Foci and Damage

London 2038
1

I want to understand focus items and dmg. Let me explain first.

Using a gun you see clearly what the damage. You know what sfx strength you have. You know you can’t put an electric mod in a toxic gun and expect it to do shock dmg. Maybe if you add a shock strength mod to the gun it might but I’ve always been leery of trying to make a gun do what it isn’t designed to do. Now, that said.

With a foci things are different. foci doesn’t tell you what damage it does instead it says x amount of power. foci also have all sfx strengths. Not sure how power relates to damage but there must be a correlation.

Without a mod added to the foci, when you shoot it does it do all the sfx strengths? Or do I need to put an “Adds x amount of damage” to it? Because no foci I’ve seen tells you the damage like a gun. Just the sfx strengths.

When I asked in chat the consistent answer I got is - Look at the icon. If it’s Purple (which it is) then it does spec dmg. Which doesn’t make sense to me. I know with a gun the icon makes sense. Red - fire, green toxic, grey physical, purple spec. In a gun just because it has fire strengthj doesn’t mean it does fire damage. Am I right?

So my questions come down to:

  1. What kind of damage does an unmodded foci do?
  2. What is the correlation between power and damage?
  3. on a float over, the foci says it does x amount of damage. With a purple icon. Then inside, it has a different number. It’s called Power. Outside and inside the foci are 2 different numbers. Are either of them related to damage?
  4. Does the purple icon really mean it’s only doing spec damage?
    Having one weapon state exactly what kinda damage it does and another using a whole different language instead of damage is confusing.
    Why all the sfx strengths in a foci? Without a dmg indicator how would you know?

These may seem like newb sort of questions. I want to be a better player. I want to understand my gear. And what it is telling me. I don’t want to assume any longer. So I ask the basic questions. Thanks for any respone.

2

Yeah, foci can be rather confusing. But hey, asking around is always better than not.

The regular foci damage is indeed spectral. There are exceptions, in which cases the icon is indeed the best way to know; foci will feature appropriate icons that communicate both damage types (ie colors correspond to damage types) and damage area. For example, Fists of Ruax use a green field icon to communicate that their autoattack produces a toxic field.

Foci power directly increases the damage of all spells that use the foci. It should naturally also increase the damage of the foci’s autoattack.
The exact correlation is determined by a rather misty formula, which also takes dual-wielding into account - which seems very hard to make player-readable. Still, that more power equals more damage is the foundation.

The overview number is essentially a “gear score” that can be safely dismissed. It intended to communicate higher gear value but it’s rather unreliable.
The power indicator in the foci inspection screen is indeed the foci’s damage value indicator; it’s not 1:1, ie a foci with 166-198 power won’t deal 166-198 damage per shot, but it still works in a direct more-equals-better relationship.

Yeah. I’d assume unless modded otherwise, but at the moment I can’t confidently recall if added elemental damage affects the autofire of foci.
(Added elemental damage does affect all damaging spells that use foci, that said.Eg, an affix or mod with +x% toxic damage will allow Hellfire to also deal toxic damage alongside fire.)

Understandable, but if I had to guess why Flagship went for this system I’d guess it was because foci were not initially designed to be used as weapons. The concept of them having different autofire skills with different damage types only came later, when the power indicators were already in place. And by then, well, the ship was already sinking.

That design choice was likely because spells deal different types of damage and they wanted foci to support them all in terms of sfx. Even foci like Ripshards, which heavily focus on a specific element, still have some sfx strengths for all elements too; otherwise (in this case non-physical) spells would likely not ever apply their corresponding sfx (unless modded).

Hope that clears things up a bit.

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As always your responses are precise and timely. Couldn’t ask for anything more. Thank you

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