Minion damage vs Melee physical dam gem

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Vipermagi wrote:

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Natharias wrote:

What nodes you have is irrelevant.

Because Minion Damage is additive, it is very important what kind of modifiers you already have. Without other Increased Damage bonuses, Minion Damage is a stronger multiplier than Melee Phys. After all, 177% Damage is more than 149%.

Multi plus Splash alone grant enough Increased Damage to make MPD the stronger option, and Minion Damage nodes only further push it in favour of MPD, but it's important nontheless.

Yes, Minion Damage is better if you have no minion damage nodes. I said they were unimportant because it is assumed you have all of them.

So seeing how you'd have 105% increased minion damage, MPD will always be better.

100 base damage. Brought to 205 after minion nodes. Brought to 305.45 after MPD. If you use MD instead, you only go from 205 to 282.

So seeing how most summoners will use hatred before anger or wrath, MD has no real place on zombies or skeletons. And as I said, both will boost hatred in at least some way. MD will double dip while MPD will increase the base considerably.

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Bermag wrote:

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Natharias wrote:

What nodes you have is irrelevant.

Which nodes you have is relevant. if you have no base minion damage from tree/equip or low then MD gives you more than MPD. Think (if my calc is correct) the breakpoint (for lvl 20/q0) is 57% minion damage from tree/equip.

As above, it is irrelevant because it is assumed you have all of them. If you don't have all of them, you aren't likely to be a full blown summoner. Weaker minions means weaker gameplay, and that means harder progression.

And what's this about a "breakpoint"?

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Bermag wrote:

Ah ok great explanation. So hatred (and other converted damage) is based on base damage (is local wapon modifiers excluded also?) and is then modified by all modifiers that applies and that includes modifiers like MPD because original damage type is also included.

Yes then MPD is better. Not sure if it is still better if you have Hatred + Anger like I have on my classical summoner (my SRS is using only hatred).

Anger will add 77-129 base fire damage, wrath adds 14-231 base lightning damage, and hatred adds 36% of physical as cold. A level 20 zombie deals 466-1088 physical damage according to the wiki.

So a zombie will gain 167-391 cold damage. The maximum damage is three times that of anger, and more than half again the damage potential of wrath. The only way to increase anger/wrath is by MD, which is only a ~77% increase.

With 105% damage and MPD, zombies will deal ~3323 physical damage at most, giving them a maximum of ~1196 from cold damage. Even with MD, anger/wrath will give no more than 228/408 potential damage.

I can't understand why any of you, especially Vipermagi, seem to thing MD is so good and say it is better. It is not.

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Natharias wrote:

I can't understand why any of you, especially Vipermagi, seem to thing MD is so good and say it is better. It is not.

That fully depends on build, really, I've been playing a bit unusual aura summoner lately that uses all offensive auras and minion damage works better for the most important of his pets.

Tentacle miscreation spectres are pretty clear-cut, low damage per hit, large bonus from anger and hatred - yes please. Same goes for animated weapons and raging spirits, not much of a contest there.

Skeletons are a bit of a murky business, though, because of their elemental damage penalty it's better to play it physical, although if you use added chaos MD might be a decent contender too.

Zombies are, of course, better as physical because of their high damage per hit, however I'm not really using them to deal damage, them and guardian are just punching bags.

So there you got a summoner that uses MD on all its minions that deal damage, even though none of them are casters, swapping it for MPD or PPAD wouldn't be a really good idea. The whole thing is very build-specific, some other summoner would probably find those vastly better.

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Natharias wrote:

I can't understand why any of you, especially Vipermagi, seem to thing MD is so good and say it is better. It is not.

it is not a matter of opinion

what is better depends on your build. sometimes it is obvious, sometimes you have to do little math to be sure

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Vipermagi wrote:

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Natharias wrote:

I can't understand why any of you, especially Vipermagi, seem to thing MD is so good and say it is better. It is not.

You haven't been reading, again.

No, I have been reading. Hence why I said the bolded part.

Reading helps.

What I do need to do is learn to spell. Think*

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raics wrote:

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Natharias wrote:

I can't understand why any of you, especially Vipermagi, seem to thing MD is so good and say it is better. It is not.

That fully depends on build, really, I've been playing a bit unusual aura summoner lately that uses all offensive auras and minion damage works better for the most important of his pets.

Tentacle miscreation spectres are pretty clear-cut, low damage per hit, large bonus from anger and hatred - yes please. Same goes for animated weapons and raging spirits, not much of a contest there.

Skeletons are a bit of a murky business, though, because of their elemental damage penalty it's better to play it physical, although if you use added chaos MD might be a decent contender too.

Zombies are, of course, better as physical because of their high damage per hit, however I'm not really using them to deal damage, them and guardian are just punching bags.

So there you got a summoner that uses MD on all its minions that deal damage, even though none of them are casters, swapping it for MPD or PPAD wouldn't be a really good idea. The whole thing is very build-specific, some other summoner would probably find those vastly better.

The thing is that a generic summoner build uses zombies and spectres for damage, and usually spectres as ranged minions to limit the chances of them taking damage-and thereby reducing their chances of dying. Zombies and skeletons are easy to remake, spectres aren't.

But even with aura investment most minions will benefit from MPD more than MD. With all aura effect (I believe it's about 66%), hatred still confers more than wrath and anger put together. And MPD helps hatred more than MD will help elemental damage.

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Ludvator wrote:

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Natharias wrote:

I can't understand why any of you, especially Vipermagi, seem to thing MD is so good and say it is better. It is not.

it is not a matter of opinion

what is better depends on your build. sometimes it is obvious, sometimes you have to do little math to be sure

No, it's a matter of facts.

Zombies, skeletons, and raging spirits will benefit far more from MPD and hatred than they would from MD and wrath and anger.

Animated weapons can go either way, but they'd probably benefit far more from MD/wrath/anger especially when you use flesh offering.

Spectres will always benefit from MD more, especially since ranged minions are usually preferred. I wouldn't count on tanky spectres just given that they'll be hard to reacquire.

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Natharias wrote:

The thing is that a generic summoner build uses zombies and spectres for damage, and usually spectres as ranged minions to limit the chances of them taking damage-and thereby reducing their chances of dying. Zombies and skeletons are easy to remake, spectres aren't.

But even with aura investment most minions will benefit from MPD more than MD. With all aura effect (I believe it's about 66%), hatred still confers more than wrath and anger put together. And MPD helps hatred more than MD will help elemental damage.

Yup, that's what I was saying, for a typical summoner. However the one I mentioned has the whole shebang, Anger, Wrath and Hatred, with Anger and Wrath potentially at level 25. In that scenario and considering the spectre choice, zombies are only minions that would benefit more from MPD.