Heroes Increase Spell Dmg

Hello exiles! I have a question regarding how damage works here. Mainly I want to know about spell damage. How it works? I mean, if I have a staff with 10% spell damage increase, which skills damage will it increase? Kinda logically thinking this would increase only castable skills, like fireball etc, but I am not sure about all that, so maybe some1 can clarify this for me. Also about elemental damages. If I have a Str based skill, let's say Ground Slam. I know that it has weapon damage based damage, but also it has some fire damage added, will spell damage increase do anything and will fire damage increase do anything? Also the same with Dex based skills, like Elemental hit. As the skill itself has only elemental damage, I would assume that even spell damage would do something, but I think that it won't help, if it does - tell me. And with that Elemental hit - if I have 20% fire dmg increase and I have added fire dmg increase support gem, will that 20% fire dmg increase add to that base fire dmg of the skill or also that support gem added damage. Also let's say I have a skill which has no fire dmg, but I add a support gem with fire dmg and also I have that 20% fire dmg increase on my wep - will it change anything? I know these are kinda many questions and they all are similar, but yeah, I just want to know how my damage is calculated, cause I just got my 1st Unique, which is a lvl13 staff with fire dmg and spell dmg increases and I was thinking about making a Templar, but I know that I will use Ground slam, maybe Elemental hit too, and Fireball skills + Fire traps. I wanted to know which of those skills will my Fire dmg increase and spell damage increase actually affect.
Please, anyone who knows something about all this stuff, help me understand my damage. :P
With best regards,
TheEnforcer.

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Posted by
on Jun 29, 2012, 12:50:17 AM

That is a big ol' wall o' text you got there.
Let's say you have a wand with innate 10% spell damage, a mod on it that has an additional 30% spell damage, a shield with 15% spell damage, 50% spell damage from skills and 25% increased fire damage.
Spells that deal fire damage will now do (1 + 0.1 + 0.3 + 0.15 + 0.5 + 0.25)x damage. Aka: 230% damage.
Cold/Lightning spells will only deal 205% damage (missing the 25% increased fire).

Last edited by TheRabbit303 on Jun 29, 2012, 12:54:24 AM

Posted by
on Jun 29, 2012, 12:53:36 AM

'

That is a big ol' wall o' text you got there.
Let's say you have a wand with innate 10% spell damage, a mod on it that has an additional 30% spell damage, a shield with 15% spell damage, 50% spell damage from skills and 25% increased fire damage.
Spells that deal fire damage will now do (1 + 0.1 + 0.3 + 0.15 + 0.5 + 0.25)x damage. Aka: 230% damage.
Cold/Lightning spells will only deal 205% damage (missing the 25% increased fire).

Well, that is the part which I kinda understand myself. I mainly want to know what happens with Ground slam and Elemental hit. As Ele hit is dex skill, It shouldn't be affected by spell damage increases, as far as I understand, only elemental ones will add damage for, let's say, that Ele hit or Ground slam.

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Posted by
on Jun 29, 2012, 1:07:53 AM

Skills that deal damage based o n a weapon (Ground Slam, Elemental Hit, ect) are Attacks.
Skills which are not attacks are Spells.
Attacks deal Weapon Damage. Some attacks also deal Secondary Damage, which is not affected by weapon-specific modifiers, but is not spell damage. An example of this is Infernal Blow - the initial hit is weapon damage, and affected by anything that affects weapon/melee/insert-type-of-your weapon-here damage. The explosion is not based on your weapon damage - it's secondary damage. It's not affected by anything specific to weapons, but is affected by generic increases to all damage, or to specific types of damage it's dealing (usually fire, but other damage types can be added)
Some spells deal no damage (auras, curses, etc). Spells which deal damage (usually) deal Spell Damage, which is affected by damage modifiers that increase/reduce spell damage. An exception would be Detonate Dead, which deals secondary damage (see above), and is thus not affected by spell-specific modifiers. This is both for balance, and because thematically the spell doesn't directly do damage, it causes a corpse to explode, and the corpse, rather than the spell directly, deals damage to nearby enemies.
Please let me know if any of this is unclear and I will attempt to refine my explanation to the point you understand.

Posted by
Mark_GGG
on Jun 29, 2012, 1:27:59 AM

Spells: List a critical chance on them.
Attacks: Don't.

Posted by
on Jun 29, 2012, 2:38:58 AM

'

Spells: List a critical chance on them.
Attacks: Don't.

Not entirely true - Secondary damage, being not based on a weapon, needs a critical strike chance from the skill as well, so attacks which deal secondary damage will list a critical strike chance. Infernal Blow does, and I believe Lightning Strike does as well - a holdover from an old version of the skill that dealt secondary damage which took a while to be noticed and removed - it's out in 0.9.11

Posted by
Mark_GGG
on Jun 29, 2012, 2:42:37 AM

'

Skills that deal damage based o n a weapon (Ground Slam, Elemental Hit, ect) are Attacks.
Skills which are not attacks are Spells.
Attacks deal Weapon Damage. Some attacks also deal Secondary Damage, which is not affected by weapon-specific modifiers, but is not spell damage. An example of this is Infernal Blow - the initial hit is weapon damage, and affected by anything that affects weapon/melee/insert-type-of-your weapon-here damage. The explosion is not based on your weapon damage - it's secondary damage. It's not affected by anything specific to weapons, but is affected by generic increases to all damage, or to specific types of damage it's dealing (usually fire, but other damage types can be added)
Some spells deal no damage (auras, curses, etc). Spells which deal damage (usually) deal Spell Damage, which is affected by damage modifiers that increase/reduce spell damage. An exception would be Detonate Dead, which deals secondary damage (see above), and is thus not affected by spell-specific modifiers. This is both for balance, and because thematically the spell doesn't directly do damage, it causes a corpse to explode, and the corpse, rather than the spell directly, deals damage to nearby enemies.
Please let me know if any of this is unclear and I will attempt to refine my explanation to the point you understand.

Thanks for the info. Now it's clear to me. I was kinda thinking the same, but wanted to be sure. And you explained the thing with 2ndary damages, I thought that they are affected by weapon specific modifiers.
Thanks. :)

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Posted by
on Jun 29, 2012, 9:50:47 AM

'

Spells: List a critical chance on them.
Attacks: Don't.

I find it easier to determine whether an ability is a Spell or Attack by checking if it has an 'Attack time' or a 'Casting time' on my action bar.

Posted by
Ryjeon
on Jun 29, 2012, 5:53:15 PM

Completely new to the game (bored/frustrated with Diablo and have heard good things about PoE - enjoying so far), so I have a basic question. Is spell damage, cast time, and/or cast speed at all based on physical damage and/or weapon swing speed?

Posted by
leroyyrogers
on Jul 9, 2012, 4:40:53 AM

no, spells such as fireball, sparks, ect. Do not benefit from a weapons dps or attack speed at all. However magic weapons and above can spawn with mods that can still effect spells. Such as spell damage, elemental damage (the % ones, not the dmg range ones) crit chance, ect. These mods can spawn on weapons (not just wands, the typical spell user weapon).

Posted by
Lionguild
on Jul 9, 2012, 5:00:23 AM