Understanding math and dmg buckets will make any build work

Console Discussion
1

I keep seeing how classes have one or two “viable” builds and people aren’t looking at other skills because they aren’t meta. The truth of the matter is if you understand how dmg works along with the math behind it, you can make any build destroy things. I’m currently using a double swing build with barbarian without any shouts or ultimate skills and I am demolishing t4 at lvl 69. (Build is 2 basic attacks for arsenal passive, double swing, iron skin, chain pull for berserk and stomp to stun around me)

There are 5 main multipliers for your dmg, otherwise known as “buckets”.
They are your primary stat multiplier (str for barbs, dex for rogues, etc). Every 10 of each stat adds 1% to your dmg multiplier.
The next is vulnerability dmg. If you have 60% vuln dmg, you’ll do 1.6x your dmg.
The next is + dmg to stuff. This could be + dmg to bleeding enemies, healthy enemies, stunned enemies, whatever you see plus dmg to, it all gets added together for one big multiplier. So +35% with dw and +10% vs bleeding and +20% vs stunned would be a total of 65% or a 1.65 multiplier.
The next one is crit dmg.
The final one is any aspect that says x% dmg. So for example, 5% more dmg to core skills up to x30% would be a 1.3% multiplier.

HERE’S THE KEY
You don’t want to stack everything into one mulitplier and instead raise your lowest multipler.
+++++++ Example +++++++++
Let’s suppose you are trying to figure out what to put in your paragon tree and you have a choice between 10% vuln dmg or 20% dmg to bleeding targets. Your current stats are 500 str (50% dmg), 90% vuln dmg (1.9 multiplier), 500% total + dmg when adding it up from your detailed stat page (6 multiplier).

Now let’s suppose your base hit would be 5000.
So before choosing you would do 5000 x 1.5 x 1.9 x 6 = 85,500

Let’s say you decided to go with your added dmg to bleeding targets making your + total dmg go up to 520%
So now it’s 5000 x 1.5 x 1.9 x 6.2 = 88,350.

Now this time you got the 10% from vuln.
So now it’s 5000 x 1.5 x 2 x 6.0 = 90,000

So even though it only went up 10% instead of 20%, you end up doing more dmg. So the bottom line is, don’t stack everything into one of your mulipliers because you’ll start getting diminishing returns. Once you understand this concept, you can start dominating with any build in the game.

4 Likes
2

Hey, thanks for the post.
I was looking into this actually yesterday because i was trying to find upgrade for my necro build. And this makes sense and i was wondering how this would actually work.

So let me try to repeat what you said, to see if i understood this correctly.

Imagine my stats are like:
+X% Damage to Distant Enemies = 25%
+X% Damage to Crowd-Controlled Enemies = 5%
Int: 350

Weapon 1: And then a new weapon drops, and that would make my stats like this
+X% Damage to Distant Enemies = 20%
+X% Damage to Crowd-Controlled Enemies = 23%
int: 300

Weapon 2: And then a new weapon drops, and that would make my stats like this
+X% Damage to Distant Enemies = 35%
+X% Damage to Crowd-Controlled Enemies = 2%
int: 375

That means that weapon 1 would actually be the biggest upgrade, even tho it lowers the other a bit, right?

3

Not quite. Any plus dmg to something would fall into the bucket of +dmg. So to simplify it, when you look at the affix that rolls on gear like 40% dmg to ranged enemies and 30% to bleed enemies would all fall into that “+ dmg to enemy bucket”

On the other hand, when looking at the affix and it’s a choice between one of those and vulnerable or crit dmg (assuming you are critting) then those would be the most bang for your buck because they are in a different “bucket”.

Outside of that, you have the legendary effects like 30% dmg to stunned. This would be different and be an actual multiplier and you can see this with advanced tooltips because in grey it will show an x by the percentage.

Lastly, if you have a bunch of + dmg stuff and vulnerable dmg, then primary stat would be good because 100 primary adds 10% to your primary stat multiplier.

For example, if you have 300% vuln dmg and 500% + dmg. Then 100 primary stat will give more than the other two because your primary multiplier will be the lowest multiplier.

4

Ah okay, then that makes sense i think.

So that means that when i chill, and slow enemies, i won’t benefit from getting both of those appliers? So i could just have +20 to cc’ed instead of having 10 to cc’ed and 10 to chilled enemies? That would both be the same multiplier?

So you actually wanna look at the different buckets you have (primary bucket, +dmg bucket, vulnerable bucket and crit bucker) and then make the lowest one higher i think right?

Then i wonder, which one suffers the least from diminishing returns

5

Right. And the amount of diminishing returns is the same for each bucket. Basically when you notice one of the buckets is 2 or 3 times larger than one of the other ones, then you would want to increase the size of the smaller bucket.

For example

1.5x2.6x4.8 = 18.72

Adding 0.2 to each different modifier

1.5x2.6x5 = 19.5

And 1.7x2.6x4.8 = 21.26

And 1.5x2.8x4.8 = 20.16

So you can see how add 0.2 to each modifier can change depending on which one gets that 0.2

6

Yeah, cool thanks for the info. This helps a lot actually.

One thing i would like to know, not sure if u know this. But i’m playing a necro and one thing i could never figure out is that, why type of added damage is actually better, or doest it not matter?

Lets say i play bonespear, i always wonder would having X crit chance or X crit damage with bonespear be better than the regular X crit chance and X crit damage? Or lets say, crit damage vs cc’ed enemies vs normal crit damage.

For both i would feel that the normal crit chance and crit damage is better than with a specific modifier i think right?