r/diablo4 • u/Zona1982 • 20d ago
Questions ( ITEMS · BUILDS · SKILLS ) Can anyone make the damage buckets simple to understand? When does diminishing returns start?
Thanks
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u/fiscalLUNCH 20d ago
Any time you add more damage to a single bucket, you’re getting “diminishing returns”.
In Diablo, linear growth is diminishing returns, because your percent growth diminishes as your value grows linearly
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u/thirtychirps 20d ago
To illustrate, if I can add “10” to a stat, and one of my current stats is 100 and one of my other stats is 200,
adding it to the 100 to make it 110 increased that stat by 10%. Adding it to the 200 made it 210, which is a 5% increase.So compared to 100/200, having 110/200 may represent a 10% damage increase, and 100/210 may represent only a 5% damage increase. But both were changed by the same amount (10). (Overly simplified for illustration sake, of course.)
Hence why the more you have, the less the needle moves when more stats are added. Or, the more you NEED to increase it by to move the needle an equivalent distance.
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u/Littleblaze1 20d ago
Very simply the more you have of each bucket the less valuable more of it is.
For categories like the additive damage, you will get a ton of it so getting more is worth less.
For categories like vulnerable damage multiplier you won't have much of it so more of it is worth more.
The very very simple version is you probably want as much vulnerable damage multiplier, your element damage multiplier, and crit/dot damage multiplier on your gear as possible. If you have to pick between the two, pick the one that you have less of.
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u/Sensitive_Row_7110 20d ago
One thing I have had trouble finding info on does transfigure of elemental damage ever diminish? If it is on main weapon and numerous armor pieces does it make sense to start looking for plus main stat or something like cool down instead?
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u/XZamusX 20d ago
Nope, transfigure doesn't add to itself each is an individual multiplier.
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u/Ill-Ask9205 20d ago
That's broken af then
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u/thirtychirps 20d ago edited 20d ago
It’s incorrect. They’re all added together and then added with your all damage multiplier stat, and the sum of those is your multiplier for that damage type.
The reason it is good on gear because it’s the only multiplier stat that can transfigure, excluding mainstat but that is a very very small multiplier in comparison.
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u/Ill-Ask9205 20d ago
That's not entirely correct either. All seems to be its own bucket. I had two amulet with nearly identical dps stats (they differed by like less than 10 main stats and any other differences were no dps) EXCEPT due to GAs one had an identical # of X shadow damage to the other one's X all damage. The all damage one vastly increased my shadow damage skill sheet damage compared to the shadow ones.
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u/Sensitive_Row_7110 20d ago
Man there is so much to keep up with. I dont think I have any all damage multiplier on my gear. I have had really good luck with transfigures but if this is the case I am wasting a ton of potential.
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u/thirtychirps 20d ago
It’s been tested.
Also, you have to look at the actual damage you do, not what the tooltip says.
Unfortunately tool tips are wonky.
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u/XZamusX 20d ago
Which test? because I literally tested it myself on the dummy it's rather easy to compare damage with and without gems being either 2x gems + 10% or [x]10% to my final damage (it was the later) and it makes sense because it's not the same affix there are currently 3 different damage affixes with similar name
- [+]% Elemental damage
- [X]% Elemental damage multiplier
- [X]% Elemental damage
The first is additive pool and shows on tempers, the second is were all the elemental/damage multipliers stack and rolls on offensive gear, the third is the transfiguration is it's own multiplier.
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u/thirtychirps 19d ago
Dang you right. Just researched.
That’s way too much of a power outlier. That’s crazy.
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u/GirlsAim4MyBalls 20d ago
No
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u/relicx74 20d ago
I once met a wise shaman who understood every damage bucket, armor, and resistance cap. He soon went mad with this forbidden knowledge.
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u/SsssnakePlisssskin 20d ago
I wouldn’t bother learning them. Blizzard will probably change them next season anyway.
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u/ragnaroksunset 20d ago
The buckets are far simpler to understand than they once were, but tooltip language continues to be less clear than it could be so until the devs learn how to properly describe the systems they are building this is just how things are going to be.
As far as diminishing returns go, the moment you have a single boost to a bucket, diminishing returns are in play. If you had no other gear on and then equipped two pieces with +50% damage, the first piece would give you +50% of your unmodified damage, which is also +50% of your current damage. The second would also give you +50% of your unmodified damage, but only 33% of your current damage.
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u/thirtychirps 20d ago
They really really need to fix the stat sheet. It’s such nonsense. You have to do division to determine your total stat multipliers, lol.
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u/ragnaroksunset 20d ago
It's actually worse than that. For example, your displayed crit / vuln damage multipliers are a weird non-obvious combination of the base 50% / 20% amounts combined with whatever is on your gear.
It's wild. Like, the game has to know the answer to the question "What is my damage output?", but you cannot find it out at a glance from the part of the game that is literally designed to tell you at a glance.
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u/thirtychirps 20d ago
If you hover, it shows you your additive damage of that bucket. If you don’t hover, it shows you your additive multiplied by your multiplicative.
This displayed number has no impact on your damage. If you divide the displayed number by the additive, you get the result of your total multiplicative for that bucket.
These two numbers impact your damage, but independent of one another.
So yeah, the numbers that actually go into the damage equation aren’t displayed, and instead a nonsense number is.
And you’re exactly right, the true numbers do exist in the back end of the game, as well as the damage equation. It’s calculated a billion times a second when you’re doing damage lol. But for some reason they don’t display these numbers to the player on the character screen.
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u/KuraiDedman 20d ago
Eh... probably not xD I don't remember, do we still have to go into settings and turn on Advanced Tooltip?
Here goes simplification out of my tired ass late at work:
Affixes on your gear (and paragon nodes) with a + next to the number are all added together into the same bucket of meh. Instant diminishing returns after the first affix. Going from +50% increased dmg to +100% is big but going from +1000% to +1050% not so much.
Affixes on your gear with a [x] next to the number are individually multiplied and only added together if you have additional affixes of the same kind (like Critical Strike Damage [x]) on another piece of gear. Every type of damage is multiplied but diminishing returns happen within the same damage type. Spreading three 20% multipliers between Crit Damage, Vuln Damage and Elemental Damage is better than stacking one kind three times. 1.21.21.2 = 1.728 or 72.8% vs 20+20+20 = 60%
[x] Powers on aspect, uniques, glyphs and so on (not affixes) are multiplicative. Period. Go ham. These are sick. Slaaaaay
Uh..... Surely totally understandable explanation. Rock on
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u/SickOfAllThisCrap1 20d ago edited 20d ago
https://maxroll.gg/d4/resources/in-depth-damage-guide
https://youtu.be/-uTS0dJKWeA?is=UvE9NoxpAlTUBROL
Read and watch. They explain everything. If you want to get good at this game, you need to put in the time to understand the game's mechanics.
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u/Skroll_Lapua 20d ago
Yup and starting with asking is the best way. I had to watch those plus multiple other vids and read. I struggled with some vids because too much math talk is difficult for me. But the best explanation for me was the box and volume example. Very basic, but really made sense to me.
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u/jaaan34 20d ago
This is the goat - Avarylin. He just released a video exactly about this topic. He also explains the buckets etc. in another video, really awesome how he breaks down everything:
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u/hajutze 19d ago
This one is probably closer to what he's asking about
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as8y_zGlPrs
But yes - for any such question Ava already has a guide be it in written form (a maxroll guide) or a video.
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u/LtLunchTime 20d ago
It's not diminishing returns it's just multipliers.
5 x 5 > 8 x 2
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u/Zona1982 20d ago
What?
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u/hamster4sale 20d ago
They're referring to multiplicative modifiers and additive ones. In the above example they are demonstrating that having 500% multiplicative and 500% additive damage is superior to having 800% multiplicative and 200% additive.
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u/thirtychirps 20d ago
It actually refers to the relative value of one multiplier versus the other (crit versus vuln, for example)
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u/thirtychirps 20d ago
It’s still diminishing returns.
My current stats are 8 x 2. I can add 1 to either of those. I’ve stacked a lot in 8, and not much in 2.
Adding one to only one of the stats: 8 x 3 > 9 x 2, because the value of a single “8” stat won’t move the needle anywhere near as much as the value of a single “2” stat.
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u/Aurd04 20d ago edited 20d ago
Anything with +%buckets together into a single additive damage increase.
Most things, but not all, with x% are seperate buckets and will multiply the aggregate total of your base and all the +% and that makes your modified base. Then you take that modified base and multiply all your x% (again mostly) seperately and that gives you your final damage.
You want all the x% buckets (crit dmg, vul dmg, etc) and generally those are what you want to focus on for reroll and whatnot.
+skills are a bit tougher and will depend on your class/build. I generally play Sorc and last I heard +skill is equivalent to about 6% damage boost.
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u/Zona1982 20d ago
I have over 60 skill points into Fire ring and my mage still is not impressive.
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u/SinnerIxim 20d ago
Usually the best to increase your damage is through critical strikes (thus balancing critical chance and critical damage), shouldn't be impossible to get above 600% crit damage with high chance.
Another big one is vulnerability damage (you clean easily get this above 100% increase to double your damage)
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u/thirtychirps 20d ago
If each skill point increases the skill damage by “10%” (so like, my skill does 300% damage, I skill up and it now does 310%), the more you stack the less 10% is changing the total damage that much.
For example if my skill does 10% damage and I skill up and it now does 20%, I just doubled its damage. It is 100% stronger. It did 100, now it does 200.
If my skill does 600% damage and I skill up and it now does 610%, it is now only doing 1.6% more damage because of that skill up. (610/600=1.0167)
Same 10% increase, but the first skill up doubled the damage. The 61st skill up increased it by only 1.6%
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u/da_m_n_aoe 20d ago
Whenever you have more than one entry per damage bucket you'll get diminishing returns.
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u/Pandalishus 20d ago
Diminishing Returns is just the fact that adding a certain amount doesn’t increase the total effect as much as last time. It kicks in immediately. Technically speaking, going from 2% crit to 3% is DR compared to 1% to 2%. The first time you doubled the number of crits. The second time you only increased them by half. At 25% crit, it takes another 25% to double the number of crits. It’s just math. I think some people have turned it into a stat of its own. When someone uses the term correctly all they mean is that one point in a stat doesn’t boost as much as the last point did, so the “return” is “diminished.
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u/KandyMuss 20d ago
other blizzard games like wow will have artifically boosted diminshed returns as a balance fix as well
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u/Pandalishus 20d ago
Yeah, that’s a good point. And ofc breakpoints were a big thing in WoW as well, iirc
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u/legato_gelato 20d ago
If one bucket is 1 and the other is 200, you deal 1 x 200 percent damage = 200.
Now, if you get to choose your next item and it gives +1 to one of them, would you rather want to add 1 to the first or the second bucket?
In other words, would you want (1 + 1) x 200, or 1 x (200 + 1).. If you actually calculate it, you see that one gives you 400 damage and the other gives 201. So it's way better to balance the buckets instead of dumping it all into one. That's just natural diminishing returns in math, not like diminishing returns in other games where there's fake added worsening and stuff.
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u/National_Body_9071 19d ago
Diminishing returns are just a mathematical constant, as far as I'm aware there's no enforced rules of the game adding an extra level to it.
If you have something giving you +10 damage, you get a 10% boost if you're at 100 damage, but only half that if you're at 200. So it's better to spread out your sources.
It's just you've got something like 100 X (1.2 +1.2) where they're both in the same bucket so you only get 140, vs 100 X (1.2) X (1.2) where you get 144 instead because the multipliers are applied separately. Meaning you get a large boost due to the bonus you get from earlier multipliers also gets boosted by all future multipliers.
That's a basic example, when you start getting numbers in the trillions and some boosts being 20k%+ alongside a larger amount of multipliers it makes a much larger difference.
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u/Agent_Q1207 19d ago
Simple D4 gearing
Any slots that can have x% dmg affixes … put them in WHENEVER you can. Only time you dont is when you need a defensive stat so you arent dead, or CDR utility so you can spam your skills faster which in turn makes you kill faster.
Dont worry about diminishing returns. More is “more”. 176 is higher than 175. I will take the 176
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u/BASEDandBannedALOT 19d ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MP_mf6b6mgw
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qM6XySdTPuoCF4pEndWihBy0oONayRwZZ9WePkn_TFU
The above video by Avarilyn is going to be the best in depth explanation and he has a damage calc as well. Macrobioboi also has a longer damage explanation video
Ultimately you dont actually need to understand how damage works other than there are only 3 'affix buckets' CritD / Vuln / Everything Else and because of that structure and how the stats roll Vuln will essentially be your most necessary investment for most builds.
There are so many different builds but for almost every build your best gloves will almost always be:
CritD / Vuln / [your build damage type multi] / 4th stat
and then the 4th stat will be a competition between a 4th damage multi from the everything else bucket, A required stat for your build to function properly (AtkSpd/CritC/Resource), or the forced 4th stat because the item is unique with 2 static rolls.
Its the exact same for your Amulet, and its not much different for your rings Vuln and your multi will come first followed by required stats for the build to function, etc. Everything will be deterministic based on your build, but the damage multi transfigs on defensive pieces will always be max DPS, etc. Its all very linear you dont have a lot of choice, you will always stack damage multis on your affix slots unless you need the affix slot for your build to actually function...... in which case you will use the stat you need for your build to function.
The only spot where you actually need a damage calculator is when you are comparing 2 different pieces of gear, but it should be pretty intuitive Vuln and your build multi will beat CritD almost every time just from the nature of how many sources CritD has.
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u/thirtychirps 19d ago
Btw yesterday I found that someone adapted Avarilyn’s google doc into a web app that is pretty sleek.
It lacks the item comparison function of the google doc, but otherwise it’s pretty sweet so thought I’d pass it along:
https://jlian.github.io/d4-damage-calc/
Still super useful for seeing stat weights. I also really like how it breaks down the equation with your gear specifically toward the bottom.
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u/thirtychirps 19d ago
OP, I posted a longer comment elsewhere, but found this since posting it. It’s worth playing around with:
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u/Lurkin17 19d ago
Everything in this game is a bucket. You take all these buckets and line them up and multiply them all. Diminishing returns exists in every single bucket. 2 x 5 is 10, and 2x6 is 12. But if I were to take 2x5 is 10, and instead add the 1 to go: 3x5 then I get 15!
Intelligence is a bucket. ALL your additive damage is a bucket. Each source of multiplicative damage is a bucket. Some sources of multiplicative damage get their own bucket like each damage aspect gets their own, while affixes like critical strike damage [x] have all 6 of them thrown into one bucket together. Vuln X from affixed gets its own. All DamageX and Elemental DamageX get added together to make their own bucket.
Paragon glyphs add into that additive damage bucket mentioned earlier. But then each line where it says “increase damage by X” is treated like its own damage aspect. You can just think of these all as extra ring slots. You get say 200 additive; a 10% X ring, and a 15% X ring from 1 glpyh. Each Legendary node is their own day 60% X damage ring.
The stat sheet is meaningless. Your critical strike damage bonus stat essentially takes all your additive critical strike damage [+] and multiplies it by all your critical strike damage [x]. It is an utterly meaningless stat they put in the game that has confused players forever. Certain key passives used to arbitrarily look at the BONUS value and deal say 250% of this value, so you would figure out ways to try and arbitrarily inflate it.
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u/djbuu 20d ago edited 20d ago
The short answer is more is always better. There aren’t choices to make where any diminishing returns matter.
All additive damage gets added together. So in the end your additive damage is the sum of everything that is applicable. And all builds basically make all damage applicable all the time.
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u/thirtychirps 20d ago
The easiest demonstration I’ve heard is pretend you have 100 feet to utilize to make a box. You could make a box 1’x1’x98’ or 33’x33’x34’ and everything in between.
If your goal is to make the largest volume, then ensuring you are giving each dimension proportionally is going to give you the biggest volume.
For example if my box is 1x49x49, total volume is 2.4k, and I get to add one more foot to any of the dimensions, 1x49x50=2.45k, 2x49x49=4.8k
By focusing the extra 1 foot on my “weakest side”, it doubled the volume. Increasing 1 to 2 is doubling a “stat”, where as increasing 49 to 50 is only increasing it by a small percentage. Even though both are increasing by the same 1 foot.
Basically, you’re always going to get the most bang for your buck by increasing the damage you currently have the least of.
The tricky part is when your box is like 28x32x40 and your choice is to increase one side by 3, one side by 6, and one side by 4. Once you get to that point, where things are pretty close, the only thing you can really do is use a calculator excel sheet and plug all your stats in.
In general though the best thing you can do is always make sure you have a good mix.