Spell Damage vs Elemental Damage vs Cold/Fire/Lightning Damage

Spell Damage vs Elemental Damage vs Specific Element Damage

Aren't they pretty much the same?

Example

If I deal 100 Spell Damage with my Freezing Pulse

Q1) If I have +100% more spell damage My Freezing Pulse Damage becomes 200

Q2) If I have +100% more Elemental Damage also I have 200 damage right?

Q3) If I have +100% cold damage, My FP also turns 200 Damage right?

Since it pretty much the same, Then why not just focus only on Spell Damage instead of taking specific cold or specific elemental damage?

Am I missing something special about Elemental or Cold/Fire/Lightning Damage?

Is it Spell Damage only increase the Spell base damage but not it's elemental damage like for example

If Freezing Pulse deals 100 spell damage and 100 cold damage but If I increased +100% more spell damage it only becomes:-

200 Spell dmg + 100 cold damage?

But If I have +100% cold and +100% elemental damage totaling in 200% increased damage in element but my Spell Damage is 0%, then would my FP becomes:-

100 Spell Damage + 300 Cold Damage? (+100% cold+elemental)

im still abit confuse how Spell Damage if any different after all these years.

Any replies would be super appreciated!

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Isndar wrote:

Spell Damage vs Elemental Damage vs Specific Element Damage

Aren't they pretty much the same?

It depends on your build.

For someone with Freezing Pulse, yes.

But not for someone who is using Burning Arrow or Blade Vortex.

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Isndar wrote:

Example

Spoiler

If I deal 100 Spell Damage with my Freezing Pulse

Q1) If I have +100% more spell damage My Freezing Pulse Damage becomes 200

Q2) If I have +100% more Elemental Damage also I have 200 damage right?

Q3) If I have +100% cold damage, My FP also turns 200 Damage right?

Yes; all three of these result in the same thing in this instance.

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Isndar wrote:

Since it pretty much the same, Then why not just focus only on Spell Damage instead of taking specific cold or specific elemental damage?

Because there's no benefit to it? Let's say that you can choose between items or passive skills - one has +10% Increased Spell Damage, and another has +18% Increased Cold Damage. Why would you choose not to increase your damage by as much as you can?

ARPGs ultimately boil down to increasing your damage by as much as you can. Willingly choosing not to do so is only limiting your character's effectiveness.

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Isndar wrote:

Am I missing something special about Elemental or Cold/Fire/Lightning Damage?

Is it Spell Damage only increase the Spell base damage but not it's elemental damage like for example

If Freezing Pulse deals 100 spell damage and 100 cold damage but If I increased +100% more spell damage it only becomes:

No, it doesn't work that way at all.


The primary reason for having different categories of damage (spell, elemental) is to make a certain number of items and passive skills relevant to a certain number of builds. Imagine for a moment that those were all replaced with affixes which increase the damage of only one particular skill. You might never find an item which actually increases your character's damage.

So instead there's more generic affixes designed to give people more opportunities to increase their damage, so they have more choices when it comes to gear & passive skills.

If you're running Heralds, those don't scale with spell damage, those don't have the spell tag, making elemental damage better than spell.

In short, the way 'increased' damage math runs is this:

You add all the relevant ones up first. For example let's say you have 100% spell, 100% cold, and 50% ele. You're looking at Freezing Pulse. So you would add those up to 250%.

Then, that's all applied to your spell. So 100 damage scales up to 350.

At no point in this process do you ever multiply more than the final step. You ADD all the relevant increases together, then multiply once. 100% spell & 100% ele does not quadruple your damage, it triples. Likewise, 200% spell and 200% ele does not 9x your damage, it does 5x.

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You can find much more detail on this page: https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Stat

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blainicus wrote:

If you're running Heralds, those don't scale with spell damage, those don't have the spell tag, making elemental damage better than spell.

Heralds have the spell tag but that is not what tags do. Tags are for example for things like +1 level to socketed x gems. If you would put a Herald in a +1 to socketed Spell gems the Herald would gain a level.