Can anyone explain if the cold damage form of Binary Star is still converted to fire damage via the Red Giant node? What I am essentially asking is: Do I have two fire damage orbs (with all the benefits of fire damage from affixes/tree/passives), or one fire (with all the benefits of fire damage from affixes/tree/passives) and one cold that only scales with what ever applies on the tree/passives and no affix from gear scaling? Also, if any devs happen by this, can we get all base damage and base crit info for every skill tree spell proc/dot so we can calculate scaling?
PS: I understand some of these descriptions have yet to be implemented, but I’d like some access so that a resource may be compiled.
Thanks for the info. I’m trying to build a fire focused damage over time build, so I was just a little confused how damage scaling works with Binary System. What I’ve gathered from your statement is that the original base damage is split between cold and fire instead of adding an additional orb with 100% Black Hole damage (but as cold). So if I wanted to scale pure fire-damage/damage-over-time taking binary system would not be ideal? Or is scaling the fire part of Binary System unaffected by the fact that there are two “stars?”
The way I read the spell, and forgive me if I’m misinterpreting, is that Binary System gives me two sources (up from 1) that deal 100% of base damage (as their respective types), plus the 100% more damage from the node, and then the cold damage is converted to fire from the Red Giant node.
this is correct as far as i can tell. the in-game info is a little vague on the skill tree for black hole, so hopefully that gets an update at some point. but just thinking about it in the abstract: if it worked as you previously thought (2 sources of damage, one cold, one fire, with 100% base damage each), then that one node would be extremely over-powered. it already has 100% “more” damage (it doesn’t specify in the tree but typically “more” is multiplicative) so if it also doubled the base damage it would quickly scale out of control.
i think you would probably want to avoid the node for a fire/DoT build, but you could theoretically make it work with the right gear. the “elemental damage over time” affix scales the best out of other affixes a build like this would want (elemental damage, spell damage, fire damage, cold damage, damage over time, etc) and would also apply to the cold DoT of the secondary black hole. this may be a worthy goal to shoot for to give your damage a noticeable bump in late-game, since gearing for it would be a little harder than using other, less specific gear.
one problem with this approach is the idols. the no-brainer choice for a fire/DoT sorc are these fire dmg (doubled when over 300 mana) ones which would not help scale the cold DoT. there are similar ones for lightning damage but i don’t believe there are cold ones. they are still probably the best choice even if you choose to go that way, because there’s simply not a comparable affix for the idol slot. if you felt your damage was sufficient without them you could instead focus on ward generated per second and mana spent gained as ward idols.
No, since Binary System gives 100% more damage (which is very HUGE) it’s definitely still worth it.
Skills that have split damage between multiple damage types are not that rare in LE and you scale each individual part with respective damage increases.
Even if you would be a primary fire build, scaling the relatively “unwaanted” Cold Damage Over Time is still relatively easy, since Cold DoT damage scale with such things as “Elemental Damage” or “Elemental Damage Over Time”.
Depending on how many other multiplicative modifiers you have in the Black Hole Tree, Binary System almost doubles the damage, so you don’t “lose” any noticable Fire Damage so to speak.
You can still focus mainly on Fire Damage, but if you put in some generic “spell damage”, “elemental damage” or “elemental damage over time” affixes, the cold part of the skill gets scaled as well.
A 100% more multiplier will always double the damage you get regardless of how many other "more"s you have. I suspect that the Binary System node doubles the damage (100% more) then splits it between cold & fire, so you wouldn’t “loose” any fire damage but you’d gain 100% of whatever you did have as fire as cold as well.
Thanks for all of the input. This discussion cleared up a lot with respect to the direction I should take the build. I agree that doubling sources and the damage would be ridiculous, so I’m happy that’s not the case. Really loving the feedback.
