It has been nearly a month since Lord of Hatred expansion launched for Diablo 4. One of the major changes introduced with this expansion is a large-scale overhaul of the equipment system, which has completely reworked damage calculation and related mechanics.
You might feel that your gear is not far off from what other players have, yet your damage output falls far behind theirs. This could be because you do not fully understand how affixes work on your equipment. Let IGGM analyze how the various attributes work in Lord of Hatred and how to build high-quality equipment based on them.
Damage Multiplier
Base Weapon Damage
Damage calculation in the game starts from your base weapon damage. This value is displayed on the weapon itself and is increased by any increased weapon damage affixes that can roll on weapons. That damage is then multiplied by factors such as the skill rank of the ability you are using – this forms the foundation of your damage.
Main Stat
Each class has its own main stat. Your character’s main stat provides a percentage increase to skill damage. This is a separate multiplier zone that is independent of all others in the game. Therefore, acquiring more main stat is another effective way to boost your damage.
Another attribute worth noting – though somewhat special – is attack speed. The faster your attack speed, the more often you deal damage. So no matter how large your individual damage numbers are, higher attack speed yields better overall returns. However, you will only notice a significant difference once you stack it to a sufficiently high level.
Additive Damage
Additive damage is essentially also a multiplier, but all additive sources are summed together – hence the name. As long as a single attack meets all the trigger conditions, every relevant additive affix will converge into one large value.
All tempering effects that are offensive in nature count as additive damage – you can identify them by the “+” sign next to their description. Moreover, most attribute increases from paragon nodes are also additive damage.
When you have both additive critical damage and a critical damage multiplier on your sheet, the game will combine them into a single displayed number. In reality, however, they do not interact with each other in that way.
That is because, no matter how high your critical damage multiplier or vulnerable damage multiplier may be, the additive critical damage value you gain and the additive vulnerable damage value you gain are entirely equivalent in effect.
How to Choose Additive Affixes?
Therefore, as a general rule, the best offensive tempering you can pick is the one that offers the highest numerical value and applies to your damage type.
Additive affixes are all about chasing high numbers; spreading them across different types serves no purpose. You only need to stack as high as possible a single additive affix that affects your damage type – there is no need to pursue multiple additive types.
Damage Multipliers
For additive damage, you simply choose the type that benefits you the most and stack it as high as you can, because all additive affixes that apply to that instance of damage are gathered together into a single multiplier zone that then acts on the rest of the damage.
Damage multiplier effects, on the other hand, do not affect your additive affixes in any way. As long as their conditions are met, they directly apply to all damage you deal. It is worth noting that specific elemental damage multipliers and all-damage multipliers fall into the same independent multiplier bucket.
How to Increase Damage Multipliers?
If your build’s primary damage source can activate the conditions for these multiplier zones, you need to acquire them on your gear. Almost every build revolves around either a high critical hit chance or a DoT effect – the two are usually mutually exclusive, but you need at least one of them.
Every build requires vulnerable damage. This is both for the extra damage bonus provided by the vulnerable debuff itself and because vulnerable damage affixes can boost your build.
Additionally, every build deals some form of elemental damage (physical counts as well) in one way or another. Therefore, you need to acquire at least the following three multipliers on your gear: critical damage multiplier, vulnerable damage multiplier, and either elemental damage multiplier or all-damage multiplier – and keep them balanced.
Vulnerable Damage Multiplier
The vulnerable damage multiplier cannot appear on weapons. It only appears on gloves, amulets, and rings. Consequently, it is even more important to obtain vulnerable damage multiplier on those Diablo 4 items, especially because its natural roll ranges on those slots are often much lower than those of other multipliers.
Elemental Multiplier
You automatically gain a certain amount of this type of multiplier from the gems you socket into your weapon slots. The multiplier provided by gems falls into the same multiplier bucket as elemental damage multiplier and all-damage multiplier – they all get mixed together.
If you also acquire Gem Strength affix on your weapon through transfiguration, these gems can reach over 200% multiplier within that single bucket. Therefore, you should reserve your actual affix slots on gear for other attributes besides elemental or all-damage multiplier.
Critical Damage Multiplier
Do not stack critical damage multiplier just because your build is based on critical hits. You also need vulnerable damage multiplier, and you also need all-damage or elemental damage multiplier. Even if you cannot achieve perfect balance, having your various multiplier values relatively even will produce a higher damage output than investing everything into a single multiplier.
Many items have affixes that inherently provide high multipliers, allowing you to easily reach the critical strike cap. If you want to equip items with higher critical strike chance or other damage multipliers, the cheap Diablo 4 items for sale in IGGM can save you the trouble of repeatedly stacking stats, and you can say goodbye to RNG!
Transfiguration System
Transfiguration System is a crafting system in the endgame that can significantly boost your damage. You need to continuously transfigure your items to obtain Gem Strength affixes. Most Diablo 4 gear become unmodifiable after transfiguration.
Thus, you will need to select pieces of gear that you do not care about, gamble on a result that does not turn them into an unmodifiable state. If you end up with just a Gem Strength affix, and its damage bonus is higher than that on your current equipment, you can equip that item regardless of whether its other affixes suit you.
Tuning Prism
Without relying on luck, Horadric Cube can also use a Tuning Prism to shift attack, defense, or utility affixes. The in-game loot filter includes a list of different affix categories. Although this list is not exactly identical to what you can do with a Tuning Prism, it serves as a general reference.
It is worth noting that some affixes belong to two categories at the same time. Certain affixes, despite having different original categories, can be affected by multiple types of prisms. This means that if the affix you wish to change falls into the same category as an affix you want to keep, you should check whether it can be influenced through a different prism instead.
IGGM reminds you that even when you understand affix multiplication and craft gear using Diablo 4 Horadric Cube Materials for sale, there is still some randomness involved in creating a perfect item. You can usually guarantee three affixes as you wish with relative ease, but the fourth affix tends to be more random – you may need to attempt it several times.
