Mechanics thread

Elemental damage means elemental damage. If you have increased elemental damage then it will increase all the fire, cold and lightning damage you deal, regardless of whether it's with spells or attacks.

Spell damage refers to all damage dealt by spells, regardless of type.

For example, detonate dead is a spell which deals some physical damage - that would be increased by spell damage increases, but not by elemental damage increases.
Likewise, Glacial Hammer is an attack, not a spell, so none of it's damage is increased by spell damage increases, but since some of the damage is dealt as cold, that would be affected by elemental damage increases.

Not all elemental damage is dealt by spells, and not all spell damage is elemental.

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siis wrote:

There are bows with +spell mods, these bows are useless because poison arrow and explosion arrow are not spells but attacks, so would only gain more dmg from +elemental dmg mods?

Explosive arrow (and infernal blow) are special cases.
While both these skills are attacks, the explosions are not dealing attack damage (the explosion isn't based on your weapon), but spell damage.
So in those two cases an attack is dealing damage that counts as spell damage (and gains the increases to it).
Even if that were not the case, that would not make those mods on bows useless, rather they'd be useful only to niche builds which do damage with spells as well as bow attacks.

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taekvideo wrote:

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Magic, rare, and unique monsters only drop equipment, and have a large Increased item rarity modifier for those drops.

Just to clarify... does that stack multiplicatively or additively with your character's increased item rarity modifier? (I assume multiplicatively)

Additively

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taekvideo wrote:

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Damage reduction from armour and endurance charges only affects physical damage.
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Endurance charges are related to the strength attribute and grant +6% damage reduction, and +6% to all resistances per charge.

which is right?

technically both, but the first is worded confusingly.
There is physical damage reduction, and there are resistances. Endurance charges confer both, but the first quote is correct in saying damage reduction only applies to physical.
Resistances apply to elemental and chaos damage, and are mechanically distinct from physical damage reduction.

The second quote does need amended as the charges increase elemental resistances only, not all resistances (which would include chaos)

The amount of damage reduction from your reduction rating compared to the incoming damage is calculated and the additional reduction from the charges is added, and then the damage is reduced by that total amount of reduction.

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Wipman wrote:

Hi, i think that this is the best thread to post this; i've a problem with my Cleave Gem.

In future, stuff like this should be posted in the skill feedback forum - there's a thread in there for each skill, and you can post in the appropriate one for the skill you're talking about.

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Wipman wrote:

I have my Cleave gem socketed on my sword that's in my right hand and a carving knife on the left hand; the fact of have a Dagger tipe or Mace tipe at the same time than a Sword, invalidates the Cleave gem.

This is a know side-effect of how cleave deals with scaling damage when dual-wielding. It will be fixed eventually, but is not at the top of the list.

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Wipman wrote:

The Cleave attack (the animation) is performed with the weapon on the right hand and never with the left one even if you've two swords.

No, if you're dual-wielding two weapons cleave can use, it swings both weapons, and deals damage with both.

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Xapti wrote:

If you deal 2 simultaneous pieces of damage, such as 2 fireballs to the same target

It is impossible for damage packages from two individual actions to combine. This means that two different actions can never cause this to happen, but also means multiple projectiles from the same action can't either, as a new action is copied for each one. So the two fireballs can't do this.

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Xapti wrote:

or a dual strike, or a 2-weapon cleave,

If it ignites/stuns the target, is the ignite_damage/stun based off just just 1 hit, or both combined?

Dual strike (and dual wield cleave) calculates the damage from the main and off hands separately and then combines them, so they are dealt as one hit for the purpose of chill duration, etc. Stun, unlike ignite damage, is calculated at the point damage is calculated, rather than when it's dealt (in fact stun is technically 'part' of the damage, in the game) so main and off hand will have stun calculated separately, then the durations (if any) added together.
It is possible that will change at a later date, should we decide it's better for dual strike to be able to

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Xapti wrote:

What if it's distinctly 1 attack/spell (default attack, frost nova, etc.), but has various damage components, such as 100 added lightning damage or something — is all the damage combined for the sake of calculating stun?

It's not so much that it's "combined" as that it was never separate. It doesn't matter where the damage stats came from (mods, skill, passives) it's a part of the action's stats at the point damage is calculated, and is affecting the total damage stats.
If you look at the character screen you'll see stats giving the range of physical, fire, cold, etc damage, including all sources. Those stats are what's used when calculating the damage to deal - the calculation doesn't even know about the various stats which make those up. So yes, this is all one damage package and is considered one thing for calculating stun etc.

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Xapti wrote:

If the damage is combined for sake of calculation of either stun or burning with regards to dual strike, what about double strike? it's attacks aren't even simultaneous, but are still executed with 1 action. I'm 99% sure that in this case they'd be calculated separately, at least for the stuns, right?

Yes, double strike calculates two separate damage packages, sends them out separately, and they are applied separately. They do not combine in any way.
This is distict from dual strike, which calculates two damage packages (which include stun), combines them into one damage package, and then apply that one - meaning all the damage is seen as one thing for burning damage, chill duration, etc.

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konfeta wrote:

Does -100% stun threshold means every hit will stun? Or do some monsters have a built in stun threshold +%?

No. The calculation doesn't work like that. I have a note somewhere to change the description to make that less confusion.

Stun Threshold reduction got reworked yesterday - as off 0.9.5 it will actually be effectively reducing the stun threshold by that amount. So 50% reduced stun threshold will mean it's twice as easy to stun an enemy, 100% will mean you always stun.
The values available will be substantially reduced along with this change to keep things balanced.

Double strike rolls for crit only once, and uses the same crit roll for both hits. Thus in normal situations either both will crit or neither will.

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Wootness wrote:

I have a question. What happens when you try to use glacial hammer when you have Avatar of Fire. Does it do fire damage instead? or just zero damage because you no longer do physical.

Avatar of fire notices that some of your physical is already going to be converted, so leaves that part alone and converts the rest. So you end up with 50% converted to cold and 50% to fire.