20%+dmg verses.......

OK, this seems like a good a place as ever to ask this...

e.g. 20%+dmg to Dragons
Elemental sword of Dragonslaying

What exactly are the limits of a 20%+dmg mod?

Do they only work towards melee/projectile? (normal attack)

Do they count towards spell/skill damage against said foe?

Do they increase the base damage of the weapon and thus adding a small percentage to your "post calculated" damage?

Thanks!

It only affects the base damage of your weapon. Spells, and skills with +dmg, are not affected.

It doesn't affect spells I know that for sure.

20% damage modes are specific to certain foes and therefore for certain areas. The best examples are:
20% vs. Skeletons-Used in FoW by 100 blades or VoS againts skeletons.
20% vs. Demons-Used in DoA vs. everything.

The pros:
Verses a specific foe they are very effective.

The cons:
Verses everything that is not under the damage your losing damage/second.

2) They do work on projectile weapons, but are rare for wands.
2) No they do not act as 20% more damage by skills for specific foe.
3) They add percent to base damage e.g. staves 11-22 + 20% damage vs. skeletons have maximum 22+4.4 =26.4~26 damage and minimum 11+2.2=13.2~13 when the mode is in effect*. It's most effectivly used by melee.

Hope I helped peace.

Awesome! Thanks a ton guys!!

It's pretty unlikely that DPS is the thing that would be lacking. Most suffixes are defensive in nature. The only exception is Of Mastery, and those seem to be rarely used.

And those that use such mods on melee weapons often have a swap out set for facing foes not covered by the mod.

Although I think I understand what you mean here, it could be interpreted incorrectly. If you are fighting a non-mod-specific foe, you don't "lose" DPS, you are simply not gaining the extra that the mod would give.

The Con: would be:
The mod takes the place of some other mod. That is, it takes the place of +30 health, +armor, +20% enchant, etc.


So you need to determine which mod is best in a certain case. Best thing is to have an alternate "normal" weapon set to switch to.