Damage

There are currently 5 main types of damage, they are Physical, Fire, Cold, Lightning, and Chaos. Fire, Cold, and Lightning are collectively known as Elemental Damage. Damage reduction from armour only affects physical damage. Each of the elemental damage types has it's own resistance value (e.g. "Fire resistance") which is viewable in the character sheet. Resistances reduce damage taken, and are normally capped at 75%. However, there are passives and items that can increase your maximum resistances to allow for values higher than 75%.

If a passive does not specify whether it's weapon or spell damage, it will affect both.

This page focuses on damage being dealt by the player. For information on how the elements affect you, see Status Ailments and Resistances.

Physical Damage

Physical Damage is usually dealt by weapons (melee or range) but can also come from some spells, like Detonate Dead, Bear Trap, Ethereal Knives and Shockwave Totem.

Melee Physical Damage Passives

Melee Physical Damage Passives increase damage for all types of melee weapons.

Basic Melee Physical Damage Passives Include:

• Melee Damage (4%,6%,8%,10%,12%)

Notable Melee Physical Damage Passives include:

• Weapon Artistry (3% Block Chance with a Shield, 10% Increased Melee Phys Damage)

Fire Damage

If you land a critical strike with an attack or spell that deals fire damage, the Ignite Status Ailment is inflicted.

Fire Damage Passives

Basic Passives affecting Fire Damage include:

• Burn Damage (10%,15%)
• Burn Duration (30%)
• Increased Fire Damage (6%)
• Wand Fire Damage (10%)

Notable Passives affecting Fire Damage include:

• Blaze (8% Increased Damage, 5% Chance to Ignite)
• Fire Walker (12% Increased Fire Damage, +12% Fire Resistance)
• Immolation (18% Increased Fire Damage)
• Pyromaniac (30% Increased Burn Damage)

Cold Damage

Hitting an enemy with cold damage can inflict the Chill Status Ailment. Critical hits with cold damage can inflict the Freeze Status Ailment.

Cold Damage Passives

Basic Passives affecting Cold Damage include:

• Cold Damage (6%)
• Chill Duration (15%,21%)
• Freeze Duration (15%)
• Wand Cold Damage (10%)
• Weapon Cold Damage (10%)

Notable Passives affecting Cold Damage include:

• Breath of Rime (Enemies Become Chilled as They Unfreeze)
• Freeze (8% Increased Cold Damage, 5% Chance to Freeze)
• Frost Walker (12% Increased Cold Damage, 12% Cold Resistance)
• Heart of Ice (18% Increased Cold Damage)
• Ice Bite (30% Increased Cold Damage with Weapons)

Lightning Damage

If you land a critical strike with an attack or spell that deals lightning damage, the Shock Status Ailment is inflicted.

Lightning Damage Passives

Basic Passives affecting Lightning Ddamage include:

• Lightning Damage (6%)
• Shock Duration (15%)
• Wand Lightning Damage (10%)

Notable Passives affecting Lightning Damage include:

• Arcing Blows (30% Increased Lightning Damage with Weapons)
• Lightning Walker (12% Increased Lightning Damage, 12% Lightning Resistance)
• Shock (8% Increased Lightning Damage, 5% Chance to Shock)
• Static Blows (45% Increased Shock Duration on Enemies, 10% Chance to Shock)
• Storm Cast (12% Increased Lightning Damage, 2% Increased Cast Speed

Elemental Damage Passives

Elemental Damage Passives affect all types of Elemental Damage (Fire, Cold and Lightning)

Basic Passives affecting Elemental Damage include:

• Elemental Damage (5%,8%)
• Increased Elemental Wand Damage (8%)
• Weapon Elemental Damage (10%)

Notable Passives affecting Elemental Damage include:

• Catalyze (30% Increased Elemental Damage with Weapons)
• Celestial Walker (10% to All Elemental Resistances, 10% Increased Elemental Damage)
• Elementalist (10% Increased Elemental Damage, +10 Intelligence)

"Keystone Passives" affecting Elemental Damage include:

• Elemental Equilibrium

Chaos Damage

Chaos damage ignores energy shield, reducing life directly. Viper Strikes can be dodged with Evasion.

The Notable Passive Adders Touch allows you to poison enemies with Critical Strikes with Daggers. Deals chaos damage equal to 10% of the damage done by the hit per second, for 2 seconds.

Converted Damage

There are many skills, supports, and item mods which will convert one type of damage into another. Converted damage gains bonuses from both the type of damage it was converted from AND the type of damage it is converted to. The following is an example taken from the Path of Exile forums.

Mark_GGG wrote: I have glacial hammer converting 50% of my physical damage to cold damage, and Cold to Fire converting 50% of my cold damage to fire damage. Lets say my weapon deals 100 physical damage (in actuality there'll be two numbers, an minimum and a maximum, but we only need to do the maths once for the example, it's applied exactly the same to both).

I have: 10% Increased Physical Damage, 20% Increased Elemental Damage, 5% Increased Cold Damage, 15% Increased Fire Damage,

My weapon's base damage is 100 physical. 50% of this will be converted to cold, 50% of that (25% of the total) will be converted again to fire.

The physical damage will be affected only by the physical damage increase, for a 10% increase.

The cold damage will be affected by physical, elemental and cold increases, for a total 35% increase (10 + 20 + 5).

The fire damage is affected by physical, elemental, cold and fire increases, for a total 50% increase (10 + 20 + 5 + 15).

Physical: 50 of the base damage ends up being physical, with a 10% increase applied = 55 Physical Damage

Cold: 25 of the base damage ends up being cold, with a 35% increase applied = 34 Cold Damage (33.75 rounds up)

Fire: 25 of the base damage ends up being fire, with a 50% increase applied = 38 Fire Damage (37.5 rounds up)

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