I need help with Added Damage from different sources.

Whats the difference between:

Adds X to Y Lightning Damage to Spells and Attacks
Adds X to Y Lightning Damage

I know there's also have these but specific to only Spell or Attacks.
But my question is: If i have a Glove with Adds X to Y Lightning Damage, and a necklace with Adds X to Y Lightning Damage, and i cast a spell, only the Necklace are going to increase the Spell Damage?

This really confuses me, because there's also have some mods that specify "To hits"...

I was looking at this post: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/30589
i know this is from 2012, and thats why im here asking help.

Thanks!

I Actually have made a post about this yesterday: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3229832/page/1#p24485744

And after looking today i noticed that someone have posted a response after the first one, i guess thats have answered my question. Thanks anyway.

so, the ones that say "to spells" or "with hits", apply to anything you do that qualifies. so damage with hits would work for most spells (because they hit), and most attacks (because, again, they hit), while the spells one applies to... spells.


i dont know of ANY glove mod that doesnt specific what the damage applies to. however, IF it exists, and really does just say "adds X damage", it will apply to almost everything (not minions/dots).

Same goes for mods on jewelry.

"adds 30-39 fire damage" applies to everything that isnt a dot/minion.


weapons are the big sticking point for most folks. they see a weapon like


and get confused. 'its a wand, its for spellcasting, why wouldnt both lightning mods apply to spells'. on a weapon, ONLY the damage that says 'to spells' works with spells. the other lightning damage mod is reflected up by the physical damage of the wand, and applies to ATTACKS made with the wand, even though the mod line does NOT say 'adds X damage to attacks'.

"i dont know of ANY glove mod that doesnt specific what the damage applies to"
I think its possible to achieve this with fossils? I dont know, but Painseeker (Unique Gloves) has some added elemental damage from every element.

And i have one more question, you said that "adds X damage" dont work with DOT, this is why Stormfire Ring and Volkuur's Guidance Gloves specify Hits / Spells + Attacks? Or i have misunderstood something?

Thank you very much!

Anything that is on a weapon and says "adds X damage" is a local modifier, that means it only counts the damage of the weapon.
For example on a wand it would increase the wands attack damage, but has 0 effect on casting spells, unless this spell is using the wands attack damage somehow (which 99% dont do).

If it says "with attacks" it only works with attack, "with spells" it only works with spells and so on, those are global modifiers since they do not buff a weapon but everything you do with attacks or spells.

There are some other global modifiers, but they usually come from jewels or passive tree skillpoints and they usually have the "global" tag.
This can be quite confusing sometimes, for example the " Adds 1 to 160 Lightning Damage if you haven't Killed Recently" enchantment on boots is a global modifier and works with everything (spells and attacks that is).

The whole "dont work with DOT" thing simply means that there is no way of adding flat damage (adds X damage) to a DOT.
DOTs are usually scaled by a skill which is either a attack or a spell and then they convert the hit damage into a DOT, for example converting a physical attack hit into a bleed based of a %base of the hit damage.
So by buffing the hit you can technically buff the DOT, but its not very effective and rarely utilized since its way better to focus on directly buffing dots through other means.

Or skills apply a DOT without a hit, in this case no source of added damage ever does anything.

Basically DOTs can never directly be scaled by any source of added damage, only indirectly if the dots is based of an attack or spell which does hit damage.

For example Vortex does hit damage and DOT damage, but there is no interaction.
So added damage to spells would buff the initial hit damage but not the DOT.
Since 99% of the damage of this spell basically comes from the DOT and not from the initial hit any added spell damage would almost do nothing for real DPS.

DOTs can be scaled by other means tho (spelldamage, damage over time, debuffs and so on).

Thats great, thanks for all of you for helping me!