Help me to understand Phys attack damage scaling so I can get better

I play 2h Slam hitting Jugg. It is a homemade build and I am happily doing yellow maps now. I like to experiment a lot so I can understand but I don't fully understand damage scaling.

On the surface it looks like I should pick up a lot of % physical damage increase and I will be fine, but as you know that is not the case.

I manage to pick up most of the 2h/Mace % damage increase nodes around resulting in


But that is pretty much it. I don't think I can pick up any more nodes. My damage is not increasing much anyway with every new node with % physical damage increase. So I must be doing something wrong.

The biggest damage increase I notice comes from a Lion's Roar, I got it with 24% more melee damage. I do understand the difference between more and increase and additive and multiplicative but I can't find skill on a tree that say more, more, more!

So where I should get damage from if not from a tree? I am not very experienced player so I don't know ins and out of all the gear but, specifically about 2H hitting phys char, should I look for gear that say more or should I look for damage on specific gear? gems? specific affixes?

What should I use the skill tree for than if the damage from it is not scaling that well? Should I unspec those 600% increase to something more like 400% or maybe 300%, or what as a general rule? and use those points for utility and life?

Please dont send me to the guide since even if I will follow a guide I will still not understand what is going on - at least this is what I think. Unless the guide takes time in actually explaining why and what - in that case it will be helpful.

Please help me to understand! Thank you.

EDIT: Export from PoB https://pastebin.com/j5kZTFeW
Please note that I am not looking for a review of a build I know it is not the best. I am looking on some info that will tell me why it is not the best - especially around the skill tree choices - it seemed natural to me to pick a lot of % damage increase nodes but that is not seems to be the case. Or maybe it is but my gear really sucks - in that case what would be a guidance for gear choices with some explanation please.

Every "more" is affected by "increased". Every "increased" isn't affected by any other "increased".

More does more base damage, which is then increased. You kind of want both, but since more is rare to find it's valued more highly.

I'm not the biggest expert, either. What helps a lot, though, is flat physical damage on rings, amulets, gloves, jewels and skills.

Post your setup or your export the build from PoB. I'm sure there are many people here who could give you a few pointers.

"

Mikrotherion wrote:

I'm not the biggest expert, either. What helps a lot, though, is flat physical damage on rings, amulets, gloves, jewels and skills.

Post your setup or your export the build from PoB. I'm sure there are many people here who could give you a few pointers.

https://pastebin.com/j5kZTFeW

As I mention in the edited post it is not entirely my point to make this build better but is more about to understand why the damage scaling slowed down so much even if I thought that picking % damage increase strategy was good.

Gear is not the best, I know this but what would be a good guidance.

Plus I was experimenting with some supporting skills so things might seem odd.

To try and explain it simply.

You have several variables that affect your damage.

1) Is the base weapon damage and added flat damage from gear makes the foundation.
2) Is the increased damage from gear and tree.
3) Is the attackspeed with which you attack.
4) Is crit chance and crit multiplier that comes on top.
5) Is the last part in form of the more multipliers.

The clutch with 1-4 is they are additive within each other. All sources of increased damage are added together first and then get applied. Same for added damage, attack speed and crit. Because of this they have diminishing returns. The more you already have of each stat, the less effect a further increase of it will get you. I.e if you have 100% increased, then adding another 10% means you get 10% more damage out of it. If you already have 200% increased then it's only 5% more and so on.

More multipliers are fundamentally different here. They are multiplicative with each other. So if you have 100 damage and get a 50% more multiplier you are at 150 damage. Get another multiplier and its then 150 x 1,5 and so on. This means with more multipliers you have increasing returns. The more of them you already have, the more any added multiplier will net you in terms of damage. This is also the reason why the damage differences in this game between low tier/budget builds and high end builds is so huge. The more multipliers excerbate the differences several times over.

This leads to two very simple guidelines when you try to push damage.

First. Try to get as many more multipliers as you can. Second. Scale the other stats equally. There is no point putting everything in one stat. After you've upped your flat damage by 10%, up your increased by 10% next, then your attackspeed, then your crit. Because while they are additive within each other, they are still multiplicative with each other. Increased multiplies your flat damage, attackspeed multiplies the result of those two, and then crit multiplies that again.

That's the "easy" theory behind it. In practise the details and limitations caused by gear, buildchoice etc make it difficult.

/edit Forgot accuracy which is another additive multiplier that has a hard cap at 100% so it kinda gets irrelevat fairly quickly but it can mean a huge damage boost if you are below 100%.

"

Baharoth15 wrote:

I.e if you have 100% increased, then adding another 10% means you get 10% more damage out of it. If you already have 200% increased then it's only 5% more and so on.

Nitpick (your overall explanation is great) here - you forgot to consider the 100% that pre-exists with any multiplier (because anything times 1 is itself, everything can be considered to start as a 100% multiplier of itself). This means if you have 100% increased (which means a pre-existing 200% multiplier), adding 10% means you get 5% more; if you have 200% increased (300% multiplier) then it's only 3.33% more, and so on.