Physical Damage with Bows & LA

I've been looking through a few threads to get an idea on how to build a decent ranger with a bow. It seems the most popular route is to head way over to the left side of the tree and take all of the Elemental Damage with Weapons passives.

From what I understand though, you're only boosting 50% of your damage (LA's conversion), whereas boosting physical damage would gain 100% of the effect. Why then is it so popular to boost Elemental Damage? Or am I misunderstanding something?

I'm new to the game, so pardon if my question sounds ignorant.

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Nemitz wrote:

From what I understand though, you're only boosting 50% of your damage (LA's conversion), whereas boosting physical damage would gain 100% of the effect. Why then is it so popular to boost Elemental Damage? Or am I misunderstanding something?

the phys damage from LA hits only the main target; the lightning damage hits the main target plus three others nearby. So boosting phys damage increases single target damage, but boosting the elemental damage boosts the AOE damage.

Even if you use something like Lesser multiple projectiles, or chain (or both), the lightning effect will always hit 4 times as many targets as the physical.

- at least, that's how I understand it works.

(FWIW, IMO this question should totally be a part of the Ranger FAQ, given how popular LA builds are)

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dlthe wrote:

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Nemitz wrote:

From what I understand though, you're only boosting 50% of your damage (LA's conversion), whereas boosting physical damage would gain 100% of the effect. Why then is it so popular to boost Elemental Damage? Or am I misunderstanding something?

the phys damage from LA hits only the main target; the lightning damage hits the main target plus three others nearby. So boosting phys damage increases single target damage, but boosting the elemental damage boosts the AOE damage.

Even if you use something like Lesser multiple projectiles, or chain (or both), the lightning effect will always hit 4 times as many targets as the physical.

- at least, that's how I understand it works.

(FWIW, IMO this question should totally be a part of the Ranger FAQ, given how popular LA builds are)

Ah okay, so the LA builds are focusing on AoE. Would it be viable then to just go physical and use Rain of Arrows or Split Arrow?

Trying to decide if I should go the usual LA path (first ranger), or try something with physical. The ranger's side seems to want you to focus on the physical part of bows.

well, LA is an AOE skill - takes out large crowds very fast... which is great for farming.

most of the 'cookie cutter' LA builds pack either Elemental Hit or Frenzy as the single-target skill for taking down bosses.

If you go down the phys (i.e. crit) route, then yes, I think one of either split arrow or rain of arrows would be the AOE skill of choice. I don't think either is quite as efficient as LA though, but you'd be better advised by someone who has a high level phys ranger, I've not tried it for a while.

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dlthe wrote:

the phys damage from LA hits only the main target; the lightning damage hits the main target plus three others nearby. So boosting phys damage increases single target damage, but boosting the elemental damage boosts the AOE damage.

^ This is the reason. A lot of people are mistaken about how the game works.

Just like Lightning Strike, Lightning Arrow does full physical and lightning damage to everything it hits. It is indeed a physical skill, like Glacial Hammer and Heavy Strike. These work by taking Multipliers (in LA's case, the Weapon Elemental Damge Gem only, sadly. I put Physical Bow builds in the "not really worth it" box) that improve the payoff of the Physical Damage% stat.

I would never go all the way to the Templar region just for Catalyze. You get a better deal per point from the center's +23% Projectile Damage, for crying out loud.

The only justification is they really, really like Static Blows and Elemental Adaptation.

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dlthe wrote:

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Nemitz wrote:

From what I understand though, you're only boosting 50% of your damage (LA's conversion), whereas boosting physical damage would gain 100% of the effect. Why then is it so popular to boost Elemental Damage? Or am I misunderstanding something?

the phys damage from LA hits only the main target; the lightning damage hits the main target plus three others nearby. So boosting phys damage increases single target damage, but boosting the elemental damage boosts the AOE damage.
)

This isn't true at all. Sorry.

From Path of Exile Wiki: Lighting Arrow
Hits Additional Targets: Arrows will strike a target and up to 3 randomly chosen monsters within range of that target will also be struck for the same amount of damage (not just the lightning portion of the damage).

LA hits the target for phys/ele, the aoe hits other targets for the same amount of phys/ele. Not only the lightning portion. o_O

edit: Damn anicholaf beat me to it. :p

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dlthe wrote:

well, LA is an AOE skill - takes out large crowds very fast... which is great for farming.

most of the 'cookie cutter' LA builds pack either Elemental Hit or Frenzy as the single-target skill for taking down bosses.

If you go down the phys (i.e. crit) route, then yes, I think one of either split arrow or rain of arrows would be the AOE skill of choice. I don't think either is quite as efficient as LA though, but you'd be better advised by someone who has a high level phys ranger, I've not tried it for a while.

There is no "physical" build imho. In many cases you'll have plenty of ele dmg coming from all kinds of sources (conversions/aura's/gear/support gems). If you are using a high dmg physical bow and you have 80% physical dmg inc from Iron Grip/STR, then shoot LA... what are you? Physical? Elemental?

Once again I'll argue that physical damage has bad interaction with crit. You crit and that's it. With elemental you crit AND you can shock/freeze/burn. So making a crit split arrow build with only phys dmg is never going to be great.
So saying physical = crit, doesn't make sense to me.

my 2 cents


To anwser OP's question: For LA I would be mostly concerned with getting lightning damage. The more light dmg the longer the shock, the easier to stack it. A bow can have high physical AND lightning damage on it. At higher levels you'd probably have some ele dmg on your gear, you should be running some ele dmg aura's. If you take aaaalll that elemental damage (including LA), it wouldn't make much sense to pick a physical dmg node over an elemental one.

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LimitedRooster wrote:

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dlthe wrote:

the phys damage from LA hits only the main target; the lightning damage hits the main target plus three others nearby. So boosting phys damage increases single target damage, but boosting the elemental damage boosts the AOE damage.

^ This is the reason. A lot of people are mistaken about how the game works.

Just like Lightning Strike, Lightning Arrow does full physical and lightning damage to everything it hits. It is indeed a physical skill, like Glacial Hammer and Heavy Strike. These work by taking Multipliers (in LA's case, the Weapon Elemental Damge Gem only, sadly. I put Physical Bow builds in the "not really worth it" box) that improve the payoff of the Physical Damage% stat.

I would never go all the way to the Templar region just for Catalyze. You get a better deal per point from the center's +23% Projectile Damage, for crying out loud.

The only justification is they really, really like Static Blows and Elemental Adaptation.

I wish I read yours first, oh well, can't hurt to say it twice, and you do go more in depth than I did.

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Icecreamcart wrote:

LA hits the target for phys/ele, the aoe hits other targets for the same amount of phys/ele. Not only the lightning portion. o_O

edit: Damn anicholaf beat me to it. :p

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dlthe wrote:

To anwser OP's question: For LA I would be mostly concerned with getting lightning damage. The more light dmg the longer the shock, the easier to stack it. A bow can have high physical AND lightning damage on it. At higher levels you'd probably have some ele dmg on your gear, you should be running some ele dmg aura's. If you take aaaalll that elemental damage (including LA), it wouldn't make much sense to pick a physical dmg node over an elemental one.

The part that confuses me though, is that all this elemental damage you're doing (besides the elemental damage from your weapon I suppose) is being converted from physical to elemental.

So wouldn't stacking physical damage in essence give you a bigger return? It would actually be increasing both physical and the (converted) elemental damage would it not?

Edit: How well would a build revolving around physical damage and the Hatred Aura work? Seems to me that Hatred would add a lot of damage if you stacked physical damage. How would LA mix with this?

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Nemitz wrote:

The part that confuses me though, is that all this elemental damage you're doing (besides the elemental damage from your weapon I suppose) is being converted from physical to elemental.

So wouldn't stacking physical damage in essence give you a bigger return? It would actually be increasing both physical and the (converted) elemental damage would it not?

Imagine we'd use:

Bow:
60-180 physical
5-50 lightning damage
gloves:
2-20 lightning damage
Ring:
2-20 lightning damage

Wrath aura lvl 15:
6-92 light damage
Anger aura lvl 15:
31-51 fire dmg
Hatred aura lvl 15:
22% of physical dmg added as cold damage: 13-40 cold

Maybe we want to use lvl 15 added lightning damage support gem:
3–66 light damage

You'll notice that's a lot of elemental damage before we even use LA. Projectile dmg would increase all of them, elemental dmg or weapon elemental dmg would increase all the elemental dmg. Physical nodes will increase only LA and hatred.

I'm not going to make the whole calculation but I'd say 50% projectile>50% elemental>50% physical.

However physical damage is not completely useless. Just by getting all the nice nodes like elemental adaption/Static blows/Resolute technique, you'd get a high amount of STR. If you'd take Iron grip you'll get a pretty good increased physical dmg just from STR only (I'd say around 50-80%). Imho this still justifies using a high physical dmg bow. (eventhough the passive build will have no "physical dmg nodes").

I'd recommend nugiyen's thread, imho it's the most solid LA build. (not the old one, the new one) Might be an interesting read, I haven't actually read it, just took a peek.