I have a question regarding damage conversion, hoping someone here can help me.
So the conversion order is: Base Skill > Skill Modifiers > Conversion on the Skill or Transmuter > Conversion on Equipment and Buffs > Equipment, Auras and Passives
How does the “Conversion on Equipment” differ from “Equipment” in the last part?
Thanks
Just wanted to say thanks for an awesome thread. This is great – thanks!
Hide these two behind spoiler tags-
www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33272
Good call, Chthon. I had been meaning to add those. Thanks for providing the links.
@Onmastikon, you’re most welcome. Glad you find it useful.
I’ve got more than a few hours in and I still find this guide useful.
Great stuff.
I’m disappointed that you’re not outside Crate HQ demanding more bridge quests in AoM. We have zero bridge quests (no the lower the bridge one doesn’t count :p)
^ I’m currently involved in secret negotiations with the developers. I think we’re on the verge of seeing some speshul Bridge-themed DLC which will challenge the way you see scrap as a resource.
The struggle is real.
Just started playing and this has been very helpful to me thank you for making it
No problem, SanguineCarn. Thanks for posting. I’m always glad to hear that people find this guide useful.
@CairnBridgeRepairGuy, thanks! Yeah, I still refer back to it myself occasionally, for certain links, etc.
Thank you for your efforts in putting together this fantastic collection of information. It looks like a wall of text, but does not FEEL like a wall of text, great job.
It was particularly helpful regarding where to find/craft tricky items, and general efficiency of playthroughs. I’m sure I’ll be coming back here often.
Thank you so much for this guide, it has helped me tons in getting started and also saved me a lot of time just linking this to my friends wanting to get into GD and me not having to explain everything to them :p.
Is it a noob trap if during the early game (still only 46) I’m only comparing the DPS values of the weapons? I’ve got an axe (well, technically a schyte) which absolutely destroys everything in terms of sheer dps, even the legendary weapon I got after killing the final boss in Act 4. I have no idea why it has such a huge dps; sometimes other items have higher base dmg and higher attack speed, and the extra stuff (like + X Aether damage) are quite negligible.
Define noob trap. I played my share of this game and still find myself gearing before the Warden, and then again before Log. The game would take so much longer if I actually paid attention to loot. Boots must have movement speed, gear must have resists and weapon upgrades show me a green number on dps.
Shields are my main vice. Always interested in checking out stats on a nice new green shield.
@ Volband Yes it is, its almost completely useless.
+x Aether etc is huge in many builds btw if its a damage type you are pushing.
Other reasons the DPS calc might say weird things:
Attack (or cast depending) speed. It’s often this one, attack speed is really good at increasing base weapon dps, after all 50% more attack speed is 50% more dmg right? Except it isn’t because this doesn’t include your WPS skills or the fact one of these weapons might be converting the damage of the skill you have on hotbar 1 to a damage type you don’t use, for example, along with like a million other things that affect your actual dps. This issue is lessened though not erased on skills that scale with cast speed.
One of the weapons has conversion that is really good/extremely unhelpful to your build.
One weapon has + to the skill you are attempting to calculate the dps of, +1 to one or both classes will throw this out even further.
Hmm, okay, then let me post one comparison just for the example’s sake!
So the axe in my inventory has:
yet it has less dps than the one I currently have, which is also only a lvl 30 item. Maybe I got too used to Diablo, and the extra 15% attack speed is not calculated in the aspd number on the top? I’m also unsure how much that 34 damage Aether damage means. I mean, when I hit in the thousands, nor 34 neither 3-52 seems too influential.
[please ignore that one of those is aether and the other is chaos; I’m only trying to understand the principle now.]
The equipped weapon is fasted due to the +15% attack speed, which is often alone the reason why DPS is higher.
Also both weapons convert half of their physical damage to either aether or chaos. If your Aether Modifier is higher than the one for Chaos damage, then you know why the weaker weapon is still better for you. In the second tab you can mouse over the damage for your LMB skill and see the damage break down for Savagery, which should display a significant portion of your damage output is Aether damage.
[please ignore that one of those is aether and the other is chaos; I’m only trying to understand the principle now.]
You can’t afford to ignore this, I’m afraid.
In essence, this is a game which rewards players for specialization. How the big picture works is as such:
(Flat damage * %bonus damage) * (100% - Enemy resist) = Final damage
^Note: If you reduce a targets resist to -X%, you essentially amplify your damage by X%.
This is why resist reduction is so sought after in this game.
But I digress.
There are tonnes of minor details I could include to paint a more accurate picture (e.g. attack speed, attack animation, etc.), but let’s ignore that for now as it’ll serve only to complicate my explanation.
As of now, I’m guessing that you’ve taken spectral binding which gives you flat aether damage + %aether damage.
The aether scythe you have in the screenshot is probably taking that into consideration. In essence, the larger the flat damage pool, the more efficacious each percent in your %bonus damage becomes.
Looking at sheet values alone and ignoring damage type is a dangerous precedent.
Since you’re a ritualist, I recommend eventually transitioning to the vitality route seeing that both the necro/shaman masteries give huge support to vitality damage.
The reason for this is simple: The higher the difficulty the game, the more resist monsters pack, the more important resist reduction (RR) becomes.
x1x1x1x2 did a magnificent cabalist which I’m sure can be jury rigged for a ritualist with relative ease: http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=73102&highlight=vitality+bone+harvest
Mad_lee also has a fantastic ritualist I’ve test runned for him. It’s not unrealistically impossible to gear for either. Especially if you’re ok with trading.
I’m uncomfortable sharing the GT link as it’s his and he hasn’t posted it yet, but feel free to PM him for ideas/advice. He’s our friendly neighborhood Russkie. 
EDIT: If aether savagery is something you still insist on, look up veretragna’s lord of the watch. http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=74335&highlight=Lord+watch
Thanks for the replies!
I only asked you guys to ignore the damage type, as I just wanted to understand dps calculation on weapons properly. Right now I’m getting the vibe that if I am using X damage type, and the weapon amplifies X damage type, then it will show up in the displayed dps difference. That is strange to me, because the games I played before usually only compared the base damage+aspd combo, and even if the “weaker” weapon adds 10000000000000% bonus damage to an element you are using, it did not show in the sheer dps comparison.
Yeah, I’m dealing Aether and Vitality damage right now. I don’t have a final build yet, don’t even know about set and legendary items, I just envisioned some death knight feel, where my character goes berserk with a 2-handed weapon with huge amount of lifesteal, while facetanking monsters.
I only picked up Savagery because:
My aim is to get that bottom constellation which gives huge amounts of + Aether and Vit damage, but the requirements are really wonky, so right now I just picked up the grim reaper constellation until I can’t get anything better.
Don’t know if this was mentioned in thread, but the OP says that Necromancer locks you into Order.
It is also true that having Inquisitor locks you into Kymon.
If you have both, it locks you into Order (because Kymon won’t accept a necromancer, but Order decides it can trust an inquisitor that’s also a necromancer).
IIRC you can always convince the Order to accept an Inquisitor.