Orodina

Much has been said over what spells are impacted by +X damage items and what isn't. I decided to sit down and see what the differences were with two items that had essentially the same +Int, but one had a substantial amount of +X and the other did not. I used the Soulfire Staff (+28 Int, +75 damage) vs. the Grizzfazzle Walking Stick (+27 Int). There are a couple cases where the Soulfire Staff has more damage by a point, and I believe that can be attributed to rounding with regards to the bonus coming from the Int.

All spells are at Master I. Numbers in () are the casting time in seconds. Bolded numbers are power drain amounts.

.............................Soulfire Staff____________________GrizzFazzle

Stroke (1) .............539 - 712 ........................................514 - 687
Ego Torrent (2) ......801 - 972 ........................................784 - 955
Perilous Gaze (2) ...193 - 234 ........................................188 - 229
Breakdown (1) .......230 - 274 [502 - 837 on term.] .........215 - 259 [502 - 836]
Sonic Boom (3) ......1722 - 2837 ....................................1696 - 2811
Vicious Torment (1) 290 - 348 66 ...................................275 - 333 65
Master Strike (2) ....2071 - 2518 ....................................2021 - 2467
Auspex (1.5) ..........1007 - 1230 ....................................1006 - 1230
Spell Scourge (2) ....1054 - 1288 ....................................1053 - 1287
Harmonius Link (1) ..361 - 441 .......................................361 - 441
Deep Focus (2) .......277 - 339 ......................................277 - 339
Harrowing Sil. (2) ...165 - 202 ......................................165 - 202

So a few things are apparent:

1) Reactives get no benefit. No newsflash there, we've known that since the effect was introduced. In addition to the three typical reactives (I didn't list Cataclysmic Mind because it is just a percentage that scale to the power used) there is Hamonious Link that is has a reactive component, and it is not affected.

2) Breakdown has no damage added to the termination effect.

3) Vicious Torment, which is an AoE and a DoT, has the damage applied to it like it were a DoT alone. I recall that only one modifier to the damage (divide by three for AoE or normalize to 5 ticks for DoTs) was supposed to apply to a spell that was both, and it appears it is the DoT rule that does.

4) Power damage is not affected. I know, power damage is meaningless in PvE, but it has some use in PvP. It is damage and should benefit from the modifiers, but doesn't.

Revel

Why didn't you use the sol ro cloak to avoid the tiny int discrepancy? Wait, didn't we have that discussion in an old thread about coercer neck adornment choices?

Really though, this is always useful information, the more that is out there the more people will understand what limitations there are on +spell damage, especially for coercers. Further since Vine-Wrapped boots work in the same mechanism, they also are not increasing Spell Scourge, Auspex, or apparently, Harmonious Link.

Curiously, the Warlock reactive (Aura of Nihility) that procs off hostile spells also isn't affected, so it must be something to do with direct damage versus reactive damage.

Orodina

I didn't use the Sol Ro cloak because I don't have it. Oddly enough, I like some aspect of the RP in MMORPG, and follow Cazic Thule, as useless as his miracles are on raids nonetheless.

+75 also lends itself better to the divisors used in a lot of the equations (dividing by 3 and by 5).

Manyak

It has nothing to do with the type of damage, nor the method of damage. Well, not directly. Remember, procs have a cast time of 0 sec. So when stuck into the equation:

End Damage = Base Damage + ( (BoE * Cast Time) / 3 )

This Gives you:

End Damage = Base Damage + ( (500 * 0) / 3 )

Which ends up as:

End Damage = Base Damage + 0


Resulting in a 0 net gain in damage.

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Pett

Very true, but why do clerics receive boosts on reactives with +healing adornments.

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Aeralik my balls.

Orodina

I shouldn't post half-asleep. Perilous Gaze is the DoT + AoE. Given that 5 points is being added, it looks like both the AoE and the DoT divisors are in place, dividing the damage by 15.

Senelin

Has anyone compared overall DPS with it yet? I'm still polishing off my quest, but will probably switch to it from the looks of this thread... still makes me angry how badly we get the shaft though.

Thank you for this breakdown Orodina.

Orodina

One additional test with a cloak that gives +15 to damage and healing showed that Manaward benefits from the bonus. Given the casting time of the spell is 3 seconds, it gains the full bonus from +Healing items.

Manyak

There is no proper explaination tbh. They just get special treatment.

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Orodina

My thought is that the mechanism in action is to prevent these items from adding to item procs. There was a problem early on where items that gave +damage to poison spells was adding to scout applied poisons, and it was using the casting time of the poison as to what to base the normalization on.

I suppose the best way to treat reactives would be to consider them a DoT. I don't think the fact that Harmonious Link can essentially proc unlimited times is really that unbalancing, as it isn't a major source of dps. Coercers can get Auspex and Spell Scourge to proc up to five times (7 times with Auspex if you have the fabled set chest) with AAs, which is what DoT are normalized on anyway. In most raids I don't see Auspex proc'ing even four times before I recast it, so that theoretical max of seven is highly unlikely.