Basic Questions on Spell Damage

Caroloces

Is spell damage created by any ability that requires magicka to generate that ability? The reason I ask is that I was slotting structured entropy on my bar which grants Major Sorcery, increasing spell damage by 20%. I want to make sure that whatever I fire off after entropy actually is generating spell damage. So luminous shards does magic damage and reflective light does flame damage, but are those considered to be spell damage, and will those generate 20% more damage if fired off after entropy? Also, will light and heavy attacks with destro and resto staffs generate spell damage, also taking advantage of the 20% boost from entropy?

LinearParadox

Okay so... you use the word "Generate" a lot, especially in places where it should be "benefit from", but to answer your questions...

SPELL DAMAGE benifits the following damage types:
Magic, Fire, Shock, Frost.

WEAPON DAMAGE benifits the following damage types:
Physical, Disease, Poison, Bleed.

All attacks, whether they are class skills, weapon skills, weapon light/heavy attacks, etc. will benefit from their assigned stat.

Hope that helps clear up what is yet another glaring lack of transparency in the game's combat system.

danno8

Basically what @LinearParadox says.

If it uses Stamina it is buffed by Weapon Damage. If it uses Magicka it is buffed by Spell Damage.

If you want really good details you can find the formulae here

So for Reflective Light 1 the formula is:

$1 = 0.0618739 Magicka + 0.648719 SD + 1.45395 (Magicka, R2 = 1, ratio = 10.48)
$2 = 0.0744772 Magicka + 0.777726 SD + 4.46913 (Magicka, R2 = 0.999999, ratio = 10.44)

where $1 is the initial hit and $2 is the DoT.

So if you have 20,000 magicka and 2000 spell damage your initial hit would be:

$1 = 0.0618739 (20,000) + 0.648719 (2000) + 1.45395 (Magicka, R2 = 1, ratio = 10.48)
=1237+1297+1.45395= 2535.

Obviously this is just base numbers and has no mitigations or other buffs involved.

WatchYourSixx

The simple answer is that spell damage isn't actually damage, but merely a character stat that increases the damage or healing that your Magicka based spells do. Think spell power. So entropy increases the power of your Magicka spells and heals by 20%. It's not quite THAT simple, but that's the idea.

danno8

WatchYourSixx wrote: »

The simple answer is that spell damage isn't actually damage, but merely a character stat that increases the damage or healing that your Magicka based spells do. Think spell power. So entropy increases the power of your Magicka spells and heals by 20%. It's not quite THAT simple, but that's the idea.

In the example above it would increase the damage from 2535 to 2794, which is around 10%. Which isn't a surprise as spell damage is usually only half the damage equation, with max magicka being roughly the other half.