Please give me a simple explanation of how damage works

Well, should be quiet obvious perhaps but I’ve discovered that I am not completely sure of how some of the mechanics actually work. I’m running a cabalist right now mostly stacking vitality %damage and some chaos for the sake of the doombolt. Been playing with 2h weapons which gives you flat damage like “200-300 Vitality damage” and have been regurlarly checking my magical damage which have been around “4000-5000 Vitality damage, 1000%” (hope you understand what I mean) but then I got a new weapon which gave me Chaos damage instead and when I equipped it the vit dropped to like “900 damage 900%” but my vit skills didn’t lose 3000 dps you see. If anything it increased my overall damage quiet massive.

Sorry if I don’t make much sense. If anyone knows about this please tell.
Edit:
From this


To this

Items carry lots of stats that can affect DPS in multiple ways - way more than just a simple plus or minus % damage amount will affect. Base item speed (the innate item speed) and base item damage RANGE as well as attack speed bonuses and flat damage bonuses can have a massive affect upon displayed DPS. A screenshot of the items in question would be the best way to know exactly what is happening.

The forum easily lets you drag and drops screenshots directly into the editor.

There are some things written about damage here 🤯 malawiglenn’s guide on game mechanics for beginners

The +2 to All Occultist skills are a big part of why this item is showing the upperhand. It also has a slightly higher attack speed bonus and a very slightly higher base attack speed. The OA bonus is probably factoring in as well - which the first item lacks in. It also has a “tighter” damage range (which usually affects DPS more positively) while the first item has a “looser” (or wider) range - the tighter range combined with a decent high flat damage output gives the item more consistent and reliable damage ouput. The major contributor tho is the +2 Occ skills.

Going off of the screenshot, I don’t think attack speed will make a difference as looking at his skill bar, he is using Drain Essence which scales on casting speed.

Keep in mind that any damage comparisons made when swapping weapons (the ones in green or red) are based on whatever skill is bound to left click, or right click if left click is Move To. So in this case, it’s using your default attack, NOT Drain Essence.


A brief way to explain how damage in Grim Dawn works is that you have 2 ways of collecting damage - base damage and +% damage.

Base damage is raw damage dealt to an enemy without any percent damage increases. Damage can come in globs dealt by spells like Drain Essence or it can be dealt by your weapon or skills that use it for damage like Bone Harvest or passive skills that further add damage to your weapon’s damage like the “x Aether damage” on Spectral Binding.

+% damage is a multiplier to all sources of base damage that I highlighted above. It’s really that simple. Say, if you have 100 base Vitality damage and +1000% Vitality damage, that 100 Vitality damage then gets multiplied by 11 to 1100 Vitality damage.

I’ll say again though that this is a very basic and brief way of understanding damage, you’re only scratching the surface.

Indeed… in this case the minor attack speed bumps will have an affect, even if minor - it’s basing off his Default Attack. The biggest bonuses tho are that extremely tight base flat damage of the item (Chaos) which also carries further significant flat and % Chaos bonuses on top of that (225-295 base item range + 20-63 more flat + 251% increase - all Chaos). Plus he has specced into Solael’s Witchfire which carries flat Chaos AND more bonus attack speed as well on it which combines with the +2 Occ skills and bonus OA it’s pretty easy to see why.

If he wants to focus on Vit tho and expand on that he should stay with the first item.

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Main problem of your inquiry, I think: where did you take that number from? If it’s dps sheet on the first page of the chat sheet, then just forget this stat exists and never look there. It doesn’t take into account most factors that contribute to real dps. It’s only good at low levels when you want to quickly compare two random weapon drops.

As for why your overall dmg increased - as Powbam said - it’s mostly the +2 to all.