who is gonna use viper with blind fury devotion, physical against elemental… unless converting it but it’s still weird.
Appreciate all the responses and testing everyone. Good conversation, helps me more clearly understand the mechanics involved.
What is the general rule about “Viper procs only with weapon damage”? Where it comes from? Why direct skills can’t proc it? Like Replicating Missile (Arcanist).
because the missile doesn’t have weapon damage in it.
I know it doesn’t I am asking why should it have it to proc. What that Viper node has to do with WD?
It says “20% Reduced target’s Elemental Resistances”, where is WD here?
It’s how the game engine works.
It has nothing to do with engine, just adding “Weapon Damage” to description will be enough.
I am a little annoyed because I thought I am using Viper but it turned out I was not. Just randomly read it here.
But may be it is not a single case and I am missing some general rule.
Consider all debuffs like this as damage with, well, zero damage, if that makes any sense.
When reflected back at player, the magnitude can be reduced by “reduced reflected damage” stat.
They’re also reduced by Damage Reduction apparently, as per this topic: [Observation] Damage Reduction applies to all* debuffs
all “stand alone” flat stats only ever apply to weapon attacks and skills using %Weapon DMg
mana leech
lifesteal
regular flat dmg and DoT dmg,
%chance of flat/dot dmg
RR on weapons/rings etc etc that is not tied to a skill/proc, like plaguebearer prefix or eternal band ring
Thanks, that seems to be “the rule”. At least now I will always consider “is it proced with WD?”.
Word “target” in Viper confused me. I am targeting with spell, so I was expected it to work. Like Storm Box of Elgoloth (Inquisitor), you can’t even fire it without a target.
The question here is:
- is it an effect on a spell/skill/proc? (like Ultos)
OR
- is it a stat? (like Viper)
If it’s the latter, then it’s only applied through hits containing % weapon damage - just like flat damage - and scales with it up to 100%. If it’s a proc, it’s only applied through hits of that proc.
But you are right, it should be explained. For example through loading screen infos instead of stuff like “hey did you know legendaries are powerful?” 
Something else to note in the discussion (this might help alleviate confusion for desioner and his testing).
Viper is a “-% Reduced resistances” which means that it cannot reduce resistances below 0. So if your hitting a mob with 0 resistance for that element, it won’t change, and thus won’t impact your damage.
So whatever dummy or mob your hitting needs to have resistances above 0 for viper to show a difference, weapon damage notwithstanding.
nope
it’s a %reduced
the minus symbol missing is the crucial point
viper/%reduced also works on negative resist, so doesn’t need to be above 0, it can be below 0, just not exactly 0
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I even tested it (and the fact that viper scales with WD) in the 13th post.
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yep,
the sentiment is sorta true tho, the closer to 0 enemy resist is the less effective Viper/Ultos/%reduced are,
but, since -% RR (CoF, mines, Censure, raging tempest, murmur, widow etc etc) easily brings most targets below 0, Viper will have an effect,
Thanks for the correction Gnome. I was thinking right, but my brain added the - anyways 
Interesting point TqFan. I was always under the impression that %RR reduced based on a % of the remaining resistance. so 50% cold resist would be reduced to 25% if you had “-50% reduced cold resistances”.
Whereas “-50% cold resist” would reduce it to zero. Did I get these two terms swapped? or is it that %RR is applied before -%R?
The formula is here Actual Resist Reduction formula and you can play around with it in the 2nd calculator in this thread 🧮 Critical Hit / Resistance Calculators - DPS multipliers
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problem is you are using minus on both
the application/reduction is correct, %reduced, ex Viper, reduces current resist and -% is straight reduct
the key however is the minus symbol, whether it’s there or not
when there is a minus symbol ie -% it’s a straight removal (and the RR stacks)
the other never has a minus symbol and is purely “x% reduced” labeled, lacking minus symbol makes it easier to tell them apart too, and i tells us the debuff doesn’t stack with other %reduced
and the order of RR is
-%
%reduced (viper ultos)
“flat”/n’th reduced (Revenant, Crown, Scales)
reason desioner was having dmg/kill times not being faster is partially the weapon dmg scaling on viper, with 24%WD application he’s applying like 5%reduced RR which is already tiny RR
combined with the issue target dummy only has like 10 resist on Ultimate, so even at 100%WD Viper effect it would be like 2% resist removed, at 24%WD and 5%reduced it’s like 0.5resist removed, which is hardly any dps/kill time increase from resist reduct perspective
Ha! thanks. I keep adding that stupid -, but I was thinking the right thing. It worked like I thought it did, thanks
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And thanks for the ink tqFan, all my old links are dead I’ll review the info.
EDIT: that was a great post. I had the correct function of the resistances, but the order slightly messed up. Appreciate it!
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