Different builds with ~ same DPS have significant damage difference. Why is that?

Always have been casual and never did it to endgame but still feel fine clearing tier up to 11-12.
My most powerful build yet is 2h slayer who has 69k DPS(cyclone pure phys). He kills map bosses in ~3-8seconds.


Recently I've tried dual claw raider for fun and she has 49k DPS(cyclone, ice, fire, phys, lightning




it takes her ages to takedown map bosses and even rare monsters. I am pretty sure that I'm not understanding some game mechanic and need help to figure that out.

Thank you

A lot of things can influence this, like secondary effects - taunt/intimidate/impale/secondary skill effects

The first thing that comes to mind looking at the information provided is that the slayer is pure phys while the raider is ele/phys hybrid.
Generally to be effective with elemental damage you need a lot of elemental resist penetration, otherwise it sucks.
A pure phys can be a lot more effective than an elemental version without penetration because mobs/bosses on high levels have high resists.
On the other hand if you have plenty of penetration, elemental damage outshines phys damage in most cases.

Slayers also usually go for the 20% cull node, which is another huge damage boost not present in the dps calculation.


Also, if you want to go a hybrid approach, try to do conversion from phys to element of choice - then both physical and elemental damage multipliers will boost your damage.

DPS numbers lie, bosses have high resistance to elemental damage and basically none to physical, especially if you poachers mark them.

in the examples you've given I suspect if you loaded the characters into path of building and selected a boss setting for what you were hitting you'd find the physical cyclone is doing at least triple the damage of the elemental one.

the game is nebulous in this way and its pretty much the reason lots of us use PoB to check if something is "viable" or not. Its easy to get good elemental damage values in practice, hard to get them in reality.

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Its easy to get good elemental damage values in practice, hard to get them in reality.

Based on previous comments does it feels like going to elemental damage usually is a mistake. I hope it's just me who does it disastrously wrong. Here is my skill tree if it helps to figure out something.(if it goes for numbers tis
40 to 500 lighting
2100-3200 cold
700-1200 physical
penetrates 37% cold resistance(also 13% additional from pob)


https://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-passive-skill-tree/AAAABAIBAABeA4cFLQW1CC4JWAxzEvETBBR1FSAV_Ra_GNsZjhm0G60hYCP2JpUshSzpLYMuCDB8Ne867Ty-PP4_VUCgRJ5F9Ed-Sn1LCk2SUUdTu1b6Whpbr12PXkVfcGHiYqxkr2VNZ6BrkGyMbWxvV3Txdf1313rvexR9dX8rgUGDbYO9hG-E2Yazh3aKOI19jbmNv5AKk_yUuJVmm42jiqk0sXyxs7TFtUi32b02vqfBi8Lsw-bIzM3qz-nTftP81ELWB9jV26fdDd3n32_gaeOf5inmiOd06NbrFO2D74_y5vrr_W7-ug==

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Temirkhan wrote:

Based on previous comments does it feels like going to elemental damage usually is a mistake.

It's hard to call it a mistake, but that building around phys damage is easier and more cost-wise efficient. To an extent.
Because of mobs' low armor and phys res, phys builds tend to perform better with moderate investments. The problem with phys damage is, that sooner or later you hit an upgrade wall - there are not much sources of high flat phys, besides weapon. And you are up to the point when any potential upgrade begins to equal tens of exalts per pop.

With ele damage, you have easier access to flat damage, but monsters' resistances are the wall.
So building around ele damage is a bit more complicated,as you need to meet more requirements for great performance:

- as much res reduction as you can get
- as many sources of flat damage as you can get
- building around crit

I can't tell of any great endgame on-hit ele build, which isn't crit.

TLDR:
Phys builds are easier to achieve better cost-to-performance ratio, especially early on.
Ele builds have better endgame potential, but are more complicated to build around.

Is the DPS the OP is reporting tooltip DPS or PoB community fork DPS? That matters quite a bit.

If it's in-game tooltip DPS being compared, then that can be disregarded. Snag a copy of the community fork PoB and import your characters to that program. Then go the "configuration" screen and match up in-game conditions as best you can to how each of your characters play.

If it's PoB community fork DPS, then it's probably just a matter of learning how to better use the configuration screen to more closely simulate in-game conditions.