I think I get the jist of the 'black damage' weapons. I know what they are at least... and I saw a few posts earlier, but my mind was lost in all the math.

Can someone put it in laymens terms for me? I have a friend who does 220k dps with his monk, with a black damage weapon, but none of his gear adds x% poison/arcane/whatever damage, just a simple socket, CD, and emerald. How does this add up?

If he's using a Won Khim Lao along with his black weapon then yeah, he's using some elemental damage.

The best way I can explain it is take a Chantodo's Force and look at it's actual damage range. Say it's 400-900 and It'll also have a fire damage range added onto it of like 300-400. If you have gear like a Triumvirate that adds elemental damage, the elemental damage will only add onto the physical aspect of the weapon so you pretty much subtrack the 300-400 damage from the 400-900.

Now if you have a black damage weapon all of it's damage is physical, e.g. the 560-1008 that wand on my wizard has along with the min and max damage and the elemental damage boosts all of that, instead of what's left over on the Chantodo's.

This is how I've come to understand it. If I'm wrong I'd be happy to have someone correct me.

Bah think I accidentally deleted my examples. Too hard to navigate on the iPhone screen?

I will try again.

Say a weapon has DPS of 1,000. This 1,000 is made up by the following 3 components:

1. Base weapon's physical damage of 500 (often shown as e.g. 250-750 say at attack speed = 1.0)
2. Additional physical damage of 300 (often shown as e.g. +300 to minimum damage, +300 to maximum damage)
3. Elemental damage of 200 (often shown as e.g. +150-250 cold damage)

From the above, the "black damage" is the physical damage of 500 + 300 = 800. And the Elemental damage is 200.

When a gear say +5% to cold damage, it means it will add a cold damage which is equal to 5% of the physcal damage. In this case 800 x 5% = 40. The total damage now becomes 800 physical + 40 cold + 200 cold = 1040.

When a gear say +5% to poison damage, it means it will add a poison damage which is equal to 5% of the physcal damage. In this case 800 x 5% = 40. The total damage now becomes 800 physical + 40 poison + 200 cold = 1040.

Posted by douvinsky at 01/18/2013 12:05 AM

When a gear say +5% to poison damage, it means it will add a poison damage which is equal to 5% of the physcal damage. In this case 800 x 5% = 40. The total damage now becomes 800 physical + 40 poison + 200 cold = 1040.

@douvinsky has it pretty close here. The RNG rolls min/max damage and +% damage mods on weapons. The +% Damage is applied to both the base and +min/max damage. Using some of the numbers from above

1. Weapon has 250-750 base damage with 1.0 attacks per second (500 dps displayed)
2. Weapon has +45% Damage
3. Weapon has +min/max damage of +150/+150 (+225 dps displayed)

When (3) is elemental damage it's displayed as +150-300 Fire Damage. When (3) is black it's separated out and displayed as +150 minimum damage, +150 maximum damage. The 45% is applied to both of these numbers:

Base Damage * 1.45 = 500 * 1.45 = 725 dps
+150/150 Min/Max Damage * 1.45 * 225 ~ 325 dps

In the case that (3) is Fire damage, the weapon damage dealt to an enemy will be 1050 dps split between black and Fire damage. If (3) is straight up black damage, then all 1050 dps is black damage.

Now equip a 5% Cold SoJ. For the weapon that's all black damage, the 5% is applied to all 1050 dps ~ 1103 dps with 1050 black damage and 53 cold damage. If you have the fire damage weapon, that 5% bonus applies to the 725 black damage -> 725 * 1.05 + 325 ~ 1086 dps. 17 dps is 17 dps, but that's not the true power of black weapons.

This is very important in terms of Cold damage, because Cold damage has an inherent 30% Chill effect (i.e., monster movement and maybe attack speed?). The rules for the precedence of the element that is applied to damage done to an enemy:

1. Skill elemental damage
2. Weapon elemental damage
3. Other Gear elemental damage (SoJ)

If you have a +150-300 Fire Damage weapon and equip a Cold damage SoJ, you always lose the 30% chill effect inherent in all Cold damage, because it strikes an enemy as Fire damage; you still receive the SoJ damage bonus, it's just not going to chill the enemy. Accordingly, if you use a skill that "does damage as lightning damage" the lightning damage takes precedence over both the Fire damage on your weapon and the Cold damage on the SoJ.

I only play a DH so I can only talk to them, but these concepts apply to all classes. I'll use Bola Shot and Multishot to demonstrate. When you're using an elemental damage weapon (Manticore is a poison damage weapon), then you'll never see the Chill effect from a SoJ regardless of your attack. If you use a black damage Rare 2H XBow or a Calamity 1H XBow, your skills are now "SoJ chill eligible," so to speak.

Bola Shot can never be black damage, so it doesn't matter if you use an elemental weapon or a black damage weapon. Elemental Arrow is the same way.

Multishot has a popular rune that halves the cost of the skill (30 Hatred to 15 Hatred), but also converts all damage to Lightning which means there's no SoJ chill effect. A second rune increases the damage dealt by the skill, but doesn't add an element to the damage. The second rune will retain the SoJ chill effect if you're using a black weapon and hence chill every enemy it hits. Grenades and Spike Trap work similarly with some runes applying elemental damage and others not (Grenades are not inherently Fire damage).

Mind you, the Chill effect is worthless on Elites in Inferno, because they have an inherent 65% CC resistance which means your 30% Chill from Cold damage only reduces movement speed 10%. It's hardly noticeable.

@ecocd

That's a very detailed explanation, including the 'conflict' which I wasn't aware of when various elemental damages are in play.

Mmmm... that pretty well sums it up for me. @douvinsky that was a solid explanation for me. Thank you very much.

@ecocd more than I wanted but definitely learned something new. Good info and thanks to both of you!

For reference, here's his build. He's not using any elemental adders though....thats why I asked. All damn good jewelry though

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/JRDIIORIO-1327/hero/20783760

@briangp @douvinsky
Bumping this, because I found out the actual reason behind the popularity of black damage. The Min/Max damage bug only applies to black damage weapons, not elemental damage weapons. It was the Marquise Ruby imgur heard 'round the world that got me investigating.

tl;dr Due to the MinMax damage bug, high aps, black damage weapons see a larger-than-intended bump from Min/Max damage affixes and will see an enormous dps bump from Marquise Rubies.

In short, when the +Minimum Damage Affixes exceed the maximum base damage for a weapon, the +Maximum Damage Affixes apply to the "new" minimum. Let's use my current Calamity as an example.



The base damage of an Exorcist is (48-50)–(275-279). For our purposes, let's say mine is a 48-279 Exorcist. The black min/max damage affix is applied and then the 41% damage is applied:
50 + 249 = 299 * 1.41 = 419
279 + 318 = 597 * 1.41 = 841
(419 + 841) / 2 * 1.78 aps = 1121 dps

Hmmm, the weapon display says 419-869. It's the 299 that's the problem. 299 is higher than the maximum possible damage for a base Exorcist (279). Instead, D3 is using 299 as the new minimum damage. The +Max damage affix is applied to this new, incorrect, minimum:

50 + 249 = 299 * 1.41 = 419
299 + 318 = 617 * 1.41 = 869
(419 + 869) / 2 * 1.78 aps = 1146 dps (rounding errors)

25 dps? What's the big deal? The problem is that now every additional Minimum Damage affixes you have on Jewelry or Gems applies to both the minimum and the maximum amount of damage done. A +30 min damage Amulet effectively makes my Calamity:

50 + 249 + 30 = 329 * 1.41 = 464
329 + 318 = 647 * 1.41 = 912
(464 + 912) / 2 * 1.78 aps = 1225 dps

The big problem is with +Min/+Max gear. Both the +Min and +Max is being applied to Maximum possible damage. The developers had previously said they had no intention of changing this as it would be an enormous retroactive item nerf. They might have to address it now, however, with the change in Rubies. At its current +150/+150 level, let's pretend my Calamity had a Marquise Ruby socketed in it:

50 + 249 + 150 = 449 * 1.41 = 633
449 + 318 + 150 = 917 * 1.41 = 1293
(633 + 1293) / 2 * 1.78 aps = 1714 dps

For the sake of argument, let's say it wasn't black damage, but instead fire damage. It would be shown on the weapon as "+249-567 Fire Damage":

50 + 249 + 150 = 449 * 1.41 = 633
279 + 318 + 150 = 747 * 1.41 = 1053
(633 + 1053) / 2 * 1.78 aps = 1501 dps

So due solely to the damage calculation bug, the Marquise Ruby is adding 240 maximum damage that "shouldn't" be there.

The only reason that imgur is so crazy is because it was socketed in a high dps black damage weapon. I picked up this baby on bid the night the patch preview came out saying that Rubies would be helping classes that didn't depend on critical hits (my Sentry DH). Pretty happy with the purchase now:


If everything stays put with the Patch (I can dream) and I eventually have the 47 jillion Gold for a Marquise Ruby recipe, I believe that will become:

50 + 246 + 150 = 446 * 1.43 = 638
446 + 298 + 150 = 894 * 1.43 = 1278
(638 + 1278) / 2 * 1.76 aps = 1686 dps with 173 Dex

my sentries won't miss the CD one bit. :)

(If they rescale the rest of the Rubies and a much more affordable +135/+135 Radiant Star Ruby is available, that still leaves me with a 1629 dps weapon - I can live with that).

And, by the way, Echoing Fury is black damage.

Wow in the pic you provided, switching the gem to a ruby added 50k to the DH's dps. How much did you get the xbow for btw? @ecocd

@razer I picked it up for 580k on bid on 1/12/13. There's a 1040 dps comparable on the market for 4 million that's been up for 10 hours. It's not exactly a booming market because it's still a niche weapon without any CD or Hatred Regen which both come on a Calamity.

The reason the guy in the picture is getting more from the Ruby than the Emerald is his other gear. If you already have +400% CD, the next 100% CD is moving the weapon strike damage from 500% to 600% on crits and doing nothing when it doesn't crit. Let's say his gear, without this Emerald, very conservatively gives him 50% CC and 400% CD. A 100% CD Emerald increases his displayed dps 10% (20% increase on crits half the time and 0% the other half). Any Ruby that increases his full weapon damage, including other Min/Max gear, by more than 10% is going to be the better Gem.

It turns out something like the same MinMaxDamage bug applies to the AH for Jewelry. Anyone that's spent time search for average damage jewelery has noticed the math doesn't always add up. Search for Average Damage 80 on rings on the Auction House and you'll get results like:
32-100 = 80 average damage
32-95 = 80 average damage

It took me quite a while to crack it, because it turns out D3 jewelry can only roll 1 damage suffix that gives +Min damage which means these high +Damage rings/amulets have a MinMaxDamage mod and a MaxDamage mod. The MaxDamage mod on the jewelry is applied after the MinMaxDamage mod much the same, buggy way it is for weapons.

The "Of Malice" Suffix, for instance, gives +Min/+Max damage rolls anywhere from +13 to +36 on each min and max. A perfect MinMaxDamage roll on jewelry would display "+36-72 Damage" in game and on correctly display its average damage of 54 on the AH. The person that has this amulet up on the auction house probably doesn't how spectacularly rare it truly is:


So if you're using an elemental damage weapon, you can rest assured that if the basic math on the damage roll works (+30-60 Damage with 45 Average Damage), then you know you're getting the real deal on the weapon damage increase you'll see. If the math doesn't line up (+25-67 with 50 average damage), the Auction House is exagerating the damage bonus. If you're using a black damage weapon, the displayed average damage is very close, if not exactly, what you'll get, because the MinMaxDamage bugs on your weapon and jewelry dovetail together.

Congratulations! You can now bid on Damage Jewelry on the auction house with complete confidence!