Touch too Much
Physical Damage
You may apply physical damage to your enemies in two variants. Either you rely on combat attacks, which are done via punching or throwing stuff or shooting arrows, or you focus on some spells which deal physical damage. Spells are as always subject to equipment restrictions, say they are only enhanceable via skill boni, Faster Cast Rate, and, if you're lucky, with decreasing of enemy's physical resistance. This FAQtoid focusses on combat, but here's a list of spells anyway:
spells which deliver physical damage
- Assassin
- - Mind Blast
- - Psychic Hammer (partly)
- Barbarian
- - War Cry
- Druid
- - Shock Wave
- - Molten Boulder (partly)
- - Twister
- - Tornado
- - Volcano (partly)
- Necromancer
- - Corpse Explosion (partly)
Paladin
- - Blessed Hammer (Classic only, in LoD Magic Damage)
Other kinds of damage are covered in FAQtoids of their own, even if tehy seem to be of physical nature. This applies to Crushing Blow and Open Wounds.
kinds of weaponry
Weapon types are subdivided in melee weapons for close combat, missile weapons for shooting and throwing weapons, which are combo weapons usable in close or ranged combat. A Druid in wereform may use a missile weapon in close combat, but he isn't allowed to do any ranged attack while being shape-shifted.
Different weapon classes are commonly subdivided with regards to Barbarian's Mastery skills. However, some technical aspects differentiate weapon classes also regarding class-specific base weapon speed, animation related business (Blocking, Hit Recovery, Spell Casting) or in consideration of damage modification via strength and dexterity. Some tables below should do the trick.
A very classical Role Playing Game convention is subdividing melee weapons in slashing, thrusting and blunt weapons. Traditionally blunt weapons are best choice when whacking undead, since those are considered painless to slashings or sticking pointy bits into them, so they must be smashed to pieces. Diablo II's little tribute to tradition is the commonly known '50% damage to undead' bonus all blunt weapons grant. Though this bonus doesn't modify weapon's base damage but is considered as 'off weapon Enhanced Damage' - offweapED. This is covered later on in this FAQtoid.
| melee weapons | ranged weapons | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| thrusting weapons | swinging weapons | throwing weapons | missile weapons | |||||||||||||
| Fist 1 | pricking weapons | slashing weapons | other | blunt weapons 2 Barbarian: Mace Mastery | used as pricking or slashing weapons | used as throwing missile | ||||||||||
| Maces and Hammers | Rods 3 | |||||||||||||||
| 1H | 2H | 1H | 2H | 1H | 2H | 1H | 2H | weapons | potions | |||||||
| 1H: used one-handed; 2H: used two-handed 1 bare fist is no blunt weapon 2 all weapons granting 50%ED versus undead; important for weapon choice while crafting Hit Power Weapon 3 Beware, Orbs don't count as rods, important for weapon choice while crafting Caster Weapon 4 Sorceress' specific thingies 5 only Mace, Morning Star, Flail and their exceptional and elite versions respectively; important while socketing Runewords | ||||||||||||||||
| bare fist claw (Assassin only) | knife throwing knife javelin | spear | sword (1H) axe (1H) throwing axe | sword (2H) axe (2H) pole | orb 4 | club mace 5 hammer (1H) | hammer (2H) | scepter wand | staff (2H) | ⇐ ⇐ ⇐ | throwing knife javelin throwing axe | fiery and toxic elixirs | bow | crossbow | ||
Another differentation is used during technical discussions about animations. This also covers why a weapons shows other base speed when rather equipped on a Paladin than a Necromancer. This classification is defined in Weapons.txt.
see also:
- player sequence table, by Hammerman
- extraction of Weapons.txt
- extraction of AnimData.d2
| animation class | means | contains |
|---|---|---|
| * not two-handed swing | ||
| hth | hand to hand | - fist - claw |
| 1ht | one handed thrust | - thrusting weapon used one-handed |
| 2ht | two handed thrust | - thrusting weapon used two-handed |
| 1hs | one handed swing | - swinging weapon used one-handed |
| 2hs | two handed sword * | - sword used two-handed |
| stf | staves | - hammer used two-handed - axe used two-handed - staff used two-handed - pole |
| bow | bows | - bow |
| xbw | crossbow | - crossbow |
Furthermore a classification of weaponry considers damage bonus gained per status point investment in either dexterity or strength or both.
This is also defined in Weapons.txt.
| weapon class | %ED/str | %ED/dex | note |
|---|---|---|---|
| * complex calculation is covered in linked FAQtoid | |||
| common melee | 1 | 0 | |
| hammer | 1,1 | 0 | all two-handed used ones, also War Hammer/Battle Hammer/Legendary Mallet |
| knife | 0,75 | 0,75 | |
| common throwing | 0,75 | 0,75 | regardless of melee or ranged usage |
| claw | 0,75 | 0,75 | Assassin only |
| amazon specific spear and javelin | 0,8 | 0,5 | Amazon only; regardless of melee or ranged usage |
| missile weapon | 0 | 1 | strength requirement must be met |
| shield | 1 | 0 | Paladin only * |
| shoes | 1,2 | 1 | Assassin only * |
damage modification
Physical Damage done via attacks is calculated with many components.
As always, item links lead to Atair's german d2wissen.
- First component is weapon's base damage. This has a minimum to maximum range which can be averaged. Lots of people only calculate with maximum damage, which gives some weapons a non-existent advantage. Existing base weapons are in fact thoroughly balanced in terms of straying damage, average damage and speed.
- An ethereal weapon will gain its 50% base damage bonus.
Shields and shoes won't gain a damage bonus to the respective attacks due to ethereality. - Now weapon damage is modified with Enhanced Damage - ED as weapon's item property. Up to 15% bonus granted by 'superior' quality count in here, too. All this you may call 'onweaponED'.
Special damage boni versus undead and/or demons are not figuring in here, even if the weapon itself has such a modifier! - All boni to minimum and maximum damage granted by items will be added. It doesn't matter if boni are on weapon itself, on other equipment, or on Charms in inventory.
Skill property '+ xx Damage' will add xx to minimum damage only.
Item property + xxx Damage will add xxx here, despite it was claimed to figure in later. - Percentage boni to Enhanced Damage not on the weapon are calculated, you may call it 'offweaponED'.
This contains- - damage modification via status points in strength and/or dexterity
- - all special boni versus undead and demons which will of course only work against those species,
even those granted by the weapon itself, regardless of magical affix or blunt weapon bonus! - - all percentage boni from equipment omitting the weapon(s)
- - all percentage boni granted by skills
- - all percentage boni granted by friendly aurae and suchlike
- - but also all penalties caused by enemy's Weaken or Decrepify curses as well as hostile Taunt and Battle Cry - those skills' diminishing effect to damage are calculated as negatives to offweaponED
- This is total physical damage, which may have a chance to become a critical hit then.
Some skills will convert all or parts of physical damage into another kind of damage. The conversion happens here. This applies to
- Amazon
- Cold Arrow
- Fire Arrow
- Magical Arrow
- Lightning Bolt
- Barbarian
- Berserk
- Frenzy (if synergized via Berserk)
- Concentrate (if synergized via Berserk)
exceptions
Paladin's Vengeance gains its elemental damage from base weapon damage up to fourth list entry, but without ther buggy '+XXX' modificator granted by, say, the Redeemer. Later modifications only affect physical part.
Paladin's Smite also works differently. It uses offweaponED and + xxx Damage item property, but none of the others; base damage is shield's damage (only shown to Paladin), not weapon's damage.
Some of Assassin's combat kicks will deliver elemental damage based on enemy's suffered physical damage, so they won't do elemental damage to physical immune enemies. Refer to Tub's german Tips to Kick and his Kickdamage Calculator.
Guess, of course there are some bugs around ...
- Skill property '+ xx Damage' will add xx to minimum damage only.
- Item property + xxx Damage will add xxx here, despite it was claimed to figure in later.
- If percentage and straight minimum and/or maximum damage boni are granted by a sole non-weapon-item you'll encounter some very odd calculations since 1.10, both in displayed and delivered damage. Prominent with this effect are jewels. It seems that socketing order figures somehow in. The bug is not fully researched yet. To play safely avoid socketing both item properties into one item. Distributed over several items there are no problems known.
This bug doesn't affect weapons.
see also: off-weapon enhanced damage in Amazon Basin
ED/Max Bug at indiablo.de, german - This is not really a bug, but nice to know: if minimum damage exceeds maximum damage internally original maximum damage figure is used for calculations. At the very end the result will be adjusted to ensure maximum damage's value is higher than minimum damage's. Have an example ...
A weapon granting 40-50 damage is enhanced with +11 minimum damage and +100% offweaponED. Internally this becomes 102-100 and is adjusted to 102-103, not to 102-104
physical resistance
To diminish suffered damage there's always a resistance. Monsters indeed may have 'resistance to physical' assigned, whereas player characters and hirelings may rely on 'damage reduced' item properties.
Characters and hirelings will have 0% physical resistance in all difficulties. Some items grant a percentage bonus to damage reduction which is hard-limited to effective 50%.
Other items will grant a straight bonus to damage reduction. Similar to magic damage reduction - MDR it is often abbreviated PDR for physical damage reduction.
In damage order firstly straight reduction is calculated, then percentage reduction.
Necromancer's Bone Armor and Sorceress' Energy Shield also step in before physical resistance.
In 1.09 Bone Armor stepped in after physical resistance.
Negative effect to physical resistance comes along with Amplify Damage or Decrepify curses, which are cast by a variety of monsters. Amplifiy will decrease resistance by 100%, Decrepify by 50%.
Keep in mind that Possessed Champions can't be cursed with anything, same for all stationaries and objects.
Monsters even may be immune to physical damage. Immunity can be broken via Amplify or Decrepify, but the curses will work only at a fifth of their regular effectiveness. Thus a monster with 109% physical resistance won't be affected by resistance-lowering effect of Decrepify (the other curse effects will still work), and if physical resistance is beyond 119% even Amplify is of no use anymore - the curse won't be applied in that case, since Amplify's only effect is resistance reduction.
Player characters and hirelings are only allowed to increase percentage damage reduction up to 50%. You may wear more stuff, but percentage damage reduce won't work beyond 50%. This works very similar to othere, elemental resistances, so if you're affected by aforesaid curses the surplus is counted in.
If you've achieved 100% or more percntage damage reduction you aren't treated as immune, so that curses will affect you without immunity penalty.
In 1.09 the limit was 75%. A character with 100% or more damage reducedwas treated as immune, thus couldn't be cursed with Amplify anymore.
Paladin's Sanctuary aura ignores undead's physical resistance; ths will work for the Paladin (or the one with that aura active) himself only.
straight damage reduction
The item property 'xx damage reduced' (without percentage) is no subject to a hard limit. It is restricted by equipment slots only. A combination of percentage and straight reduction will make the character indeed nearly immune, since it may negate any average physical damage the character will suffer. Average physical damage is very rarely beyond 80. But critical hits are out of consideration here.
An interesting glitch affects the combination of MDR and PDR if small values of damage should be applied. If in damage order the elemental damage result up to the point where MDR and PDR step in is smaller than PDR's value, PDR will set this elemental part to zero. 'Elemental' is here Cold, Fire, Lightning and Magic Damage.
see also:
- PDR/MDR Overflow Mechanism in Amazon Basin
- PDR/MDR in Lurker Lounge
thorny effects
Reflected damage is a pain to all melee combatants, it doesn't work with ranged attacks. It is based on physical damage the opponent has received. If this was way enough to kill the opponent still the complete damage he would have suffered is taken into account, thus a high-damage character may kill himself on very weak opponents when a thorny effect is applied to him. To player characters and melee hirelings thorny effects are more deadly than to monsters, because monsters have usually lots of life compared to their punching damage, whereas characters and hirelings are designed the other way.
see also:
- Thorns and a misconception, by Nefarius
Paladin's Sacrifice will reflect 8% of delivered physical damage to the Paldin, who's called Martyr for some reason then. Sacrifice is also available via Charges on melee weapons.
| name | kind |  PvP effect * | may be gained from |
|---|---|---|---|
| * additively the PvP penalty of 17% is applied ** extra precision ThornsEffect = (Thorns% + 4) / 8 ThornsCalculation = 25600 * ThornsEffect / 100 ThornsDamage = ThornsCalculation * 17 / 100 | |||
| Thorns | area-affecting aura | 1/10 ** | Paladin skill hireling skill oskill |
| Spirit of Barbs | area-affecting aura | 1/10 ** | Druid skill Charges |
| Iron Maiden | curse | 1/4 | Necromancer skill Charges trigger |
| Iron Golem | aurastate | ? | Necromancer skill Charges |
| Spike Fiend Quill Rat guest monster | item property | - | - |
| Sacrifice | selfinflicting attack | all | Paladin skill Charges |
Another variation are item properties which will damage an attacker regardless of delivered punching damage. These exist with physical damage or lightning damage. Technically these are no thorn effects, since they don't reflect.
Same goes for Assassin's Blade Shield.
All listed effects don't need a CtH check and can't trigger events.
In 1.09 Blade Shield could trigger events.
Any shape-shifted unit won't die instantly, but changes back to original shape before and is at one hitpoint then. This is no life assurance, but if in damage order some life gained via Life Leech or Life Tap is granted, it will be applied at this moment. So a shape-shifted unit has a minimal better chance of surviving thorny effects.
see also: Wereform and Iron Maiden
Credits
- adeyke
- Anarki
- Atair
- Crystalion
- El
- gulasch
- mikeandroe
- Nefarius
- Ozmodiar
- tommi
- Tub
Contact me via E-Mail, if you like.
