Physical Vs Elemental the never ending story

@celavie (you must be french! :p)

I really think you should take a look at suffixes and prefixes. Then compose your mythical "perfect" gear for both a physical and elemental build.

Equipment like broadstroke, magnate, etc, are a joke when compared to a perfect rolled elemental counter-part. Let's say a 36% inc weapon ele dmg / 7-72 light dmg / 109 life / resist quiver.

A very important point in this whole discussion is that flat physical damage on gear is lower than the ele counter part AND is NOT increased by %inc phys dmg nodes. Whereas flat elemental IS increased by %inc elemental nodes. I think this is really the nail in the coffin for a physical oriented passive tree.

Edit: What I mean is, you could still use a phys weapon and a phys skill and then convert a part of it... you will find that proj>ele>phys dmg nodes in the end.

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Celavie wrote:

If I account for those numbers, I must account for +physical damage numbers as well. It will be too complex.

If adding in stats for items is "too complex" for your mathematics you probably have very inaccurate and unfinished number there.

In your own words your math is not done because it's too complex.

Cool attempt at a post, but sadly it's not a good one.

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Weism wrote:

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Celavie wrote:

If I account for those numbers, I must account for +physical damage numbers as well. It will be too complex.

If adding in stats for items is "too complex" for your mathematics you probably have very inaccurate and unfinished number there.

In your own words your math is not done because it's too complex.

Cool attempt at a post, but sadly it's not a good one.

The math I´ve done is solid. I mean that I must find a medium value for all the equipment modifiers. Which I havn´t had time to do. However I am thinking about redoing all this math with the inclusion of gear. However, that will be done another day.

Icecreamcart is on the right track. Physical damage lacks potent support from enchantments. %phys damage is only available on (otherwise plain bad) unique items and in lower value than %WED. There are two flat elemental auras, one conversion aura and no pure physical aura. Added fire gem costs one socket and is therefore inherently worse than the auras. Flat physical on gear is not even comparable to flat elemental rolls in value which is even more enhanced by the fact that you can have up to 3 elemental modifiers on some slots but only one physical.

And then there are game mechanics. Attack speed increases elemental damage multiplicatively, the armor implementation in PoE does not make the same thing true for physical builds. Last, Elemental Weakness is mechanically way stronger than Vulnerability.

There isn't even a contest to be honest and while your math may be correct, you're completely off track regarding completeness of your base information.

Elemental > Physical for all instances but leech value. How conversion builds fit into there is a case by case question but in general it's better to increase the elemental damage after conversion than increasing physical damage before the conversion.

"Attack speed increases elemental damage multiplicatively" please explain this statement.

What is interesting is the damage per attack. Attack speed only multiplies this damage X amounts per second.

Say that 1000 elemental attacks deal 100 damage per avarage.
Say that 1000 physical attacks deal 100 damage per avarage.

Each will (on avarage) do 100 damage X times per second.

Still noone touches the subject of %WED giving bonus to both players. I will return tomorrow with more extensive calculating, but now its time to actually play the darn game M)

Sorry, I didn't phrase that well, excuse me.

Flat damage modifiers scale with attack speed. Elemental damage scales linear with attack speed, so 20% less damage and 20% more attack speed cancel each other out in the worst case. It makes sense to use the fastest base speed to maximize those modifiers. For Physical damage this isn't true. 20% less damage and 20% more attack speed don't sum to zero because the 'armor penetration value' is lower for the attack speed case. Which means that physical builds should use slow bases to maximize the armor pen which in turm makes flat damage modifiers even worse.

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Khazrad wrote:

Sorry, I didn't phrase that well, excuse me.

Flat damage modifiers scale with attack speed. Elemental damage scales linear with attack speed, so 20% less damage and 20% more attack speed cancel each other out. It makes sense to use the fastest base speed to maximize those modifiers. For Physical damage this isn't true. 20% less damage and 20% more attack speed don't sum to zero because the 'armor penetration value' is lower for the attack speed case. Which means that physical builds should use slow bases to maximize the armor pen which in turm makes flat damage modifiers even worse.

That makes your comment more clear and I agree it is a factor, from the armour penetration point of view.

However I would be very surprised (although not crunched any numbers yet) that the armour penetration value is relevant at the sort of damage levels we are talking about here.

i.e. I am saying that for all intensive purposes 20% more damage, 20% less attack speed vs 20% less damage, 20% increased attack speed, really is the same for both physical and elemental damage.

Usually armour penetration becomes significant when damage scales up by orders of magnitude, not by some few percent.

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so let's make some theorycrafting instead, seems there are a lot of misunderstanding in this thread.

the whole formula for physical dmg would be

{dmg.physical.weapon.shown*skill.modifier*(1+strength/500+sum.dmg.increased)
+dmg.added.physical.gear*skill.modifier*(1+dmg.increased)}
*(1-sum.phys.converted)*multi.dmg.less*multi.dmg.more

with

sum.dmg.increased = dmg.increased.physical+dmg.increased.projectile+dmg.increased
sum.phys.converted = phys.converted.to.cold+phys.converted.to.fire+phys.converted.to.lightning
multi.dmg.less = (1-dmg.less.projectile)*(1-dmg.less)
multi.dmg.more = (1+dmg.more)

the strength/500 is iron grip
beware, that weapon's stats have a special calculation; so a "dmg.added.physical" leads to higher values on the weapon, it does not take account in dmg.added.physical.gear. Also besides: attack speed overall is calculated "weapon.base.speed*weapon.attack.speed*(1+sum.attack.speed.gear-passive)"

while for example for lightning bolt that would be for lightning dmg

{dmg.physical.weapon.shown*skill.modifier*(1+strength/500+sum.dmg.increased)*phys.converted.to.lightning
+dmg.added.physical.gear*skill.modifier*(1+dmg.increased)*phys.converted.to.lightning+
sum.dmg.added.lightning*(1+dmg.increased.projectile+dmg.increased+dmg.increased.lightning+dmg.increased.elemental+dmg.increased.weapon.elemental}
*multi.dmg.less*multi.dmg.more

with

sum.dmg.increased = dmg.increased.physical+dmg.increased.projectile+dmg.increased+dmg.increased.lightning+dmg.increased.elemental+dmg.increased.weapon.elemental
sum.dmg.added.lightning = dmg.added.gear + dmg.added.gem + dmg.added.aura
multi.dmg.less = (1-dmg.less.projectile)*(1-dmg.less)
multi.dmg.more = (1+dmg.more)*(1+support.gem.weapon.elemental.dmg)

the strength/500 is iron grip

So... finally to say: A nice Thicket Bow with Tri-Ele-Dmg and Attackspeed would be slightly better, if you do not take the better use of passive points and the chance to crit into account. Otherwise Lioneyes Glare with good rolls wins hands down.

Try to calculate it yourself - you'll see the huge difference in the weapon elemental damage support gem.

Do not get the wrong conclusion - with pure phys builts you can get very decent dmg too, and you maybe have another playstyle then ;-) hope this helps

Frenzy does NoT increase the physical damage of another skill than of Frenzy.

The whole math is fakked up.