How to understand damage scaling

Hey, can someone help me understand how damage scaling works?

I’ve read about additive vs multiplicative, but I’m unsure how to tell the difference.

I’m struggling to figure out how to optimize my damage progression.

Sure!! It can be complicated:)

So most damage bonuses, like the % you see on equipment, most nodes in the tree etc are additive. They can also come from difference sources, like projectile damage, cold damage, attack damage and just generic damage (which affects everything).

Those all add up together to one large base multiplier.


Lets say all together you get 200% increased damage from them.

Next you have EXTRA damage...that adds to your damage based on (usually) your physical damage from the weapon. That is a seperate multiplier. It can also be 50% physical becomes cold etc. Those are applied after the initial damage boosts (or the other way around but it doesn't matter, still ends up the same).

Next up you have MORE.....any time you see more that is a totally seperate multiplier that happens after the last one.

So if your base damage is oh 5-10 and you have 200% increased damage from various sources, that makes your total 15-30. If you have 100% more damage, that is an additional multiplier that doubles the 15-30....making it 30-60.

Next up you have crits, again that is an additional multiplier that happens after the more damage one. A base crit multiplier is 100% or double damage. So a crit with the above damage would do 60-120....pretty amazing from a 5-10 base weapon isn't it?

But wait...there's more!!!

Finally you have attack speed. It's the more more multiplier lol. Attack speed determines how fast you attack, so is yet again another multiplier (and one of my favorites). Faster you attack more crits you get, more damage you do, more freeze buildup etc.

That is pretty much it, although you can have mods that add more fire/chaos etc damage (based on physical damage etc). It's how you build extreme amounts of damage on a character.

In PoE 2, basic attacks......are not that basic. They can GET very high damage levels. Every level the basic attack gets increases its' base damage multiplier (letting it be much higher than many of your skills eventually). Also basic attacks cost no mana, so any support gems that multiply your mana cost, don't cost anything to use on them. Some weapons can add things like chain attacks automatically, and you can make your basic attacks SICK by using them along with good supports.

There are also other modifiers out there, more damage when hitting bleeding enemies or poisoned enemies, auto crit when hitting armor broken enemies, large crit multipliers if you time your attack right etc. There are many ways to pump damage to extreme levels, often by combining various other abilities or debuffs etc.

Oh and also resists.......especially for elemental damage, you can give enemies negative resists....which is an additional multiplier for your damage after everything else is done. If a monster is at -50 fire resist and you hit him with 300 fire damage, he will take 450 fire damage I believe......so yep, yet another modifier.


Finally most classes in poe2 have multiple skills that convert some or all of your physical damage to an element. That means having high base physical damage gives you a ton of versatility in the elemental damage you do. Still can be good to focus on 1 element (like ice), or 2 elements (like ice and shock!) but the ability to convert your physical damage into mostly or all ice damage and super freeze things is really nice, so focusing on physical damage is often very useful.

Some ascendencies also offer "more" options, like 10% of all damage is added as more physical damage.....as an example.

Anyway that is my basic take on damage and how to get huge/insane/crazy amounts of it lol.

Personally love high base damage from projectile/attack nodes + bonuses on gear along with decent crit and multiplier and very fast attack speed. My favorite char is a deadeye and he totally rocks with his setup:)

Thanks!

That’s still a bit complicated but it helps me figure it out!