Gameplay Help and Discussion - Please Help a noob - Chaos damage to spells. - Forum - Path of Exile (2024)

Hi All,

This is my first league so forgive the noob question.

I found a Breath of the Council:

-(260 to 310)% increased Physical Damage

-(60 to 80)% increased Chaos Damage

-10% increased Radius of Area Skills

-40% increased Chaos Skill Effect Duration

If I understand correctly "increased physical damage" would not apply to spells even if they are physical spells like exsanguinate correct?

How about the Chaos Damage, Would that also only be applied with an attack and not a spell?

Assuming neither of these apply to self-cast spells like exsanguinate: I could still use it on something like Cyclone COC exsanguinate correct? Then they would apply to the cyclone but not the Exsanguinate.

Increased Physical Damage is a local modifier, it's increasing weapon's damage, so it does not apply to spells.

Increased Chaos Damage is a global modifier, so it applies to both spells and attacks.

The way to understand this in general (when they don't specify) is to ask yourself this: If the item the mod is on were otherwise a blank white item, could it benefit from the mod? If the answer is yes, then that mod is a local mod. If no, then it's a global mod.

So in this case, if the weapon was a blank white item, it would still be a weapon that deals physical damage. Therefore, mods to physical damage, attack speed, crit chance, etc. would all be local.

Note that mods which require a certain condition (i.e. 100% increased damage when on low life) are not local because they generally require YOU to meet the condition, not the weapon. So they would apply to you when the condition is met (which is global).