note: see last paragraph before commenting please.
When I have a flat damage buff such as 100 elemental damage from ‘storm spirit’ I will deal that damage if I hit something with my weapon.
But what about pets? Will my raven from ‘summon familiar’ deliver the ‘storm spirit’ damage? the raven has an ability ‘storm orb’ that deals lighting and electrocute damage. I know ‘storm spirit’ does buff my raven and gives it a “global” buff of % elemental damage. I know that buff will help the raven’s storm orb attack.
But is ‘storm orb’ also getting the extra flat elemental damage? If I made the character a Warlock (occult/arcanist) and put points in Iskandra’s Elemental Exchange with transmuter Manifestation to give the IEE to pets would the flat damage given from IEE affect orb? Or is ‘storm orb’ for my raven a “spell” like for me a “spell” is something I cast that is not a weapon attack and does not have % weapon damage? This would be important question if I am trying to make the raven do damage.
Just to save time on anyone who says not to spec the raven as damage the name of my character is “The Crow” and the whole point is just to farm crap and see how well a maxed Summon Familiar raven does. So far I am threw smuggler’s pass and am an Occultist with Maxed Raven except only half maxed ‘Mend Flesh’. The purpose of the build is just to see how well it does and the purpose of this post is to figure out mechanics of how flat damage buffs on pets affects pets attack. ‘storm orb’ and the raven is an example but also curious on other pets like item or hell hound etc… It would be important to find out about if you were using auras to buff your pets damage with flat damage.
No, the raven won’t benefit from flat damage bonuses from Storm Spirit and IEE, but as you mentioned it does benefit from the +% damage multiplier bonus.
For a more detailed discussion of the mechanics of flat damage on pets (and all things related to pet damage), see my article here: Understanding Pet Damage. Here’s the relevant portion that answers your question:
That being said, i am about 95% certain that the raven does NOT fit into this category. The raven is more like a “familiar” than other pets in the game. I do not think it has an auto-attack, it just passively buffs and casts spells.
I won’t comment further on the effectiveness of single pet builds since you clearly state the goal in that bottom paragraph.
For reference, I play the build mentioned in the above thread that I linked, and so I am decently familiar with the Raven’ mechanics vs. the mechanics of other pets.
Related question on the topic, what about the skeletons from Raise the Dead (Revenant devotion proc)? They were changed in a patch to deal Vitality/Aether damage themselves and scale off Player bonuses, rather than pet bonuses.
I don’t see any indication they do any % Weapon Damage, so do they benefit from flat damage auras like Raven’s elemental aura buff (recently updated in 1.0.1.0 patch), or Demo’s Flame Touched?
They should benefit from those, but I haven’t tested it. Any pet that physically attacks with its weapon/claws seems to benefit from flat damage, and the skeletons do have a melee attack. Someone that acually uses the revenant constellation should probably verify though.
They used to have %WD and were affected, but this should have been removed with the latest patch. Quoting Zantai from this month-old Reddit thread:
This only applies to player-scaled pets. For pet-scaled pets, their mechanics (including a list of non-%WD pets) is described in the article Understanding Pet Damage.