Methodology

In two pictures above you see an example of testing whether or not Devouring Blaze is a separate multiplier.

  • hit a monster million times
  • record MIN and MAX
  • calculate lowest possible MIN and highest possible MAX based on recorded values
  • apply the bonus
  • record again to acquire upper and lower bounds on what this bonus could be
  • use these bounds to disprove your hypotheses about the bonus until only one remains
  • gg

Findings

  1. Damage you deal is directly proportional to your Weapon Damage (thanks god)
  2. Same for skill multiplier
  3. Damage from Int and Lightning Damage are multiplicative with each other
  4. Lightning damage is additive with the following (replace Lightning with Physical for Barb stuff)
  1. All Damage
  2. Core Skill Damage
  3. Basic Skill Damage
  4. Pyromancy Damage
  5. Damage to Close enemies
  6. Damage to CCd enemies
  7. Damage to Frozen, Slowed, Stunned etc. enemies
  8. Damage while Healthy
  9. Damage while Fortified
  10. Damage while Berserking and Berserking’s native 25% bonus
  11. Damage with Axes/Swords/Dual-wield weapons
  12. Damage to Healthy
  13. Damage to Injured
  14. Damage to Bleeding
  15. Damage to Burning
  16. Damage to Elites
  1. From here we can conclude that by transitive property all these damage bonuses are additive with each other and we shall call them Additive Damage.
  2. I didn’t test every bonus in the game, like damage bonus for 4 seconds after farting in Werebear form and all that stuff but I’d be really surprised if any of it is a multiplier
  3. Back to findings: Critical Strike Damage (and it’s funny variations like Lightning CSD) are added together to form a separate multiplier Pog
  4. Vulnerable Damage is also a separate multiplier

The practical conclusion here is the following: And endgame build will always have a fuckton of Additive Damage. The paragon boards are filled with nothing but Additive Damage (and Potion Healing) and every Glyph that gives +dmg per 5 stat is additive too (except Exploit and Core Skill CSD). You will end up with at least +500% of it. So your typical +30% on a ring or weapon will only boost your DPS by 5%, which can be good enough sometimes but there’s often better stuff to get. +15% rolls on Amulet and Chest are completely laughable in every situation.  

The Funny (it’s not funny)

Blizzard did a funny thing with tooltips that really fucked me up when I did this testing in Open Beta.

Some separate multipliers (with “x” next to if from passives or aspects etc.) are displayed in your stats.

They are still displayed as a multiplicative bonus, for example if you get

+100% All Damage from paragon

x30% All Damage from Aspect of Inner Calm

then your stats will show: All Damage: 160% ((1 + 100%) * 1.3 - 1)

However if you also have +100% Core damage from your items then you stats will read

All Damage: 160%

Core Damage: 100%

Your core skill with base 100 damage will deal

100 * (1 + 100% (core) + 100% (all) ) * (1 + 30% (inner calm)) = 390 damage

You can also not use the aspect and get 60% more All Damage from paragon. Then you get the same stats

All Damage: 160%

Core Damage: 100%

But your skill is now doing:

100 * (1 + 100% (core) + 160% (all)) = 360 damage

Thanks, Obama.

<insert video about trusting tooltips here>

Miscellaneous

  1. Devouring Blaze is a separate multiplier to your crits (and it goes to 6 Ranks: x1.6 vs Burning or x2.5 vs Immobilized xD gl making a Sorc build without burning in it)
  2. Aspect of Control is a separate multiplier, stacks with itself if multiple CCs are active and it’s multiplicative with itself KEKW. Against a Staggered boss it’s 2.74x/4.096x/5.832x separate multiplier. Combine with Devouring Blaze form above and aspect of Retribution for a funny number (:
  3. Hits that apply a status generally don’t benefit from corresponding bonuses. (Tested with Arc Lash + Retribution and the balanced version of Exploit Glyph)
  4. DoTs snapshot all bonuses when they are applied. This includes Area DoTs such as firewall, it snapshots your stats and active effects on the enemy each time an enemy enters the area
  5. Burning Instinct is Additive and it also only counts your bonus CSD (ripbozo)

Not Tested

  1. Thorns - didn’t have time to go in detail on this one but it’s not the same as normal damage. Simply putting on thorns and a bunch of different damage bonuses did not produce the expected damage. (RIP to anyone thinking “Thorns always deal the same damage, I’ll test the mechanics with Thorns EZ Clap”) Also Challenging Shout doubles the damage enemies take from thorns for no reason.
  2. Owerpover - LuL
  3. DoTs - dots are extra fucky like this because you have 1st tick, a bunch of middle ticks, and a last tick which are random af so you introduce an extra inaccuracy when you only compare middle ticks. The proper way would be to add up all the ticks and compare the total damage but someone else can do it xD
  4. Flat damage procs that don’t scale with your weapon. Just from field testing it seems that they are always shit so no motivation to test them :/ (I dunno I could be completely wrong and full Ice Spike Blizzard build is OP af if you stack the right stuff but no time)