first off ive researched on google and there are still some parts i dont understand.
i understand whether u have 1 charge or 8 charges you get the tenacity boar and the third modifier buffs.
what i dont get is what do the charges do to your weapon damage and wps skills. so does it start out with low weapon damage and build up to about 170?
how do charges interact with flat damage added to savagery and wps procs
I would imagine it affects the flat lightning and bleed damage which is affect by weapon damage. So the first savagery is like a default weapon attack + 30% of the bonus “flat” damage values listed on the skill (instead of 30% of (default weapon damage+flat damage)). I’m not a pro so I don’t really know but if its something different then I would be surprised.
Savagery at 16/16 does 150% weapon damage multiplied by charge level multiplier. Its range is from 30% (0,3) to 115% (1,15), so basically your first hit does 1500,3 = 0,45% weapon damage, while fully build skill does 1501,15 = 172,5% wd. With Bear transmute it is also multiplied by 1,18, which nets 203,55% wd. Once some WPS procs, Savagery wd is multiplied by WPS (as Savagery counts as normal attack). So, basically, when you get a proc of Feral Hunger 10/10 after building full charge, you hit for total 150%1,151,18*1,6 = 325,68% weapon damage, which is incredibly good (better than Cadence with WPSes, because every Savagery hit can trigger WPS, while just “white” 2/3 hits of Cadence trigger WPS).
Though, there are also drawbacks. First, both Savagery and WPS flat bonuses are not multiplied, but rather added in the end, so the main thing that affects your dps is weapon damage and flat bonuses to it. Flat bonuses are multiplied together with weapon base, but there is an exception described in this bug report. Then, while Cadence overcap does really increase weapon damage bonus of the skill (from 420% up to as high as 500%), Savagery wd increase is listed in skill description, but real damage does not increase, actually (another bug mentioned in the same topic), which basically negates any point to raise this skill over 16/16, except for the case when your primary damage type is Lightning or Bleeding.
what do you mean flat bonuses to the attack? like flat damage added from devotions/gear ect?
also this kind of confuses me so if i was building a ranged savagery vindicator for example what affects dps the most? besides rr i know how that works
ive read through your link i understand that past level 16 savagery gains no more weapon damage.
So in that link the augment flat damage bonus is not multiplied by savagery are their any other sources of flat damage that also are not multiplied such as devotions / gear/ auras?
Witcher explained the mechanics quite well. Keeping it simple, Savagery applies all its bonuses to every hit but the first hit gets 70% haircut. And fully changed Savagery gives you 20% its total damage on top.
Here are some inconsistencies, though:
Savagery should increase both weapon damage and number of charges (at 24 if I remember right) after softcap and there definitely is plenty reasons to max it on dedicated autoattack builds - whether it’s lightning, bleeding, cold, pierce, fire, vitality or aether (is there acid savagery?).
Also, it’s obvious there is no reason to push Savagery over 16/16 on non-lightning/bleeding builds because there’s no reason to use it at all unless you have relevant conversion.
Anyways, you make a Savagery build then max Savagery. Simple as that.
Bonuses to damage, not attack… but yes, I mean, various small bonuses added to weapon damage. Say, in case of vitality ritualist you receive grand bonus from Dread Lord’s green items because they not just add percentage bonuses like “+70% Vitality damage”, but also flat bonuses like “14 Vitality damage”.
No idea - I haven’t tried Vindicator [yet].
It’s not just about damage bonuses - it’s about total damage, weapon damage included. Well, ya_ is right: you receive new charge level once you reach 24/16… but you can as well use other items which grant you flat and/or percentage bonuses to your primary damage, and that would grant you way more dps than raising Savagery by as much as 8 points over max. After all, new charge is nothing but replacing your first mutiplier of 1,15 with 1,2, which doesn’t quite worth 3 legendary items.
Let’s agree to disagree. 
I’ve tested 3 Savagery builds in total: Elgoloth crossbow Vindicator, Malkadarr Korba Trickster and Ultos Warder. Every time I went over my head to max Savagery and it paid. I didn’t know about the bug which kinda changes much. But still, it does not change enough to give up on maxing the main dmg skill: you still got the last charge worth 5% total dmg (huge) and loads of lightning flat.
I say, bug no bug, max it anyway.
Like I’ve said before, it’s worth maxing in case your damage is lightning or bleed. in my cases of physical Avenger Warder and Wildblood melee Ritualist - it’s better to use items which grant you damage instead.
I get it that you have a different philosophy and I’m totally cool with that just explain to me one thing. Why is it relevant to lightning and bleed and not to - as you said - Avenger Savagery? Avenger weapon converts all lightning to phys. And it’s the last few points in Savagery that give you most flat. Best Avenger Warder I’ve seen even uses Badge of Mastery just to get to that 26/16.
It’s even more relevant to Korba Trickters (cold Savagery) where the conversion is specifically “to Savagery” so even the +%lightning bonuses on Savagery line count.
Wildblood, yes, I agree.
Because of how armor absorption works: it absorbs all damage sources individually. This means, for example: “white” strike = armor subtracted once; “white” + WPS (like Markovian) = twice. Then, even if you hit with plain weapon attack while your damage consists of two parts - weapon (large part) and some ring or converted damage (small part), absorption works twice as well. And so on… Now take into account the following facts: trash mobs mean no harm anyway, while nemesis and celestials have 2500-4000 armor with 75-77% absorption, which basically means that all non-weapon bonuses get reduced by 3/4. To be short, I’d rather equip items which multiply my main weapon damage rather than items which add small flat bonuses or improve existing ones! hehe
I honestly don’t know if WPS make a separate source of damage to which dmg absorption is applied separately or not. From my experience I’d rather bet my money on a negatory and say when WPS procs it’s still one hit. Unless ofc those WPS have multiple hits by definition (like AQC, Chilling Rounds, Storm Spread). WPS replace default attacks by stacking their bonuses multiplicatively with them and don’t proc on top of them like devotions. But I admit I’m not not 100% sure about this.
That is just 200% incorrect. I don’t know exactly what you mean by “some ring” but I’ll assume you mean flat dmg from gear.
Flat dmg from gear and devotions is added to weapon damage in the first place. This is taught in 1st grade of GD
Elementary. Flat dmg doesn’t produce any additional hits for armor phys dmg absorption to be applied more than once. If that was true stacking any form of flat physical damage would be pointless.
Conversion does not produce any additional hits either. Only resistances are applied separately if a hit consists of different damage types.
Dmg absorption is applied to hits, not to what dmg those hits consist of, whether it’s flat dmg absorption from the Seal or Blast Shield which is applied last or phys dmg absorption from armor which is applied after shields and before resistances. Armor dmg absorption only applies to phys anyway.
The only gear that multiplies weapon damage to Savagery is Bloodrager helmet (which is BiS on most Savagery builds anyway also because it gives +2 to it) and Elgoloth crossbow so really, there aren’t any options for trade-offs you described.
It depends on exact WPS. In case of WPS without flat bonus the whole physical part of damage goes as a single block; in case of WPS with added flat damage (like Markovian) as two blocks, and so on. Test it!
Then you were taught at a wrong place 
don’t go there anymore. You don’t even need lots of gear to test it, actually - just test it in a mod which consists of a single modified weapon with fixed damage (say, 454-454 instead of 111-797), by hitting dummy (which is as armored as any mob), and then summon non-armored dummy via console. Alternative: calculate expected damage on a non-armored target (if you know the formula). It will be easy to notice that armor is applied once in case of auto attack with white hammer, twice in case of Markovian or Cadence, trice in case of hammer + Cadence + Deadly Momentum, and so on. Yes it produces just a single hit, but still this hit is absorbed trice - fun, eh? Likewise, any added flat damage from gear will affect real damage way less than expected (about 4x less), because of armor absorbing it separately.
I was just speaking about gear which gives me +%physical, +OA, +%AS and so on - anything that would multiply damage of my weapon… in most cases there is a lot of such gear to be used instead of specific eq with +Savagery.
So… Having 100% armor absorption makes me COMPLETELY impervious to this, this and that (see attachments)?
Nope, of course. Bonuses are multiplied by +%damage (which is quite high in case of players and superbosses); also physical resist is applied (which multiplies damage in case of negative values, instead of decreasing it). Ravager has about 10-13k physical damage (after multipliers), it keeps you under permanent 25 total resist reduction, so even in case of DK with 25% damage reduction (Ill Omen or Decay), Mythical Leviathan and full phys.res. set you will need about 7k armor with 100% absorption to become immune to Ravager’s physical attacks. And even then you lose this immunity as soon as it howls! But generally - yes, it is possible to assemble absolute physical immunity.
Yeah, but you said that armor is applied separately to base weapon damage and then again to all flat dmg bonuses which is quite a revelation to me tbh. I always thought all flat is added to weapon damage and that’s that. Resistance variable is applied after armor so it’s irrelevant.
Does it mean that unless all flat phys bonuses on gear and devos are above a certain value they are completely useless? Like, wearing an Oleron belt with 20-30 phys is useless (equivalnt to 0 phys) on enemies with 100% armor absorbtion unless you stack it with other bonuses above a certain value?
Doesn’t armour go first though? So if you had (insane) armour + 100% armour absorption, you could have -(insane)% phys resist and not feel anything, aside from trauma?
savagery = the condition of being primitive or uncivilized.
used in a sentence, “without adult society, the children descend into savagery”.
That is a nice explaination , no doubt on this.
Yea, this is how this part of game mechanics was described in various guides… which, it seems, just copied it from eachother without any attempts to test it. Actually, phys resistance goes first, which makes your armor be way more important once you’ve gathered a lot of physical resistance, but way less important with negative physical resistance. For example, here is my DK killing Ravager while having 25% incoming damage reduction (which goes first), over 40% phys. res. and over 3.5k armor. As you can see, the superboss hits like some common dranghoul, for just some 1-3k (well, sometimes crits for 3-5k). I could have gathered total immunity, but then again potions would become useless, so I decided to go for more dps.
Nope, not totally - there are just no bosses with 100% absorption, even Ravager has 77% absorption or so. Still, this little damage is reduced 4x by armor absorption, which makes it… say, way less desirable than it looks. Actually, the best part of Oleron’s Chains is +1 to Soldier; though, for a physical class w/o Soldier I’d rather prefer Mythical Chains of Anguish anytime (assuming that my build has some means to survive its anti-proc, which is usually true - with slithblood for sure).