Added Chaos support gem vs Added Lightning?

I've currently got a level 66 witch specced for fire damage and spell crit. One of the abilities I use for some supporting damage is Flame Totem with GMP and Extra Rarity. I have one more linked blue socket and I was debating between using Added Lightning Damage or Added Chaos Damage.


Added Lightning seems like it does more damage overall, or at least has a higher potential for damage...what exactly are the advantages of Chaos damage beyond penetrating ES? The character is not specced for Chaos Damage (or Lightning Damage for that matter), and the totem already has some lightning damage on it from Herald of Storm (so it will already shock when it crits).

Is there something I'm missing about Added Chaos Damage that makes up for it doing less? Is the greater minimum damage really that worth it? Or should I just stick with added lightning?

Or is there maybe another blue support gem I haven't considered? I'd rather not chrome the item any more as it is a pure ES boots item, so rolling one red and one green was hard enough (ideally I'd have red - green - green - blue and use Culling Strike as my final gem).

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TheMongrel wrote:

Is there something I'm missing about Added Chaos Damage that makes up for it doing less?

Added chaos is around 50% stronger than added lightning, however it's harder to scale and it has no status ailments to inflict. Other than that, chaos damage can't be reflected so it helps a bit there.

i think mobs generally have less chaos resist? Im under that impression but raics probably has a better chance of actually confirming that as a fact.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

i think mobs generally have less chaos resist? Im under that impression but raics probably has a better chance of actually confirming that as a fact.

I don't, no idea how much exactly they have and there's no way to lower it so we can't even test :)

However, it is less common than elemental resists.

Related question, is added chaos damage better than [element] penetration? I think that's even harder to calculate due to the exponential nature of resist.

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melodia1 wrote:

Related question, is added chaos damage better than [element] penetration? I think that's even harder to calculate due to the exponential nature of resist.

You need to know the exact spec to answer that, there's no universal answer. The closest you can get is that penetration is better if your build has a clearly dominant element.

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Vipermagi wrote:

Penetration Gems grant at least their Pen value as More Damage for the related Element,

Assuming no curses/EE.

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melodia1 wrote:

Related question, is added chaos damage better than [element] penetration? I think that's even harder to calculate due to the exponential nature of resist.

answer to all similar questions is: "depends"

when dealing damage that consists of multiple elements, yes. When focusing on one element, no

Added Chaos is hands-down better on Flame Totem and probably better on any other spell as well. Average out the min and max damage. It's way way more on average currently.

Yes, it's arguably harder to scale, but the amount it gives is so high that it doesn't matter. It easily contributes a third of tooltip dps on its own. Just compare the base damage of your spell versus what Added Chaos Damage gives (after damage effectiveness penalties) and more likely than not, it's a huge percentage of base damage.

That's not a suggestion by the way. Go and do that for any spell you care to name: Incinerate, Arc, Flame Totem. This is base damage before all multipliers and buffs.

Penetration doesn't scale Added Chaos, but doesn't have to because few enemies are both resistant to Chaos and Fire. So in the cases where you do encounter resists, you wind up doing very stable dps to them.

Added Lightning doesn't shock enough for it to be worthwhile if by itself. Shock durations are clocked by the size of the lightning damage you do.

Once A4 is released then Added Lightning starts to become a serious contender on pure lightning spells, since the damage is being buffed and Wrath now multiplies your lightning damage as a "more" modifier. But even then Added Chaos wouldn't be a "terrible" choice by any stretch.

But as it stands on the live server, Added Chaos is still better on a devoted lightning spell.