Physical vs Elemental vs Physical Conversion

Can someone tell me if I am correct in my understanding of these three build classifications?

1) When people say "physical build" they mean a build that only seeks to buff physical damage and uses a weapon that is only concerned with having a high phys damage roll?

2) When people say "elemental build" they mean a build that focuses on buffing elemental and weapon elemental damage and using a weapon that has 2-3 cold/fire/lightning mods on them which are all hopefully high rolls. I read "tri-elemental" a lot and assume that is what they mean.

3) When people say "physical conversion" they mean a build that runs off a skill like lightning strike or infernal blow where 50% of the phys damage is converted to elemental. For this build you can buff elemental, weapon elemental, and phys damage and use a high physical damage weapon that may or may not have added elemental damage?

Is that all correct?

Currently pure physical builds don't seem viable...when do people opt to pure elemental vs. physical conversion elemental? Should you only go for "elemental" if you have a good tri-element weapon waiting for you at high levels?

Thanks for any input! Trying to do some theory crafting for a 1H+shield HC Marauder. Currently have a lvl 60 LS Mara in softcore.

I am lvl 85 mara and I experimented a lot of builds. Pure physical is still viable and the good thing about pure physical is that the more physical you have the more elemental damage you can have from "Hatred buff" and "added fire damage gem". I don't need to explain why.

But the disadvantage of pure physical is that you will suuuurely die from reflect physical mobs if you don't have enough armor (atleast 15k-20k) and 6k hp( you surely need kaom's heart). With a decent amount of life steal you can negate the 20% reflect damage :)

Alright, cool, thanks for the insight on Phys.

As far as the definitions in OP, am I right about what people typically mean when they say those build types?

I agree with the first two definitions. The third one i'm not sure exactly how to maximize the damage. I guess you are stacking physical and then using a skill gem like glacial hammer, an aura like hatred, a support gem like added fire damage, etc. but you use these with a pure physical build too! :P they work, so....why wouldn't you?

I find reflect not to be a problem if you have resolute technique. If you don't crit, then you can use the 2% life leech passive point as well as warlor's mark to leech tons of life late game. Both these gems are red (most common type of color found on strength gear) and on top of that they're not stats on your gear. I see a phys. reflect mob and my response is usually "huh...useless affix"
i have 3.8k life, 6k armor and do 5k tooltip dps on my aoe skill.

I'm able to kill +10 level mobs above my character with a physical melee build (mostly) on Merciless.

Here the video to prove it.


http://youtu.be/sfOQ3exbkgA

http://youtu.be/Hg6rf5OrtOE

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mindstorm155 wrote:

I am lvl 85 mara and I experimented a lot of builds. Pure physical is still viable and the good thing about pure physical is that the more physical you have the more elemental damage you can have from "Hatred buff" and "added fire damage gem". I don't need to explain why.

But the disadvantage of pure physical is that you will suuuurely die from reflect physical mobs if you don't have enough armor (atleast 15k-20k) and 6k hp( you surely need kaom's heart). With a decent amount of life steal you can negate the 20% reflect damage :)

You don't need high armor just lots of endurance charges. With endurance charges you have the option of being immune to physical damage as well as high physical resistant.

Something I'm struggling with is that I am currently running a Glacial Hammer build on a Raider with Herald of Ice and Hatred. My question/concern is if I should get MORE Elemental Damage to increase my damage or more Flat Physical to use for the conversion...