Hey guys quick question:
When you get stats on your gear that give elemental damage (e.g. cold) does it also improve the damage of your cold abilities?
I didn’t think so at first, but then i was looking at the character screen on my amazon. Typically if you use Freezing Arrow the C screen shows two numbers. The top number is your front end damage, a combo of your physcial and elemental damage combined. The bottom number is damage from your talent straight from your skill tree (in this case Freezing Arrow).
However, when i equiped a Cold damage charm it increased not only the top number but also the bottom number too.
Excited, i flicked over to my lightning java skills and equiped a lightning charm. The charm only improved the top number and did nothing to the bottom.
Is this intended or is it a bug? Are some skills an exception? Is the freezing arrow damage on my character screen not accurate?
yup
just doesn’t work for magic damage or poison as those are not elements
Does elemental damage increase spell damage?
The only thing that boosts spell damage (aside from synergies and +skill) are things that say, + #% To [Element] Skill Damage, like Rainbow Facet Jewels.
Anything that adds (for example) +1-2 Cold Damage, adds it to weapon attacks only. It will be added to Melee/Ranged Weapon Attacks like Guided Arrow, or Jab, but not to spells like Frozen Orb, or Chain Lightning.
Also, on Skills like Lightning Fury, the damage being reported in your Character Screen shows two values. Weapon Damage, which only the initial javelin does, and the Spell Damage. Once the javelin splits, only the reported Spell (lightning) Damage would be applied to each enemy.
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There is only a few items in the game that have this effect (only rune words and uniques) but its Lightning, Fire, Cold and Poison “Skill Damage” +X% also another way to get extra damage is to find items that have -X% to enemy Lightning, Fire, Cold and Poison Resistance it works in a sort of inverted way by lowering the enemies resistance to an element amplifying the damage. The minus to enemy resistances is particularly good because some enemies wind up with 95% res to an element so by lets say lowering that res from 95% to 90% you increase your elemental damage by 100% to that monster.
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Lightning damage is meant to be volatile. Damage increases, be they from charms or listed as adding “lightning skill damage”, will often only affect the top end while the bottom end generally remains a very low number. For example, a lightning skill doing between 3-4389 would not be an unusual range. Adding a skill charm would then change this damage value range from 3-4586, etc. The minimum damage would remain static, but the top end has noticeably shifted up.