed to carry Enchant's fire. That might be the only clearly "physically delivered" looking attack (uses up a Jav, after all) that isn't, I don't know.

I saw one anomaly that I didn't track down because I wasn't sure I really saw it... a test with a rogue hireling using Kuko seemed less effective in one trial (where the visual seemed at a glance to show exploding arrows not delivering noticable damage).

(sorry, I was sleepy, so I've edited after reviewing my test numbers and thinking about them)...

Upon review, my +200% Fire Mastery (3x damage) and 3x non-ranged being approximately equal has confused me in interpreting the numbers I saw. Here's what I said before edit:

>>>
The lying character screen™ for the skill Enchant says 1/3 damage for ranged attacks (vs. melee). I saw no evidence that this is true (presumably obsolete text or a mis-implementation).

The big factor for Enchantresses is that, clearly from testing, they are getting the Fire Mastery bonus a second time. Indeed it look multiplicative to me, offhand. The lying character screen™ reflects this state of affairs, so I think it was intentional. Passion is one of the easier runewords (zeal, berserk, hit blinds target) so I rather think Enchantress Sorcs are about to have a field day trying to prove they can (output) melee (damage) with the best of them.
<<<

I now rather suspect that the skill numbers shown for Enchant damage are correct, but the skill description perhaps should say "3x damage" for Sorc if melee, not ranged. If that is true, then the displayed damage (stats screen) when the Sorc is using a (normal short) bow is in error (as it seemed to be in my test) by showing the 3x number that would only be true for melee (or if the Sorc used the runeword to shift into werebear form, eh?).

Clearly I need to test for this, to see which interpretation is correct and what is in error.

edit2: for example, *both* might be the case: FM might be being applied twice, but Sorcs (only themselves) might suffer 1/3rd penalty on ranged attacked when enchanted. I'll post back, probably tomorrow, once I clear this up, unless someone else gets to it first.

edit3: sorry for all the "in-process" confusion... the "final" testing conclusion is this: for the Enchantress herself, she gets a repeat (multiplicative) boost from Fire Mastery (on the +fire from Enchant, which was calculated with FM as a factor) *if* she is doing a melee attack. I'm afraid I didn't test all forms of melee and ranged attack possible but I'm betting this is true in general. FYI this means that the Sorc's damage shown on the stats (left side) lying character screen™ is wrong for enchanted ranged attacks (but correct, as stunning as that is, for melee attacks). This also means the skill tab info is giving you the enchant damage benefit you grant to others (melee/ranged) or your own ranged attacks, but is lowballing you for your own melee attacks if you have Fire Mastery.

Conclusion: melee enchantresses should consider emphasizing Fire Mastery more than the "optimum" recommended by MadScientist's excellent Skill Calculator because the melee fire damage is again multiplied by Fire Mastery. Further they should consider attacking as rapidly as possible (such as by Passion granted Zeal or The Beast werebear form using fully Shaeled Chu-Ko-Nu or equivalent for 4 frame attacks). We're talking reachable (i.e. not necessarily uber equipment) builds with many 10,000s of fire damage per second here fyi.

p.s. An oddity I encountered, which is a bit off-topic, is that these tests did *not* track displayed damage PvP being reduced to 1/10th. The numbers I saw were probably consistant with 1/6th (perhaps I should read the readme more closely, as 1/10th may have been just during beta).

[librarian]

Heiho,

uh, that's really hard stuff to follow with 'editing-in-progress'

Just a little nitpicking to make at least some points clearer for me:

>> So, as others have noted, certain attacks, like Exploding Arrow and Immolation Arrow, benefit twice (from fire adders like Enchant) because they actually "hit twice" in some sense (to-hit arrow and then splash). <<

This will only happen, if the CtH check was succesful, because in 1.10 the autohit function of elemental arrows/bolts/...missiles only counts for the elemental part.


>> Despite NextDelay, I also noticed Strafe (PvP, one target, no summons, slvl 1) hitting more than once. <<

With how many frames per attack, actually? From all I've read so far this should not have happened with a faster attack than 4fpa?


>> Multishot hit only once and clearly was dimishing the fire damage by the 3/4ths factor. <<

Again this is confusing, so elemental damage in 1.10 is also nerfed by the inbuilt 75% penalty of MS? Slightly OT, but if so, then I've missed an important post somewhere ;-(
Or is this just along with Enchant and not generally with all elemental damage?


>> Of the Jav skills, ... only Lightning Bolt failed to carry Enchant's fire. That might be the only clearly "physically delivered" looking attack (uses up a Jav, after all) that isn't, I don't know.

Pure out of curiosity, LB does not transform the fire damage from Enchant into lightning damage? (this could be the case, if Enchant fire damage has a special handling like I assumed one paragraph above. What about Zerk?)


>> ... these tests did *not* track displayed damage PvP being reduced to 1/10th. The numbers I saw were probably consistant with 1/6th (perhaps I should read the readme more closely, as 1/10th may have been just during beta). <<

So this is again the 17% number Jarulf posted in the 'new absorb caps' thread, hummm, I'm too tired to knot these together right now.

[Ruvanal]

>> Multishot hit only once and clearly was dimishing the fire damage by the 3/4ths factor. <<

Again this is confusing, so elemental damage in 1.10 is also nerfed by the inbuilt 75% penalty of MS? Slightly OT, but if so, then I've missed an important post somewhere ;-(
Or is this just along with Enchant and not generally with all elemental damage?

Yes you missed an important post or two on this. The SrcDam factor in skills.txt (or SrcDamage from missiles.txt) is scaling the elemental damage forms, not jsut the physical damage.

What Enchant is doing is essentially applying a temporary aura to the target that gives the recipient the equivalent of a 'charm' that does the indicated fire damage. That is the easiest way that I can think of to view the current Enchant skill.

[librarian]

Heiho,

thanks again for clearing another point^^

Last thing in my memory was, that in 1.09 despite the Character Screen information elemental damage was not nerfed by MS penalty. No wonder that one of my old bowies has some problems now ...

[LavCat]

What Enchant is doing is essentially applying a temporary aura to the target that gives the recipient the equivalent of a 'charm' that does the indicated fire damage.&nbsp; That is the easiest way that I can think of to view the current Enchant skill.

I understand enchant damage is supposed to be reduced on ranged attacks, but I thought that in 1.10 the mastery/synergy effect should fully affect other partied players/minions, not just the sorceress herself.

In my experience she gains about 8000 damage on her own weapon, but only about 2500 average on other melee characters. Or is this only a display issue?

[Ruvanal]

LavCat, the damage of about 2500 that you are applying to the other characters (and yourself) is the Enchant Skill amount (including the synergy and the Fire Mastery effect). When someone does a melee attack they are also getting the passive_fire_mastery attribute applied to their damage also. This passive_fire_mastery comes on a small handful of items and from the sorceress Fire Mastery skill. In the case of a sorceress throwing the enchant on herself, she is first getting the benefit of the mastery in setting up the damage that the Enchant skill does and again when using a melee attack (effectively FM^2). For other players they are only getting the effect of your mastery once.

There is no penalty to the damage from enchant when using a missile weapon other than the mastery is not being applied to it a second time as does with the melee attacks.

[Bun-Bun]

Ruvanal,

This would seem to imply that Fire Mastery and Lightning Mastery do not apply to other elemental adders on a ranged damage attack, such as fire damage charms, a Kuko's fire damage, etc.

Am I correct, or am I killing off my Bowsorcs prematurely? My impression was that the Masteries applied on ranged attacks in 1.09.

[Guest]

Ruvanal: When Enchanting my Rogue she doesn't get the damage on the character screen (she gets slightly higher), I haven't edited the skill at all (I could be wrong here :unsure: ), and she has no +fire damage on her.

[LavCat]

Thank you Ruvanal, as always! Do I understand correctly that if the enchantee had some level of fire mastery, the mastery would affect that character's enchant damage?

I wonder what items have that property? I don't know of any, but I will be looking. If anyone is aware of one, this would be a good place to compile a list!

[GentlemanLoser]

How about items with + Fire skill damage? Off the top of my head, I can only think of Ormus Robes and Rainbow Facet jewels.

[adeyke]

ow about items with + Fire skill damage? Off the top of my head, I can only think of Ormus Robes and Rainbow Facet jewels.

Ruvanal had said:

This passive_fire_mastery comes on a small handful of items and from the sorceress Fire Mastery skill.

I'm guessing this means that items like Ormus' Robes and Rainbow Facets would have their effect added onto your fire mastery percentage (which would start at 0 for non-sorcs).

[GentlemanLoser]

So fire Sorc's would get this bonus twice? By being added to the fire skill being used and Fire mastery.

[Ruvanal]

Fire Mastery is really just the passive stat of passive_fire_mastery. When a character equips one of the items that has extra-fire, the item also gives the user the passive_fire_mastery stat. If a sorceress equiped such an item it would just be adding its value to the sorceresses own passive_fire_mastery, which is what would then be used to for adjusting the fire damage. This similar to having the Warmth skill and using Mage fist for the increased mana regeneration, they are both the same stat (manarecoverybonus) and are just added together for determining what use for the effect.

[Guest]

Weird, I thought Warmth was a separate bonus. Thanks again AS. :(