i am trying to build some kind of spell caster that just does direct damage with spells. i have no idea what i’m doing so i just go with the flow…
i’m quite confused. which equipment is for casters? what kind of weapon improves upon the damage my spells do? does the dps increase/decrease mean anything to a caster or is this number only relevant for non-casters? conventions changed around quite a bit the last few years. d3 is obviously quite different, so is path of exile, which sometimes also does a poor job explaining which stat effects what. the game needs some kind of indicator if something is useful for a caster or not. i can look at the number on my spell damage. if it increases that’s probably a good sign. are there dedicated caster weapons? it doesn’t look like it. if a mod says: increases fire damage by 10%, does this mean it increases the damage of my fire spells? does this increase the fire damage a weapon does? both? i have no idea.
so the equipment type and tooltips need to be more clear otherwise every newbie will have to scour the forums and ask the same question the last one had to ask over and over.
The DPS shown on the character stats tab one is the DPS of the skill on your left mouse button. To see the DPS of your right mouse button skill you can hover over the DPS on the tab and a popup will appear.
You can also set your left mouse button to something that does no damage (“walk to”) so that the DPS shown will then refer to the skill on your right mouse button; which is easier if e.g. you are swapping gear and wanna see how much the DPS of your Panetti’s Replicating Missile improves.
There is a type of weapon called “implements” that is specifically made for casters. They take the form of daggers and wands (“scepters”) and are e.g. dropped by Bloodbound cultists in large numbers.
What makes them useful for casters is that they provide a percentage damage increase to one type of damage and its respective damage-over-time, also the base damage of the weapon is not physical damage but instead the type of damage that this specific implement inflicts.
So e.g. a “sacrificial knife” bound to cold damage will do cold damage on weapon attack and will provide you with +x% cold damage and +y% frostburn damage. Plus whatever its enchantments may add.
Now on to skills…
There are basically these kinds of damage-dealing skills:
Basic attack replacers
Skills like “Cadence” and “Fire Strike” that replace your basic attack and can only be used with a weapon. They are usually treated as default weapon attacks and thus rely on whatever is buffing your default attacks, e.g they use attack speed, might trigger passive skills that are triggered by default attacks, etc…
Casting speed reliant skills
Like “Panetti’s Replicating Missile” or “Phantasmal Blades” that do not have a cooldown and can thus be cast continuously as fast as your casting speed and mana pool allow.
To buff those skills build casting speed and percentage damage bonuses.
Cooldown reliant skills
Like “Trozan’s Sky Shard” or “Sigil of Consumption” that have a cooldown timer that keeps you from casting them continuously.
To buff those skills build cooldown reduction and percentage damage bonuses.
Pseudo-pets scaling off of your own bonuses
Like “Wind Devil”, “Blade Spirit” or “Mortar Trap” that summon an entity that only stays for a fixed amount of time before automatically disappearing again.
To buff those skills build cooldown reduction (so you can have more of them summoned at any one time) and percentage damage bonuses.
Pets scaling off of pet bonuses
Like “Summon Familiar”, “Summon Hellhound” or “Summon Briarthorn” that summon an allied entity that you can command and that stays with you until dismissed or killed.
To buff those skills build pet bonuses. Auras also apply to them as they apply to you.
Then there is this important distinction:
Skills that factor in your default weapon damage
Skills that do not
If a skill says that it does a percentage of your default weapon damage than suddenly completely new mechanics apply as now every hit with that skill is treated as an attack.
Most importantly this means that they will do a percentage of the damage that your default weapon attack would do - and that they trigger passive skills that trigger “on attack”.
So to buff those skills build whatever is already applicable to them (e.g. if they have a cooldown build cooldown reduction and percentage damage bonuses), then try to use equipment that gives you those “x% chance on attack” bonuses, then see if it’s viable to improve your default attack damage.
Here is where you have to see for yourself if you rather want to play a classic caster with implement and caster off-hand or if you want to e.g. use a two-handed weapon to do a lot of default attack damage because a percentage of that is transfered to the skill you use.
When 200+% of default weapon damage are applied to your skill the choice might be easy, when it’s only 15% it’s probably not, so it’s up to you to decide what kind of character build you wanna go for.