Shaper of Winter and Minimum Damage to Inflict Chill

As I understand it, you need to do ~.32% of an enemies ailment threshold to inflict the smallest chill of 5%. If you do less than this the ailment is not applied.

Shaper of winter says that all your damage types can chill, not that it is guaranteed to do so but, it also says that your chill minimum is always 15%.

My question is: Does this mean I always chill for at least 15% even if I don't break that minimum threshold?

My follow-up question is whether increases/decreases to the effect of ailments apply before or after the 15% minimum.

To put all this into an simple and real scenario... If I hit Sirus for 10 damage (Far below .32% of his ailment threshold) while I have Shaper of Winter and 200%+ of increased ailment effect, do I:

A. Not chill Sirus at all
B. Chill Sirus for 15%
C. Chill Sirus for the cap of 40%

I believe your answer is B, though not 100% certain and would also be curious to know.

It's actually C.

Here is why:

+x% increase Effect of non-damaging ailments applies only to those ailments that already manage to pass the enemy's Ailment Threshold. This is because an ailment, in order to be inflicted, needs to pass that threshold, or it is not applied at all.
You can take Chill as an example. There is no "Your cold damage can Chill" modifier because cold damage itself has a "Your cold damage always chill". In other words, your 10 cold attack was already Chilling Sirus even before Shaper of Winter existed. Simply, its effect did not pass the threshold check and, thus, was not applied

Shaper of Winter chenges drastically this thing. All your hits can chill, regardless of they being cold or not (provided they are prohibited from chilling or deliver ailments, for example being supported by Elemental Focus), and your chill has now a minimum effect of 15% Reduced Action Speed. There is no "All your hits always chill" because of what I've said before.

When an ailment has a granted minimum effect, it applies the ailment with that magnitude provided your hit doesn't actually manage to deliver a stronger one (in other words, if one of your hit, without +x% effect, manages already to deliver a chill for 20%, you will deliver a chill for base 20%). BUT! Since all of your hits chill with that effect, then even inflicting 1 damage to ANY enemy will apply a minimum effect chill on them - in this case, base 15%


(note: "Chill enemies as dealing x% more damage" is applied in this moment, and helps build up a good base chill with even low cold damage. Hitting Sirus with a lv1 Driftwood Wand auto-attack or a Lioneye's lv 21/23 Ice Shot won't probably change the 15% granted base chill you will deliver, provided you don't build up A LOT of hit damage on your hypothetical Ice Shot witch)

And... now it's the part where the +x% increase ailment effect kicks in! Since you managed to deliver a chill of 15%, that chill is now boosted by +x% incAilment effect. In your case, even if you don't build up chill effect, you already have a 50% More effect of chill if your hits are mostly cold damage. So, your 15% base is turnet into a nice 22.5% = 22% Chill just because you've hit Sirus with a puny 1/0 Freezing Pulse!
And, of course, this gets even better with any Increase Effect of Chill. If you actually have 200% increased, your puny 1/ freezing Pulse would deal a (15 *2)*1.5 = (30*1.5) = 45 = 40% reduced action speed (Unless they changed something, maximum cap for Chill is 40%. Otherwise, raise that number accordingly). With. A. 1/0. Freezing. Pulse.