Scaling Spell Damage

[SuaveMonke]

They have got to add a way to scale spell damage with gear other than just the % and spell level modifiers on staves/wands.

I have a fire sorc, and a level 36 staff with +4 spell level 130% spell damage 79% fire damage.
I have no reason to ever change this staff, because until maybe level 80 will I get any kind of meaningful increase to the stats this one gives.

Like with phys damage weapons, no matter what you are going to have meaningful stat increases every 5-10 levels, because phys damage is a flat number on the weapon that increases, but for staves/wands, if you have 130% increase, it doesn't matter if it's a level 30 staff or a level 80 staff, 130% is 130%.

[Lyote]

Nah, Melee has the same trouble as casters with weapon affixes making low level stuff compete hard with high level stuff.

I remember when levelling my Warrior, picked up a 1H club in Act1, it rolled a hefty physical bonus and + melee skill levels.

I kept that club all the way till mid Act 3 when instead of upgrading the 1Hand club to a higher level one, I had instead hit the level and stat reqs to use a 2hander+shield.

My Merc had similar issues with finding upgrades.
Early gear that rolled stupid well was just plain better than mid rolls on higher level gear.

Honestly, the problem is simply that the modifiers lend significantly more power to skills than the raw stats of the base weapon.

A simple fix for that would be to remove skill levels and percentile damage buffs (Not the extra damage ones, just the +Physical/Elemental Damage ones) from appearing on weapons and baking the damage those stats would have provided into the baseline of the weapon.

Would massively improve the variety of weapon upgrades we get through the campaign.

As it stands, you need 2 specific modifiers to appear together in order for it to even begin to be an upgrade (or even a sidegrade) over a lucky early drop.

[SuaveMonke]

I think my issue is more cap of stats seem significantly different at varying levels for phys weapons than for magic weapons.

Like if I get a level 20 two handed mace with +20 phys damage and 90% increased phys damage, it will still be lower damage than a level 30 two handed mace with +20 phys and 90% increased phys damage.
The flat number of phys damage on the mace is (usually) always higher on higher level weapons, and the modifiers scale accordingly.
For example if a mace has 50 damage at lvl 10 a 100% increase in phys damage is 50 extra damage. But if a mace at lvl 30 has 100 damage, a 100% increase is 100 extra damage.
On top of that, this is scaling the base value of the weapon, not an after effect percent increase to the skill you are using.
Like if my fireball does 100 damage now, and I apply a 10% increase it's 110 damage. if I get a passive that adds 10% damage, it now does 120 damage.
For a phys weapon, if I have a skill that does base phys damage, and my mace has 100 base damage, the skill does 100 damage, if I get a passive that adds 10% damage, I do 110 damage, but if I get a weapon modifier that is a 10% increase, the mace is 110 damage base, now if I get that same 10% passive damage increase, it's 111 damage. Scale that up to meaningful numbers like instead of 10% go up to 100%.

That's what I mean when I say magic weapons don't have any way to meaningfully scale. You're only ever doing additive scaling, never get multiplicative like when you change the base value on phys weapons.

[Pönnukaka]

Oprindeligt skrevet af SuaveMonke:

I think my issue is more cap of stats seem significantly different at varying levels for phys weapons than for magic weapons.

Like if I get a level 20 two handed mace with +20 phys damage and 90% increased phys damage, it will still be lower damage than a level 30 two handed mace with +20 phys and 90% increased phys damage.
The flat number of phys damage on the mace is (usually) always higher on higher level weapons, and the modifiers scale accordingly.
For example if a mace has 50 damage at lvl 10 a 100% increase in phys damage is 50 extra damage. But if a mace at lvl 30 has 100 damage, a 100% increase is 100 extra damage.
On top of that, this is scaling the base value of the weapon, not an after effect percent increase to the skill you are using.
Like if my fireball does 100 damage now, and I apply a 10% increase it's 110 damage. if I get a passive that adds 10% damage, it now does 120 damage.
For a phys weapon, if I have a skill that does base phys damage, and my mace has 100 base damage, the skill does 100 damage, if I get a passive that adds 10% damage, I do 110 damage, but if I get a weapon modifier that is a 10% increase, the mace is 110 damage base, now if I get that same 10% passive damage increase, it's 111 damage. Scale that up to meaningful numbers like instead of 10% go up to 100%.

That's what I mean when I say magic weapons don't have any way to meaningfully scale. You're only ever doing additive scaling, never get multiplicative like when you change the base value on phys weapons.

I made a Spark Stormweaver last season. Level 95, quite a few divines worth of gear. I don't think you understand the concept of how to scale as a caster simply.

Having highest % spell damage/elemental damage you can is part of the equation.

Casting speed, relevant to the skill you are using is important.

Important thing you most likely don't have is levels of the skill. Looking at: https://poe2db.tw/Spark scroll down to the damage graph. You want the highest level of the skill possible, because that's how it scales further.

Critical hit chance and damage for spells is mandatory if you want more.

Now depends on what skill do you use, but again looking at Spark, it is also a 'projectile', so that opens up another avenue of stacking, now we stack all magic/elemental/projectile damage. Not only that, but some projectiles can bounce around and pierce enemies. So increasing or lowering their speed, increasing pierce % also comes into play.

Previously we also had Lightning Rod passive, that made it so, your non-critical hits are lucky. Rolling twice and choosing higher value. People did maths and it increased damage by about 40%. That was the core of my previous build, as I ignored critical hits and I went full non-critical, pure damage, levels, casting speed..No content was safe from me.

Sadly with all the nerfs, to the skills, supporting skills, passive tree, ascendancies, archmage being butchered - you have to find new builds, new uniques to interact with and cook up something. Just looking at the ladders, we have many casters in top 10..

[SuaveMonke]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Pönnukaka:

Oprindeligt skrevet af SuaveMonke:

I think my issue is more cap of stats seem significantly different at varying levels for phys weapons than for magic weapons.

Like if I get a level 20 two handed mace with +20 phys damage and 90% increased phys damage, it will still be lower damage than a level 30 two handed mace with +20 phys and 90% increased phys damage.
The flat number of phys damage on the mace is (usually) always higher on higher level weapons, and the modifiers scale accordingly.
For example if a mace has 50 damage at lvl 10 a 100% increase in phys damage is 50 extra damage. But if a mace at lvl 30 has 100 damage, a 100% increase is 100 extra damage.
On top of that, this is scaling the base value of the weapon, not an after effect percent increase to the skill you are using.
Like if my fireball does 100 damage now, and I apply a 10% increase it's 110 damage. if I get a passive that adds 10% damage, it now does 120 damage.
For a phys weapon, if I have a skill that does base phys damage, and my mace has 100 base damage, the skill does 100 damage, if I get a passive that adds 10% damage, I do 110 damage, but if I get a weapon modifier that is a 10% increase, the mace is 110 damage base, now if I get that same 10% passive damage increase, it's 111 damage. Scale that up to meaningful numbers like instead of 10% go up to 100%.

That's what I mean when I say magic weapons don't have any way to meaningfully scale. You're only ever doing additive scaling, never get multiplicative like when you change the base value on phys weapons.

I made a Spark Stormweaver last season. Level 95, quite a few divines worth of gear. I don't think you understand the concept of how to scale as a caster simply.

Having highest % spell damage/elemental damage you can is part of the equation.

Casting speed, relevant to the skill you are using is important.

Important thing you most likely don't have is levels of the skill. Looking at: https://poe2db.tw/Spark scroll down to the damage graph. You want the highest level of the skill possible, because that's how it scales further.

Critical hit chance and damage for spells is mandatory if you want more.

Now depends on what skill do you use, but again looking at Spark, it is also a 'projectile', so that opens up another avenue of stacking, now we stack all magic/elemental/projectile damage.

Previously we also had Lightning Rod passive, that made it so, your non-critical hits are lucky. Rolling twice and choosing higher value. People did maths and it increased damage by about 40%. That was the core of my previous build, as I ignored critical hits and I went full non-critical, pure damage, levels, casting speed..No content was safe from me.

Sadly with all the nerfs, to the skills, supporting skills, passive tree, ascendancies, archmage being butchered - you have to find new builds, new uniques to interact with and cook up something. Just looking at the ladders, we have many casters in top 10..

My staff is 130% fire, 79% spell, and +4 spell level searching the trade site with no level restricting, all I've seen better than this is a level 78 staff for 1 divine that gives 78% fire, 76% spell, and +6 levels for a level 78 staff.

When I say the scaling is lacking for magic, it's the fact that the modifiers are more or less the exact same, whereas for phys weapons, the modifiers are the same, but the base phys damage you have is not, it increases per level (typically).


Of course, I am trying to make fire sorcerer work, which considering all the fire skills are slow, clunky, staging garbage, high mana cost, low damage, trash heaps, doesn't really help... Especially when despite being AoE spells, they do no scale with area damage modifiers or passives, so I can only scale them with either fire damage or spell damage and that's it.

[TheOnlyHiro]

Oprindeligt skrevet af SuaveMonke:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Pönnukaka:

I made a Spark Stormweaver last season. Level 95, quite a few divines worth of gear. I don't think you understand the concept of how to scale as a caster simply.

Having highest % spell damage/elemental damage you can is part of the equation.

Casting speed, relevant to the skill you are using is important.

Important thing you most likely don't have is levels of the skill. Looking at: https://poe2db.tw/Spark scroll down to the damage graph. You want the highest level of the skill possible, because that's how it scales further.

Critical hit chance and damage for spells is mandatory if you want more.

Now depends on what skill do you use, but again looking at Spark, it is also a 'projectile', so that opens up another avenue of stacking, now we stack all magic/elemental/projectile damage.

Previously we also had Lightning Rod passive, that made it so, your non-critical hits are lucky. Rolling twice and choosing higher value. People did maths and it increased damage by about 40%. That was the core of my previous build, as I ignored critical hits and I went full non-critical, pure damage, levels, casting speed..No content was safe from me.

Sadly with all the nerfs, to the skills, supporting skills, passive tree, ascendancies, archmage being butchered - you have to find new builds, new uniques to interact with and cook up something. Just looking at the ladders, we have many casters in top 10..

My staff is 130% fire, 79% spell, and +4 spell level searching the trade site with no level restricting, all I've seen better than this is a level 78 staff for 1 divine that gives 78% fire, 76% spell, and +6 levels for a level 78 staff.

When I say the scaling is lacking for magic, it's the fact that the modifiers are more or less the exact same, whereas for phys weapons, the modifiers are the same, but the base phys damage you have is not, it increases per level (typically).


Of course, I am trying to make fire sorcerer work, which considering all the fire skills are slow, clunky, staging garbage, high mana cost, low damage, trash heaps, doesn't really help... Especially when despite being AoE spells, they do no scale with area damage modifiers or passives, so I can only scale them with either fire damage or spell damage and that's it.

I feel you man, I long for a good functional burn/fire build that's NOT raging spirit spam and also a damn bleed/phys build. But huntress is getting there, so we'll see.

[SuaveMonke]

Oprindeligt skrevet af TheOnlyHiro:

Oprindeligt skrevet af SuaveMonke:

My staff is 130% fire, 79% spell, and +4 spell level searching the trade site with no level restricting, all I've seen better than this is a level 78 staff for 1 divine that gives 78% fire, 76% spell, and +6 levels for a level 78 staff.

When I say the scaling is lacking for magic, it's the fact that the modifiers are more or less the exact same, whereas for phys weapons, the modifiers are the same, but the base phys damage you have is not, it increases per level (typically).


Of course, I am trying to make fire sorcerer work, which considering all the fire skills are slow, clunky, staging garbage, high mana cost, low damage, trash heaps, doesn't really help... Especially when despite being AoE spells, they do no scale with area damage modifiers or passives, so I can only scale them with either fire damage or spell damage and that's it.

I feel you man, I long for a good functional burn/fire build that's NOT raging spirit spam and also a damn bleed/phys build. But huntress is getting there, so we'll see.

I made a busted huntress build that uses no skills at all, just trail of caltrops while I roll around.
And to be fair to my sorc, I do clear mobs easily, it's just bosses are annoying and seem to just stop taking damage at certain points.

[Pönnukaka]

Oprindeligt skrevet af SuaveMonke:

Oprindeligt skrevet af TheOnlyHiro:

I feel you man, I long for a good functional burn/fire build that's NOT raging spirit spam and also a damn bleed/phys build. But huntress is getting there, so we'll see.

I made a busted huntress build that uses no skills at all, just trail of caltrops while I roll around.
And to be fair to my sorc, I do clear mobs easily, it's just bosses are annoying and seem to just stop taking damage at certain points.

Maybe you need to play that thorns build? How it works? It's magical ^^ a true caster!

[Drake]

That's how spells work. Spells don't use your weapon's base. That's the point of spells, the base damage of a spell is on the spell.
So if the spell base scaling or mechanic is bad, the spell is bad.

There is no other way around that. In poe 1 it's mitigated by a load of more damage supports. But poe2 doesn't have a lot of them and you can't use them on multiple spells, so it's a lot harder to scale.

Personally I'm against having caster weapon getting base spell damage becasue it reduces build posibilities (I like to have the option of casting spells while playing with a bow or quarterstaff etc. if my build works around it, making spells be dependant on caster weapons ruins that), but something needs to be done.

Adding more meta gems to combine spells would be a solution, having more support variations would be another (like having infusion support variant for spells, since the ones we have only work with attacks).

One thing I think they need to do though is standardize all those combos... so that you can mix stuff. Like for example SRS only working with fire spells. No, SRS should work with any kind of fire damage.

[SuaveMonke]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Drake:

That's how spells work. Spells don't use your weapon's base. That's the point of spells, the base damage of a spell is on the spell.
So if the spell base scaling or mechanic is bad, the spell is bad.

There is no other way around that. In poe 1 it's mitigated by a load of more damage supports. But poe2 doesn't have a lot of them and you can't use them on multiple spells, so it's a lot harder to scale.

Personally I'm against having caster weapon getting base spell damage becasue it reduces build posibilities (I like to have the option of casting spells while playing with a bow or quarterstaff etc. if my build works around it, making spells be dependant on caster weapons ruins that), but something needs to be done.

Adding more meta gems to combine spells would be a solution, having more support variations would be another (like having infusion support variant for spells, since the ones we have only work with attacks).

One thing I think they need to do though is standardize all those combos... so that you can mix stuff. Like for example SRS only working with fire spells. No, SRS should work with any kind of fire damage.

I don't want caster weapons to get a base increase or anything like that either, I just want spells to have a more meaningful way to scale, and also for there to be a reason to upgrade gear as you level. Like having higher roll averages and maximums on modifiers the higher level the item is, as it stands, I believe 130% is max roll for the various elemental and spell damage no matter the level, and the only difference is in spell level modifier.

More support gems would be a good trade off. I'll be honest, I think they have some broken system for support gems for fire skills, because there have been a large number of support gems that show they support a skill, but it will not allow me to use it with that skill, or it lets me use it, but it doesn't impact the skill at all.

[Hefutoxin]

Oprindeligt skrevet af SuaveMonke:

I don't want caster weapons to get a base increase or anything like that either, I just want spells to have a more meaningful way to scale, and also for there to be a reason to upgrade gear as you level. Like having higher roll averages and maximums on modifiers the higher level the item is, as it stands, I believe 130% is max roll for the various elemental and spell damage no matter the level, and the only difference is in spell level modifier.

More support gems would be a good trade off. I'll be honest, I think they have some broken system for support gems for fire skills, because there have been a large number of support gems that show they support a skill, but it will not allow me to use it with that skill, or it lets me use it, but it doesn't impact the skill at all.

Affixes should scale by level.

Example:
Levels 1-10 = 10%-20% spell damage
Levels 11-20 = 20%-30% spell damage

That way you can find upgrades while leveling and don't feel like it's all garbage that drops.

[SuaveMonke]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Hefutoxin:

Oprindeligt skrevet af SuaveMonke:

I don't want caster weapons to get a base increase or anything like that either, I just want spells to have a more meaningful way to scale, and also for there to be a reason to upgrade gear as you level. Like having higher roll averages and maximums on modifiers the higher level the item is, as it stands, I believe 130% is max roll for the various elemental and spell damage no matter the level, and the only difference is in spell level modifier.

More support gems would be a good trade off. I'll be honest, I think they have some broken system for support gems for fire skills, because there have been a large number of support gems that show they support a skill, but it will not allow me to use it with that skill, or it lets me use it, but it doesn't impact the skill at all.

Affixes should scale by level.

Example:
Levels 1-10 = 10%-20% spell damage
Levels 11-20 = 20%-30% spell damage

That way you can find upgrades while leveling and don't feel like it's all garbage that drops.

Completely agree, however, people would feel exceptionally weak early game like that, and you can't change spell's base damage because then late game they would be broken.

I think they could add more modifiers you could get at latter levels, and I believe they do have 1 type of later level modifier being "gain #% x damage type" which is a multiplicative scaling opposed to additive scaling you get from "increase #% modifiers."

I actually finally found a better staff than my lvl 36 staff, even with 50% less of a #% increase to spell and fire, because it had a "gain 28% as extra fire damage" which made it a fairly substantial increase even with less of a #% increase.

I'm discovering, my issue may be that I just found a staff that was way too good way too early, and also that fire spells suck ass with scaling options.
Honestly I didn't feel like I couldn't scale more damage when using lightning or cold, because cold spells almost all scale off area damage passives/modifiers as well as cold, and spell, and often projectile, and elemental, same thing for lightning, but fire just scales on elemental/fire and spell, despite many being aoe spells, they don't do area damage, and despite many being projectiles, they don't scale on projectile damage (save for maybe ember fusillade?).

[Pönnukaka]

Oprindeligt skrevet af SuaveMonke:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Hefutoxin:

Affixes should scale by level.

Example:
Levels 1-10 = 10%-20% spell damage
Levels 11-20 = 20%-30% spell damage

That way you can find upgrades while leveling and don't feel like it's all garbage that drops.

Completely agree, however, people would feel exceptionally weak early game like that, and you can't change spell's base damage because then late game they would be broken.

I think they could add more modifiers you could get at latter levels, and I believe they do have 1 type of later level modifier being "gain #% x damage type" which is a multiplicative scaling opposed to additive scaling you get from "increase #% modifiers."

I actually finally found a better staff than my lvl 36 staff, even with 50% less of a #% increase to spell and fire, because it had a "gain 28% as extra fire damage" which made it a fairly substantial increase even with less of a #% increase.

I'm discovering, my issue may be that I just found a staff that was way too good way too early, and also that fire spells suck ass with scaling options.
Honestly I didn't feel like I couldn't scale more damage when using lightning or cold, because cold spells almost all scale off area damage passives/modifiers as well as cold, and spell, and often projectile, and elemental, same thing for lightning, but fire just scales on elemental/fire and spell, despite many being aoe spells, they don't do area damage, and despite many being projectiles, they don't scale on projectile damage (save for maybe ember fusillade?).

edit: I pasted wrong league, but now the link is right

It is brutal reality. I deleted all my previous season characters, but my Spark. Just looking at https://poe2.ninja/builds/dawn/?class=Stormweaver&sort=dps people are doing spark, but mostly cold snap. Some comet. You probably need to pick a skill that simply works. What can you do..

[Hefutoxin]

Oprindeligt skrevet af SuaveMonke:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Hefutoxin:

Affixes should scale by level.

Example:
Levels 1-10 = 10%-20% spell damage
Levels 11-20 = 20%-30% spell damage

That way you can find upgrades while leveling and don't feel like it's all garbage that drops.

Completely agree, however, people would feel exceptionally weak early game like that, and you can't change spell's base damage because then late game they would be broken.

That's the reason other ARPGs switched to having spell damage based off weapon damage.

It's easier to balance things when they start from the same spot. Weapon damage getting base increases before being modified by skills is much stronger early on than Spells getting an modifiable base damage with the same boosts that martial weapons get.

As it stands, both benefit from the same % modifiers on armor, just the weapon is different. It's easier to find a new great mace of buttkicking than it is to find a wand of + multiple skill levels for all skills.

Spells with base damage are generally better if you are grossly undergeared, but affixes aren't really level constrained, so it's not much help here.

[=][=Alduran=][=]

Oprindeligt skrevet af SuaveMonke:

Oprindeligt skrevet af TheOnlyHiro:

I feel you man, I long for a good functional burn/fire build that's NOT raging spirit spam and also a damn bleed/phys build. But huntress is getting there, so we'll see.

I made a busted huntress build that uses no skills at all, just trail of caltrops while I roll around.
And to be fair to my sorc, I do clear mobs easily, it's just bosses are annoying and seem to just stop taking damage at certain points.

Yeah, I feel that too. I am stuck with my Witch on Act two Boss. I do maybe 20 odd damage less than my Warrior did but somehow it takes 10 times longer to kill him even though he is vulnerable to my Spells Element + exposure + penetration.

[Fire]

Oprindeligt skrevet af SuaveMonke:

They have got to add a way to scale spell damage with gear other than just the % and spell level modifiers on staves/wands.

I have a fire sorc, and a level 36 staff with +4 spell level 130% spell damage 79% fire damage.
I have no reason to ever change this staff, because until maybe level 80 will I get any kind of meaningful increase to the stats this one gives.

Like with phys damage weapons, no matter what you are going to have meaningful stat increases every 5-10 levels, because phys damage is a flat number on the weapon that increases, but for staves/wands, if you have 130% increase, it doesn't matter if it's a level 30 staff or a level 80 staff, 130% is 130%.

then SHOULD have a ton of spells that just scale with INT instead of Ear but they dont and that is why Fire is shafted pretty much only Cold and Shock drop. If a Fire Staff drops it has... plus Shock on it... so... itemization is conpletely insufficient and Fire does not enough damage to survice a ton of encounters in addition to being the most squishy Mage since zero CC.