PoE 2 Guide: How to Scale Damage

Version 1 - Written from pre-release info based upon public teasers only.
(No leaks involved in the writing of this guide)

The Mobalytics version of this article will be updated reasonably promptly after launch; unfortunately, the accompanying Youtube video will not be able to be updated. If the Mobalytics and Youtube disagree on information – the Mobalytics writeup is authoritative.

We don’t yet know everything about damaging ailments or how critical hits work. Check out our upcoming Ailments 101 Guide to learn more about Bleed, Poison, Ignite, and more once we know more about how they are implemented in POE2, and our upcoming Critical Hits 101 guide as well.

In Path of Exile 2, there are a number of known ways to scale damage. These can be divided into four main categories:

1. Scaling tied to the monster
2. Scaling tied to the player. This is the biggest section; it will be last
3. Avoiding failed actions
4. Increasing time spent attempting to deal damage

Here’s examples of each:

1. A monster suffers more damage, because it is Shocked.

2. A player allocates the passive tree notable Spaghettification, which reads (in part) “29% increased chaos damage”, or turns on the buff Archmage which reads (in part) “Spells Gain 5% of damage as Lightning Damage for each 100 maximum Mana you have."

3. A player casts a spell, but a monster hit inflicts a Stun while they are casting it, causing the spell to fail. Another player fires a projectile, but the intended target isn’t in the right place when the projectile gets to it. Another player makes an attack but has insufficient accuracy and so the monster evades it.

4. A player’s high movespeed allows them to dodge a deadly boss attack rapidly, and to get back to dealing damage. Another player’s investment into fire resistance and life leech allows them to stand in fire constantly attacking, never once stopping to move.

Shock

The poster child for this mechanic is Shock. In POE2, some skills that deal Lightning Damage can Shock. Our upcoming “Ailments 101” page will have all of the details.

Ordinarily, you can only usefully apply one Shock on an enemy. The Sorceress class’ Stormweaver Ascendancy excels at inflicting shock, and its Strike Twice notable allows you to break this rule.

Even if you are not a Stormweaver, Shock is a powerhouse offensive option.

Curses

Monsters can also be debuffed through curses. Despair and Flammability both cause monsters to suffer large penalties to their resistances. These aren’t worth applying to monsters you expect to slay in 1 or 2 hits, but against tougher monsters they will be very worthwhile.

Exposure

Monster resistances can also be debuffed through inflicting Exposure to a particular element. There will be many ways to apply this.

This guide will be updated as new ways to increase damage taken by monsters are found. For example, the Intimidate mechanic from Path of Exile 1 might return – if that occurs, it will be added.

It’s obvious, but player skills do no damage if they don’t occur.

Avoiding CC

Monsters can stun or freeze the player to prevent player actions. Charms can remove these effects from you, but have limited uses.

If you find yourself suffering from a stun or freeze, look for warning signs the monster might have given beforehand, so you can dodge that ability in the future.

Skills not Hitting/Missing

Fast moving monsters can move out of the way of a skill before it lands. Investing in attack speed, cast speed, projectile speed or AOE can mitigate this, as can learning monster movement patterns. Skills with long damage delays, such as the Crossbow Skill Cluster Grenade, are affected worst here.

Monster mechanics that nerf player movement options can cause a skill to miss, as can another monster obstructing your movement. Ascendancies, unique items and the passive tree may have solutions you can spec into.

Blocking Damage

Some monsters tied to the Expedition mechanic are pernicious – they can block damage that originates from the direction they are facing. Finding skills you can use that strike them from behind is critical to counter this.

For all of these mechanics not tied to player stats, practice against that monster will help you a lot.

Low Accuracy

The Accuracy stat can also cause your attacks to miss, wasting an action. You’ll want to mitigate this by investing in accuracy, but this will come at the expense of investing in more damage. We’ll aim to ascertain Accuracy benchmarks to clarify how much of this stat you will want.

This one is simple. Time spent dodging monster abilities is time spent not unleashing your strongest skills to do damage.

The more durable your character, the less monster skills you need to avoid. Builds optimized for Hardcore take this to extremes.

The faster your character can move, the less disruptive it is to be forced to move.

Less obviously, the faster your character executes skills, the less disruptive it is to be forced to move. Attack Speed or Cast Speed can occasionally let you go from zero damaging skills up to one. These effects are more important the faster enemies are acting.

This can be summarized as raw character power.

This comes from your Passive Tree, Support Gems on your skill, Ascendancy Passives, buffs granted by Spirit reserving skills, short term buffs granted by support gems like Ice Bite… but mostly, they come from gear and your passive tree.

Path of Exile splits damage boosts from gear, supports and the tree into two types, “more damage” and “increased damage”.

“More” and “Increased” multipliers almost always specify types of damage they apply to, such as:

• 30% increased damage with two-handed weapons
• 20% increased fire damage

These will only help if you deal the correct type of damage.

More/Less Damage

“More Damage” and the opposite, “Less Damage”, all MULTIPLY together.

This can cause them to have a huge effect. They are better than “Increased Damage” effects unless the increased have much higher numbers.

Example: Your character has five effects that read “200% more damage." Each one triples your damage. After applying one, you do 3x baseline damage. After two, 9x. After three, 27x. After four, 81x. After the final one, you’re at a massive 243x baseline damage.

Increased/Reduced Damage

“Increased Damage” and the opposite “Reduced Damage” are all added together, and these combine into ONE single layer that is multiplied.

Example: Your character has five effects that read “200% increased damage”. This adds to 1000%, so you do 11x baseline damage.

As you can see, more multipliers are precious, especially large ones. You will want to start planning builds with a question. “What big more multipliers can I fit into this build?” This is perhaps the most important question you will ask.

Increased multipliers, on the other hand, fall off quickly as you collect more of them. You still want these boosts, but not if the cost gets too high.

• “More” and “Increased” modifiers
• Weapon base damage
• Base damage printed on spell gems (this increases as the gem becomes higher level)
• Critical Hit modifiers. See upcoming Critical Hits 101 for more, as these have changed since Path of Exile 1.
• Gem level increases such as “+5 to Level of all Lightning Spell Gems”
• “Gain 20% of Damage as extra Lightning Damage”
  (or the same for other elements or percentages)
• • If a spell does 500 fire and 1000 cold damage, this stat gives an extra 300 lightning damage. “Increased Elemental Damage” modifiers would then boost all of this damage.
• Attack Speed/Cast Speed
• • Boosting cast speed or attack speed is effectively (but not technically) a “more multiplier” to your total damage – but also one to how much mana your character spends.

You’ll usually focus on one type of damage on many builds to maximize options for “increased” damage modifiers on the passive tree. A spell that deals Cold Damage, and “gain X% of damage as Extra Cold Damage” is easier to scale than a mix of elements. The same applies to weapons.

Unlike Path of Exile 1, there does not appear to be “flat damage increases” such as “Adds 1-87 Lightning Damage To Spells” as a weapon mod. This means you cannot circumvent the need for good weapons and high level spell gems simply by stacking this flat damage.

It has been confirmed that you can get flat damage on Attack Damage weapons, just not for spells weapons like Wands/Sceptres.

Some skills don’t do much damage, but can make the next skill you use do more damage. (Such as by Breaking monster armour)

Always ask yourself “Is it worth firing off one weak skill to empower several subsequent ones?”

The answer is usually no against weak monsters, and yes otherwise.