Cherrubim's Maleficence doesn't work correctly?

I've been using this chest for quiet a while now on my 'current build' if you will. The idea was to stack as much lightning damage as possible via buffs (aruas, HoT, etc.),boost said damage via Increased Elemental Damage (with Weapon), convert it all to chaos via a Voltaxic Rift, and then apply the Cherrubim's chaos damage bonus to that. I've done this by using Wrath + HoT + Legacy Thunderfist + a combined total of 159% increased Weapon Elemental Damage (just from items).

My actual build (passive tree) is largely based around Increased Crit chance and Crit Multi while also adding in some increased Elemental Damage - currently 78%.

Current Passive skill tree build

My main attack is Tornado Shot (links can be seen below) As you would imagine I use this attack for clearing packs of mobs and even straight-up against map bosses.



I was under the assumption that my Cherrubim's Maleficence would apply it's 20% chaos damage boost to my attack after adding all of the lightning damage bonuses from Wrath, HoT + Legacy Thunderfists and applying all relevant increased elemental damage from items and passives.

step 1) add all lightning damage up
step 2) apply relevant increased elemental damage buffs
step 3) convert to chaos damage
step 4) Cherrubim's bonus applied

But this doesn't seem to be the case. I won't pretend like I understand the exact way in which damage is calculated but something isn't adding up. Equipping my chest only seems to yield a roughly 4.3% increase in chaos damage going from 95-3029 -> 99-3165 (using Tornado shot) with all of my items equipped and Wrath+HoT active.

I'm trying to understand if the chest is even working correctly, because even if I remove the entirety of my items and aruas and using the basic attack I deal 2-719 chaos + 64-197 phys damage per attack and with the chest equipped 2-782 chaos + 64-197 phys damage. An increase of only 63 chaos damage, yet 721*1.2 = 865, an increase of 144. So, as far as I can tell only 43.75% of my 20% damage boost is being applied - which is only an increase of 8.75% chaos damage.




Needless to say I'm confused.

You're assuming that the Cherrubim's chaos damage bonus is multiplicative. It isn't. Multiplicative bonuses are always phrased "X% more chaos damage/whatever", whereas anything that says "increased" is additive with every other "increased" modifier that applies. In this case, that includes all your projectile damage, weapon elemental damage, etc. So if we pretend, say, that you have 100% increased elemental damage and 100% increased projectile damage (and no other relevant modifiers), then Cherrubim's is just tacked onto both of those, bumping your damage increase from 200% to 220%. Obviously, this is not a 20% increase in real damage.

this chest adds 'increased' chaos to your other 'increased' sources - thus the damage gain is pretty small if not - abysmal

if you have 170% combined inc phys/ele and add 20% on top of that (by equping this chest) you gain like ~9% MORE damage (it isnt as simple as that due to conversions and stuff, but in a simplistic terms it is more or less this)

it is totally not worth it

I see... well that's pretty shit and rather misleading, but in any case it's at least providing some sort of dps bonus I suppose.

Honestly, this chest is laughably weak. Sorry to say that, but +20 INCREASED damage is nothing. Even on armor. Stacking increases everywhere else is just way too easy for +20% to matter in the end. This is pretty sad, because this armor looked promising at first.

Even Infernal Mantle (aka Troll Mantle) has more bonuses than this armor - it has its drawback, but it can be negated with some creative stuff. This armor drawback is not having anything else. So in the end, it doesn't really have anything: AT BEST +20% chaos damage, good hp and silly life leech bonus, which is hard to pair with chaos damage.

So you end up with armor, which has, in reality, good hp and armor/evasion. This is pretty much easy thing to achieve with rare armor. No real drawbacks to build around it, no real good bonuses to gain from.

IF that bonus was MORE damage, it would be far more interesting.

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LostArtz wrote:

I see... well that's pretty shit and rather misleading

quite interesting that you know how to make tons of currency to afford top-end gear while having no idea how the most basic damage mechanics work :D

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LostArtz wrote:

I see... well that's pretty shit and rather misleading, but in any case it's at least providing some sort of dps bonus I suppose.

It's only "misleading" if you don't know the difference between 'increased' and 'more'. The fault lies in the interpretation rather than the description.

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Ludvator wrote:

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LostArtz wrote:

I see... well that's pretty shit and rather misleading

quite interesting that you know how to make tons of currency to afford top-end gear while having no idea how the most basic damage mechanics work :D

Well, it's a bit different thing since he has no other chaos damage increases from tree so it makes sense to think that way. I can see where he's coming from.

When I first saw this chest I thought it was interesting and I was hoping someone could put it to good use. The life leech rate increase isn't really a BIG deal - not when GGG has buffed life flasks so that you can easily get a ton of regen.

For a level 71 unique this chest does feel a bit underpowered. Obviously meant for an IR build with the hybrid AR/EV.

But I am thinking it would work well with Viper Strike or Poison Arrow.