Say you’re trying to maximize a lightning build and you’re trying to stack as much Lightning Skill damage % as possible.
Does rerolling the elemental damage in a weapon to lightning add anything extra on top? Or do only the actual damage numbers matter?
Back in the day it did. Now? Not any more. If you have GG stats and the only thing to roll is base damage, then it’s get the numbers as high as you can. Blizz could always change that later on, but I don’t see that happening. At this point with sets and other items, I really don’t think it would really matter in the long run.
I don’t think it matters on +% to skill damage. It does matter on some wizard skills I think. Like if you had lightning on your wep, it is considered “lightning damage” on skills that give boost to x amount of different elemental damage you do…I think.
No, only the values matter, the element of your attacks is determined by the element of the rune on your abilities. For example, the DH’s dagger Karlei’s Point drops natively with Cold as its element. However, if I use Impale with the Ricochet rune applied, all damage done by Impale is lightning (as that’s the element of Ricochet), regardless of the weapon’s native element type.
Another good example would be the Barbarian’s Bul-Kathos mighty weapons which drop natively with Holy damage on them. Holy is an element that Barbarians cannot cause, they cause whatever element the Barb’s abilities do.
So, when looking to maximise your elemental damage bonus on gear (e.g. on bracers / amulet) you match the element to that on the rune of your ability, not to the element of your weapon.
The only case I can think of where the damage element of the weapon actually matters is wizard’s Elemental Exposure passive. The damage element of the weapon counts as one stack of Elemental Exposure.
Other than that the weapon damage element doesn’t matter. I think.
take it from an actual goood player here, it does matter for some mechanics in the game, it is not irrelevant in all fashions, in most it is, but in some it does.
The answer is ‘No’ (in 99% of all cases), but it should.
If the element on the weapon mattered, it would result in the search for good weaponry taking even longer, because it would add another affix that would have to drop correctly for your build. What if I want to play Shadow/Impale, but want to switch between Ricochet (lightning) and Overpenetration (cold)? I’d need two different weapons. Weapons like the BK swords are Holy, and can only be used by a class that doesn’t do Holy damage. What element would Barb’s existing BKs be be converted to? It’s way better that the element is controlled by the ability’s rune than by the weapon’s base element.
What if the elemental damage does not get converted by physical attack skills (melee attacks and ranged physical attacks like arrows)?
I would work like in D2.
If you have a weapon that deals
…then your attack would also deal:
… instead of just 1350 X Type damage where the elemental damage is determined by the skill.
That is also how it was shown to work in the Diablo 3 Gameplay Trailer:
Don’t call yourself a good player and then block your profile.
Generally people hide their profiles so that other people can’t see their forum activity pages, not because they want to prevent people seeing their armoury pages, and it’s not possible to allow access to one but not the other. Besides, it’s possible to see anyone’s armoury pages with very little effort…
can you proc wyrdward with weapon damage != lightning?
It’s a 0/10 failtroll.
I remember that and I remember liking that. I guess it was too complicated for Wilson to grasp…
Well in any event I rerolled to the near-highest possible, and turned out to be Fire damage.
No skin off my nose.
Yeah, elemental weapon should increase your elemental damage as well.
For example:
Fire elemental weapon should increase your fire skills by 20% or 30% or something so people will care about the elemental in their weapons.
I also thought the secondary elemental effects were awesome. Not sure why they removed them.
These secondary elemental effects would make people care about the element they are using.
It also would have been relatively easy to come up with good ideas for secondary effecs
Fire
Primary: deal 70% of its damage instantly and 30% of its damage over 3 seconds - stacks without limit
Secondary: 10% chance that the DoT effect increases from 30% to xxx%
Frost
Primary: deals 100% of its damage instantly
Secondary: applies chill stacks and has a chance to freeze enemies
Lightning
Primary: deals 100% of its damage instantly
Secondary: 20% chance that lightning damage emanates a small secondary Chain Lightning that hits up to 2 additional enemies for xx% of the initial damage
Poison
Primary: deal 40% of its damage instantly and the remaining 60% over 5 or 6 seconds - stacks without limit
Secondary: every stack of active poison also adds a stack of Poisoned, which reduces enemies healing and damage by 2% per stack - this stacks up to 10 times
Arcane
Primary: deal 100% of its damage instantly
Secondary: 15% chance to deal xx% of its initial damage in a 10 yards radius
It depends on how it is balanced.
If the Primary Effect (the overall damage) is the same and only the secondary effect differs, and is still within a reasonable range, than it should be okay.
Theoretically fire damage could be slightly higher overall, but if it would need a few seconds to fulfill its total damage potential (because it deals a part of its damage over x seconds instead of instantly), then it might be less useful.
There are other and better ways to make people care about the elemental damage type on weapons/items imo.
Physical Attack skills should not even convert 100% of elemental damage on item into a specific element. Spells should do that, but not physical attacks (e.g. melee skills or arrows).
So since you’re such an
Maybe you could actually elaborate on the situations that it does matter to give a more helpful answer.
Yes, this is why it is useful to equip Thunderfury and Wyrdward on your follower
And you thought the lag with Ad is bad…wait until you figure this in as well
Right, then only let it hit the first 4-5 enemies it hits.
It still can have a cool ‘Arcane Nova’ animation, but it still would only hit ~5 enemies and not everyone.
That should solve the issue.
Don’t some of the skills and runes not mention an element. I seem to recall a bunch of them say “150% weapon damage” with no “as …(element)” so I always believed that those took their elemental type from the weapon…
For example, Tempest Rush does not mention an element in the base skill or some of its runes…