Why does Iron Will not Work with Freezing Pulse?

Hi,

i'm using Freezing Pulse and want to use Support gems for more dps.

The 20% Quality Iron Will gives 48% increased Spell Damage. + The strenght Bonus 1% per 5 Strenght. With 150 Strenght Iron Will must be at 78% increased Spell damage, right!?

I also use Controlled Destruction with 0% Quality. It makes +44% increased Spell Damage.

Controlled Destruction gives my FP ~ 10.000 DPS more.
And Iron will only 1.000 DPS.

Whats the Problem, why Iron will not Work?

THX

Nope mate,just different type of increase.
Iron Will is additive,while Controlled Destruction multiplicative.

Details here

Controlled Destruction gives more damage, while Iron Will gives increased damage. In PoE speak, more = multiplicative with your other modifiers, increased = additive with everything else that says increased.

In other words, Controlled Destruction will always boost your actual damage by the percentage it says. Iron Will does that only if you have no other increased spell/cold/projectile/etc damage. You presumably have quite a lot of that, so what ends up happening is that your great big "increased" multiplier goes from, say, 500% to 578%, which is only 16% more actual damage.

The difference between additive and multiplicative damage:

a) additive damage (described with the word increased)

Additive damage has diminishing returns. The more you have of it, the less effective it becomes. It uses the base damage of your spells and attacks for the damage calculation. This is the number written on your spell gem for spells and on your weapon for attack-based skills (deals xxx - xxx damage).

1. Let's say a spell deals 100 base damage. You get 10% increased damage from somewhere. You spell will now deal 110 damage. These 10% increased damage were fully effective.

2. Let's say you have 300% increased damage from items, support gems and passive skills. Your spell with 100 base damage will deal 400 total damage. Let's say you add 50% increased damage from an iron will gem. You will now have 350% increased damage and your spell will deal 450 total damage. These 50% increased damage increased your total damage output by only 12,5%. They still work only on the base 100 damage of the spell, not on the total damage you're dealing after you factor in all sources of increased damage.



b) multiplicative damage (described with the word more)

Multiplicative damage always increases the total damage you're dealing. Let's take the case with the spell doing 100 base damage and having 300% increased damage from varoius sources. Its total damage will be 400. If you add 40% more damage to it with a controlled destruction gem, it will now deal 560 damage.

Your math is correct, however I think there is some misuse of terms.

I haven't seen diminishing returns used in that way before. Usually it means sub-linear scaling, i.e. the same amount of stat increase is less effective the more you have it. It's often used to implement soft caps. For example, another game I used to play had a stat called "crit rating". The first 1000 points of crit rating would give you 15% crit chance. The next 1000 points would only give 7.5%, and the next 3.75%. There are other ways to implement diminishing returns, not all of which are capped. AFAIK PoE does not have sub-linear scaling for any stat, but uses hard caps instead.

Flat damage and increased damage have linear scaling. +100 damage will always give you +100 base damage, never more or less. Similarly 100% increased damage will always give you damage equivalent to 100% of your base damage. It is true that the same absolute increase will result in a smaller relative increase, but this is just a property of linear scaling.

The third category of scaling is superlinear. Most commonly an exponential function is used, but there are other possibilities. In PoE this manifests as "more" modifiers. A single 20% more modifier results in a 20% increase. Two modifiers result in a 44% increase. Four modifiers result in a 107% increase. This is the most powerful type of scaling and can easily break the game so it is used very sparingly.

It's actually possible to distinguish different types of sub-linear and superlinear scaling as well, but I'll leave that for another time.

An important point to note is that when linear scaling is applied to a reduction stat like resistances, the effect on character toughness becomes superlinear. A 25% resistance will increase toughness by 33%, but 50% resistance results in a 100% increase. Incorrectly implemented damage reduction stats are probably the easiest way to break a game.

Now, PoE does not exactly make it easy to see the base damage for "increased" modifiers. Thus it may seem like diminishing returns, but in reality it is just linear scaling.

@databeaver: let's not get into arguments about semantics. The way I see it, when you're just starting to level and you get 30% increased damage from somewhere, you see it increase your tooltip DPS by almost 30%. When you're level 90 and you get 30% increased damage, it barely registers in the tooltip. That's diminishing returns as far as I'm concerned, even though the scaling is technically linear.

but 30% of ur tooltip damage is like 100 damage at a low level and then the same amount of spell damage at lvl90 giving 5% increase on your total figure is giving you 1000 damage. So the same increase gives you 10x more damage at lvl90, so surely it doesnt diminish, actually its increasing returns, you are getting more out of it later on when you look at the numbers in terms of # rather than %.

Its a trick of the light either way.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

but 30% of ur tooltip damage is like 100 damage at a low level and then the same amount of spell damage at lvl90 giving 5% increase on your total figure is giving you 1000 damage. So the same increase gives you 10x more damage at lvl90, so surely it doesnt diminish, actually its increasing returns, you are getting more out of it later on when you look at the numbers in terms of # rather than %.

Its a trick of the light either way.

I don't think you're speaking about the same thing I was speaking of. Please re-read my calculations for the effectiveness of increased damage.

From a "meaning of words used in gaming" perspective, getting less of an increase overall for the same investment is usually called Diminishing returns. Gotta agree with Bars on this one. Always looking at the overall relative gain, not absolute numerical gains.

"

Bars wrote:

"

Snorkle_uk wrote:

but 30% of ur tooltip damage is like 100 damage at a low level and then the same amount of spell damage at lvl90 giving 5% increase on your total figure is giving you 1000 damage. So the same increase gives you 10x more damage at lvl90, so surely it doesnt diminish, actually its increasing returns, you are getting more out of it later on when you look at the numbers in terms of # rather than %.

Its a trick of the light either way.

I don't think you're speaking about the same thing I was speaking of. Please re-read my calculations for the effectiveness of increased damage.

the passage in question

1. Let's say a spell deals 100 base damage. You get 10% increased damage from somewhere. You spell will now deal 110 damage. These 10% increased damage were fully effective.

2. Let's say you have 300% increased damage from items, support gems and passive skills. Your spell with 100 base damage will deal 400 total damage. Let's say you add 50% increased damage from an iron will gem. You will now have 350% increased damage and your spell will deal 450 total damage. These 50% increased damage increased your total damage output by only 12,5%. They still work only on the base 100 damage of the spell, not on the total damage you're dealing after you factor in all sources of increased damage.

I dont need to reread what you wrote, I understood it the first time. It is an error in how you are interpreting the results, you chose to express the changes in a certain form when the reality is you could express those changes with other numbers and get the exact opposite, it would appear not to diminish but to increase in effectiveness.

Diminishing returns in regards to mechanics like these suggests a very particular thing, there is no diminishing returns on increased damage the way there is on magic find, armour, evasion etc. Every time you stack 10% increased damage you get exactly the same amount of damage regardless of how much or little increased damage you already have. So calling it diminishing returns is not correct, that is an error in how you are expressing the change, you are not expressing it as a % of the original damage but as a % of the total damage which changes every time you stack more, so what you are basing your % off is changing and making it appear that the effectiveness of the nodes is diminishing. They do not diminish, they remain constant.

These semantics matter as much as the difference between 'more' and 'increased' matter.