+# Neutral Spell Damage Vs +#% Spell Damage

what's the difference and what's should i prioritize?

 

Raw spell damage is added on after (eg an extra 200 spell damage) and spell damage % takes the base spell damage (not including raw spell damage) and multiplies it by whatever %. It depends on what kind of build you are going for, as both can be helpful.

I believe that the majority of people use spell %, but I haven’t ever tried out raw spell damage.

hope this helps, sorry if I worded it badly.

 

Helped a lot ty, ima just hop on the spell % bandwagon ig :D

 

yeah. pretty much above. note that some classes prefer raw, such as mage, due to low weapon base and meteor multiplier.

if you are ok with a lot of reading i would recommend motoki's damage calculation thread, which is slightly dated in parts, but still gives a really great overview of most of this stuff- here

for something that might help more specifically with this question is druser's raw spell to spell % conversion thread, which is actually really useful in this case- here

 

Let's imagine a weapon:
---------------------------------
Amazing Stick

200-200 Fire Damage
---------------------------------

Meteor spell has a 500% damage multiplier. so, when you cast a meteor with your amazing stick, you deal

200 fire * 5 = 1000 fire
= 1000 total damage

(There's also the burning ground damage from meteor but that's just like a different spell with a different spell multiplier. We'll ignore it here)


Let's imagine another weapon:
---------------------------------
Bendy Stick

200-200 Fire Damage

+ 125 raw spell damage
---------------------------------

Raw spell is added to your spell damage at the end, and is multiplied by your spell multiplier.
So when we cast a meteor with our bendy stick, we deal

200 fire * 5 = 1000 fire
120 raw spell * 5 = 600 neutral damage
= 1600 total damage
1000 fire
600 neutral.


What happens with % spell damage?
It's a little more complicated.
---------------------------------
Brown Stick

200-200 Fire Damage

+ 50% spell damage
---------------------------------

Casting again:
200 fire * 5 = 1000 fire
+ 50% spell damage = 1500 fire damage
= 1500 fire damage


Very cool. What was complicated?
Let's compare these two:
---------------------------------
Pen

200-200 Fire Damage

+ 250 raw spell damage
---------------------------------
---------------------------------
Pencil

200-200 Fire Damage

+ 50% fire damage
+ 50% spell damage
---------------------------------

Casting with our pen, we get
200 * 5 = 1000 fire
250 raw spell * 5 = 1250
= 2250 total damage
1000 fire
1250 neutral

Casting with our pencil, we get
200 * 5 = 1000 fire
+ 50% fire = 1500 fire
+ 50% spell = 2250 fire
= 2250 total damage right?

Wrong. Spell% and elemental% are additive. what we actually get is this:
200 * 5 = 1000 fire
+ 50% fire + 50% spell = 2000 fire
= 2000 fire damage.

So which one is better?
Neither really. Whichever you get more damage out of. Keep in mind that elemental defenses are a thing, and neutral defenses are not. Also, mage's meteor has the highest spell multiplier out all all the spells (at least for a single hit), so raw spell may be a bit less effective on other classes. I recommend mixing them, since adding 25% spell damage to already 150% spell + elemental damage is only going to get you another 17% damage, and raw spell items aren't usually the best at increasing your other stats.

 

does the +water damage multiplier from the intelligence skill affect those?

 

The elemental damage multiplier from skill points is additive, so will be less effective if you have spell damage or elemental damage in that element already.
This is the same for strength for earth%, but it's other stat provides another multiplicative boost to all damages (excluding raw damages)(and sort of indirectly when you have dexterity but same result)

Powder specials just add to your stats, except for Quake and Chain lightning, which use melee + elemental% (but don't use raw melee)

Spell damage is (let's ignore spell conversion, attack speed and crits because I did before and no one noticed.)
base damage * (Spell% + Elemental% + Skill% + Str%) * spell multiplier
+ raw spell * spell multiplier