Exploding damange explained

I haven't seen any recent information about how exploding damage is calculated, so I got curious after seeing a few interactions with them. I decided to run some tests and post a thread with the results


First, how the exploding ID works
If you have a % of exploding on a weapon, piece of armor, or accessory, you have that % chance to trigger exploding whenever you kill an enemy. For example, if I have a ring with 10% exploding and a wand with 12%, then on kill, the enemy has a 22% chance to explode and knock the enemy back. This means that any exploding % over 100 does nothing


There is one other way exploding can trigger, and that is with the major ID Explosive Impact. There is currently only one level 52 helmet, Scarlet Veil, with this major ID, but you can also get the ID from raid buffs. This major ID makes it so that exploding triggers on hit. A majority of my testing was with this major ID and what triggers it



All tests were done with 100%+ exploding
All test were done multiple times and used averages (when applicable) to get the most accurate results



How hits work:

• A hit with exploding (Explosive Impact major ID) counts as one hit, for 2x damage than the attack base dmg, which I will refer to as an explosion hit
  • Thus the formula is: main attack dmg*2
• On kill, It will hit enemies around the enemy killed for an explosion hit (2x the hit that killed it)
  • This applies to any method of killing, melee or spell
• An explosion hit mirrors the weapon damage type (weapon deals earth and fire damage, the explosion hit will deal earth and fire damage)

Range:

• Explosion damage hits targets up to 3 blocks away (not affected by melee attack range increases, raw or %)
• For enemies touching the original target (on the block next to or closer), the explosion hit will hit once for each target touching on top of the 2x from the original hit and transfer the dmg 2 blocks before falling off
  • For example if you have 6k main attack dmg, hitting one enemy is 6k*2, hitting 2 enemies would be 6k*2*(2+2), and 3 would be 6k*2*(2+2+2), and so on
    
  • Another example, if you have a 3x3 square of dummies, hitting the middle target will do 2*18x dmg (+2x for each dummy) to all of those 9 targets, and if you add a 4th row of 3 dummies, the 4th row will also take 2*18x dmg but not increase the original dmg, the 5th row will then get: 2*12x dmg, and the 6th row: 2*6x dmg
  • Formula (as long as there is at least one enemy touching) is: main attack dmg*2*(2*number of enemies)

Dex/strength/elemental mastery:

• Any Increases in base dmg will increase the dmg of the explosion hit
  • This includes things like corrupted and focus
• The explosion hit dmg is calculated with the crit

Spell dmg increases/decreases and Melee dmg increases/decreases:

• The damage from explosive impact is based on the main attack dmg, thus is affected by melee dmg increases and decreases
  • It is not affected by spell damage increases or decreases
• An explosion hit after a kill is affected by spell dmg or melee dmg, whichever you killed the enemy with

Attack speed:

• Attack speed multipliers do not apply, as the explosion dmg hit is based on single hit dmg, not dps
• Every hit, no matter how fast (with Explosive Impact major ID) will cause an explosion

Multiples hits:

• For triple shots, shaman multiple attacks, etc. (with Explosive Impact major ID) the explosion hit will trigger for each hit, making each hit deal 2x dmg

Poison:

• (with Explosive Impact major ID) Does not trigger on tick
• On kill, deals 2x main attack dmg (with main attack weapon damage type) to nearby enemies

Powder specials (with Explosive Impact major ID):

• With Quake, exploding does trigger, making Quake do 2x dmg
• With chain lightning, exploding does trigger, making chain lightning do 2x dmg
• With wind prison, does not trigger when casting wind prison, but on wind prison hit, does 2x dmg
• With curse, you get a water % dmg boost and this does apply to any exploding hits in the time that curse is active
• With courage, you get a fire % dmg boost and this does apply to any exploding hits in the time that courage is active, and with the 60% dmg hit from courage, exploding does trigger, making the courage hit do 2x dmg
  The interactions with touching enemies also apply, thus Quake would do 9*2x dmg on a 3x3 square of dummies

Major IDs:
Most major IDs were unaffected or unrelated, but the ones that were:

• Fission:
  • Does double dmg of an explosion hit, so 2*2 (4x) dmg and extends reach to 5 blocks
• Flurry of blows:
  • This was one I was particularly interested in, as, with super fast attack speed, you are hitting ~43 times per second, but for only 16% dmg per hit
  • Every hit does trigger an explosion hit
    • Causes extreme lag with multiple enemies but MASSIVE dps (I was getting about 1-1.5 million per dummy on 3x3 square of dummies)
      • This unfortunately does not work almost ever in practice as you can never find that many knockback resistant enemies in that close of space but you get some very high dmg #s
• Superconductor:
  • Triggers explosion hit on powder special for each bolt so does 2x the normal damage of superconductor with touching enemy interactions
• Dauntless inferno:
  • Pretty much same as superconductor, triggers explosion hit on powder special, so does 2x the normal damage of dauntless inferno with with touching enemy interactions
• Cavalryman:
  • Exploding hit does still trigger, but with 30% less base dmg, so it does not bypass the 30% dmg reduction

Elemental Defences:

• As the explosion hit mirrors the weapon damage type, exploding does not bypass elemental defenses

Class ability interactions (with Explosive Impact major ID):
Here are the notable affected/unaffected class ability interactions

• Archer:
  • Twain's arc: counts as a main attack hit, thus does 2x dmg
• Assassin:
  • Surprise strike: exploding counts as one hit, so surprise strike does stack with the explosion hit for a single melee hit totaling 2.8x dmg
  • Shurikens: do not count as a main attack
• Shaman:
  • Puppets: hits do not count as a main attack, no exploding on hit
  • Bleeding does not count as a main attack

Essentially, what I have grasped is that besides having some weird interactions, explosion has the potential to be good for melee builds and 2x dmg is very good but fitting in Scarlet Veil is difficult for a build. If you see Explosive Impact in a raid and are using a melee build, Explosive Impact is pretty much just a free +100% dmg boost. Explosion has the potential to be really good, especially with powder specials like Quake, or Flurry of Blows, but the niche of needing knockback resistant enemies basically on top of each other to actually get the benefit limits its usability and just turns it into a small dmg boost when killing a large number of enemies (aka collapse in loot runs)





Edits:
- Made a calculation mistake, dmg boost is 2x (+100%) NOT 1.75x, now fixed in post (thx to zenythia for helping me realize)
- Added courage and curse (forgot to add those in even though I did the testing)
- Added information about Dauntless inferno major ID
- Added information about melee range increases


Feedback or opinions appreciated :)

 

im goign to give you kissies on the cheeks for testing this is so very demure and mindful
wait theres no way explosions do 1.75x aoe dmg buh?

edit: does the explosion range get boosted by melee range %

 

So you're saying, if we get a way to make the "blackhole" of smoke bomb drag enemies continuesly, then it would be usable?

 

Corrections:
Exploding is a flat 100% Meele Conversion, always.
It is entirely unaffected by strength's damage boost and dexterity's crit damage boost.
It is entirely unaffected by ANYTHING from the ability tree.
Also unaffected by curse/courage and like any other damage boosts I may have forgotten.
In general the only ways to boost explosion damage are
1. more damage from weapon base + ids
2. faster attacks
3. hitting more enemies

As for eledefs (not a correction per se but a clarification):
Exploding itself is only affected by eledefs once, since it is "taken" from the normal damage before eledefs are applied (so if youd deal 50 exploding damage normally and the enemy has a defense of 10, you deal 40)

Also I honestly dont know how you got thge 1.75 number, could you explain that?

 

mods... kill this person.... and their family....

 

mods... give this person kissies on the cheeks AND

 

Strength boosts base dmg, which affects main attack dmg, so yes it does affect explosion and I tested as well
The elemental masteries also boost base dmg so they affect explosion dmg (again, tested)
Anything in the ability tee that affects melee, that be elemental masteries, or something like triple shots, affects base dmg, so it affects explosion
About the 1.75x THANK YOU for making me second guess as I made a HUGE mistake, taking out the +26% main attack dmg from the scarlet veil I had twice instead of once (idk how that happened but it did) so, yes it is a 2x, or 100% increase.

also thx for adding the clarification for ppl about ele defenses, I did not word it great in the post

 

Possibly, but when you get multiple enemies, the damage ends up scaling so high that you will almost instantly kill anything (excluding raid bosses and anni)
For reference, when I did the test with just 9 enemies talked about in the post, I only had 6k main attack dmg per hit, so you could imagine the numbers someone could get with say, even just 30k per hit (about 7.4 million expected dps per target)

 

Yeah, that's often the case with quadratic scaling. At base it's to low to be usable, but when you do get the perfect setup, it does so much dmg that it's just so much overkill to allow sustainable dps.

Btw, I doubt that it would work for raidbosses and anni, because the smokebomb setup would probably not work. For qira though. She summons enough minions that I believe are not cci. And she has multiple fases, so you would be able to trigger it multiple times.

 

mind posting your testing? bc from all of my testing exploding damage is NEVER affected by strength and dex. can test it yourself by using a constant damage weapon (like recursion, which is nice since it has part elemental damage) and then just getting one explosion from a crit, one explosion from a non-crit and one from a non-crit with diff amount of strength
anything in the ability that affgects melee does not affect it

unless you tested with "death explosions" and they somehow work differently i dont see how youd get those results.

For reference:
59 Str


111 Str


59 Str + Crit


Ability Tree Melee Modifiers do NOT affect it (59 Str, with Double shots which reduce individual main attack damage. only amount of hits matters)


And other % boosts dont either (this is with once again single shot and 3 focus, you can see normal damage being higher but explodingh damage being the same)


Also, the %damage from ele masteries does apply because it is just an id, but the "+ x-y [Element] Damage" does not apply because it is not an id
(these are both with fire mastery, you can see the main attack damage changing but the explosion damage staying the same)

 

You are talking about the explosion damage itself, which yes is unnaffedted. I was referring to the total damage (normal+explosion) and calling it an explosion hit. Thus anything that increases normal damage will increase the total damage from the hit, regardless of whether it affects the explosion damage or not. Apologies if that was not clear in the thread. That is why I said "main attack dmg", not "hit damage" in all the formulas, and when talking about critical damage said "The explosion hit dmg is calculated with the crit" -> crit damage + explosion damage = explosion hit dmg

 

oh, well that does make sense the way syou phrase it, but since the mob you hit isnt hit by its own explosions as far as i remember I dont htinik it makes sense to use that