query - A A Ray & Chaos

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

This question might be answered in one of the build guides but I had two questsions. Is A Aether Ray as chaos damage a viable thing anymore?

The second question is just order of operations I guess… In my head I imagine it’d be good to take a lot of the aether / damage buffs in the Arcanist skill tree. But to use the Occultist as well for his level 50 Possession so that you get the chaos damage bonus from Possesion after all the aether / damage buffs are added to the A Aether Ray and then converted to Chaos.

But really, I’m just more and more confused thinking about it.

2

if you convert to chaos then you need to stack chaos damage, it wont double dip from both aether and chaos

3

Man this game is so weird. In my head convert seemed obvious to mean #### damage type becomes same ####damage type.

4

I believe, and someone please correct me if I’m wrong, that damage multipliers from the skill (or later node in line) are applied first and then the conversion. So Aether Ray will count the Disintegration aether +% damage bonus and the Possession Chaos +% damage bonus if you use Tainted power to change it to chaos.

5

yes thats how it works

6

and anything else from arcanist increasing aether damage is ignored?

like the passive increasing aether damage isn’t applied?

I was pressuming the total damage when on low health would be applied after the conversion to chaos

7

The % Aether damage and Chaos damage from Fabric of Reality apply to AAR but the flat damage won’t because AAR has no weapon damage.

8

Reckless power you will benefit from the fire%, burn%, casting speed (the flat aether damage if any skill has %weapon damage)

fabric of reality you will benefit from the chaos% (the flat damage of both if you have a skill with %weapon damage)

he only benefits from the chaos% if he converts the damage to chaos

9

I have always wonder about % damage and conversion. Let’s take Tainted AAR for example: doesn’t increasing % Aether damage means more flat aether being converted to Chaos? So upping % Aether damage should technically increase the chaos damage of Tainted AAR since upping aether damage means more of it being converted to chaos.

I’m probably wrong about this. Just want some clarification.

10

once you convert damage the only way to up your damage is by stacking the damage you changed to. so for tainted AAR you have to stack chaos damage not aether.

%weapon damage skills will benefit from all flat damage added, but will only benefit from % damage of the damage type you converted to.

This is one of the reasons I hate how conversion works in this game especially for caster skills. You need to take skills deep into ultimate and all the items with +skills use the original %damage of skill.

11

that’s weird yaeh