Ice Bite - pretty useless

I was playing my duelist, who currently uses Hatred to buff his Heavy Strike and decided to spec into Ice Bite for some DPS-boost.
I wrote down the DPS values for a level 16 Heavy Strike, a lvl 10 Heavy Strike and a lvl 10 Glacial Hammer for comparison before I specced. All were linked to the same support gems, Faster Attack, Melee Splash and Melee Physical Damage.

As my Hatred is 42% more effective due to aura-supporting passive nodes, about 1/3 of my damage is cold damage, and as I had no other %-elemental damage buffs up to that point I expected an increase of about 300-400 DPS (4000 DPS * 1/3 * 30%).
Glacial Hammer makes it so 2/3 of my damage is cold, so I expected even more from that.

I was in for quite the surprise:

Level 16 Heavy Strike: 4049 -> 4157 (increases 108 points)
Level 10 Heavy Strike: 3715 -> 3823 (increases 108 points)
Level 10 Glacial Hammer: 3011 -> 3195 (increases 184 points)

So, seeing how the difference was the same for a level 10 and a level 16 gem, it was quite obvious that the %-damage increase on the Heavy Strike gem is not even considered.
As I was a bit baffled, i pulled out my calculator and ran some numbers through it.

As it turn out, it seems like the 30% increase from Ice Bite takes the damage from the "Default Attack", then calculates all converted and added cold damage from skills and such, and adds that much flat cold damage to your total damage.
No %-phys damage buffs that usually apply to your converted or added cold damage from Hatred/Glacial Hammer apply here, so you only get a ridiculously small flat buff and that's it.
Support gems, gem level, none of those matter.

Let me repeat: If I'm correct, Ice Bite always scales of the Default Attack.

Seeing how the three main sources of weapon cold damage (Hatred, Glacial Hammer and Ice Shot) all scale with physical damage, that makes Ice Bite quite the joke. It's just as effective to grab a small 12% phys node, which even gives you a little bit more leech.

I guess other 'weapon elemental damage' incresing nodes work the same way, which would mostly matter for the combination of the 'Added Fire Damage' gem and the 'Lava Lash' node.

I could be wrong, I don't know.
What I know is, Ice Bite sucks and I'm speccing out of it.

Kekeke, welcome to Path of Exile. Yes, all "Increased" stats add together they don't multiply, except maybe DoT ones like Burning. Nobody knows anything anymore on that front.

Ice Bite is indeed poopy. We all have consensus on that.

Even if you have all your damage converted to Cold, you're still only getting 30% increased damage. If you're also taking Hatchet Master. If you're taking Deft Blade instead for some reason, it is 15% increased damage a point. And neither of them can use Glacial Hammer, so it's doubly useless. Ice Shot could in theory use it, but it might as well be on the other side of the moon to Fury Bolts.

The only type of damage it increases that regular Physical% doesn't is base Cold attack damage, which is available on gear and the Added Cold Damage support gem. The three elements are not equal when it comes to base elemental damage either; Lightning has an aura and a support gem that provides base damage, the other two don't.

Oro's Sacrifice does give Lava Lash some reason to exist, though..

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welcome to Path of Exile

Well, thank you.

Before I respecced I wrote down some more numbers, like the damage with Double Strike and the default attack and the raw cold damage dealt per hit for all the attacks, and concluded that what I wrote above was probably correct, the default attack also gains 108 points cold DPS.
I kinda phrased it a bit more complicated than you.

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Yes, all "Increased" stats add together they don't multiply, except maybe DoT ones like Burning. Nobody knows anything anymore on that front.

So, what you're trying to explain to me is, that the "30% increased cold damage with weapons" gets added to the phys% modifier that scale Hatred/Ice Shot/Glacial Hammer?
That seems to be correct, after doing the math on it, the numbers work out.

#workingAsIntended, I assume.

Devs might want to consider this:
My cold damage without Ice Bite, using Heavy Strike (linked to physical support gems) and Hatred, is 377-776 per hit. No other passives/items add or increase cold damage.

Ice Bite says, it increases the cold damage dealt with weapons by 30%.
After I spec Ice Bite, my cold damage is 408-840.
That equals an 8.2% increase in cold damage.

In which world does that make any sense to someone reading the skill description.

(/obv those numbers only apply to my case, but other cases will be similar)

It makes perfect sense.

Increased means add.
More means multiply.

Increased means BASE DAMAGE * (ADD UP ALL INCREASED)
More means BASE DAMAGE * MORE MODIFIERS

+30% + +40% increased = base * 1.7
+30% + 40% more = base * 1.3 * 1.4

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anubite a écrit :

It makes perfect sense.

Increased means add.
More means multiply.

Increased means BASE DAMAGE * (ADD UP ALL INCREASED)
More means BASE DAMAGE * MORE MODIFIERS

+30% + +40% increased = base * 1.7
+30% + 40% more = base * 1.3 * 1.4

Way to miss the point, sir.

That the mechanics work in a certain way doesn't mean they make sense.
They work in a way that makes Ice Bite a waste of space in the passive tree, and that can't be a desirable effect.

Ice Bit + Hatred sucks

Ice Bite + Cold Damage gem is good.

Why? Because Hatred uses your physical damage to determine the bonus, and therefore Ice Bite becomes an additive modifier with all your physical modifiers meaning it is very weak. However if you use flat cold damage Ice Bite becomes quite powerful.

Unfortunately there are very few ways to get significant added cold damage.

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hscorpio a écrit :

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anubite a écrit :

It makes perfect sense.

Increased means add.
More means multiply.

Increased means BASE DAMAGE * (ADD UP ALL INCREASED)
More means BASE DAMAGE * MORE MODIFIERS

+30% + +40% increased = base * 1.7
+30% + 40% more = base * 1.3 * 1.4

Way to miss the point, sir.

That the mechanics work in a certain way doesn't mean they make sense.
They work in a way that makes Ice Bite a waste of space in the passive tree, and that can't be a desirable effect.

They make sense to me, but I've been playing the game for ages.

Mathematically and linguistically, they are consistent across the board. They make perfect sense. What you're complaining about is 'intuitiveness'. I'd agree the wording is not intuitive - PoE is the first game I know of to have developed a rigid word-based structure for modifiers. I've never payed a game where crit chance was increased multiplicatively and not additively, it's not intuitive that increased/more are different.

But you can't say they make no sense, unless you failed the 5th grade or something.

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But you can't say they make no sense, unless you failed the 5th grade or something.

I have no idea why you'd stoop so low in a argument about a game mechanic.
You are intentionally misunderstanding/ignoring the point I am making and arguing on a completely different angle while trying to insult me on a personal level.


Yes, the mechanics "work correctly" in that the result of the function that calculates the damage is correct.

No, they don't "make sense" in that they are nonintuitive and there are only cornercases where the skill is actually worth the points you have to invest to get to it, because it works horribly with the most common sources of cold damage.
Having three funtionally identical skills for fire/lightning/cold and making the mechanics in a way that one of them is much worse than the other is not good game design, and that doesn't make any bloody sense.

If you're not getting that, maybe you should come up with more polemical and insulting ways to dodge the discussion.

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hscorpio a écrit :

"

But you can't say they make no sense, unless you failed the 5th grade or something.

I have no idea why you'd stoop so low in a argument about a game mechanic.
You are intentionally misunderstanding/ignoring the point I am making and arguing on a completely different angle while trying to insult me on a personal level.


Yes, the mechanics "work correctly" in that the result of the function that calculates the damage is correct.

No, they don't "make sense" in that they are nonintuitive and there are only cornercases where the skill is actually worth the points you have to invest to get to it, because it works horribly with the most common sources of cold damage.
Having three funtionally identical skills for fire/lightning/cold and making the mechanics in a way that one of them is much worse than the other is not good game design, and that doesn't make any bloody sense.

If you're not getting that, maybe you should come up with more polemical and insulting ways to dodge the discussion.

Actually one of them is not much worse because of mechanics. It is much worse because of your elemental damage source.

That's a very large difference.

If you had flat cold instead of converted cold it would do what it says it does. Not knowing the difference mechanically between flat and converted damage sources is not Ice Bite's problem. It's a failing of the game to accurately convey information or of you to research an underlying principle which has been executed identically in all situations.

Converted damage is subject to the increases of its original damage type and the increases of its new damage type. Increases are inherently additive with each other, and conversion does not stop that.

Lava Lash is bad if you use the Added Fire Damage gem or use incomplete conversion from Infernal Blow. But you haven't noticed that, and assume that Lava Lash doesn't have a similar use case "issue".