So what exactly is the difference
If using let's say a fire skill and got 1 item of either 10% spell or elemental increase the damage increase would be the same of either of them right??
And playing as a Witch is your normal attack considered to be a 'Spell' attack with a wand or elemental?

Posted by
SAKRAY
on Apr 5, 2012, 9:24:05 PM

10% spell damage or elemental damage will do the same on a fire spell.
But 10% spell damage will increase chaos damage, unlike elemental damage.
Do you mean basic attack with wand? No, it isn't spell damage. But if the wand deals elemental damage, %increased elemental damage will work on it.

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Posted by
on Apr 5, 2012, 9:34:40 PM

Ah oke thanks for the quick awnser and chaos damage is a special kind of damage or?
Also to increase wand damage I have to get STR/Pysical boosts?
edit:
Also if your weapon has like 6 cold damage does elemental increase only increase the 6 cold damage portial of the basic atk?

Last edited by SAKRAY on Apr 5, 2012, 9:58:46 PM

Posted by
SAKRAY
on Apr 5, 2012, 9:40:36 PM

Strength does not increase the physical damage of ranged weapons unless you get the keystone passive that allows it to do so, or support your attack skill with it.
Increased spell damage will increase the damage of all of your spells, including chaos spells as was stated.
If you a weapon with elemental damage attached to it, increased elemental damage will only increase the elemental portion, not the physical portion of your attack. However, you can get decent elemental levels on your attacks by utilizing elemental hit, lightning strike, lightning arrow, fire arrow, molten strike, or glacial hammer. These all add or convert a large amount of elemental damage to your attacks, and increased elemental damage will add to all of them (but spell damage will NOT because they are attacks and not spells).

Last edited by Kraide on Apr 5, 2012, 10:10:31 PM

Posted by
Kraide
on Apr 5, 2012, 10:10:10 PM

'

Ah oke thanks for the quick awnser and chaos damage is a special kind of damage or?

yes, chaos damage isn't reduced by elemental resist or armor, and it bypass energy shield.
Some enemies have chaos resist though, but it just reduces the damage a bit, you can still kill them.

'

SAKRAY wrote:

Also if your weapon has like 6 cold damage does elemental increase only increase the 6 cold damage portial of the basic atk?

yes, if you get the %increase ele damage from a passive, it will increase the 6 cold damage on your weapon.

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Posted by
on Apr 5, 2012, 10:42:22 PM

I know this thread is old but if someone sees it I would be glad to get an answer. so if i understand this correctly. Elemental DMG boost all forms of attacks/spells that have some sort of element in it. And spell DMG only increeses the dmg of actual SPELLS.
I have done a Witch where i go heavy into lightning DMG (dont know if it is good late game or not but i wanna try it). So i can both get spell dmg and elemental dmg to boost the damage of my lightning spells such as spark and lightning trap for exampel?

Posted by
on Nov 9, 2013, 2:18:35 PM

Both spell dmg and elemental dmg will boost the damage of your lightning spells.

Posted by
sydgame
on Nov 10, 2013, 2:10:09 AM

I have a witch doing cold damage. I was told that x% increased elemental damage passives not only increases the cold damage but also increases chill and freeze damage so is better bang for buck than x% increased spell damage passives.
Using Freezing Pulse, Ice Nova and Ice Spear.
Is this right? Thanks in advance.

~DemiDemon~
Playing almost every day since Beta version 0.9.1 in 2011.

Last edited by DemiDemon on Mar 11, 2014, 12:23:46 AM

Posted by
DemiDemon
on Mar 11, 2014, 12:19:10 AM

'

I have a witch doing cold damage. I was told that x% increased elemental damage passives not only increases the cold damage but also increases chill and freeze damage so is better bang for buck than x% increased spell damage passives.
Using Freezing Pulse, Ice Nova and Ice Spear.
Is this right? Thanks in advance.

In short, no.
'Chill and freeze damage' doesn't exist. Chill and freeze duration is based on the damage dealt by the hit that triggered them. Anything that increases the damage of the original hit increases the duration of chill/freeze. No extra damage is dealt to a monster just because you chilled or froze it.
Whoever told you that is getting chill/freeze mechanics mixed up with ignite/burn mechanics.
You're welcome to make a new thread for this kind of thing instead of bumping really, really old ones. PoE has changed a lot since Open Beta started, much less 2012.

Last edited by KG31459 on Mar 11, 2014, 12:54:00 AM

Posted by
KG31459
on Mar 11, 2014, 12:52:09 AM

'

Whoever told you that is getting chill/freeze mechanics mixed up with ignite/burn mechanics.

Thanks for the answer.
Yeah, he had a fire witch and I assumed that what applied to one element would naturally apply to another - my bad.

'

KG31459 wrote:

You're welcome to make a new thread for this kind of thing instead of bumping really, really old ones. PoE has changed a lot since Open Beta started, much less 2012.

Again, my bad. After looking over the site for 20 mins I resorted to Googling the term 'elemental damage vs spell damage' and this was the only result close to what I wanted to know. When it didn't give me quite the answer I needed I thought it better to post in a similar thread rather than start another and end up with even more thousands of threads that are next-to-impossible to search through.
Thanks.

~DemiDemon~
Playing almost every day since Beta version 0.9.1 in 2011.

Posted by
DemiDemon
on Mar 11, 2014, 1:24:17 AM

Hello exiles! I have a question regarding how damage works here. Mainly I want to know about spell damage. How it works? I mean, if I have a staff with 10% spell damage increase, which skills damage will it increase? Kinda logically thinking this would increase only castable skills, like fireball etc, but I am not sure about all that, so maybe some1 can clarify this for me. Also about elemental damages. If I have a Str based skill, let's say Ground Slam. I know that it has weapon damage based damage, but also it has some fire damage added, will spell damage increase do anything and will fire damage increase do anything? Also the same with Dex based skills, like Elemental hit. As the skill itself has only elemental damage, I would assume that even spell damage would do something, but I think that it won't help, if it does - tell me. And with that Elemental hit - if I have 20% fire dmg increase and I have added fire dmg increase support gem, will that 20% fire dmg increase add to that base fire dmg of the skill or also that support gem added damage. Also let's say I have a skill which has no fire dmg, but I add a support gem with fire dmg and also I have that 20% fire dmg increase on my wep - will it change anything? I know these are kinda many questions and they all are similar, but yeah, I just want to know how my damage is calculated, cause I just got my 1st Unique, which is a lvl13 staff with fire dmg and spell dmg increases and I was thinking about making a Templar, but I know that I will use Ground slam, maybe Elemental hit too, and Fireball skills + Fire traps. I wanted to know which of those skills will my Fire dmg increase and spell damage increase actually affect.
Please, anyone who knows something about all this stuff, help me understand my damage. :P
With best regards,
TheEnforcer.

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Posted by
on Jun 29, 2012, 12:50:17 AM

That is a big ol' wall o' text you got there.
Let's say you have a wand with innate 10% spell damage, a mod on it that has an additional 30% spell damage, a shield with 15% spell damage, 50% spell damage from skills and 25% increased fire damage.
Spells that deal fire damage will now do (1 + 0.1 + 0.3 + 0.15 + 0.5 + 0.25)x damage. Aka: 230% damage.
Cold/Lightning spells will only deal 205% damage (missing the 25% increased fire).

Last edited by TheRabbit303 on Jun 29, 2012, 12:54:24 AM

Posted by
on Jun 29, 2012, 12:53:36 AM

'

That is a big ol' wall o' text you got there.
Let's say you have a wand with innate 10% spell damage, a mod on it that has an additional 30% spell damage, a shield with 15% spell damage, 50% spell damage from skills and 25% increased fire damage.
Spells that deal fire damage will now do (1 + 0.1 + 0.3 + 0.15 + 0.5 + 0.25)x damage. Aka: 230% damage.
Cold/Lightning spells will only deal 205% damage (missing the 25% increased fire).

Well, that is the part which I kinda understand myself. I mainly want to know what happens with Ground slam and Elemental hit. As Ele hit is dex skill, It shouldn't be affected by spell damage increases, as far as I understand, only elemental ones will add damage for, let's say, that Ele hit or Ground slam.

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Posted by
on Jun 29, 2012, 1:07:53 AM

Skills that deal damage based o n a weapon (Ground Slam, Elemental Hit, ect) are Attacks.
Skills which are not attacks are Spells.
Attacks deal Weapon Damage. Some attacks also deal Secondary Damage, which is not affected by weapon-specific modifiers, but is not spell damage. An example of this is Infernal Blow - the initial hit is weapon damage, and affected by anything that affects weapon/melee/insert-type-of-your weapon-here damage. The explosion is not based on your weapon damage - it's secondary damage. It's not affected by anything specific to weapons, but is affected by generic increases to all damage, or to specific types of damage it's dealing (usually fire, but other damage types can be added)
Some spells deal no damage (auras, curses, etc). Spells which deal damage (usually) deal Spell Damage, which is affected by damage modifiers that increase/reduce spell damage. An exception would be Detonate Dead, which deals secondary damage (see above), and is thus not affected by spell-specific modifiers. This is both for balance, and because thematically the spell doesn't directly do damage, it causes a corpse to explode, and the corpse, rather than the spell directly, deals damage to nearby enemies.
Please let me know if any of this is unclear and I will attempt to refine my explanation to the point you understand.

Posted by
Mark_GGG
on Jun 29, 2012, 1:27:59 AM

Spells: List a critical chance on them.
Attacks: Don't.

Posted by
on Jun 29, 2012, 2:38:58 AM

'

Spells: List a critical chance on them.
Attacks: Don't.

Not entirely true - Secondary damage, being not based on a weapon, needs a critical strike chance from the skill as well, so attacks which deal secondary damage will list a critical strike chance. Infernal Blow does, and I believe Lightning Strike does as well - a holdover from an old version of the skill that dealt secondary damage which took a while to be noticed and removed - it's out in 0.9.11

Posted by
Mark_GGG
on Jun 29, 2012, 2:42:37 AM

'

Skills that deal damage based o n a weapon (Ground Slam, Elemental Hit, ect) are Attacks.
Skills which are not attacks are Spells.
Attacks deal Weapon Damage. Some attacks also deal Secondary Damage, which is not affected by weapon-specific modifiers, but is not spell damage. An example of this is Infernal Blow - the initial hit is weapon damage, and affected by anything that affects weapon/melee/insert-type-of-your weapon-here damage. The explosion is not based on your weapon damage - it's secondary damage. It's not affected by anything specific to weapons, but is affected by generic increases to all damage, or to specific types of damage it's dealing (usually fire, but other damage types can be added)
Some spells deal no damage (auras, curses, etc). Spells which deal damage (usually) deal Spell Damage, which is affected by damage modifiers that increase/reduce spell damage. An exception would be Detonate Dead, which deals secondary damage (see above), and is thus not affected by spell-specific modifiers. This is both for balance, and because thematically the spell doesn't directly do damage, it causes a corpse to explode, and the corpse, rather than the spell directly, deals damage to nearby enemies.
Please let me know if any of this is unclear and I will attempt to refine my explanation to the point you understand.

Thanks for the info. Now it's clear to me. I was kinda thinking the same, but wanted to be sure. And you explained the thing with 2ndary damages, I thought that they are affected by weapon specific modifiers.
Thanks. :)

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Posted by
on Jun 29, 2012, 9:50:47 AM

'

Spells: List a critical chance on them.
Attacks: Don't.

I find it easier to determine whether an ability is a Spell or Attack by checking if it has an 'Attack time' or a 'Casting time' on my action bar.

Posted by
Ryjeon
on Jun 29, 2012, 5:53:15 PM

Completely new to the game (bored/frustrated with Diablo and have heard good things about PoE - enjoying so far), so I have a basic question. Is spell damage, cast time, and/or cast speed at all based on physical damage and/or weapon swing speed?

Posted by
leroyyrogers
on Jul 9, 2012, 4:40:53 AM

no, spells such as fireball, sparks, ect. Do not benefit from a weapons dps or attack speed at all. However magic weapons and above can spawn with mods that can still effect spells. Such as spell damage, elemental damage (the % ones, not the dmg range ones) crit chance, ect. These mods can spawn on weapons (not just wands, the typical spell user weapon).

Posted by
on Jul 9, 2012, 5:00:23 AM