+x% Damage to Elites broken. "Status on Adds +x% to ____ damage?"

[MegaSkeleton]

I was super curious about the Adds +x% to Holy/Poison/ARcane/Fire/etc. Damage stat, as it seemed to me that it would be increasing my damage by X% as that type of damage on all attacks. So I bought a Stone of Jordan for my WD with +6% as holy damage. While testing it a lot of strange things were occurring and I didn't really come to any conclusions about the stat except for it seems whack right now. Only relatively consistent damage dealer I could find was Grasp of the Dead, which ticked for a lot of different amounts, but MOST often as 1579 damage. When fighting elites with the ring on, there would be no increase in damage vs Champ Packs, Elite Mobs or even Bosses. It was still ticking for 1579 most often. Maybe it works in increasing the chance to reach a higher damage bracket, but that seemed a peculiar and roundabout way to accomplish a +damage stat. But I don't know.

My methods of testing are far from rigorous, and I more made this thread to open discussion on these types of weird, less utilized stats. Do they work as intended? Or are they broken? How can we more rigorously test them with damage ranges being so seemingly wild?

[Nizaris]

Perhaps this is a job for the strategy affiliate site. I've been curious about this myself.

[sifuedition]

The elemental types only add to the base damage you see on the item. Cold has one of the only affects which is a chance to chill the target. Holy will make corpses despawn which can be helpful with Fallen mobs, etc. The rest are basically just cosmetic differences with corpses on fire, etc.

Edit: But I suspect I may be mis-understanding your question.

[MegaSkeleton]

The elemental types only add to the base damage you see on the item. Cold has one of the only affects which is a chance to chill the target. Holy will make corpses despawn which can be helpful with Fallen mobs, etc. The rest are basically just cosmetic differences with corpses on fire, etc.

Edit: But I suspect I may be mis-understanding your question.

Mayhaps you did. I'm referring to the stat on this item: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/stone-of-jordan
You might be thinking of the weapon damage modifier types.

[MegaSkeleton]

Perhaps this is a job for the strategy affiliate site. I've been curious about this myself.

Which one is that?

And I was quite curious myself, curious enough to take a 3m plunge, anyway.

[Lanthanide]

It seems obvious to me that that stat simply means if you have a skill that does 100 holy damage, it will now instead do 106 holy damage. If you have a skill that does 100 fire damage it will continue to do only 100 fire damage.

[MegaSkeleton]

Well I would agree with you but A) Kinda ****ty design (but that's no reason why it can't be that way), B) then why does the ring add damage to me even though it has no damage stats, C) I tried testing it on my monk but couldn't find a holy damage move that would do reliable numbers, only move I ever found with anything reliable was DOTS, otherwise numbers are all over the place.

It would be ****ty design just because it just doesn't make sense. It means it has to put the SOJ through 2 stat rolls BEFORE it's random attribute. (But it's nothing new that legendaries have to have the stars align to be really worth it) but furthermore, none of the bonus damage options is physical, leaving Barbarians pretty much in the dust. Plus the wording is a little unclear.

[Defenestrate]

none of the bonus damage options is physical, leaving Barbarians pretty much in the dust. Plus the wording is a little unclear.

While agree that the lack of physical damage is not cool, it really isn't unclear. It says adds x% to holy damage. Which means holy damage is multiplied. It doesn't say, as your first post worded "adds x% damage as holy."

Do note that there are builds that use primarily one element and the barbarian has quite a few options to go with the elemental damage of the weapon or even skills that do elemental damage.

From the tests I performed with my wizard though, spectral blade doesn't change any typed damage, but I never found it to proc the lightning stun from the lightning passive, even though my weapon does more than half it's damage in lightning damage. Seems kinda lack luster really. If a barb has a weapon that adds holy damage, that SoJ should add 6% to the holy damage the weapon deals when the skill doesn't change the damage type.

At least, IMO.

[Muggs]

This was covered on reddit not too long ago. + to damage modifiers affect your weapon damage and not your overall damage. So getting the items +6% holy or the popular Zunimassa's Journey that add + 6% poison affect everyone but it is adding that damage to your base weapon. This modifier is added no matter the type of damage you are doing since again it affects the base weapon only and does not matter what type of damage your weapon currently does.

I can't find the post right now but I am posting from a phone so my searching is a bit limited.

[MegaSkeleton]

This was covered on reddit not too long ago. + to damage modifiers affect your weapon damage and not your overall damage. So getting the items +6% holy or the popular Zunimassa's Journey that add + 6% poison affect everyone but it is adding that damage to your base weapon. This modifier is added no matter the type of damage you are doing since again it affects the base weapon only and does not matter what type of damage your weapon currently does.

I can't find the post right now but I am posting from a phone so my searching is a bit limited.

Thanks for clearing that up. So the tooltip is indeed very misleading, but still not very good. Ah well, maybe they'll improve it in the future, I'll hold onto it for now. See even in this thread there are a lot of confident misconceptions, my own included.


So with that cleared up, can anyone confirm or deny if they've had any success seeing if +damage to elites works?