Can anyone explain how these 3 things work as far as skill tags go? For instance Umbral Blades is tagged with “physical”. Does that mean it only scales with things specifically tagged as “physical” or does “melee physical” also work?
My assumption is that something tagged with “melee” only works with things tagged as “melee” but if it’s tagged as “physical” then anything with “physical” would work including “physical” and “melee physical” just not “melee” by itself. Is that correct?
Umbral Blades isn’t a melee skill so anything melee won’t affect it. The physical tag means that it does base physical damage.
OK so at a more broad level does that mean the tags have to always match exactly? Melee matches melee only but not melee physical?
Melee & physical are two different tags. Melee modifiers will apply to any skill that has the melee tag regardless of what element it does (phys, void, fire, etc), but it won’t apply to skils with the spell, throwing, bow or minion tags.
“Melee physical” means it has to be both melee AND physical. If it doesn’t have both tags, it doesn’t count. It’s like you tell your friend you want him to buy you a red Gatorade at the gas station. And he buys you a red Powerade. That’s the wrong thing! So he goes back and gets a blue Gatorade. Still wrong! It needs to be both red AND Gatorade. 
Right but you could look at it from the other way. If you look at the skill that has the scaling and it just says “physical” it sounds like a broader category that might include both physical and melee physical. I also don’t think I have seen a skill listed with “melee physical” but there are affixes with melee physical but maybe I just haven’t seen it. Sounds like the affix has to match exactly to the skill. Thanks for the info.
Those add flat damage of the type physical to melee skills.
That’s because “melee physical” is not a single tag, it is 2 tags, one is “melee” and one is “physical”, plenty of skills have both those 2 tage.
Kinda. “Physical” refers to what damage is done (phys, fire, poison, void, etc) while “melee” refers to how it is done (melee is not spell, throwing, bow or minion, many minions have melee attacks).
If you have any % increased physical damage affixes, they would affect only physical damage dealt by all melee/throwing/spell/bow skills. Any % increased melee damage modifiers would only affect melee skills (not bow, spell, throwing or minion skills) but would affect all damage that melee skill did regardless of the element (fire, phys, void, etc).
So if a skill has the tags “melee” and “physical” (like synchronized strike) and you have an affix that says increases “melee physical” damage you get scaling twice from 1 affix?
No, just once. But that affix would be flat added damage, not % increased (not that that affects the answer).
No, melee physical is a specific damage type. Some skills are melee void or melee fire. You may find an item that adds melee cold damage (these are flat damage like Llama said), but since your skill is physical, the affix is a waste of space. You are not scaling cold, only physical (unless a node modifies damage type).
Not really, you can go down the % increased melee damage route rather than the % increased physical route and still scale both. So saying it’s wasted is just wrong, it may not scale as well depending on how you’ve chosen to stack your modifiers or it may scale perfectly well. The devil, as they say, is in the detail.
You are right, it still is damage, just not scaled damage. No different than playing, lets say, pure physical cyclone in PoE and having a adds 10-20 flat cold on your 2h. Indeed damage, but there are much better affixes for that slot.
I am trying to work out why using a crystal sword that has melee ele tags with my werebear swipe does more dmg despite not having any elemental nodes with shards of attack speed and melee physical - it does more for swipe than my katana with same prefixes. Melee elemental should not work with swipe as my swipe has no elemental tags should it?
It does if you have changed Swipe to lightning in the Swipe tree.
Strange thing is I checked and it now has lightning tag, but no nodes I selected were lightning but all physical
Do you have the unique gloves Storm Paws (I think)? They have the same effect as the node that adds the lightning damage which adds the lightning tag.
Yup - that makes sense - thanks for the clarification!
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