Fenfire Codex — How Damage Works

A bonus only counts if it applies to the kind of hit you are dealing. +40% ranged damage does nothing for a Fireball, and +% spell damage from Intelligence does nothing for a skeleton. Every hit in the game is one of the kinds in the table below. Most skills deal more than one: a Fireball is a spell bolt, then an explosion, then a burn — and every part of a skill takes the melee, ranged or spell % of the skill that owns it.

Which bonuses apply

• Penetration applies to every kind of hit except bleeding. Conversion applies to direct damage only: a burn always deals fire, a poison always deals poison.
• Minions hit with their own stats. They grow with the skill's points and its Bond (see below). The only bonus of yours they get is +% minion damage. Your attributes, element bonuses and crit do not reach them.
• Traps are the exception: a trap uses your element %, explosion %, penetration and conversions, read live on every hit. It still does not get your attributes or crit.
• Bleeding drains a share of the victim's maximum life. It ignores armor and resistance, nothing scales it except the skill itself, and it works against bosses at a tenth of its strength and against champions at three tenths.

Added damage: imbued or on hit

Gear adds damage to your hits in two ways. Imbued damage is part of the weapon itself: it crits and takes every bonus the weapon takes. On hit damage is something that happens once the hit lands, closer to a small spell: your element bonus and your melee / ranged % grow it, never a critical hit. Both follow your conversions.

• Both kinds are added once per hit, and only to the hits listed. Explosions, ground effects, burns and minions never carry them.
• When one attack fires several projectiles, each one carries its share of the added damage, like the rest of the hit (step 6, the global multiplier, below).
• On-hit lines can also carry a burn or poison (see Ticks below), a stun or a blind, or a chance to cast a spell. That spell is cast at its full strength.

Order of operations

One weapon hit, start to finish. Other kinds of hit follow the same steps and skip the lines the table marks with a dash.

1. Base
   The weapon's damage (for a weapon hit) or the skill's damage (for a spell). Skill points have already scaled the skill's numbers, and its masteries have already multiplied them. Some melee skills strike with a share of the weapon: each hop of Flying Cuts deals ×0.55, Spear Charge ×1.5 and more with points. That share also applies to imbued damage, not to on-hit lines.
2. Convert
   Conversions move a share of each damage type to another, once. Converted damage is not converted a second time: physical turned to fire stays fire, even with a fire-to-cold line. Lines above 100% in total share the damage pro rata.
3. × element
   +% fire damage and the like, for the type the damage ended up as. Physical converted to fire takes your fire bonus, not your physical one.
4. × kind of hit
   Melee, ranged or spell %, on every part of the skill: the weapon line, its own riders, its explosions and clouds. For weapon hits also the critical hit and +% damage vs undead (or demons, animals…). Explosions take +% explosion damage on top.
5. + added damage
   Weapon hits add the +N damage of sockets and components (converted, then multiplied by steps 3 and 4), then the On hit lines of affixes (converted, multiplied by your element bonus and your melee / ranged %, no crit).
6. × global
   Multipliers on the whole hit, added damage and burns included. Some skills carry one in their core: Soul Steal Arrow's arrow deals ×0.7, the price of the mana it returns. Several projectiles at once (Multishot, a shotgun's pellets) each deal 1 / √n of the hit: 4 pellets deal half each, 9 deal a third. Minions and traps take +% minion damage here, and player-versus-player hits are cut to a fifth.
7. − defence
   Armor (physical only), then a block if the target blocks, then resistance minus your penetration. Resistance is capped by the target's maximum and cannot fall below −100% (double damage). An immune target takes nothing from that type, whatever your penetration.

Each step multiplies the previous one. So two bonuses in different steps are worth more than the same total in one step: +50% fire and +50% ranged give ×2.25, while +100% fire gives ×2.

What each bonus does

Evasion, block & hit recovery

Three things can stop a hit or hold you in place. While you are held you can neither move nor attack.

• Evasion is rolled first, then block. You cannot evade again until the evasion's hold ends, nor block again until the block's hold ends.
• A block reduces the whole hit by the shield's block value, whatever the damage type.
• Every kind of hit can be evaded or blocked, spells and explosions included, except the ticks of a burn or a poison.
• Against a ground effect each tick is a tenth of a second, so the hold is a tenth too: 0.02 s instead of 0.2 s.

Ticks

Damage that lasts is dealt in small slices called ticks. Each tick is a hit of its own: the target's resistance and your penetration apply to every one.

• Burns and poisons always deal their full total: the last, shorter tick pays what is left. They cannot be blocked or evaded, and armor does not reduce them.
• Your fire or poison bonus is read at each tick, not when the hit landed.
• Burns and poisons from separate hits stack, each on its own timer. Standing in one cloud or patch keeps a single stack from it, refreshed while you stay. Burning pitch stacks at most 3 times on one body.
• Ground effects are the zones a skill leaves behind: Toxic Flask's poison cloud, Corrosive Rounds' acid, Pitch Arrow's burning pitch, the fire and poison pools of elite monsters. Auras such as Solar Blessing work the same way.
• Ground effects roll block and evasion on every tick: an evasion avoids that tick, a block reduces it. The hold after each one is 0.02 s instead of 0.2 s (see above), so you are slowed a little and can still walk out.

Skill points

Points multiply a skill's own damage on a curve that grows with each point, and +skills gear adds points on top:

Points never multiply your weapon. On a weapon skill they grow the skill's own added damage, its speed, cooldown or area. The weapon hit itself grows with your gear and the bonuses above. Weapon minions such as skeletons and familiars follow the same curve through their +% physical damage.

Masteries

Masteries multiply the numbers inside the skills of their tree. They apply before any of the steps above. Most trees pair two nodes: a Force for the hit and a Bond for everything that lasts. Some classes give them other names.

• The wizard's masteries and the alchemyst's Alchemy and Flask Masteries are single nodes: they multiply damage and stat lines, but not burns, poisons or other effects (Flask Mastery makes one exception for Toxic Flask's poison).
• A Bond grows a burn's damage and its duration together. Damage per second stays the same, and the total grows.
• A skill with no damage of its own, like Rapid Fire or Cosmic Dance, gets nothing from a Force. Its damage is your weapon's.

Worked examples