Minion Spells: What Affects Their Damage?

[TwoTonTuna]

Here's the context:

The Underling node in the Skeletal Mages specialization allows skellie mages to cast 'Profane Oblation.' Removing the staff leads to a default damage of around 150 DPS. Equipping a staff that has no minion damage modifier brings it up to around 1,000 DPS.

When I actually see the spell in use against enemies of my level (level 51), Profane Oblation only deals a piddly 140-270 damage depending on the enemy. When I take off my staff, that damage remains the same: 140-270 depending on the enemy.

In the course of my testing, I tested the damage of plain old skeleton warriors. Equipping a staff with +7 minion melee damage, the warrior hit for around 30-50 damage. Killed the skeleton, unequipped the staff, summoned a new warrior, and observed the damage. It was *still* within the 30-50 damage per strike.

I honestly don't understand the mechanics behind minion damage now. Is this bugged or am I missing something?

[tiamats4esgares]

You have to resummon a minion after swapping weapons when testing. They tend to have the stats of the weapon that summoned them.

Seems like you did that in your third paragraph (though you didn't say whether you summoned the first warrior after the staff was equipped or not...), but like, it DEFINITELY works. IDK what to tell you. I'm doing insane amounts of damage and I have tested it myself as well. The new affixes are crazy.

Are you sure he wasn't hitting for 30-43 before and afterwards was hitting for 37-50?

EDIT

I just tested it myself, on a much more extreme scale. I have a sword that gives +71 minion melee damage, and no other meaningful stats. With the sword equipped, my skeleton warrior is doing 2150-2950 on the target dummy. With it unequipped, he's doing 600-900. HUGE difference.

[TwoTonTuna]

Originally posted by tiamats4esgares:

You have to resummon a minion after swapping weapons when testing. They tend to have the stats of the weapon that summoned them.

Seems like you did that in your third paragraph (though you didn't say whether you summoned the first warrior after the staff was equipped or not...), but like, it DEFINITELY works. IDK what to tell you. I'm doing insane amounts of damage and I have tested it myself as well. The new affixes are crazy.

Are you sure he wasn't hitting for 30-43 before and afterwards was hitting for 37-50?

The warrior's damage is too small and varies so little for me to notice. Will try, but I'd rather focus on Profane Oblation since the staff-variant should deal at least six times more damage than the no-staff version.

Here's the numbers:
I see 1,078 DPS for a Profane Oblation (PO) with a moon staff (+78 melee damage, +65 spell damage, +32% spell damage, +44% necrotic damage, +7 minion spell/melee damage). With no staff equipped, the DPS of PO is just 155.

Did the unsummon-resummon test with the staff and without the staff. The damage is roughly the same: 140-220 damage per Profane Oblation for both staff-summoned and staffless-summoned mages.

If the displayed DPS numbers are accurate, the staff-summoned mages should be dealing around 6.95 times the damage of staffless-summoned mages. That means staff-summoned mages should be dealing 973-1,529 damage per Profane Oblation.

That is a FAR cry from the numbers that I should be seeing

[TwoTonTuna]

One bump for visibility

[Elgareth]

What does the staff say exactly?
Usually (as I don't know the Acolyte nodes etc.), minions ONLY scale by explicit minion stats.

When the staff only allows the mages to use PO, then the mages themselves will use it, which will scale by +minion spell damage etc.
The DPS for PO on your character is completely meaningless for them. (Unless it states somewhere "With your stats" or "Your stats also apply to minions when they use the spell")

[TwoTonTuna]

Originally posted by Elgareth:

What does the staff say exactly?
Usually (as I don't know the Acolyte nodes etc.), minions ONLY scale by explicit minion stats.

When the staff only allows the mages to use PO, then the mages themselves will use it, which will scale by +minion spell damage etc.
The DPS for PO on your character is completely meaningless for them. (Unless it states somewhere "With your stats" or "Your stats also apply to minions when they use the spell")

I posted the staff stats in my second post. The numbers I took directly in-game, looking at the values that come from holding ALT while mousing over the node that lets mages cast PO.

The disparity is why I'm asking the question in my original post. I'm confused about what affects minion spells, especially since the numbers I see in the tooltip clearly don't match the numbers I see in combat.

[Elgareth]

Originally posted by TwoTonTuna:

I posted the staff stats in my second post. The numbers I took directly in-game, looking at the values that come from holding ALT while mousing over the node that lets mages cast PO.

The disparity is why I'm asking the question in my original post. I'm confused about what affects minion spells, especially since the numbers I see in the tooltip clearly don't match the numbers I see in combat.

Ah, gotcha:
I see 1,078 DPS for a Profane Oblation (PO) with a moon staff (+78 melee damage, +65 spell damage, +32% spell damage, +44% necrotic damage, +7 minion spell/melee damage). With no staff equipped, the DPS of PO is just 155.

So the DPS you see for your PO is meaningless for your mages.
+73 melee damage obviously useless
+65 spell damage only works for yourself, and increases the base damage, before +% multiplies that.
+32% spell damage only works for yourself
+44% necrotic damage only works for yourself
+7 minion spell damage is the only thing applying to your mages.

I THINK it's a UI problem in this case. I thought Profane Oblation was a skill you as Necromancer had yourself as well, and with a node the mages could cast it, too.
After looking at a skill planner it seems that Profane Oblation only exists as a spell in the skeletal mages skill tree, right?

So I think when you look at it in the skill tree, the DPS you see for that skill calculates YOUR DPS, if YOU would cast that skill. Which you can't, because it doesn't exist for you, only for your mages.
My minion skills (totems as shaman) all show "---" in their DPS tooltip, because the game AFAIK doesn't/can't calculate the DPS of minions, because of their individual attacks, skills, cooldowns, triggers etc.

So effectively the DPS of PO only increases by +7 spell damage, but the DPS increase shown is the result of a calculation of +65 spell damage, +32% spell damage and +44% necrotic damage, as it calculates your own DPS with the skill.

[TwoTonTuna]

Originally posted by Elgareth:

Originally posted by TwoTonTuna:

I posted the staff stats in my second post. The numbers I took directly in-game, looking at the values that come from holding ALT while mousing over the node that lets mages cast PO.

The disparity is why I'm asking the question in my original post. I'm confused about what affects minion spells, especially since the numbers I see in the tooltip clearly don't match the numbers I see in combat.

Ah, gotcha:
I see 1,078 DPS for a Profane Oblation (PO) with a moon staff (+78 melee damage, +65 spell damage, +32% spell damage, +44% necrotic damage, +7 minion spell/melee damage). With no staff equipped, the DPS of PO is just 155.

So the DPS you see for your PO is meaningless for your mages.
+73 melee damage obviously useless
+65 spell damage only works for yourself, and increases the base damage, before +% multiplies that.
+32% spell damage only works for yourself
+44% necrotic damage only works for yourself
+7 minion spell damage is the only thing applying to your mages.

I THINK it's a UI problem in this case. I thought Profane Oblation was a skill you as Necromancer had yourself as well, and with a node the mages could cast it, too.
After looking at a skill planner it seems that Profane Oblation only exists as a spell in the skeletal mages skill tree, right?

So I think when you look at it in the skill tree, the DPS you see for that skill calculates YOUR DPS, if YOU would cast that skill. Which you can't, because it doesn't exist for you, only for your mages.
My minion skills (totems as shaman) all show "---" in their DPS tooltip, because the game AFAIK doesn't/can't calculate the DPS of minions, because of their individual attacks, skills, cooldowns, triggers etc.

So effectively the DPS of PO only increases by +7 spell damage, but the DPS increase shown is the result of a calculation of +65 spell damage, +32% spell damage and +44% necrotic damage, as it calculates your own DPS with the skill.

Gotcha. Guess I'll report it as a UI bug then

[Deathspider12]

Originally posted by Elgareth:

Originally posted by TwoTonTuna:

I posted the staff stats in my second post. The numbers I took directly in-game, looking at the values that come from holding ALT while mousing over the node that lets mages cast PO.

The disparity is why I'm asking the question in my original post. I'm confused about what affects minion spells, especially since the numbers I see in the tooltip clearly don't match the numbers I see in combat.

Ah, gotcha:
I see 1,078 DPS for a Profane Oblation (PO) with a moon staff (+78 melee damage, +65 spell damage, +32% spell damage, +44% necrotic damage, +7 minion spell/melee damage). With no staff equipped, the DPS of PO is just 155.

So the DPS you see for your PO is meaningless for your mages.
+73 melee damage obviously useless
+65 spell damage only works for yourself, and increases the base damage, before +% multiplies that.
+32% spell damage only works for yourself
+44% necrotic damage only works for yourself
+7 minion spell damage is the only thing applying to your mages.

I THINK it's a UI problem in this case. I thought Profane Oblation was a skill you as Necromancer had yourself as well, and with a node the mages could cast it, too.
After looking at a skill planner it seems that Profane Oblation only exists as a spell in the skeletal mages skill tree, right?

So I think when you look at it in the skill tree, the DPS you see for that skill calculates YOUR DPS, if YOU would cast that skill. Which you can't, because it doesn't exist for you, only for your mages.
My minion skills (totems as shaman) all show "---" in their DPS tooltip, because the game AFAIK doesn't/can't calculate the DPS of minions, because of their individual attacks, skills, cooldowns, triggers etc.

So effectively the DPS of PO only increases by +7 spell damage, but the DPS increase shown is the result of a calculation of +65 spell damage, +32% spell damage and +44% necrotic damage, as it calculates your own DPS with the skill.

Not True, i tested it myself, somehow. weirdly enough, the skil scales on your own necrotic/spell Damage, not on any minion damage whatsoever...

[Fluffy]

Sorry to necro this but I also tested and came to a different conclusion. Scaling comes from minion damage, minion necrotic damage, minion spell damage and intelligence. What's happening with the UI indication is that it lists what would happen if you yourself cast the spell. However you are not casting the spell, your minion is.

So the dps indicator can be ignored since minions don't have %increase in spell damage so it would only apply if profane oblation is cast directly by you. There is no way currently to directly cast it but there may be in future updates, hence why the tooltip is so confusing.
To validate this theory, try using an archmage to cast the oblation. I bet you will see a much larger damage number popping up.

The other indication that this is how it works is that applying dread shade to your mage also increases the damage substantially.