Dimishing Returns on add n% damage type

Grim Dawn Gameplay Discussion
1

Okay, back once more with another deeper game mechanic question.

I checked the advanced game mechanics thread, made a quick glance across the wiki where I thought I could probably find the information, but I didn’t find anything.
I don’t remember in which guide thread it was, but IIRC there was something mentioned about not overdoing the add n% to damage type of choice, due to dimishing returns later on.
Unfortunatly it wasn’t explained when those dimishing reutrns set in and when the threshold of cost/gain is about to turn. IMHO this is rather important when planning devotions, since with devotions alone you can get about 900+% to your damage type and if at this point 10% nominal means 0.1% effective it could be better to switch some devotions to defensive options and resists.

So is there any formula, or threshold at which one should consider to stop adding damage because the points spent are rather ineffective and could be used for defensive pruposes?

2

Should ultimately depend on your goal, playstyle, your current resists, damage reduction/absorption/DA/Armor and so on.

Another factor in this, is resistance reduction. Getting +100% damage to your type or getting 2% more resistance reduction. When is the former more effective than the latter? and so on.

3

There’s no diminishing returns. The only issue here is that if you focus on % damage you’ll most likely miss RR (resistance reduction) and therefore lose much DPS on many enemies or just deal no damage at all to certain enemies (because their resists are over 100).

4

For each % damage you increase, the less effect on total damage output you get. I would count that as some kind of diminishing return, at least if one uses the (original ?) ecomonics definition.

5

Perhaps that’s what was meant in the guide thread. So if there is no real nominal reduction of gain, is there any general threshold that is said to be “enough”?

6

I don’t really understand what you mean. Having 100 base damage and 1000% increased that particular damage gives you 1000 damage. Having 2000% gives you 2000, 5000% gives you 5000 damage. The only thing that does work differently is enemies’ resistance. If the enemy reduces your damage by 75%, you deal 250, 500, 1250 damage respectively. I believe this is what you mean, however, this doesn’t really apply to every damage type because there are monsters that reduce one damage type by at max 30% (physical damage by nemesis, they have 25% resist + armor, so I estimate about 30%, although I think I exaggerated a lot).

The only damage(s) type that actually suffer from the lack of RR is vitality and bleeding, vitality taking the first place and bleed the second. Monsters usually have high vitality resistance and some (even trash) monsters have over 100% resistance to that, bleeding resist is usually small as heck (no nemesis has more than 18% resistance iirc), but undead creatures reduce the damage by 118% or something similar (anyway, it’s again over 100%). The massive upside of bleeding damage is an easy gain of that particular RR, Rend (32%), Devouring Swarm (40% at 16/16), Curse of Frailty (50% at 10/10) and then, if you want, you can rush Manticore for another 28 RR to all resists. Vitality has massively spread its RR, having only a random 25% in devotions (+ manticore if you want it), Curse of Frailty (30% at 10/10), Spectral Binding (33% at 10/10), Devouring Swarm (60% at 16/16) and then rings.

Overall, you pick two masteries for bleeding RR and you get 150 bleeding RR, while you pick two masteries for Vitality and you get, at max, 146, while effectively getting a lower value if you look at enemies’ resists. Summed up, bleeding has 132% RR vs. most enemies, and vitality has about 100% (looking at Nemesis monsters only). There’s, on average, 49,7% resist to Vitality (from nemesis) and literally 18% resist to bleeding (from nemesis).

7

He means that when you already have 900% increase to your dmg. type getting another 100% will not increase your damage by 100% but only by ~10%. The more %you already have the less actual gain for your damage you get.

8

Two things:
This does sound right, however, if you increase your damage by 500%, and then by another 100, you effectively increase your damage x6.
What you understand is the damage after the first 500% is your total damage, so another 100% bonus damage will increase your damage by only 20%. As far as this is right, this is also wrong, because if you’ll look at this that way, you should not care about getting more than 1000% bonus to a damage type but instead getting RR. RR is most effective with high % to a damage type. With 100 base damage, 500% increase and 100% RR you deal 1k damage to a target with 0% resist, with 100 base damage, 2000% and 75% RR you deal 3500 damage. So, this is what you understand, you effectively lose damage, but!, what if I tell you you can actually achieve both in one? This is, you can get massive % damage and RR. When I make my builds, I firstly try to search what damage type I’ll focus on, which set will I take and then equip it on a dry character to then check my RR. Here, no matter what I do, I end up with at least 1500% damage increase and mostly over 90% RR.

I do agree that RR is way better, however, it’s not that RR will compensate your lack of % damage. The example I made above (100% RR and 500% damage and 75% RR and 2000% damage) literally shows the idea of importance of % damage increase. Furthermore, some enemies have no RR at all (theoretically, 18% is not that much tbh), so casting only one RR skill will increase your damage by a way greater amount than just applying RR, which may have a chance to apply if you use devotions.
Now, let’s say you’re a fire-based build. You only have Elemental Storm and Eldritch Fire. Effectively, 20% chance of applying both at a time (let’s just flatter that, ES has 25% chance and EF 15%), so let’s say after 5 hits you apply both, for a total of 55% RR (enemy has 0% resist):
Let’s say we hit 6 times,
100 base damage, 500% increase = 2500 damage with all 5 hits, and then 775 damage after RR, for a total of 3275 damage,
100 base damage, 2000% increase = 10000 damage with all 5 hits, and let’s say we have only Eldritch Fire (23% RR), so we hit for another 2460 damage, for a total of 12460 damage.
Now, let’s say the enemy has 55% resist, first example deals 1125 damage with all 5 hits, and then deals another 500 damage, for a total of 1625 damage, while the other one hits for 4500 with all 5 hits and 640 with the sixth hit.

I believe you already knew about all that. My point is that no matter how much %RR you get, you won’t deal as much damage even with less RR as only with RR. The more RR and %damage you get, the more damage you do and there’s nothing like diminishing returns no matter how you look at this. % damage only loses it’s weight if you don’t have RR, if you have RR but don’t have % damage, RR loses it’s weight (the same thing is with eating, you don’t eat because food is prepared, you eat only when you’re hungry - eating when you’re stuffed will have diminishing returns, same as preparing the food and cooking it when you’re not hungry at all).

9

It’s best explained using extremes IMO.

If I have 1 base damage and 10,000% bonus, I’ll deal 10,000 damage.

If I add 1000% bonus damage, I’ll crease my damage output by 10%.

However, by adding 1 flat damage, I effectively double my DPS.

The reverse is ALSO true, however. (i.e. 10,000 flat damage + 1%bonus damage).

So we gotta balance the 2 to ensure maximum deepz.

What username here is saying, however, is that if we get too entrenched in thinking about sheet dps and forgo RR, we are in turn gimping our DPS.

No point doing 10mil dps if an enemy has 100% RR to your damage type. You might as well tickle his balls with a feather for all the good that’ll do.

10

Thanks… Now I have to get THAT picture our of my head all day, especially comparing it to different mob types… :rolleyes:

Those calculations are pretty interesting and insightful. Thanks. It is pretty much what I meant. To get an idea when to stop going for +n% dmg and check for def and RR. But since this is mostly for planning my devotions (second char arrived in AoM expansion, so no great item pool to chose from) def is a higher priority, since there aren’t that many RR devotions and those usually need weapon damage.

11

I especially like to picture blight fiends doing the tickling. :rolleyes:

Jokes aside, I don’t think any devotions with RR have a weapon damage component except for maybe hand of ultos. But that can easily be circumvented by the oh-so-good viper.

RR is insanely good IMO, which is why almost every single devotion which offers RR give such crappy affinity yield, with the exception of rumor. (2 greens + 2 purps.)

12

If you have 900% dmg and you can get 100% more get it. If you have 2000% dmg and you can get 100% more, get it, provided that you don’t gimp:

-OA - if you don’t crit enough

-or even DA to the point that you get crit too much for your comfort, you decide what that is

-Don’t lose RR too much. 100% extra damge when you aready have 2000% means ~5% better performance, roughly cause it can be more or less depending on how much RR you have. But 5% is important.

-Don’t lose RR as it makes the rest of your 2000% shine.

The above is a rough estimate, there are a lot of things to take into consideration on each particular build and it’s gimmicks

13

What I meant is to apply the RR, as I understand, you have to deal weapon damage. This is somewhat problematic on my current main… It has Rhowan’s Crown, which applies its RR by Elemental Storm. Nice and dandy, but if I got it right I’d have to close in on my enemy hit it with my weapon or RoS to apply the RR, then head out to not be hit and hope the mob will run across one of my runes in those two seconds… :rolleyes:
My Infiltrator rather keeps his distance to the perpetrator, than going head on with mobs. :smiley: But at least I can have some Elemental and Cold RR for those coming to close. :wink:

14

No you don’t. Apply it with any skill. For example, if you use pox every enemy it spreads to, every single time it ticks for damage, you have a 25% chance of proccing rumor.

15

Ok if Crate doesn’t add a mob named Perpetrator (or a boss with “The…” ) in the coming xpac, I’m not playing!

16

Sorry for being unclear, I meant the flat RR on Viper which doesn’t come with a skill to proc. I sometimes have several Elemental Storms out there, bound to my Rune of Hagarrd. Or Elemental Seekrs on Storm Box… But as I understood flat RR without skill needs to be applied by weapon damage (iE Viper)

17

% rr and flat rr like viper/storm in this case can be applied both by %weapon dmg or skills.

Only -% weapon dmg ONLY comes from skills/ procs.

Elemental storm is a proc, you jus tneed to bind it to a skill to proc and you are done.

Viper is a “stat” so you will need some form of % weapon dmg to apply it.

18

Exactly, so at some point you are better off chasing other means of increasing overall damage: reducing resistances, reducing their DA, increasing your OA, increasing your %crit dmg.

19

it viper RR also scales with %wpn dmg, up to 100%. A skill that uses 50% weapon damage will use RR from viper at 50% effect. A skill that uses 200% weapon damage will use RR from viper at 100% effect.

20

I did not know this. Not being argumentative - but may I ask where you got that from?

EDIT: Just curious is all