Elemental Damage

[Crystalion]

Greetings. I have a quick question regarding elemental damage adders and elemental skills.
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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:

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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).