I’ve been seeing affixes on gear that give +% to lightning damage and others to shock damage. Does anyone know if I’m a lightning Sorc what the difference between those would be? All my skills just say “lightning damage” but I can only imagine that Shock is related to lightning skills as well?
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Is one direct damage and one damage over time?
Shock is a skill tag for Sorceress. Lightning is a damage type.
Shock skills deal lightning damage.
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Yet both have own stats, so i.e. you can get an item that has +X% Shock damage and you can also get an item that has +X% Lightning damage. Looking at the talents tree: all lightning skill abilities of type lightning have also the schock tag. So the question about the difference of both still stands.
Same as frost and cold damage
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Another prime example of stats clutter.
If shoch is lightning, or lightning skills are tagged as shocked, why have both?
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Found this thread while googling to answer this exact question. This was confusing to me.
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Maybe it confusing for Sorceress and less for other classes.
Barbarian can have 2HD-sword with partially LIGHTING damage, but will never had access to SHOCK-magic of Sorcerers.
Hence All except sorcerers cant benefit of shock-damage but can from lighting-damage.
- That what i think.
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Because classes other than the Sorceress can have sources of Lightning damage but can definitely not have sources of Shock damage, as that one’s exclusive to Sorceress, would be my guess.
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This reminds me to D2, +X lightning damage mean it is damage added to weapons so it is useless for casters. I just hope here it applies to any attack, physical or spells.
They need to clean this up for sure. Is there some point to having shock and lightning??
There isn’t a stat to track shock damage on the stats list and shock doesn’t increase lightning damage stat. I had a chest piece that increased shock damage and another that increased lightning damage. The lightning damage can be tracked but the shock one can’t, makes me loose lightning damage stat. Not sure which to choose from.
As states earlier in the thread, ‘Shock’ refers to skills. There is no ‘Shock’ damage. You track what rank your various ‘Shock’ skills are by looking at your skill tree. Each skill tell you how many ranks come from items. +Shock Dmg and +Lightning Dmg stack.
+Skill increases the rank of a single skill.
+Shock Skills increases the rank of all skills tagged with ‘Shock.’
+Shock DMG increases the dmg of all ‘Shock’ skills.
+Lightning damage increases all sources of lightning damage regardless if it comes from an item or a skill.
If you are trying to increase damage then take both, they stack. Otherwise compare the two; I nicer more detailed tooltip would be beneficial to the game for sure.
Most likely you want +Skill though if you can get it. Additional +Skill affixes don’t just increase damage. e.g. increasing ranks of Teleport (a shock skill) reduces its cooldown.
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I know I’m late to the party here but I thought I could clear this up.
Shock is a different element than lightning.
It’s the element of surprise.
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What I mean is in the stats list where it shows your damage with stat there is no category for shock. You could have 100% bonus shock but you won’t find it like damage with lightning or crit, etc.
Yeah agree, there is plenty of tooltip/stat tracking improvements to be made.
But to the core of the topic. Shock refers to sorc skills tagged as ‘shock’, lightning refers to any lightning dmg regardless if it comes from a shock skill, a druid storm skill, an item… etc…
that’s so dumb. if shock skills deal lightning damage then why is there even both names in the game? It should just be Lightning damage, without the need for a shock skill tag.
Makes zero sense.
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I beg to differ. I’m looking at my equipped wand with an att: 13% increased Shock Damage.
But someone mentioned that other classes might be able to use lightning damage, and shock might be specifically for sorcerer
Edit: I can temper an item to increase shock damage or lightning damage. So confusing.
As you branch out to playing other games when you become an adult, you will realize that games use skill type tags, and damage types.
Sometime not all the time these things can be used at the same time.
I know it’s a crazy new frontier having us dedicated fans have to actually look at multiple things if we want.
Edit:
The definition to “adult” used in this post is someone that has dedicated at least 18 years game time in the State of FL.
Other States may have different age statutes pertaining to the maturity of the relevant gamer’s time investment.
Please check you local gaming Authority, as lack of knowledge does not hold up in court as a defendable excuse.
Sorcerer has shock skills, which deal lightning damage. +shock damage will affect damage from those skills.
Crackling energy is lightning damage. Druid lightning storm is a storm skill. We had a rune that generated druid lightning bolts. These all benefit from +lightning damage but not +shock damage.