"Increased Physical damage" what does it do?

I want to use bows, and I'm confused as to if a generic "Increased 15% physical damage" like in the +physical damage and +life in the start add damage to bows. It doesn't say melee. and I've been reading the only bow damage increase skills are the ones that have "bow damage" in the description of the skill.

Some clarification of this would help me, as I'm entirely new to the game.

Thanks

Types of damage in this game:

Physical
Fire
Cold
Lightning
Chaos

If your build has significant physical damage, then the mod will work for you.

What's your build?

EDIT: There are nodes and items and gems that increase Melee damage for your character. That only applies to melee skills.

I picked the rogue guy, and was going to follow the +physical damage and life tiles through to coordination, sniper, then quickness, and branch out towards pierce and other skills.

What skill are you aiming to use in the long run?

I haven't the slightest idea what the long run of the game looks like, I figure being my first time I'll just play and see how the dice fall, then later make a new person with a better idea of what I'll be looking for.


I'm kind of just looking at a bunch of bow spheres and see how far I go heh

Yeah that's a good idea.

FYI good physical bow builds include Split Arrow and Tornado Shot.

You can search around the forums regarding those builds and and get a general idea about the kinds of items and skill tree that experienced players use to build up a solid character.

ya just generic "physical damage" will apply to bows, melee, spells, any source of physical damage, stuff that is specific like "physical with bows" "..with swords" "projectile damage" etc apply to specific things obviously.

There are a few categories each skill goes into:

What type of offensive ability is it?
Cast, Attack

From Cast, there is
Cast & Non-spell 'Cast'
Cast & Spell, this is called 'Spell'

From Attack, there is
Attack & Melee 'Melee'
Attack & Projectile 'Attack, Projectile'
Attack & Bow 'Attack, Bow' as well as projectile damage modifiers


What Element is it?
Physical, Chaos, Cold, Fire, Lightning

Physical & Chaos : Not affected by 'Elemental' Modifiers (Increased Elemental Damage etc.)
Cold, Fire, Lightning : Affected by 'Elemental' Modifiers
*Note that Element in the question's context is used in this case for easier distinguishing of the damage types. As stated above, only Cold, Fire, Lightning are affected by 'Elemental' Keywords.

Cast abilities scale with cast modifiers but not spell modifiers without the spell keyword.
Spell abilities scale both with cast and spell modifiers.

Melee abilities scale attack and melee modifiers.
[Attack, Projectile] abilities scale with attack and melee modifiers. They do not scale with bow modifiers unless they have the bow keyword.
Bow abilities scale with attack and melee modifiers. Without the projectile keyword, they will only scale with projectile damage modifiers but not all other projectile modifiers. This last point varies between skills.

As long as the ability contains a stated element, that element modifier will affect the ability. If my Arc does pure physical damage, then increased physical damage will affect it. Note that damage conversion will allow abilities to be affected as long as the original damage type is being affected. Note that most passives do not double-dip.




Additional Tags:
Duration, Movement, AoE, Trap/Mine, Aura(always AoE) etc.

Duration : Duration can be modified with passives and supports.
Movement : Causes movement. Can be affected by movement modifiers.
AoE : Classified as AoE. Affected by AoE modifiers.
Trap/Mine : Creates a trap/mine that uses a skill. Causes trap/mine damage if damage is a direct result of the trap/mine.
Aura : Is an aura and affects allies within the AoE. Can be affected by Aura modifiers.


Note that the lack of such tags means some that innate property cannot be modified. For example:
Projectiles have a 'duration' before they fizzle out, but this innate property cannot be modified. Fireball will explode after a certain distance, arrows don't fly infinitely etc.

Ah cool, thanks for the information everyone.

Physical damage can be mitigated by armor. Elemental damage (fire, lightning, cold) can be mitigated by resistances to said elemental damage. Chaos damage can only be inflicted by poison (AFAIK) and con only be mitigated by chaos resistance.

I would not put a lot of passive skill points into straight bow damage .... go for projectile damage instead ... that covers the bow and any other attack that launches projectiles.

Happy Hunting