Help this noob understand flat damage scaling :/

After reading several reddit post, forum post and the wiki, Im left even more confused now. I hope you can help a noob out like me!

So basicly my questions are:
(Im playing a 100% phys to cold frost blader)

If i have 300% increased physical damage
And 300% increased cold damage.
Do i benefit more from flat physical or cold from gear? Or is it equal?
If i have 300% increased physical damage but only 200% increased cold damage or wise versa, do i benefit most from flat damage to that specific damage type? (Which ever is highest)

When buying jewels and jewelry, is it better for me to get both flat phys AND flat cold or just double/triple flat cold or physical damage according to whatever is highest?

My current tree has about 360% phys and 300% cold damage Thats why im asking :/ hope this makes sense.
Merry christmas everyone, may the RNG bless you!

Not enough information. If you're using Melee Physical Damage (affects flat phys but not flat cold), Hatred (as before), Vicious Projectiles (~~), etc. they'll affect the flat phys but not flat cold. Flat ele rolls tend to be quite a bit higher in general, but phys>ele converted damage has a lot of additional modifiers to affect it.

In your case, at equal amounts, flat phys will be better than flat cold. The reason for this is because of how damage conversion works. Your phys damage, though being converted to cold, will still be affected by phys damage increases (because it is base phys), and also by cold damage increases (because it is being converted to cold). Your base cold damage, on the other hand, will only be affected by increases to cold damage. Things based off of % phys, like the Hatred aura, will also benefit from flat phys, but not flat cold. So, at the same amounts, flat phys will net you more damage than flat cold--except that flat elemental is often available in larger amounts than flat phys.

Really, the best way to figure out most mechanical interactions is to hop into Path of Building and play with it yourself. The wiki has good info (most of the time) but playing with things yourself will show you exactly how it works and will let you compare options for their actual effect on your character (like your choice of jewels, for example).

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sylle93 wrote:

So basicly my questions are:
(Im playing a 100% phys to cold frost blader)

If i have 300% increased physical damage
And 300% increased cold damage.

Converted damage benefits both from damage type is was converted from and damage type it was converted to. It means:
- if you add 10 physical attack damage, it will be increased by "%increased phys dmg" + "%increased cold dmg" - in your case by "300% inc. phys" + "300% inc. cold" = 600% inc. dmg = 10 * (1 + 6) = 10 * 7 = 70;
- if you add 10 cold attack damage, it will only be increased by "%increased cold dmg" - in your case by "300% inc. cold" = "300% inc. dmg" = 10 * (1 + 3) = 10 * 4 = 40.

Added elemental damage, usually, have bigger values than added physical damage. Typically can add 10 physical or 25 cold. Which will give you more benefit depends on your build.

For advanced testing & research i advice you install Path of Building.

if its a typical phys based frostblader where uve got it all converted to cold, u got hatred aura, ur probably looking at a taste of hate flask, ur maybe even using melee physical damage gem.... then u want flat physical damage.

In that situation u usually have too much scaling that is applying to physical and scaling from physical. As people have said, the phys is converted to cold and will then get increased by all ur cold scaling, but the flat cold wont get increased by ur phys scaling, ur phys gems, wont contribute to the damage gained from hatred, taste of hate etc.

All my phys to elemental builds stack pure flat physical only, I never stack flat elemental with them. BUT, some conversion builds do, it depends how ur set up. For a more firm answer like the guy said, we need to see the build, the tree, the gearing, the gem links etc.

Hello everyone, thank you for the very detailed replies, i didnt know that flat phys would benefit from both multipliers actually, but it makes perfect sense.
My gem setup is :
Frost Blades - Melee physical damage - WED - Ancenstral Call - Multistrike - Hypothermia

I do have PoB installed but its quite an advanced tool i think, i havent figured out how to add custom items yet to test different things :)

Yeah but if you notice the flat phys rolls are about half elemental on jewel/jewelry and such so T1 cold could be just as good as T1 Phys.

path of building you can plug anything you want into your character to see.

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sylle93 wrote:

I do have PoB installed but its quite an advanced tool i think, i havent figured out how to add custom items yet to test different things :)

In the right site of "Items" panel there is a button "Create custom...". It is designed to transfer items info from PoE to PoB. In order to do this, in PoE mouse hover your item and press ctrl+c, then in PoB click "Create custom..." and press ctrl+v, then click "Create" - item will be added to your "All items:" list.

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DivineChampion wrote:

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sylle93 wrote:

I do have PoB installed but its quite an advanced tool i think, i havent figured out how to add custom items yet to test different things :)

In the right site of "Items" panel there is a button "Create custom...". It is designed to transfer items info from PoE to PoB. In order to do this, in PoE mouse hover your item and press ctrl+c, then in PoB click "Create custom..." and press ctrl+v, then click "Create" - item will be added to your "All items:" list.

You can also make up your own mods, either to just test things or to simulate actual item behaviour in some cases. For example, if you just want to test the flat phys vs flat cold, you could try hitting, "Edit...", on an item and adding the line, "Adds 50 to 100 Physical Damage", or, "Adds 100 to 200 Cold Damage", just to compare the two. Another example of simulating actual behaviour might be something like Malachai's Artifice, which has mods that aren't properly handled by PoB. Like in my build for this league, I have a Flame Golem gem socketed in it, so to simulate accurate behaviour, it can be given the lines, "+100% to Fire Resistance", "Damage penetrates 50% Cold Resistance", and, "Damage penetrates 50% Lightning Resistance". Just bear in mind that the custom mods do have to be recognised by PoB so you'll want to copy the wording of something with a similar mod to what you're adding if you're not sure what it should be.