Complete Damage Guide - Path of Exile 2

Main ideas / concepts

• Your actual damage output is determined by multiple layers of calculations for both attacks and spells.
• Attacks primarily scale from weapon damage, while spells have their own explicit base damage (not derived from weapon damage in the same way).
• Damage types can be added (e.g., elemental/chaos) alongside physical (or other base types).
• Damage conversion happens in two steps, then you apply:
  • increased/decreased modifiers
  • more/less multipliers
  • then critical strike calculations
• Crits are chance-based, but crit damage acts as a multiplicative “final” step that can scale further with “crit bonus” type stats.
• If conversion exceeds 100% in a step, the game normalizes down to a total of 100%.

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Damage calculation breakdown (methodology)

1) Start with Attacks (weapon-based core damage)

• Core scaling: Most attacks scale from weapon core damage.
• Attack percentage modifier: Attacks typically deal ~50% to 150% of weapon core damage as an initial range (with edge cases outside that).
• Key flat-damage sources that add into weapon/core damage:
  • Local modifiers (typically on weapons)
    • Often worded like: “Adds X [damage type] to attacks”
    • Their values appear in the weapon tooltip and directly increase the weapon’s relevant damage contribution.
  • Non-local flat damage to attacks (often on rings/gloves)
    • Often worded like: “Adds X [damage type] to attacks” but applied globally/non-locally.
    • These add their flat damage into the same core attack damage pool before later math.
• Multi-damage-type attacks: An attack can deal multiple types simultaneously, e.g.:
  • The ability’s base damage (often physical/core ability damage)
  • Plus extra granted damage types from mods (e.g., +4 fire damage)

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2) Start with Spells (spell-based base damage)

• Spells don’t generally take their base damage from the weapon core damage.
• Instead, the spell itself defines base damage explicitly.
• Spells can also add multiple damage types, conceptually mirrored from attacks:
  • Base spell damage type(s)
  • Plus any extra damage granted by “adds X damage” effects

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3) Damage conversion (two-step process)

Conversion occurs in two distinct steps, both resolved “all at once” as a batch before later modifiers.

Step A: Skill-based conversion

• Comes from the skill/ability context and conversion rules such as:
  • “Converts [amount/type] physical damage dealt to [another type]”
• Example structure (narrative math):
  • Start: 100 physical
  • Add flat elemental (from gear): +10 fire
  • Conversion changes the physical portion into another type (example outcome):
    • 60 physical / 40 lightning
  • Fire stays as extra flat damage: +10 fire

Step B: Modifier-based “gain” conversion

• Triggered by passives/armor/gear that:
  • convert portions of elemental damage into other types, and/or
  • add chaos from conversion outputs
• Example structure (narrative math):
  • Armor converts: 50% elemental → cold
  • Another modifier “gives” 10% of chaos damage
  • Example outcome:
    • Lightning reduced because part converts to cold:
      • 20 lightning remains
      • 5 fire remains
      • 25 cold is produced
  • Then chaos is gained from the relevant core pool:
    • 10% chaos → 11 chaos (per the example’s totals)

Over-conversion normalization rule

• If conversion in either step totals more than 100%, values are normalized so the maximum sum is 100%.

  • Example (conceptual):

    • If you have:

      • 100% physical → chaos
      • 50% physical → fire
      • 50% physical → cold (total = 200%)

    • The result normalizes to:

      • 50% chaos / 25% fire / 25% cold
    • Within each step, there’s no looping; conversion is applied as one combined calculation.

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4) Apply increased / decreased modifiers (first modifier bucket)

• After conversion, you enter a bucket of increased and decreased modifiers.
• Two categories: 1) Increased based on projectile/area/other qualifiers - Example: “+10% increased damage with projectiles” - Applies only when the ability’s mechanics qualify (projectile vs AOE). - If an ability has multiple stages (e.g., projectile then explosion): - projectile modifiers generally apply to projectile damage - AOE modifiers apply to AOE damage - any AOE derived from projectile is unclear 2) Increased based on damage type - Example: “+10% increased physical damage” - All matching “increased/decreased” modifiers add together into one sum.
• The resulting increased/decreased total is applied to each qualifying damage type.

Important takeaway:

• All increased/decreased modifiers are added together first, then applied.

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5) Apply more / less modifiers (multiplicative buckets)

• Next come more/less modifiers, which are multiplicative, not additive.
• They behave like:
  • “Deal X% more [damage type]”
  • “Deal Y% less [range/projectile/etc]”
• The example emphasizes stacking multiple multipliers:
  • Apply one “more,” then apply another “more” when it qualifies.
• Key takeaway:
  • Even small “more” values can be far stronger than comparable “increased” because they are separate multiplicative pools.

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6) Apply critical strikes

Crit chance

• Comes from:
  • weapon crit chance (for attacks)
  • spell crit chance (for spells)
• Can be modified by percent crit chance sources:
  • treated as additive (e.g., base 10% + another 10% = 20%)

Crit damage multiplier

• Treated as another multiplicative step at the end.
• Crits use a crit bonus multiplier (example described as “2x baseline,” then scaled).
• Crit bonus scaling:
  • “Crit damage bonus” stats increase the crit multiplier beyond 2x.
  • Example: 50% crit bonus → 2.5x instead of 2x.
• The crit multiplier applies to the whole damage result, affecting all damage types produced in that chain.

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Speakers / sources featured

• No other named speakers or sources are identified in the provided subtitles.
• Speaker: an unnamed YouTube narrator/creator (the person giving the guide).