Does phys damage% on weapon with no local phys damage do anything?

Meaning like a cultist bow or crackling quarterstaff... if it has %phys damage affix but no x - x local phys damage, does the % scale globally or is it a worthless affix without that?

I'm pretty certain it's an oversight, owed to the early stage the game is in - but then again, those weapons can roll + flat phys damage, so the possibility isn't completely out of the question.

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UnDeaD_CyBorG#7056 a écrit :

I'm pretty certain it's an oversight, owed to the early stage the game is in - but then again, those weapons can roll + flat phys damage, so the possibility isn't completely out of the question.

No, its just a bad rolled weapon.
Thisbis a core mechanic and im pretty sure this will stay like this.
Was in poe1 the same meachanic.

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Terraohm#2632 a écrit :

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UnDeaD_CyBorG#7056 a écrit :

I'm pretty certain it's an oversight, owed to the early stage the game is in - but then again, those weapons can roll + flat phys damage, so the possibility isn't completely out of the question.

No, its just a bad rolled weapon.
Thisbis a core mechanic and im pretty sure this will stay like this.
Was in poe1 the same meachanic.

We call a mod bad when it gives something unwanted on that item. All common mods have to provide something, they can't be literally useless. Such bases should have local lightning/chaos damage in mod pool instead.

Surprisingly, such weapons can roll %increased phys damage mods deliberately. I wonder what the designers were debating about and how did they end up deciding this. Is it even worth 1 minute to discuss? GGG literally allowed items to roll mods without a standalone effect which breaks their own philosophy. Mods exist to modify stuff, they have to provide something. Otherwise we could've been rolling local %increased cold damage on axes for example, or local %increased evasion on ES body armours. But we never could, and it made sense. In PoE2 though, when we got non-phys weapons, having blank mods became fine. What a coincidence, is this surely not because such weapons would require custom mod pools – something the devs can't prioritise right now?

As for "right now", the comment is not new. It's from before 0.2 update. There was a conversation in a discord channel where someone asked the same question as in this thread. In a guide they followed, the author said %phys mods worked on base lightning damage of crackling quarterstaff. I can understand the confusion partly, one thing is to make a valuable mod useless, another thing is to keep it rollable because it still can roll +flat phys.

The reason killed me. Since when we have mods that only work in pairs? Forbidden Flesh/Flame? They are disinged around this idea. That's why they have that very strong effect together. This is not relevant for +flat phys and %phys increase combo. For unqiues it's a cool idea, not so much for normal rollable mods. I mean there's a design room for rollable mods as well, but current ones are clearly intended to work on thier own.

Maybe that discussion revolved around a question like "should we keep % increased phys damage rollable?", which is flawed at its core. Because it originates from the fact that all weapons can roll it by default. But they do only because they are phys-based things, the discussed weapons are not. And this mod shouldn't be in question at the first place. Like imagine if you chose mods for the mod pool one by one from stratch, without referencing to the current weapon mod pool. Would you choose % increased phys damage for weapons that don't deal phys (by default)?

I think it's important to keep in mind that a lot of skills only deal damage based on a percentage of their phys damage being converted to f.e. lightning damage.

If you'd remove the phys rolls from that fanatic bow example's modifier pool, then you'd be making all such skills inherently unusable with that bow.
Lightning arrow, shockcaller arrow, etc all convert from a % of phys ...

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keppie#6373 a écrit :

I think it's important to keep in mind that a lot of skills only deal damage based on a percentage of their phys damage being converted to f.e. lightning damage.

If you'd remove the phys rolls from that fanatic bow example's modifier pool, then you'd be making all such skills inherently unusable with that bow.
Lightning arrow, shockcaller arrow, etc all convert from a % of phys ...

But dont those skills still use whatever damage types are on the weapon + convert a portion of physical to an element?

Eg, I use a bolting staff with no physical damage. I can still use every quarterstaff skill with it, but the ice attacks will be doing lightning dmg.

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Direfell#7544 a écrit :

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keppie#6373 a écrit :

I think it's important to keep in mind that a lot of skills only deal damage based on a percentage of their phys damage being converted to f.e. lightning damage.

If you'd remove the phys rolls from that fanatic bow example's modifier pool, then you'd be making all such skills inherently unusable with that bow.
Lightning arrow, shockcaller arrow, etc all convert from a % of phys ...

But dont those skills still use whatever damage types are on the weapon + convert a portion of physical to an element?

Eg, I use a bolting staff with no physical damage. I can still use every quarterstaff skill with it, but the ice attacks will be doing lightning dmg.

Hard to say. It all depends on the skill and optionally, at what damage portion of the skill you're looking at if it deals it's damage in phases.
Lightning arrow for example deals it's projectile damage directly and thus will apply whatever damage is on the weapon and is added from other sources. But conversion is handled first. For a fanatic bow with no added phys damage from anywhere, this would mean 0 damage is converted into zero damage. The resulting projectile damage would be the sum of all elemental damage and chaos damage on the weapon + all added elemental damage and added chaos damage from other sources, with all applicable increases from passives or gear applied last.
It also has a secondary damage source upon hitting walls or enemies in the form of a chaining lightning beam, for which the damage is 100% of physical damage converted to lightning. For that same fanatic bow with no added phys damage from anywhere, this would result in no damage since the beam is a pure lightning secondary damage source to which the other damage types on the initial projectile are not applied (it is no longer the initial projectile) and only increases to elemental dmg or lightning dmg will augment it further.

For a build that takes a lot of increased ele dmg passives for example and with the example of Lightning arrow, weirdly enough, this will mean you will want significant phys damage on your weapon due to the conversion (and most notably the second, complete, conversion).
In short, the skill descriptions are important.

I assume similar principles can be found on other skills from other classes.

Sorry, my posts aren't quoting for some reason*

Thanks for the explanation, I get it now.