Mechanical Questions Thread

Wild Strike

The tooltip is known to be wildly (hehe) inaccurate as it only depicts the physical damage portion of the skill, without any conversion and most importantly, without the spell-like effects of the skill.

Is this a design principle in the skill that the damage dealt by the spell-like effects is hidden? If not, could we get some answers on how that damage portion looks like?

1. Is the damage of the spell-like effects a flat damage that increases per level? Or
2. Is the damage of the spell-like effects somehow calculated from the initial hit? (This has been said to not be the case before but in less clear terms so I figure a clear cut answer would be nice.)
3. What is the damage progression of the spell-like effects like per level?
4. What damage modifiers actually apply to the spell-like effects? Are they counted as being elemental damage dealt by a weapon, ie. does Increased Elemental Damage with Weapons increase the spell-like effects? Are they counted as melee attacks, ie. does Increased Melee Damage increase their damage?

I guess that's the most of it. Thank you for your time and patience.

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Loimulohi wrote:

Wild Strike
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2. Is the damage of the spell-like effects somehow calculated from the initial hit? (This has been said to not be the case before but in less clear terms so I figure a clear cut answer would be nice.)

I mean, it's close enough that I would argue the answer is practically yes. The secondary effects have the same base damage as the Melee Hit. There are a few reasons the answer is technically no. First and foremost is that the melee hit and the secondary effects have different modifiers allowed to apply to them, though some overlap. Secondly is the pedantic issue that each secondary effect hit makes a new damage roll rather than having damage derived from a hit the way Poison, Ignite, and Bleeding do.

In practical terms, it goes something like this.

You have 450% increased generic damage, 50% increased melee damage, and 10% increased projectile damage. Your Wild Strike has no links and your only equipped gear is a sword with 100 average damage (example: it reads 90 to 110 physical), and we assume 1 attack per second, 100% chance to hit, and no crits, for simplicity.

Now, sorry for the sort of sloppy organization here, but it's worth addressing some common misconceptions and the rest of your questions.

The most frequently misunderstood myth about Wild Strike is that the randomized conversion applies only to the secondary ("spell-like," as you call them) effects. The truth is that the conversion applies to both the melee hit and the secondary effect. The tool tip shows all physical because of the randomization; it can't predict which element will be chosen, so it gives no estimate.

That should actually address your question 4 if you know that deciding which modifiers to apply is fairly straightforward with no rule-breaking that I can think of. I'll try to expand the example I started but haven't yet finished to address this too in a bit.

Anyways, your tool tip should read 600 dps from 100 * (100% base + 450% generic + 50% melee). This is the dps of your melee hit. If you get the flame explosion or lightning arc, you will be dealing 550 dps with those; 100 * (100% base + 450% generic). If you get the frost wave projectile, you'll deal 560 dps with it; 100 * (100% base + 450% generic + 10% projectile).

As you can see since it uses same base damage as melee hit there is no damage progression other than the "Deals x% of base damage" line on Wild Strike that also applies to melee hit. Speaking of which, I forgot that in my example, you can multiply everything by 130% for level 1 wild strike if you want to be super technical (i.e. 600 dps becomes 780, 550 becomes 715, etc).

To demonstrate the common misconception and continue to address your question 4 (some of it is covered in my example above), let's make similar assumptions and again be lazy and not do x% of base damage (you can pretend it is wild strike level negative 15 or something if it bothers you).

Erase damage bonuses from before, replace with 150% increased physical, 50% increased elemental, 20% increased fire. Base damage 100 physical as before.

In this case, there will be literally no difference between the melee hit and the secondary effects; the hits will be exactly same magnitude.

If you roll frost wave or lightning arc, you'll deal 280 dps; 100 * (100% base + 150% physical + 60% × 50% elemental). The melee hit deals 280 and the secondary effects do 280 to other targets. If you toll fire explosion, it'll be 292 dps; 100 * (100% base + 150% physical + 60% × 50% elemental + 60% × 20% fire). Your melee hit deals 292 to a target; explosion deals 292 to others.

Quick interlude in case you're new to conversion: why does physical get the full bonus but elemental and fire are scaled down at 60%? I like phrasing it thus: conversion remembers. Converted damage is allowed to be modified by any damage type modifier that it has ever been; all of the damage was at one point physical. 40% stayed physical, and 60% added either cold, lightning, or fire type. The 60% is then sometimes written phys-fire, phys-cold, etc. to denote that bonuses to phys can affect it and so can bonuses to the element.

Now, with all that new knowledge, you should be able to answer the rest of 4 by yourself. But let's go through them individually so you can check answers :)

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(Does) Increased Elemental Damage with Weapons increase the spell-like effects?

They increase any elemental on both the melee hit and the secondary effect. If your base is all physical and you have no other conversion, that would be 60% of the hit damage gaining the bonus, and 40% ignoring the bonus. If you have special weapons like Oro's Sacrifice, it'll benefit 100% of Wild Strike damage. If you get at least 40% conversion from elsewhere, such as from Physical to Lightning support, it'll benefit 100% of wild strike damage.

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Are they counted as melee attacks, ie. does Increased Melee Damage increase their damage?

No

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Anyways you can review this information on the wiki page for wild strike. Full breakdown of secondary effects I forgot to mention before this edit:

Frost wave: adds projectile-ness
Fire explosion: adds area-ness
Lightning arc: doesn't add any damage bonus categories, but does benefit from extra Chain stats

Okay, so essentially increased physical does benefit both main attack and secondary effect, but melee physical will only scale the main attack, as the secondary effects are not melee, even though they are generated by melee skill, am I correct?

Edit: You mention that the conversion applies to the secondary effects just as to the main hit. Am I to take from this that a 100 dps Wild Strike's Fire explosion will actually deal 40 dps physical damage and 60 dps fire, not full fire?

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Loimulohi wrote:

Okay, so essentially increased physical does benefit both main attack and secondary effect, but melee physical will only scale the main attack, as the secondary effects are not melee, even though they are generated by melee skill, am I correct?

Yes

Sorry, one more question. You mention conversion affecting both main and secondary effect. Does this mean that unlinked the secondary effect's damage is actually 40% physical, not fully elemental as one would expect?

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Loimulohi wrote:

Sorry, one more question. You mention conversion affecting both main and secondary effect. Does this mean that unlinked the secondary effect's damage is actually 40% physical, not fully elemental as one would expect?

That's correct

For the item Shackles of the Wretched, why doesn't "Curse enemies with X on hit" vaal implicit reflect back to the player?

Hello,

i would like to know about interaction between the skill Lacerate and the notable from the Gladiator-Ascendancy "Outmatch and Outlast".

I assume, that each swing only counts for one hand, right? So each swing can only either generate an endurance or frenzy charge.
Opposed to cleave, where you apparently swing with both weapons at the same time, meaning that each time you kill something with cleave, you can generate both charges at the same time.

But each time you kill with Lacerate, you can only generate one type of charge at a time, right? Even if you hit mobs with overlapping strikes, one still comes later than the other, so one kills.

Is that right?