Damage Types, Conversion & Critical Hits

The damage types are Physical, Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos.

Physical damage is one of the five Damage Types. It is the most common and the only one reduced by Armour, rather than by a Resistance.

Most physical damage comes from Weapon Attacks, but some Spells and other skills deal physical damage as well. Physical damage over time can be inflicted with Bleeding.

Fire damage is one of the five Damage Types. It is reduced by Fire Resistance. Fire Hits inflict Flammability based on how much Fire damage is dealt, which provides a chance to Ignite.

Cold damage is one of the five Damage Types. It is reduced by Cold Resistance. Cold hits apply Chill and build up Freeze, but cannot build up Heavy Stun.

Lightning damage is one of the five Damage Types. It is reduced by Lightning Resistance. Lightning hits have a chance to Shock based on how much Lightning damage is dealt.

Chaos damage is one of the five Damage Types. It is reduced by Chaos Resistance.

Chaos damage is the least common damage type, and removes twice as much Energy Shield as the damage value when taken.

The three Elemental damage types are Fire, Cold, and Lightning.

Any damage that isn't damage over time is Hit damage.

Damaging Ailments which result from a Hit will calculate their damage from that Hit, and will not subsequently have Damage modifiers applied directly to them. As a result of this, raising Hit Damage will result in more powerful Damaging Ailments innately.

Your Pre-mitigation Damage is the damage of your hits after all your modifiers to damage have been applied, but before the target's mitigation, such as Armour, Resistances or Blocking, prevents any of that damage.

The target's modifiers to Damage taken apply after their mitigation, so Pre-mitigation Damage also does not include the effects of those modifiers. However, modifiers that cause the target to take damage as a different Type occur before mitigating the damage, so are included in Pre-mitigation Damage.

Damage can be converted from one type to another. This causes it to deal the new damage type, scale with modifiers to the new damage type, and no longer scale with modifiers to the old damage type.

For example, Fire damage converted to Lightning now scales with Lightning damage modifiers and causes Shock, but no longer scales with Fire damage modifiers or causes Ignite.

Conversion is a two step process. Conversion inherent to Skills occurs first, then Conversion from all other sources. Damage over time cannot be converted.

Damage gained as a specific damage type only scales with modifiers to the new type, not with modifiers to the source damage's type (unless they're the same type).

For example, Lightning damage gained from Physical damage scales with Lightning damage modifiers, but not Physical damage modifiers.

Damage Gain occurs in the same two step process as Damage Conversion. Damage over time cannot benefit from damage Gain.

Critical Hits deal +100% extra damage (i.e. twice as much damage) by default. Critical Damage Bonuses can further modify this value.

Attacks usually use your weapon's base Critical Hit Chance, while Spells and some other skills have their base Critical Hit Chance listed on the skill.

Most modifiers to Critical Hit Chance are percentage based. For example, gaining 100% increased Critical Hit Chance on a base Critical Hit Chance of 7% would result in a final Critical Hit Chance of 14%.

Multiplies the damage dealt by Critical Hits. Default value is +100% (i.e. twice as much damage).

Hits which could potentially be a Critical Hit but do not roll a Critical Hit will re-roll Critical Hit chance until they succeed.

Hits have 30% less Critical Damage Bonus for each time Critical Hit chance was re-rolled.

Overwhelm negates a certain amount of the target's Physical damage reduction, but never more than the total Physical damage reduction the target has.

Penetration causes the target's corresponding Resistance to be treated as lower than its actual value by the specified amount when of calculating Damage taken from your Hits. Resistances can only be Penetrated down to a minimum of 0% by default.

Since Penetration only affects Hits and applies to the target's defensive stats rather than your own offensive stats, it does not affect damage with Ailments.

Ignoring Resistances means your damage cannot be modified in any way by the target's Resistance stats.

Lucky things are rolled twice and the better result used.

Unlucky things are rolled twice and the worse result used.