Scope
When your character hits something, the game resolves a single damage number. That number is assembled in a fixed order from a small set of independent parts. Every decision you will ever make about a character — which node, which item, which gem — is a decision about one of those parts.
The construction below starts from an empty hit and adds one layer at a time. The finished structure is short enough to hold from memory, and every later lesson refers back to it.
Layer 1 — Base
Every skill begins with a base damage number. This is the seed. Everything that follows is a multiplication applied to it, which has one immediate consequence worth stating plainly: if your base is small, every multiplier you own is multiplying something small.
Where the base comes from depends on what kind of skill it is:
| Archetype | Base comes from |
|---|---|
| Attacks | Your weapon's damage |
| Spells | The skill gem, scaling with gem level, plus flat added spell damage |
| Minions | The minion's own base, driven by gem level and minion modifiers |
That table is the entire subject of lesson 3, so we will not dwell on it. For now: base is layer one, and it is not the same slot for everyone.
One thing that belongs here rather than later: added or "flat" damage — a modifier like "Adds 7 to 13 Physical Damage to Attacks" — enlarges the base before any multiplier runs. 1 It is not a fourth kind of multiplier. It is a bigger seed, which means everything downstream multiplies it too.
Layer 2 — Two kinds of percentage
On top of the base sit percentage modifiers, and the game uses two different words for them. The distinction is deliberate and it is the most load-bearing piece of vocabulary in the game.
increased (and reduced)
Every source of increased damage that applies to your skill is summed into a single figure — the additive total — and that one figure is applied as one multiplication. Two sources of 20% produce a combined 40%, giving a multiplier of 1.40. 1
"Additive total" is used throughout the course for this summed figure, to keep it distinct from a character's current damage. The additive total is a percentage; current damage is a number.
more (and less)
Each source of more damage is applied as its own separate multiplication. Two sources of 20% produce 1.2 × 1.2 = 1.44. 1 In PoE2 these come mostly from support gems.
20% increased + 20% increased → 1 + 0.2 + 0.2 = 1.40
20% more × 20% more → 1.2 × 1.2 = 1.44
What each word is measured against
The distinction is sharper stated as a reference point than as a stacking rule:
increased adds a percentage of your base damage. The base never moves, so a given modifier always contributes the same absolute amount.
more multiplies your current damage. What it contributes grows as the character grows.
Applied to a character with base damage of 100 and an additive total of 500%, whose damage therefore stands at 600:
| Modifier | Measured against | Adds | Damage becomes |
|---|---|---|---|
+50% increased | base damage, 100 | 50 | 650 |
50% more | current damage, 600 | 300 | 900 |
Identical printed values; six times the contribution. The naming is literal — increased means increased relative to base, and it was never measured against current damage.
One consequence is worth noting in advance. Early in a character's life the total is roughly the base, so the two behave almost identically and the distinction is invisible. It widens continuously thereafter.
Working out the consequence
The two preceding sections supply everything required to derive the most useful arithmetic in the course. The situation is stated below before the conclusion is drawn.
A character has accumulated 300% increased damage from tree and gear. All of it sits in one summed total, so the multiplier currently applied to their base is 1 + 3.00 = 4.00.
They allocate a passive cluster worth +50% increased damage. The total becomes 350%, so the multiplier becomes 4.50.
By what percentage did their actual damage go up?
The printed number on the passive says 50. The damage moved 12.5. Both are true, and they differ because the modifier is measured against the base, while the improvement is measured against your current total — and those two reference points have been drifting apart since level one.
For any increased modifier, what you gain is what you add, divided by 100 plus what that total already stood at.
real gain = added ÷ (100 + current total)
We will call each of these summed totals a total, and the 100 + total figure its denominator. Those two words are course vocabulary rather than game vocabulary — they are in the glossary — and they exist because the diagnostic loop this course builds toward is unsayable without them.
Check the rule against the earlier small example: 20% increased on top of an existing 20% gives 20 ÷ 120 ≈ 16.7%. Maxroll's own walkthrough of that case reports exactly 16.67%. 1 Same arithmetic at both scales.
What the denominator does over a character's life
The result also follows from the reference-point statement above, without dividing anything. Since increased is measured against a base that never moves, a given modifier contributes a constant absolute amount — and that constant amount lands on a total that keeps growing.
| Total | Damage on a base of 100 | +50% increased adds | Which is |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50% | 150 | 50 | a third of it |
| 200% | 300 | 50 | a sixth |
| 500% | 600 | 50 | a twelfth |
Fixed numerator, growing denominator. The modifier is not getting weaker; the thing it is being compared against is getting larger.
Stated as a table of divisions, the same fact:
| Total before | You add | Division | Real gain |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0% | +50% | 50 ÷ 100 | 50.0% |
| 100% | +50% | 50 ÷ 200 | 25.0% |
| 300% | +50% | 50 ÷ 400 | 12.5% |
| 600% | +50% | 50 ÷ 700 | 7.1% |
This is not a flaw in the tree and it is not a mistake anyone made. It is what summing into a shared total does, arithmetically. And it is useful: a total whose returns have flattened is telling you something specific about where the remaining room is.
More multipliers have no denominator, because they never join a total. A 30% more multiplier is worth 30% on a level 20 character and 30% on a finished one. That immunity is the structural reason support gems behave differently from tree nodes.
Two characters — one with a 0% additive total, one with 500% — each gain the same modifier. Which one delivers the same percentage gain to both?
- A support granting thirty percent more damage
- An amulet granting thirty percent increased damage
- A passive granting fifty percent increased damage
- A weapon granting eighty percent increased damage
A caution against over-learning that: more being immune does not make it automatically larger.
On a character whose additive total already stands at 500%, which addition produces the larger gain?
- Two hundred percent increased damage, from the tree
- Thirty percent more damage, from a support gem
Two characters each add fifty percent increased damage. Who gains more?
- The character with two hundred percent already
- The character with four hundred percent already
- Both characters gain exactly the same amount
Layer 3 — Speed, and the fact that totals are separate
Hit rate — attack speed or cast speed — is a genuine damage multiplier: twice the hits is twice the damage over time. It behaves exactly like the layer above, with one structural detail that turns all of this into a diagnostic tool:
Increased damage and increased attack speed are separate totals with separate denominators. They do not know about each other. The same modifier is worth different amounts depending on which total it feeds.
A character has 400% increased damage and 30% increased attack speed. They can add 40% to either. Work out both divisions before opening the answer.
Into damage: 40 ÷ (100 + 400) = 40 ÷ 500 = 8%
Into speed: 40 ÷ (100 + 30) = 40 ÷ 130 ≈ 31%
Roughly four times the return from the same modifier, for one reason: one total was nearly untouched and the other was not.
Now reverse the character — 400% increased attack speed, 30% increased damage — and the answer reverses with it, exactly. Which tells you the useful thing: the question is never "is speed better than damage." It is "which of my totals is emptiest." That question has a different answer for every character, including two characters playing the same skill.
Speed is the one total with practical ceilings the division does not capture: mana sustain, animation lock, and skills whose output is tied to a duration rather than a hit count. Maxroll flags hit rate as a real multiplier but adds that "you need to be careful with this." 1 An unusually empty speed total is a lead worth checking, not a conclusion.
The remaining layers
The finished skeleton, for completeness. The final three layers each receive their own lesson.
× (1 + INCREASED) # layer 2 — one shared total
× MORE₁ × MORE₂ … # layer 2 — each separate, no total
× SPEED # layer 3 — its own total
× CRIT # lesson 4 — two totals that multiply
× ENEMY # lesson 5 — resistances, penetration, curses
Six layers. Independent, multiplied together. Everything else in this course is either a detail inside one layer or a procedure for deciding which layer to work on.
Worked diagnostic
Exercises from this point take a consistent form: a character, no recommendation, and a question resolved by the reader.
Two options, one pick:
- A passive cluster giving +24% increased physical damage
- A pair of gloves giving +12% increased attack speed
Which do you take? And separately — is there anything on this sheet that neither option addresses?
The passive: 24 ÷ 485 ≈ 5%
The gloves: 12 ÷ 118 ≈ 10%
The gloves are worth about twice as much while printing half the number, because 18% is a nearly untouched total and 385% is a saturated one.
The thing neither option addresses: the empty support socket. A more multiplier has no denominator at all, so a support gem there is competing on a different axis entirely and plausibly beats both. The general point: when you audit a character, the smallest total is not always one of the lines printed on the sheet. Sometimes it is a socket, and later in the course it will sometimes be enemy resistance you were never reducing.
Note what the diagnosis required: three divisions, done on paper.
What to carry out of this
- A hit is base × six layers of multiplier, independent and multiplied together.
Increasedmodifiers sum into one shared total.Moremodifiers each apply separately and never join one.- Real gain = added ÷ (100 + current total). This one line prices any tree node in your head.
- Every stat has its own total and its own denominator, so "which total is smallest" is a better question than "which stat is best."
The structure above is applied to a character by locating two figures on the character sheet: total increased damage, and total increased attack or cast speed. Running the division for a hypothetical +30% into each identifies which of the two totals is currently the emptier.
Layer one — the source of the base — is treated in lesson 3, and the answer differs materially between attacks, spells and minions.