Summons and damage modifiers

[Guidsmaster]

Originally wrote this post asking if the damage bonus for enemies being in creeping dark apply to shadows and their abilities (for the Doomed class, their Cursed / Darkness tree).

However, now I'm also wondering if summon damage in general counts as YOUR damage.
Example a) I have damage/crit %/ crit dmg bonuses. Do these affect my summons' damage?

b) i have talents to where my summons can cast spells / abilities. (such as the talent Shadow mages from cursed class' Shadow tree). Do any of my modifiers affect that damage?

c) Madness talent (to where every time i deal mental damage, there's a chance enemies have to make a saving throw to prevent certain effects). If they (or any other summons of mine) do any mental damage, would that talent apply?

d) Talents such as the ones from advanced shadowmancy, such as Cursed Bolt or Shadow's Path, to where my character casts an ability which is then executed by my shadows. Would these be affected my modifiers and talents, or theirs, or both?

[Yiasmat]

a) yes and no
b) yes
c) i don`'t think so
d) no

In general, summons inherit your %damage modifiers but not your crit or crit multy.
On summoner, they also inherit stun/confusion/pin/blindness resistances and your armor penetration.

I have yet to play doomed but i think that your shadows inherit nothing. However, shadows scale to your level, so they become stronger as you do (and through talent level).

[Guidsmaster]

Thanks very much! I had figured B would be a no and D would be a yes xD Good to know its the other way around!

[Yiasmat]

Alright i just finished my first run on doomed and can confirm that your skills, even when the shadows use them, are based on your damage. So everything in advanced shadowmancy scales with your damage and crit and penetration.

Didn't realize how broken this class was. That was one of the easiest nightmare victories i ever had...

[Guidsmaster]

So I had been on the training dummies testing out different skills, and indeed the active abilities in advanced shadowmancy tree are affected by your stats, in fact it doesnt even take up their turn as theyll still attack after doing whatever ability you cast. However, in terms of their own turns, it seems they're not affected by your stats, only their level and the points placed into the shadow tree (such as shadow warriors which directly impacts their damage)

So i'd say it probably looks like:

A) No (Only affects the active abilities YOU use from the advanced shadowmancy tree)

B) No (Though important to note that shadow warrior talent impacts the spell damage from shadow mage talent)

C) No (not even with cursed bolt), though their attacks can trigger brainlocked.

D) Yes (affected by my modifiers, not sure if warrior/mage talents impacted this damage but i doubt it).

Curiously it seems to be much more impacted by my weapons than from +changes to mind/physical damage). I'd need to test more, but I think its due more to the weapon damage rather than mindpower (as it was only a total of 4 effective mindpower from my weapons)
(as in, i tested with/without armors that gave +all/mind damage, as well as with/without my weapons, and the weapons clearly had a muuch larger impact even though i was changing the +mind/all by 20% via the armors. The +20% mind/all in reality only impacted their damage by around 1.3%)

[Yiasmat]

yeah thats what i figured after my first run with doomed. shadows are fundamentally different from all other summons.

however, i found myself not really needing the shadows to do more damage. i went cornac and put a cat point into shadow tree to get 4 shadows, then i maxed their first 3 abilities there and thats it. they were able to take out elites and sometimes even bosses before i had the chance to do stuff and i never once had to use any talent in advanced shadowmancy.

mainly due to the fact that doomed is actually broken as it seems like.
gesture of guardian with psiblades + antimagic shield + deflection makes you insanely tanky. you don't even have to get into melee range, your shadows are there to also protect you and your deal absolutely insane damage.

reproach did 1.3k mind damage on my char. that plus it hits everything around you plus it only has a 3 sec cooldown. ima test this char a bit more on insane today.

[Guidsmaster]

Where can you get psiblades and anti-magic category? now that i see how much weapons impact mindpowers, definitely interested in checking that out.

Yeah I agree doomed has been really strong so far, in my case I didn't buff my shadows until just now (2 dungeons from end), but instead made lots of use of advanced shadowmancy. Great surviveability and offense in that tree. You can reduce enemy damage by ~50% (and just resummon the sacrificed spirit with 4th ability from shadow tree), make the enemy attack a shadow, reposition shadows, and the shadow's path ability does insane damage both for aoe and single target (plus you can attack mobs inside vaults/ behind walls with this).

I didn't end up taking gesture of guarding. Maybe i didn't understand the ability, but deflecting a flat damage amount that's really low doesn't seem like its worthwhile, and it doesn't seem to scale well into later game either. (like 6 dmg deflected for ~1.3 attacks per turn at max rank, which at my level now would now have scaled to around 17dmg for ~2 attacks per turn). I don't really find melee attackers being an issue, except some freak unique in dreadfell that one-shot me with over 500dmg. Even in that situation, dont think the ~10dmg deflected would have saved me.

I'm not sure how to interpret the last bit of the talent though, where it says that deflected attacks cant be crits. Could mean that it wont deflect crits, or that while you're deflecting, melee attacks cannot crit. If it's the latter, then perhaps that's the major benefit of this talent, especially against enemies like the one i mentioned from dreadfell.

[Yiasmat]

1. antimagic and fungus (which i was using) can be got at the town left of last hope if you do not use any spell (you're doomed, so the only spell you might have is from your race). getting antimagic however prohibits you from using arcane items. I found it not to be an issue though.

2. it's the latter. if you deflect an attack, it's no longer a crit. But with psiblades buffing your mindstars (again, from the antimagic route) i got 2.6 deflects for 78 damage. So esentially i could block roughly 150 damage a turn which is massive. I left it at 3 points though. Maybe 1 is fine too. After all, going antimagic leaves you with absolutely no generic points....

[Guidsmaster]

1) Ahh I see, great to know, ty!! I went shaloren so from the beginning i've had a racial spell and have probably been loaded on arcane items xD are the mindstar/psiblade talents also from zigur?

2) That makes much more sense, those are definitely significant values

[Yiasmat]

yes. if you only want the psiblades, then you can respec that spell at the start, play a bit until you can buy them (1.25k gold) in zigur and then skill the spell.

[Guidsmaster]

gotcha, ty!