Does phys damage% on weapon with no local phys damage do anything?

No problem. There are also other factors to consider such as allowing leech mechanics on items that do not inherently feature physical damage for example.
All in all, multiple reasons exist for why these items can still roll these modifiers but some source of added physical damage is indeed needed to make them useful

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Direfell#7544 wrote:

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keppie#6373 wrote:

I think it's important to keep in mind that a lot of skills only deal damage based on a percentage of their phys damage being converted to f.e. lightning damage.

If you'd remove the phys rolls from that fanatic bow example's modifier pool, then you'd be making all such skills inherently unusable with that bow.
Lightning arrow, shockcaller arrow, etc all convert from a % of phys ...

But dont those skills still use whatever damage types are on the weapon + convert a portion of physical to an element?

Eg, I use a bolting staff with no physical damage. I can still use every quarterstaff skill with it, but the ice attacks will be doing lightning dmg.

Right, when using a fanatic bow that has 200 chaos damage, lightning arrow at level 20 (attack damage: 250%) would deal 350 chaos damage by initial arrow, and 350 chaos damage to nearby targets with beams. When using a phys bow that has 200 phys damage, lightning arrow would deal 210 phys damage + 140 lightning damage by initial arrow and 350 lightning damage to nearby targets with beams. Phys -> lightning conversion just shifts one damage type to another, it doesn't prevent any non-physical damage.

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keppie#6373 wrote:

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It also has a secondary damage source upon hitting walls or enemies in the form of a chaining lightning beam, for which the damage is 100% of physical damage converted to lightning. For that same fanatic bow with no added phys damage from anywhere, this would result in no damage since the beam is a pure lightning secondary damage source to which the other damage types on the initial projectile are not applied (it is no longer the initial projectile) and only increases to elemental dmg or lightning dmg will augment it further.

It doesn't work like that, but let's pretend it does. We use Lightning Arrow + Stormcaller Arrow, they need a weapon with physical damage (otherwise they are only half as effective, right?), why would anyone prefer a fanatic bow which doesn't innately deal phys damage over various of physical bows?

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keppie#6373 wrote:

No problem. There are also other factors to consider such as allowing leech mechanics on items that do not inherently feature physical damage for example.
All in all, multiple reasons exist for why these items can still roll these modifiers but some source of added physical damage is indeed needed to make them useful

Same, if your build relies on mechanics/interactions that scale off physical damage, you won't use a non-phys weapon, it's counter-effective. Even with %phys increases, PDPS-wise, they can't compete with normal weapons. And by the way, I'm concerned specifically about %increased physical damage mods, + phys flats are fine since they have a standalone effect on those weapons. Just like + ele flats have always been fine on physical weapons. So if you want to keep "some source of added physical damage" rollable on these weapons, I'm not against it. But I don't think that's what players would like to roll, I don't remember any mechanic that works good with just any amount of phys damage, it's usually the more the better.

You mentioned leech and I realised that phys life/mana leech mods on non-phys weapons also don't work on their own. They should be revisited as well. By revisiting I mean changing "physical" to the corresponding base damage type of the weapon. Lightning for the quarterstaves, chaos for the bows, phys/fire for the maces.

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MonaHuna#6449 wrote:

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keppie#6373 wrote:

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It also has a secondary damage source upon hitting walls or enemies in the form of a chaining lightning beam, for which the damage is 100% of physical damage converted to lightning. For that same fanatic bow with no added phys damage from anywhere, this would result in no damage since the beam is a pure lightning secondary damage source to which the other damage types on the initial projectile are not applied (it is no longer the initial projectile) and only increases to elemental dmg or lightning dmg will augment it further.

It doesn't work like that, but let's pretend it does. We use Lightning Arrow + Stormcaller Arrow, they need a weapon with physical damage (otherwise they are only half as effective, right?), why would anyone prefer a fanatic bow which doesn't innately deal phys damage over various of physical bows?

I think wether the various added damage to attacks get added to the secondary damage depends on wether the secondary damage source is still considered an attack. I'm not sure that is always the case, but it could be.
As for the fanatic bow example, i'd say a possible reason would be because it's the only bow that innately deals chaos damage which is twice as effective against ES ?

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MonaHuna#6449 wrote:

You mentioned leech and I realised that phys life/mana leech mods on non-phys weapons also don't work on their own. They should be revisited as well. By revisiting I mean changing "physical" to the corresponding base damage type of the weapon. Lightning for the quarterstaves, chaos for the bows, phys/fire for the maces.

Ok, so the leech example i gave isn't that bad. I'm not entirely sure, but isnt there a passive node somewhere that allows leech to be applied to elemental damage ? But even if so, with the tree being what it is and the unique jewels not being very affordable, i'm fairly sure that wouldn't be a viable solution for all builds.

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keppie#6373 wrote:

I think it's important to keep in mind that a lot of skills only deal damage based on a percentage of their phys damage being converted to f.e. lightning damage.

If you'd remove the phys rolls from that fanatic bow example's modifier pool, then you'd be making all such skills inherently unusable with that bow.
Lightning arrow, shockcaller arrow, etc all convert from a % of phys ...

this is irrelevant, you dont need any physical damage

you can have a skill that converts 100% phys to cold

and then equip a bow with 0 physical damage and 500 lightning damage

the skill will work fine, it'll just deal lightning damage

an example of this from poe 1,

https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Piscator%27s_Vigil

the wand has literally zero damage, you scale its damage through other means

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auspexa#1404 wrote:

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keppie#6373 wrote:

I think it's important to keep in mind that a lot of skills only deal damage based on a percentage of their phys damage being converted to f.e. lightning damage.

If you'd remove the phys rolls from that fanatic bow example's modifier pool, then you'd be making all such skills inherently unusable with that bow.
Lightning arrow, shockcaller arrow, etc all convert from a % of phys ...

this is irrelevant, you dont need any physical damage

you can have a skill that converts 100% phys to cold

and then equip a bow with 0 physical damage and 500 lightning damage

the skill will work fine, it'll just deal lightning damage

an example of this from poe 1,

https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Piscator%27s_Vigil

the wand has literally zero damage, you scale its damage through other means

Wouldn't a local physical % roll increase the range of damage that is converted? so it isn't useless. Even a elemental build wants % phy. Correct me if i am wrong on piscators, but if you have no global added damage (+flat ele damage), it would do nothing.

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gr0o0ve#1473 wrote:

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auspexa#1404 wrote:

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keppie#6373 wrote:

I think it's important to keep in mind that a lot of skills only deal damage based on a percentage of their phys damage being converted to f.e. lightning damage.

If you'd remove the phys rolls from that fanatic bow example's modifier pool, then you'd be making all such skills inherently unusable with that bow.
Lightning arrow, shockcaller arrow, etc all convert from a % of phys ...

this is irrelevant, you dont need any physical damage

you can have a skill that converts 100% phys to cold

and then equip a bow with 0 physical damage and 500 lightning damage

the skill will work fine, it'll just deal lightning damage

an example of this from poe 1,

https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Piscator%27s_Vigil

the wand has literally zero damage, you scale its damage through other means

Wouldn't a local physical % roll increase the range of damage that is converted? so it isn't useless. Even a elemental build wants % phy. Correct me if i am wrong on piscators, but if you have no global added damage (+flat ele damage), it would do nothing.

whether it would increase your damage or not depends on the build, obviously it would increase your damage if you're comparing it to an empty prefix but a different prefix could provide more dps. if your weapon has 50 base pdps, 150% inc phys is strictly worse than 150 lightning flat

again, you don't always want %phys, it completely depends on the build. and that's the point of piscator, you stack flat dmg bonuses on gear and with things like wrath

I was mainly responding to keppie's argument where he said "a lot of skills only deal damage based on a percentage of their phys damage being converted to", which is completely wrong and as far as I remember there isn't even a single skill in poe 1 or poe 2 that works this way. conversion is just an extra thing on skills, their damage is based on their attack damage multiplier, which is not based on any element