I believe I have found a bug with the way this skill scales damage, depending on which skill specializations are taken. I originally opened a thread in the general section asking about why this may be, but now I think it is just a bug. Thread here: Do implicits affect spells differently than affixes?
First, the items:
This is what I will refer to as the “curse” wand, since it has a curse mod which is absent from the other wands: Curse-wand hosted at ImgBB — ImgBB
These wands I will refer to as “lightning” and “exalted”, with lightning referring to the rare weapon with lightning damage and exalted referring to the exalted weapon with adaptive damage. weapons hosted at ImgBB — ImgBB
Test scenario:
I stripped my character of all items and idols, and only equipped the various wands to check changes in the damage. I had to take some passives to unlock the skill and specialize in it. For this, I took 8/8 bone aura, and 8/8 stolen vitality. These add armor and vitality respectively, and should not affect the spell’s damage. I only had 10 points to specialize in, and will note the configurations of spec as best as I can. All DPS values are from the tooltip itself. I did not test that the actual damage is higher or lower than expected, but based on my original findings in the general thread I think the tooltip is at least generally accurate (so if it’s lower it’s actually lower, if not precise). All specs not specifically mentioned were taken at their lowest value needed to continue through the tree, and did not seem to impact damage at all. My character has 3 int.
Baseline (no spell specs):
No wand: 101 DPS
Lightning wand: 648 DPS
Exalted wand: 878 DPS
Curse wand: 1416 DPS
1/1 Plague of Eyes (this seems to work correctly):
No wand: 116 DPS
Lightning wand: 685 DPS
Exalted wand: 917 DPS
Curse wand: 1467 DPS
1/1 Scourge, no Plague of Eyes (this seems wrong; neither the adaptive nor necrotic spell damage is being multiplied, probably. Or, the lightning is when it shouldn’t):
No wand: 101 DPS
Lightning wand: 950 DPS
Exalted wand: 878 DPS
Curse wand: 1416 DPS
1/1 Scourge, 1/1 Plague of Eyes (still wrong, but doesn’t seem to be an interaction issue between these):
No wand: 116 DPS
Lightning wand: 987 DPS
Exalted wand: 917 DPS
Curse wand: 1467 DPS
Removing plague of eyes/scourge and moving to the right side of the tree:
1/2 Rotten to the Core (again, this is doing something weird, likely in the lightning/adaptive/necrotic damage):
No wand: 101 DPS
Lightning wand: 689 DPS
Exalted wand: 878 DPS
Curse wand: 1416 DPS
2/2 Rotten to the Core (same as 1/2 but more pronounced):
No wand: 101 DPS
Lightning wand: 729 DPS
Exalted wand: 878 DPS
Curse wand: 1416 DPS
2/2 Rotten to the Core, 1/2 Concentrated Rot (concentrated rot seems to have the same issue as rotten to the core and scourge):
No wand: 101 DPS
Lightning wand: 848 DPS
Exalted wand: 878 DPS
Curse wand: 1416 DPS
2/2 Rotten to the Core, 2/2 Concentrated Rot (same as above but more significant effect):
No wand: 101 DPS
Lightning wand: 970 DPS
Exalted wand: 878 DPS
Curse wand: 1416 DPS
As you can see from the data, Scourge, Rotten to the Core, and Concentrated Rot all seem to either affect added lightning spell damage when they shouldn’t, or they don’t affect adaptive/necrotic damage when they should. This is speculation on my part, but we can see that the obviously better (read, higher total mods and/or damage) are indeed better without these specializations, and then with them only the lightning seems to be scaling.
Please let me know if you want any additional information, I tried to include everything I could to make this reproducible and obvious.