Question about "scaling damage".

I have 359% increased physical damage. Would it be better to take points away from that and spread them into a different kinds of damage? Does that avoid getting diminishing returns? For example, I was thinking of getting an area damage jewel(I have 0% atm, and yes I use an aoe skill) and getting 94% increased Fire damage nodes(I use Added Fire Support, Herald of Fire and would get a phys weapon with Fire on it as well), maybe replace my ECoMS gem with Fire Penetration.

By the way I've been looking for the damage formula, but I can't seem to find it. I've seen it before, can someone post it if you have it?

Finally, if I do increase my fire damage, how much elemental damage would I need to do to get worried with 4k Life(working on it) and 50% block?

The applicable increased stats will be summed together. So your AoE jewel wouldn't help anymore than a phys jewel.
https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Stat

Added fire and herald of ash are based on the physical damage, so preferably you should scale the base damage type (physical) to get the most damage. So don't invest too much in fire damage.

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Illviljan wrote:

The applicable increased stats will be summed together. So your AoE jewel wouldn't help anymore than a phys jewel.
https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Stat

Added fire and herald of ash are based on the physical damage, so preferably you should scale the base damage type (physical) to get the most damage. So don't invest too much in fire damage.

Do you mean that increased fire damage nodes wouldn't increase the fire damage from HoA and Added Fire Damage?

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Vipermagi wrote:

Increased Fire Damage does apply to Added Fire/Herald of Ash, naturally, but 10% Increased Physical is just as strong as 10% Increased Fire Damage.. And also applies to the rest of your Physical Damage.

Well, I think it's still a good idea to increase fire damage, it's all I have left to increase my dps. My sword is all physical damage, and from what I've seen on the trading site the only way I can raise my dps without going into exalt territory is to get more speed and eDPS.

Edit: Isn't that considered double-dipping? The firedamage being boosted by physical damage increase and then by fire increase? Or would it be no different if the fire increase was physical as was stated?

No, double dipping refers to something rather different. The game is only designed to allow any single damage bonus to apply to any particular damage value once and only once. Double-dipping occurs only with what I call Derived DoTs, that is, DoTs whose base damage over time is based on an initial hit. When you have a Derived DoT and a damage bonus that can apply to both the Hit portion and DoT portion, that is when double-dipping occurs, in that the differential effect of grabbing one bonus is similar to grabbing it twice, in terms of the derived DoT.

In your case your only access to double dipping would be through Ignites, which are Derived DoTs. For example, if you had no physical damage bonuses, and deal 100 Fire Damage before bonuses, which would deal 20 Fire Damage over Time (Ignite is 20% of initial Hit size), then gain 100% increased Fire Damage, then your base increases to 200 Fire Damage, boosting the burn to 40 Fire DoT, and the 100% applies again to the DoT value itself, turning your final Ignite damage to 80 Burning per Second.

In your case, rather than double-dipping, I would call it extra stacking.

Looking only at Hit damage you can think of Increased Fire Damage as similar to Increased Physical Damage, applying at a fraction based on what proportion of your base damage is fire damage.

For example, suppose you deal 100 base Physical Attack Damage, and your Herald of Ash + Added Fire Damage Support added 50% of your physical as fire. You can think of this as turning your base damage into 100 Phys, 50 Phys-Fire.

The 100 Phys gets scaled by all your Physical Damage bonuses,
the 50 PhysFire gets scaled by all your Physical and Fire Damage bonuses.

So you can see that Fire Damage will scale just 1/3 (50/150) of your damage. So for a Hit, x% increased fire damage is roughly as strong as 3x% increased physical damage.

Suppose you had 100% physical to fire conversion, meaning x% fire = x% phys for Hits. Then, it works something like this:

100 base PhysFire damage
50% increased Physical Damage
50% increased Fire Damage

Then, you deal 100 * (1 + 0.50 + 0.50) = 200 Fire Damage in one Hit.

EDIT: So, re-reading my post, I don't think I made the decision-making implications clear enough.

You cannot avoid diminishing proportional returns by changing damage types, because of the additive stacking of different damage types to same damage value. In your case, even at 500% increased physical damage, your Hit damage will not benefit whatsoever by changing that mix to 400% increased physical damage and 100% increased area damage. It would be exactly the same.

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adghar wrote:

Spoiler

No, double dipping refers to something rather different. The game is only designed to allow any single damage bonus to apply to any particular damage value once and only once. Double-dipping occurs only with what I call Derived DoTs, that is, DoTs whose base damage over time is based on an initial hit. When you have a Derived DoT and a damage bonus that can apply to both the Hit portion and DoT portion, that is when double-dipping occurs, in that the differential effect of grabbing one bonus is similar to grabbing it twice, in terms of the derived DoT.

In your case your only access to double dipping would be through Ignites, which are Derived DoTs. For example, if you had no physical damage bonuses, and deal 100 Fire Damage before bonuses, which would deal 20 Fire Damage over Time (Ignite is 20% of initial Hit size), then gain 100% increased Fire Damage, then your base increases to 200 Fire Damage, boosting the burn to 40 Fire DoT, and the 100% applies again to the DoT value itself, turning your final Ignite damage to 80 Burning per Second.

In your case, rather than double-dipping, I would call it extra stacking.

Looking only at Hit damage you can think of Increased Fire Damage as similar to Increased Physical Damage, applying at a fraction based on what proportion of your base damage is fire damage.

For example, suppose you deal 100 base Physical Attack Damage, and your Herald of Ash + Added Fire Damage Support added 50% of your physical as fire. You can think of this as turning your base damage into 100 Phys, 50 Phys-Fire.

The 100 Phys gets scaled by all your Physical Damage bonuses,
the 50 PhysFire gets scaled by all your Physical and Fire Damage bonuses.

So you can see that Fire Damage will scale just 1/3 (50/150) of your damage. So for a Hit, x% increased fire damage is roughly as strong as 3x% increased physical damage.

Suppose you had 100% physical to fire conversion, meaning x% fire = x% phys for Hits. Then, it works something like this:

100 base PhysFire damage
50% increased Physical Damage
50% increased Fire Damage

Then, you deal 100 * (1 + 0.50 + 0.50) = 200 Fire Damage in one Hit.

EDIT: So, re-reading my post, I don't think I made the decision-making implications clear enough.

You cannot avoid diminishing proportional returns by changing damage types, because of the additive stacking of different damage types to same damage value. In your case, even at 500% increased physical damage, your Hit damage will not benefit whatsoever by changing that mix to 400% increased physical damage and 100% increased area damage. It would be exactly the same.

Ok, so I should just forget about trying to bypass diminishing returns. By the way, what is the recommended dps a lv 80 character should be doing? What about at level 90?

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srt746 wrote:

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adghar wrote:

You cannot avoid diminishing proportional returns by changing damage types, because of the additive stacking of different damage types to same damage value. In your case, even at 500% increased physical damage, your Hit damage will not benefit whatsoever by changing that mix to 400% increased physical damage and 100% increased area damage. It would be exactly the same.

Ok, so I should just forget about trying to bypass diminishing returns. By the way, what is the recommended dps a lv 80 character should be doing? What about at level 90?

You may still be able to fight diminishing returns by trading increases in damage for increases in attack speed. 400% damage and 0% attack speed is worse than 350% damage and 20% attack speed.

You can still look into other options.
E.g.:
- reduced mana reservation costs - to run another aura which would boost your DPS significantly.
- Equipping unique item and taking some e.g. ele resists on tree.

The ways to push DPS further are tricky.

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adghar wrote:

So you can see that Fire Damage will scale just 1/3 (50/150) of your damage. So for a Hit, x% increased fire damage is roughly as strong as 3x% increased physical damage.

it's the other way around :)