Game Mechanics - Questions and Answers

Why is elemental overload worded to only work with players and not totems?

It's worded that way because that's what it does, and having the wording say something else would be problematic. If you mean why it works that way, then I'm afraid that's an example of the kind of question that's outside the scope of this thread. I can tell you how it does work (you need to crit something, so your totems critting something won't cut it, but once active, since totems use your skills, they benefit from it), but not why that decision was made.

Elemental conversion follows a specific order and can't go backwards or it'll result in a loop. Would it be possible to implement a "conversion flag" so you could convert backwards in the order, then have the game check if the damage had already been converted once it hits whatever the source damage type was?

Probably not, although I don't have a full logical proof of this. Practically, definitely not - the amount of extra processing added to common stat calculations by that would be unreasonable, if it were possible.

Is there an inherent limit to the number of enemies a skill can hit? There was recently a thread about this on Reddit and it made me wonder if this is just part of the engine.

There is not one limit that applies to all skills, but there is generally a requirement that skill have a limit for technical reasons (as well as potential balance and or performance reasons) to the number of simultaneous hits that can occur.

Is there a technical limit to DPS?

There is a technical limit to the visible DPS on a skill popup, due to that being stored in an integer variable. There is a technical limit on the amount of damage a given hit can deal (same dealio), but to my knowledge not a technical limit on the number of times you could hit a target in a second, so I do not believe there's a technical limit on actual DPS dealt to a specific enemy.

There is definitely a mechanical limit to DPS, because there are limits on how high the values of stats you can obtain from passives/gear/etc. There is some theoretical "best DPS" build that could exist with perfect gear, that would have more DPS than any other actually possible build. This limit is significantly below where any technical limitation would occur on actual damage.

Is there any way to definitively distinguish whether a modifier is local or global, if it could reasonably be either?

In general, if a modifier can modify the base behaviour of an item (what a white item of that type would do) then it will be local. There are very few exceptions to this, but they do exist, so the answer to the question is no.

Does Arctic Armour Reduce reflected fire damage? (assuming you are still standing).

Yes.

Are the Slayer's Headman bonuses to area of effect radius and damage multiplier on kill treated as buffs and will they be scaled by Ichimonji's increased buff effect?

No. Buffs can be identified by having a visible icon with a green border. Anything without that icon or with a different border is not a buff.

Vortex's Damge of Time Tooltip doesn't benefit from + damage to spells (Herald of Ice etc), and also cannot have its element converted. Is that the actual functionality and/or is that intended?

This is true of all damage over time, and always has been. Flat added damage only makes sense for hits, and damage conversion cannot apply to damage over time (although that one might be able to change in the distant future).

I have an issue with pierce chance from the Drillneck quiver. It is supposed to give "10% chance of Arrows piercing" but it doesn't increase the chance to pierce, that is indicated by the tooltip of my Lightning Arrow.

Skill Tooltips intentionally only show the stats that are specific to that skill. They don't show global things that affect all skills.

If you want to see everything a skill does, including all your global stats, the character panel, not the skill popup, is the place to do that.

Is there a maximum range I need to be within of monsters killed (by me) to gain experience?

Yes. Experience for a kill is assigned to players within range, regardless of whether any of those players are the ones which killed it.

Do monsters dying to degen when I'm already several screens away still grant experience no matter what?

If you're actually getting "several screens away" before they die, they probably aren't dying at all, since time stops passing for things outside the player's wake range.

Do strongbox prefixes have any effect on quantity of items contained?

No.

Would opening a normal strongbox be the same as opening a magic one (with no suffixes) loot wise?

Also no. Magic strongboxes inherently have increased quantity/rarity of items for being magic, but this is unrelated to any prefixes they have. Similarly for rares and uniques.

I'm deciding on the ranger class, using a Drillneck for the pierce bonus damage. But the problem is that I'm unsure if the Ranger Deadeye passive interacts with Drillneck.

It does.

- is it dynamic? Such as reducing total damage as the projectile travels and loses pierce chance?

Of course. The projectile loses pierce chance, so anything calculated based on that pierce chance also changes.

How exactly does taunt operate on a monster? Does it mean the next hit will be directed towards the taunter? Or all hits over the duration of the taunt?

While taunted, a monster's AI cannot consider any object as a potential target except the taunter.

Is there a Taunt cool-down period?

Previously, some unique monsters (act bosses and map bosses) that were taunted gained immunity to further taunts for 9 seconds. This was removed as part of the 2.3.0 Taunt rework. There is now no such mechanic used.

Is there a radius limitation on the Taunt effect? Does the taunter have to be within a certain distance for the taunted monster to target the taunter?

No. However, if the taunter is outside the monster's aggro radius, they're an invalid target, meaning the monster has no targets to choose from (since objects that aren't the taunter can't be targeted).

When totems taunt (chieftain passive), do they become the target, or does the player (since totems represent players in certain ways)?

The totem is a separate object from the player. If the totem taunts an enemy, the totem is the taunt target.

Is there any difference between Scold's Bridle and Heartbound Loop's damage taken, and between hiltless "reflected" damage? If so, where exactly?

Yes. The primary difference is that the reflected damage is reflected damage, which carries a whole bunch of rules baggage. Reflected damage cannot trigger on-hit effects, for example. The other two are just hits of regular secondary damage you deal to yourself. They are more different than they are similar.

When Contagion spreads Essence Drain, is the degen order maintained or somehow changed? For a specific example - I cast Contagion linked with Item Rarity on a group of monsters, then cast Essence Drain on one of them and they all die from Contagion spreading ED. Will Item Rarity affect them all?

First Contagion is added to the monsters, then Essence Drain. If they were not already under the effect of debuffs, contagion will be the "first" debuff on them, until that contagion runs out.

If the new taunt mechanics where others take reduced damage applies to Stone Golem and Decoy Totem. If they taunt, do I take the 10% less damage?

Yes, from the taunted enemies.

I have a question about Abyssal Cry and its interaction with critical strikes. When does critical strike check occurs? in a moment of initial cast or in a moment of monster exploding?

Checking whether a hit is a critical strike or not is always done when that specific hit is calculated, and cannot be done at any other time, because your critical strike chance can be different for different hits.

The critical strike roll is only made once, when the skill is cast, just like most skills. All hits from the same action have the same roll, but are potentially checking against different chances to crit, so may or may not crit on different enemies.

Could you confirm that the Doomfletch (and its fated version) mechanic "Gain 110% of Bow Physical Damage as Extra Damage" scales with flat added phys from other items?

Yes.

Why is frost wall so inconsistent at blocking certain player projectile attacks (namely explosive arrow)?

Teams cannot be correctly set on the client for objects that aren't actors. This is a known bug which is difficult to solve because migrating team serialisation code to generic object code breaks existing and required functionality in other cases.

Do "chance to avoid stuns when x" nodes and mods on gear work with block animations? I mean, do you also get a chance to avoid a block animation or does the animation always happen unless you're stun immune?

You only play a block animation if a hit would have stunned you if not blocked. Since you avoided the stun, the hit would not stun you, and there is no block animation.

Does Hypothermia's more damage affect Vortex's DoT?

No. Conditional modifiers cannot apply to DoT, because the condition could change during the DoT.

Do maps have hidden extra mods? Sometimes I see maps with 4 tormented spirits or 2+ exiles without any explicit/implicit mods or Zana map device effects attached. If so, do these hidden mods affect IIQ/map drop rates?

Those are generated normally. If you do enough maps, you'll see things like that. They aren't caused by any hidden mods.

Death's Oath chest, 450 chaos damage per second to enemy around. Does this damage over time scale off of chaos damage in the passive tree?

No. The item directly applies the damage to enemies, your stats are not involved.

Diamond flask and Assassin's Mark How do I correctly calculate my effective crit chance against a monster that has assassins mark on it and i use a diamond flask? More in detail, do i first add the flat chance to my crit chance, then apply the diamond flask math 1-(1-critchance)² or is it the other way round?

The diamond flask does not affect chance to crit. Chance to crit is worked out, including all modifiers such as Assassin's Mark, then compared to the Crit Roll of the skill. The Diamond flask does nothing at this point, it affects when the crit roll is made, by rolling twice and taking the better of the two rolls.

So to confirm, cluster traps and multi traps reduce the damage done when it is tied to the gem even by something such as linking mirror/blink arrow to trap and cluster trap the damage reduction applies to minions and so they do less damage when using either cluster or multi? but also the reverse side doesn't apply the same way in that the trap damage when tied to a bow minion does not increase the damage?

Yes.

- ie: only way to really scale mirror/blink arrow is to scale minion damage and trap reductions apply but trap increases do not apply to bow minions

No. Trap damage modifiers do not apply to minions summoned by traps. Cluster Trap and Multitrap give "less damage", not "less trap damage" - the reason it applies is because it is not a modifier to "trap damage"

How is the target priority of enemy monsters determined when there is no taunt involved? Like for instance when there are 3 people entering a room with monsters, how do they monsters decide who to attack? Is it fully deterministic or does it use "randomness" to choose target?

Depends on the monster's AI.

When looking and skills and effects that are not gained by skill gems, but some other way, is there a good rule of thumb to know if these are affected by our passives/items/flasks/ascendancies?

Yes, but it's not going to come in the form of some big list of things that work with other things. It comes from understanding the mechanics, which determine all the results. In general, any of your modifier stats apply to anything you do (that is the thing they apply to).

There are a few cases which are not straight forward such as all minion skills. They say they are spells but are not affected by spell damage. Why aren't minions affected by spell damage when they have the spell tag?

Minions do not "have the spell tag". Minion spell gems have the spell tag, because they are spells. They deal no damage.

There is a fundamental difference between your Raise Zombie spell, which is a spell cast by you that creates a minion and no damage (but would be affected by spell damage modifiers if it did), and the Zombie's Melee attack (which is an attack, not a spell, not used by you, that deals attack damage because it's an attack).

The damage of the Zombie's melee attack is not the damage of the Raise Zombie spell, and is pretty much entirely unrelated to it.

How do Wings of Entropy, Lacerate, and Outmatch/Outlast from Duelist interact with each other?

Lacerate when dual wielding always does a main-hand hit followed by an off-hand hit.

What exactly does the tooltip DPS on Lacerate and Double Strike mean? Do these account for a hit both swings, discounted by accuracy/crit/etc ?

Yes, they include all those things.

When skills are calculated for DPS (or the order which they are triggered for CWDT) does it matter the order the supported skills and the relation they are to the active/triggered gem?

The order of active skills in sockets determines the order they will trigger in if triggered by the same event. It has no effect on dps calculation, and the position of supports never matters.

Does Curse effectiveness increase the "Other effects on Cursed enemies expire 40% slower" from Temporal Chains or the "2% of damage leeched as life" from Warlords Mark?

Yes, it increases any numerical quality of the curse.

Does Flask effectiveness increase the 2% life leech from Chaos Damage on Atziri's Promise, the Onslaught from Silver Flask or the Increased Critical Strike Chance from Diamond Flask?

As above - yes, except for Onslaught, which is not a numerical property, but a boolean state. A character either does or does not have Onslaught, and 20% increased "having Onslaught" is still having it.

EDIT: As has been pointed out, this is incorrect regarding the Diamond flask. The question said their Diamond Flask was giving increased critical strike chance (which would be affected by this modifier), but Diamond Flasks do not increase critical strike chance, they make it Lucky, which like Onslaught, is boolean, and cannot be increased.

When I use Freezing Pulse linked with spell echo and have the Trickster node Weave the Arcane which gives me "20% chance to Recover Mana on Skill use" will that chance roll once per spell echo or twice?

You only used the skill once, and it repeated. It rolls once per skill use.

How does Saboteur's "Chain reaction" and "Bomb Specialist" interact? Suppose that I have 10 traps on ground and one trap triggers, which causes all traps to trigger. Do all traps get the 10*8% damage bonus?

This depends on the traps. The traps don't stop existing until they've finished using their skill. If the skill is one that calculates damage at that point, such as Ice Nova, then the traps will be there at the time damage is calculated, and apply. If they fire projectiles which don't hit anything until after the trap has already gone, then they won't be there when that projectile hits something and calculates its damage.

The new unique Breath of the Council, does the "Increased duration of chaos damage skills" apply to poison applied by those skills?

Poison is modified by skill duration modifiers, so yes.

Why does the aftershock from earthquake not give endurance charges on kill when you are using blasphemy warlords mark?

It does give charges. However, if you move on and leave the aftershock to kill things, those might not still be in the aura when they're killed. It also doesn't get around the only one-charge-per-skill restriction, so if you kill something with the initial hit and get the charge, you won't get a second charge from the aftershock.

Why are all Guardian Ascendancy skills considered auras but not actually affected by aura radius and effectiveness?

They are Auras, and would be affected by increased Aura radius, and increased Effect of Auras.
However, you do not have those modifiers. They are not Aura Skills, nor are they Auras you Cast. Thus they can't be affected by increased radius of Aura Skills, or increased effect of non-Curse Auras you Cast.

I'd like a clarification on the damage calculation for skills. Am I understanding it correctly that it goes like: Net Damage = ([Base Damage * Sum of Increased Damage Modifiers] * Product of More Damage Modifiers)

This part is roughly correct, yes.

- * Sum of Debuff Modifiers
Debuff example would be Shocked Ground from Vaal Lit Trap, Vulnerability Curse, Wither Stacks

This part is not. What you're referring to are modifiers to damage taken, and are entirely separate to modifiers to damage dealt. They are inherently not part of the same calculation.

The result of the first calculation is your damage, this is then mitigated by resistances/armour/etc, to obtain the base damage dealt. These modifiers apply to that value.

They follow the same rules as all modifiers - increased/reduced modifiers of this type are additive, more/less modifiers are multiplicative.

I've seen a lot of different info about whether reflected damage is affected or not by monster stats/mods and/or map mods, as I understand it I would guess that it counts as if you hit yourself with all your own stats (accuracy, crit, RT, penetration, etc) with the reflect percentage applied, and that the enemy you hit (or any map mod) has no effect in any way. Is that correct?

Reflected damage cannot crit. But you are correct that you're hitting yourself, so it's your own accuracy, etc. Reflected damage cannot be modified by damage modifiers, and cannot cause on-hit effects, including penetration.

How does Increased Attack Damage (from something such as Crown of Eyes) work with The Goddess Unleashed and the new 'Fated' Doomfletch, specifically the mod: Add X% Bow/Sword as Y Element(s)? If it applies at the end of all the conversions, wouldn't that effectively make it a 'MORE' multiplier?But if it applies to the Physical and then the Fire, wouldn't the effect of Increased Attack Damage be doubled for the Fire and not for the Physical?

These are, as you've correctly noted, conversions. Converted damage (or converted anything) is the thing it's converted to, and is affected by modifiers to it, but it is also affected by modifiers to the thing it used to be. So the fire damage that was converted to physical is affected by increased fire damage, increased physical damage, and increased attack damage, and all of these stack additively, since they're increases.
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If you have any game mechanics questions you'd like answered, try your luck in this thread. Please be sure to read Mark's opening post to understand what kind of questions are appropriate.

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