Starforge/Voidforge newbie questions

I am thinking of picking either one of those beast swords, but i have a newbie question.
I am using 2 skills for damaging in this game. First is heavy strike for without any elemental supports;
Second is ice crash with a hypothermia support. Also using Atziri's flask .
All and all without going into too much depth how will lets say Starforge affect my Ice crash and Atziri
or how will Voidforge affect my heavy strike.
Beforehand i have to apologize if the question is noobish or stupid.

Well, it's actually quite simple: all the items and skills will do, what they say, that they do:

Icecrash will convert 50% of your physical damage into cold damage. Since Starforge says: "Deal no Elemental damage", these 50% cold damage would be discarded. Since you wouldn't deal any cold damage anymore, you won't be able to chill, wich means Hypothermia wouldn't work anymore.
Result: You loose 50% base damage and the Hypothermia multiplier, not recommended.

Heavy strike simply gives a high % damage multiplier to your base damage and doesn't care about the damage type at all. With Starforge it will deal phys damage, with Voidforge it will deal ele damage.

Since Voidforge says "Deal no non-elemental damage" you would loose out on the physical part of its damage though, unless you get other sources of conversion from physical to elemental. To be more clear: The game will calculate all your damage, just like it would do if Voidforge didn't have its "ele-only" modifier. But in the very end the resulting physical damage part would be discarded. If your supportgem setup would still make sense with voidforge i can't tell you without knowing it. But one thing is certain: Your best supportgem with Voidforge is "Elemental damage with attacks", not close.

Baseline: Heavy strike + Voidforge would technically work, but HS would deal 25% more damage, if you found a way to convert 100% of your physical damage to elemental damage.

In practice, i would say, it's not worth the hustle. It's better to use another skill with Voidforge, wich already comes with some conversion on it, like Icecrash does. Then you can itemize (or specc) for 100% conversion without too much trouble usually.

Ok first of all thank you for answering with a detailed reply to my question.

After this i think i understoon the mechanics behind it, so let me just ask this and see if its true.
No mather what sword of the two i choose ICE CRASH will suffer 50% dmg for sure unless i somehow transform my phys to elem or the other way around depending on the sword (wich i dont know how to do at all at this point)?

its easy to make 100% physical to elemental convertion, simply use Hrimsorrow or Hrimburn gloves to convert 50% physical dmg into ice or physical to lightning support gem to convert 50% physical to lightning.

combination of these 2 elements is stronger imo than full cold convertion becouse lightning damage can shock and you will freze enemies with cold dmg. But since you want to use voidforge you gonna shock anyway.

"

Kawasaki wrote:

Ok first of all thank you for answering with a detailed reply to my question.

After this i think i understoon the mechanics behind it, so let me just ask this and see if its true.
No mather what sword of the two i choose ICE CRASH will suffer 50% dmg for sure unless i somehow transform my phys to elem or the other way around depending on the sword (wich i dont know how to do at all at this point)?

No, Ice crash won't suffer a 50% damage loss with Voidforge (only with Starforge it will). Icecrash is better for Voidforge than Heavy Strike, because it has conversion.

Voidforge deals its physical damage + 3x(physical damage as elemental).

First heavy strike: (Heavy Strike multiplier) x (Voidforge base damage) This will give 3/4 ele damage and 1/4 phys damage. And because you cannot deal phys with voidforge, you loose these 25% of the final damage.

Now Icecrash:

(icecrash multiplier) x (Voidforge base damage) This will at first also give 3/4 ele damge and 1/4 phys damage. But icecrash converts 50% of that physical part to ele damage, resulting in 7/8 ele damage and 1/8 phys damage. And then this 1/8 will be discarded.

PS: For Voidforge Phys to lightning support is not good, because it doesn't scale the elemental damage. It's better to use items with conversion or nodes in the tree.

Ok i see now. Well in that case too bad for me :/ i have too many other items dependable on physical dmg to do this kind of drastic change. Next time i go 2H i will have this in mind considering the Forge as a last weapon of choice. Right now i guess i will go for the next best thing for me probably Doomsower Sword.

Uhm... What do you mean with "dependable"? Because out of the top of my head i can't think of many things that would be broken by conversion, except the physical leech affixes from the stoneage.

If you have stuff that scales % physical damage or gives flat physical damage: these still will work.

Carnage heart, Atziri and Lion flask and probably mosto f my jewels will have to be changed not sure about passive skills tho. Now that i look at it its not much.
Ok so to make this conversion thing work out what items do you suggest, except those gloves someone pointed out up in the replys , cause i am not getting to those notes on the Skill tree at all.

Ok you would loose the physical leech on carnage heart. But: Atziri flask is even better with conversion/ extra ele damage, and lions roar and most likely all your jewels will still work.

I don't want to go into detail here, because then i would have to copypaste the wiki, but the important thing is:

When you convert one damage type into another you can scale both ends of the conversion and all modifiers for both sides will be applied.

For example, when you do 100 phys damage and convert it fully into cold damage, Atziri's Promise will give you the extra damage both for the initial physical as well as for the resulting elemental damage.

For more details i recommend the wiki or the valued poster Abdiel Kavash ^^.

Abdieeeeeel...?


https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Damage_conversion

The wiki also lists all uniques with conversion. In the Incursion league you can also get leaguespecific rares with conversion (25% phys to lightning on gloves).

Thank you for argumenting further on the question. I guess i will try and make it work. In the end basically i need to make 100% phys conv. with some items? Ok i will research which items will do that for me and try and make my self something out of it.Is it gonna be that bad if i dont make a full 100% conv but lets say 50%. Have in mind like i said i am still a newbie and a softcore player. I will try and make better chars in the future with this info.