when is Physical to Lightning actually worth it?

Hey guys,

the new physical to lightning gem has gotten quite some attentions. I question its effectiveness though.

What it does is it converts 50% of physical damage to lightning damage, and, at higher levels, adds about 30% of physical damage as lightning damage on top.

So on paper, it adds quite some dps.

The downside however is how armor works in this game. As you all know, the mitigation is nonlinear in a way that small, fast hits will end up doing less damage than the hard, slow hits with same dps on an enemy with an appropriate armor value.

Many Flickerstrikers use this now instead of Inc. crit damage since that got nerfed hard. Its good against phys reflect.

So my question is, especially to those who use this gem already - how does the dps "feel" ? is it really going higher?

It's amazing with any build that uses Doryani's Catalyst, and actually created a lot of new Doryani's builds.

In fact, you can convert any pure physical build to an almost pure elemental build with that gem, Doryani's, and a pair of Hrimsorrows. I'm experimenting with doing just that with Cyclone.

PtL is basically the best blue gem you can link to an attack, especially since they nerfed ICD gem. Massive dps increase.

I'm currently playing double strike build with the setup:
double strike - multistrike - melee physical damage - added fire damage - weapon elemental damage - Physical to lightning. I'm at 120k tooltip dps and still climbing. Replace/remove the Physical to lightning and I seriously drop in dps (can't tell exact numbers since i'm at work). The dps gained from that gem is very very much worth it. It scales nice with other gems

On top of this setup I have Doryani's Catalyst with herald of ash - increased burning damage - reduced mana which is a very nice combo when playing single target dps.

I do need to play carefull with ele reflect, I spec and gear full physical which all is scaled to elemental and reflect can kill me in 1 multistrike combo. Physical reflect is a joke though.

I have it currently set up with support flicker.

The only reason I use it is to shock and kill enemies to proc Herald of Thunder (which is awesome for my crit dagger shadow). Combine that with Doryani's Lightning belt and it get's really fun.

I think it merit's testing. Now that elemental resists have been fairly balanced amongst end-game mobs, stacking lightning damage isn't as much of a no-no as it used to be.

I think it's fun as hell..and honestly really like the interactions with Herald of Thunder.

Phys to Light not only offers more dps on a phys crit build than a Crit Multi gem but it also adds lightning damage to charas that often don't have any which increases damage with shocks. It has a 110% mana multiplier compared to 130% of CMulti which reduces your mana cost but also reduces your phys leech slightly meaning you get a little less mana/hp leech. It reduces the effect of phys reflect but increases your risk from ele reflect which cannot be mitigated by such means as cwdt+ic which at the very high end may mean you suffer from ele reflect.

TL;DR It gives more deeps than CMulti gem but may add some problems with leech and ele reflect as a result. Overall a very good and often overlooked gem that provides a good alternative to just stacking crit multi on phys builds.