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Damage Multipliers and Thorns Explained

Last Updated: January 7th 2024

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Introduction

One of the most important goals within Diablo III, or any ARPG for that sake, is to become strong enough to take down every enemy on your road. However, the in-game tooltips in Diablo III do not explicitly state how damage is calculated, what types of damage multipliers exist and how it all comes together for you to damage a target... or hordes of targets.

In this guide, we are going to explain damage calculations and multipliers while answering common questions that you see roaming within the community like: How does the Weapon Damage Range define damage of abilities? What is the difference between additive and multiplicative multipliers? All these questions, and many more, will be answered here: Stay awhile and listen!

Damage Range

The base of every damage calculation in Diablo III comes from your Damage Range (or from Thorns in some cases), which comes mainly from your Weapon(s) and eventually Offhands (Source, Mojo, Phylactery) or Jewelry (Rings and Amulet). Let's take a simple Level 1 Weapon as example:

Level 1 Wand
Level 1 Wand with a Flawless Royal Ruby

On our unsocketed Weapon, we can see that it has a range of 2-3 damage, meaning this weapon has 2 Minimum Damage and 3 Maximum Damage. These rolls are the implicit range rolls of the "Level 1 Wand Weapon Base": any item of the same weapon base, regardless of its rarity and primary affixes, will at a bare minimum have this damage range. On the second weapon we can see that it has a damage range of 272-273, meaning that Flawless Royal Ruby grants +270 Minimum Damage and +270 Maximum Damage to the base.

Note that the primary affix "+X% Damage" on Weapons increases both minimum and maximum damage ranges of the Weapon. Other sources of damage range such as Jewelry or Offhands are applied on the damage range only after the +X% Damage Weapon Affix. In order to get our average damage, we need to divide by 2 the sum of our minimum and maximum damage range:

Thus, we can calculate our socketed Wand average damage, which should be (272 + 273 / 2) = 272.5 average damage per hit. In order to get our Weapon Damage Per Second (DPS), we need to multiply the average damage by the Weapon Attack Speed which is 1.2 in our case: this brings us to a grand total of 272.5 * 1.2 = 327 DPS. For more information about Attack Speed and Breakpoints, check out this article written by Northwar!

Thorns

General Rules

  • Thorns damage does not take Weapon damage into consideration. This means all sources of average damage (Weapon, Rings, Amulet and Offhand) are useless for Thorns builds.
  • All damage done by Thorns is Physical. Demon's Skin (2) Bonus, Demon's Hide (2) Bonus and Asheara's Uniform (3) Bonus are the only exceptions as they respectively grant Fire Thorns and Holy Thorns.
  • Thorns damage cannot critically strike (except with Envious Blade).

Thorns Sources

  • Rolls on Shoulders, Chest, Amulet & Belt: 5334-7696 Thorns (7697-9500 for Ancients).
  • Rolls on Rings, Helmet, Bracers, Gloves, Pants, Boots & Offhand: 2401-2880 Thorns (2881-3500 for Ancients).
  • Nailbiter & Neanderthal: 5334-7696 Thorns (7697-9500 for Ancients).
  • Heart of Iron: 300% of your Vitality as Thorns.
  • Boyarsky's Chip: 16,000 Thorns, up to 136,000 at level 150.
  • Flawless Royal Topaz in Weapon: 38,000 Thorns.

Note that the character sheet tooltip states that Thorns damage is increased by a portion of your Primary Attribute: this is an heirloom from early Diablo III, when Thorns damage was only increased by 25% of your Primary Attribute. This is however not the case anymore, you do benefit from all your Primary Attribute!

Thorns Multipliers
As seen earlier, in regard to Thorns damage calculation, your average damage is replaced by your Thorns value. This value is defined by your sheet Thorns amount, which is directly buffed (and shown in your character sheet) by the following effects:

  • Thorns of the Invoker (2) Bonus + Iron Skin Reflective Skin
  • Iron Maiden
  • Tough as Nails
  • Spear of Jairo

We call these buffs Thorns Multipliers. Every one of these bonuses is a separate multiplier to your Thorns amount, the only exception being Thorns of the Invoker (2) Bonus, which is additive with Iron Skin Reflective Skin. We can also mention Aberrant Animator which is a passive that gives 200% of the Necromancer's final Thorns amount (after all Thorns multipliers have been applied) to its minions.

But there is more to it! Thorns are divided into 2 categories that we will call Real Thorns and Converted Thorns for convenience.

Real Thorns
The first thing to know is that Real Thorns damage is calculated using only your Thorns amount and all your damage multipliers. The second thing is that in a normal scenario, whether it is a buff or a debuff, all additive damage buffs stack additively within their category and their sum forms one separate damage multiplier (see below). This is however not the case with Real Thorns as buffs and debuffs from the additive category are multiplying with each other, meaning they're both separate damage multipliers for this Thorns category. Real Thorns sources are:

  • Thorns applied when a monster hit you (or your minions with Aberrant Animator).
  • Thorns applied by Hack.
  • Thorns applied by Thorns of the Invoker (2) Bonus.

Another thing to bear in mind is that Vo'Toyias Spiker is a 100% additive damage debuff working for the whole party but only for Real Thorns and not for Converted Thorns. This means it stacks additively with other additive damage debuffs like Strongarm Bracers but on the other hand, as seen above, additive damage buffs are multiplying with additive damage debuffs.

Also, Reflected Thorns and Hack cannot proc Area Damage. On the other hand, AoE Thorns from Thorns of the Invoker (2) Bonus can proc Area Damage. Thorns from Hack are applied in a 15 yard radius and can proc Area Damage as well when combined with Thorns of the Invoker (2) Bonus.

Converted Thorns
Converted Thorns follow normal damage calculation rules. The reason is that they are using your Thorns amount as base damage but unlike Real Thorns, they have a "Skill Damage" Multiplier. Sources of Converted Thorns are the following:

  • Thorns applied by Sanguinary Vambraces
  • Bombardment Barrels of Spikes
  • Consecration Bed of Nails
  • Steed Charge Spiked Barding
  • Thorns of the Invoker (6) Bonus

For this Thorns category, additive buffs and debuffs stay additive with each other and as seen above, Vo'Toyias Spiker additive damage debuff does not work.

Skill Damage

Every skill in Diablo III deals a specific amount of Weapon Damage, also called Skill Damage Multiplier. If we look at Magic Missile, we can see that the skill without rune deals 230% of our Weapon Damage. This means that to get our average hit with an unruned Magic Missile, we need to multiply our average weapon damage by this skill multiplier:

In practice with our average damage defined in the section above and an unruned Magic Missile dealing 230% of our weapon damage, we should deal on average 626.75 damage per hit:

Then we need to add all our damage multipliers to get a final damage value. Note that some skills have a special Weapon Damage scaling: Seismic Slam Rumble, Ancient Spear Boulder Toss and Meteor Star Pact have a base Weapon Damage value and consume all remaining resource after the initial skill cost to add Weapon Damage to the base value. Skeletal Mage Singularity has a similar scaling but the remaining resource is scaling a separate damage multiplier to the Skeletal Mage instead of scaling its base Weapon Skill Damage. This means Maximum Resource and Resource Cost Reduction give a slight damage increase for those skills.

Damage Multipliers

Rules
Now that we defined our base damage, we can now dive safely into more thorough damage calculations. The main idea to keep in mind is that pretty much everything in Diablo III acts as a damage multiplier to your base Weapon Damage (or Thorns Value in some cases).

By definition, buffs are beneficial effects and by opposition debuffs are harmful effects. In Diablo III, when we speak about buffs, we mean beneficial effects applied on players while debuffs are harmful effects applied on monsters (hence also beneficial to players). That being said, practical differences between buffs and debuffs are anecdotic in Diablo III when it comes to damage calculation, only affecting the Additive Damage category in a few cases.

The main rule is that every damage buff is additive with others buffs in its own category, and these categories then multiply your damage. Sadly, there is no absolute rule of thumb to tell how every damage buff is working: you just have to know. Luckily for you, we are here to nail it and explain to you how all these damage buffs and multipliers work together!

Categories

Primary Attribute

Critical Hit Chance & Damage

Elemental Damage

Elite Damage

Monster Type Damage

"Additive" Damage

Pets Skill Damage

Attack Speed

Other Damage Multipliers

Class by Class Overview

If the categorization and all the exceptions to every rule in the section above scared you, don't worry, we got your back! Below, you can find the explanation for most of the damage interactions class by class:

Wizard

Barbarian

Necromancer

Demon Hunter

Witch Doctor

Monk

Crusader

Video Guide

Damage Multipliers Explained by Wudijo

Conclusion

I hope this guide gave you all the insides about how the damage instances are processed within Diablo III! While damage interactions can be complicated with a lot of exceptions to mention, a good understanding of damage scaling mechanics and damage multipliers will make you a lot more insightful regarding optimisation and gearing choices, allowing you to maximize your Greater Rift pushing potential. Good luck!

Credits

Written by Chewingnom.

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