How does spells work

Have been trying to read on the internet but without examples it seems a little hard to know. So

I have the talents Flame Wraith & Reapers.
The flame wraiths casts fireballs that do fire damage - the reapers talent adds necrotic damage to spells and attacks.

  • The ability have the tags: Fire, Necrotic, Spell … but!
  • The scaling tags are only Minion & Int ?

In short: Does +necrotic damage gets added to the fireballs cast by the Fire Wraiths? & do they scale on both necrotic damage and fire?

Next:
I have 434% minion damage
550 % minion spell damage
601 % minion fire damage

What of this does apply to a minion that casts a firespell? 434+550+601%? or something different?

Also what is the difference in Scaling Tags and Minion Tags

Does this mean that the ability only scales of Minion damage and int. ?

Read the full description of the spell, there should be a formula for calculating the damage.

Minions have nothing. No dps, no dmg numbers

There isn’t a formula for calculating the damage. But in general, you need to do the following by damage element (fire, phys, void, etc) & by damage type (melee, spell, throwing, bow):

  • Take the base damage
  • Add any flat damage (eg, the Reapers node) & multiply it by the skill’s added damage effectiveness, this is 100% by default
  • Sum up any increased damage (by element, % fire damage won’t affect flat void damage, for example) & multiply the total flat damage by. It don’t forget the 4% per point of attribute from the tags.
  • Take any of the more damage multipliers (by element, if no element is specified, apply them) & apply them separately* (if you have two 50% more damage multipliers, it’s x1.5x1.5)

That will give you your total non-crit damage.

As far as the tags are concerned, they’re mainly used to tell the game what element the base damage is & for certain unique modifiers (eg, increased ignite chance for fire skills).

Edit: For minions the process you’d go through is the same but you only take into account any “minion damage” affixes & any % increased damage per attribute point such as Int since % damage on your gear that doesn’t specify minion won’t affect the minion (unless the skill tree has a node that allows it to such as two of the Ballista nodes).

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I have Flame Wraith (Fire ball Wraiths) - They have necrotic, fire & minion tag

I have the talents
“Monolight Pyre” (adds flat fire & necrotic damage to spells)
“Reapers” (adds flat fire & necrotic damage to spells)
The Wraiths only casts fireballs.
I have:
434% Minion damage
550% Minion spell damage
601% Minion fire damage
446% Minion Necrotic damage

What do i use to calculate the damage?

Maybe this should changed so its easy to see what talents that currently effect a skill. Or just a better way to know. Since its not totally clear if +flat necrotic damage is added to a fire only spell

Just the minion parts. If it doesn’t say “minion” then it is applied to you, and minions are independent of you, so only stuff that works specifically for them will be applied.

The flat damage is always added if it’s relevant (ie, not melee damage to a spell).

Assuming those figures are from your character screen (it double counts generic damage modifiers in all of the more specific lines, so the 434% minion damage would be a large part of the 550% minion spell damage).

  1. You take the base minion damage, split it 50:50 between fire & necrotic
  2. Add in the flat damage from the Moonlight Pyre & Reapers passives/nodes
  3. Multiply the flat necrotic damage by: 434% + (550%-434%) + (446%-434%) = 562% increased
  4. Multiply the flat fire damage by: 434% + (550%-434%) + (601%-434%) = 717% increased
  5. Take any more damage nodes in the skill tree & multiply the numbers you got from 3 & 4 by them
  6. Add up the numbers from 5.

Why do i split the base minion damage 50:50? I think this is the part i dont get.
On other talents it says “converts the damage into fire”

This is not displayed over the “Fire Wraiths” Does this mean that even though they casts fireballs they still deal 100% necrotic? (If it says its not converted)

  • Originally they are displayed only to do necrotic damage by the tooltip

Because you said the skill had the necrotic & fire tags. I’m not at my pc at the moment so can’t check what tags Wraiths get when they’re fully converted to summon fire Wraiths.

As I said earlier. The damage element tags (fire, necrotic, etc) are used by the game to determine what elements the base damage is. So if a skill only has 1 damage element tag (eg, physical) then the base damage would be pure physical. If a skill had 2 damage element tag (eg, fire & necrotic) then the game would split the base damage evenly between the two.

The Fire Wraith node doesn’t convert all Wraiths to fire, it only gives you a % chance to summon a fire Wraith instead of a normal one.

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I understand what you are saying. For me its just a wierd interaction.

You have a necrotic damage minion with only the necrotic & minion tag.
You get access to flame wraiths that casts fireballs.
The ability gets the “fire” tag, but dosent convert any damage into fire. Instead the game splits the base damage of fire&necrotic. Might be better if the game then says: Converts 50% of the damage into fire?

Or it’s like Tempest Strike & the necrotic tag is for the melee Wraiths & the fire tag is for the fire Wraiths (more likely). What happens if you have 100% chance to summon fire Wraiths? Does that remove the necrotic tag?

I have more than 100% chance to summon a flame wraith. And it dosent remove the necrotic tag.

There for i believe they only deal fire damage with fireballs only. and the reapers talent dosent work. that adds necrotic damage to spells?

That would require testing with % increased minion necrotic damage in that case to see if the damage is pure fire (in which case the % necrotic damage would have no effect) or split between fire & necrotic.

However, the flat necrotic damage from Reapers would still be added (because the node adds the damage to spells & attacks) & it’d stay necrotic until there’s an effect that converts it (which there isn’t).

Its really hard to test by myself since minions have big difference in damage / crit / multi & it takes forever with talents respecs.

Should really remove the - levels when you change skills atleast before 1.0 to get it all tested

If you’ve already got a few points in the Reapers node then just unequip your gear & equip some gear (idols are simplest if you get some necrotic damage idols, they have both player & minion damage modifiers on them) with % minion necrotic damage & maybe a white Decaying Homunculous since that has % minion necrotic damage as well.

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