The pet bonus of the Manifestation skill looks quite good on paper and actually this skill was the main reason I went for the Warlock combination (occultist/arcanist), but after some testing I’ve come to the conclusion that this skill is not working as stated or maybe even not working at all.
I see a lot of discussions online about whether or not the -40% elemental damage also applies to the pets, which would reduce the +120% elemental damage to just +80% bonus, but… this is actually rather irrelevant, because I don’t even see the +80% bonus happening at all.
For instance, the lvl 1 lightning strike of the raven familar does 58-130 base damage, which I would expect to see increased to 104-234 damage, because of Manifestation. I can assure you that the actual result is nowhere near these numbers. Yes, I know about mobs elemental resistance, which would reduce these numbers, but the net effect of having Manifestation is really nowhere near the 80% (more like 5-10%).
Either I’m misinterpreting the Manifestation skill or this skill is just flawed/bugged. Somebody can enlighten me?
If you have 400% or more pet damage, and you add +120% elemental damage on top of that, you’re only at +520% damage for your raven, which is only 25% more than you used to be at.
From what I understand elemental bonuses are always distributed between the 3 elements (cold, lightning, fire). So in this case you’d get 80/3 = ~26,6 % on this particular skill. If you have other bonuses in place, due to the additive nature of +%-bonuses your total lightning damage might only go up by a few percent.
On the other hand, to me it seems that GD is designed to give the player many small bonuses rather than one item or set blowing your damage through the roof.
So in conclusion Manifestation isn’t useless but it isn’t build defining either. It just helps a bit killing stuff before it kills you.
As others have pointed out, the skill window shows the modified damage of level 1 Lightning Strike, not the base value. Tiny base value, tiny gains.
And yes, what you’re saying could very well be a bug. I’ve played a pet Warlock myself, and I know several people who have made variations of one, but very few people actually take Lightning Strike so I suppose we took for granted that there was a chance Manifestation was not working properly (auto attack-wise, the effect of IEE is very noticeable).
If you’re testing Lightning Strike, I’d also compare the level 1 and level 12 versions.
Edit:
Only flat elemental damage bonus gets split into the three element types. +%elemental damage applies fully to fire/cold/lightning.
