Wizard Int question

[Deleted]

Say I have a sword that does 23 damage and a axe that does 36, but the sword has 33 intelligence on it yet my damage goes up when I equip the axe, is it still better to have the int even though I can't see how much damage it adds? It's confusing me a bit, is damage referring to melee or actual spell casting damage. Basically my damage goes up when equipping the axe, yet the sword has more intelligence.

Any help? Thanks.

[Anowyn]

Your spells are based off of weapon damage, so the damage show on your character page is the damage any attack is calculated from (though the number shown is the average damage per second). The number shown on the page factors in all damage increases -- intelligence, attack speed, etc. If you equip a new weapon and your damage goes up on the character page, you are doing more damage. Weapon damage scales absolutely enormously in this game, so a higher damage weapon even without int will often win. Also rings and necks that add +damage are huge damage increases as well. The only place you want to watch when upgrading is defensive stats. You can lose as much intelligence as you want as long as you're doing more damage. But losing 200 vitality to make you do more damage might be a bad choice, depending on your survivability.

[Deleted]

For simplicity, incase you just want a easy way to judge gear. In the stat menu the game evaluate an approximate dps with the current gear/stats equipped.

[Darsithis]

Don't forget, int increases elemental resistances, which is very useful post Act 2

[Deleted]

Your spells are based off of weapon damage, so the damage show on your character page is the damage any attack is calculated from (though the number shown is the average damage per second). The number shown on the page factors in all damage increases -- intelligence, attack speed, etc. If you equip a new weapon and your damage goes up on the character page, you are doing more damage. Weapon damage scales absolutely enormously in this game, so a higher damage weapon even without int will often win. Also rings and necks that add +damage are huge damage increases as well. The only place you want to watch when upgrading is defensive stats. You can lose as much intelligence as you want as long as you're doing more damage. But losing 200 vitality to make you do more damage might be a bad choice, depending on your survivability.

Thanks a lot for the post, Anowyn. Just to be clear, equipping the axe is better all round as my overall damage goes up, even though I lose 33 int when swapping the sword out? It just seemed strange to me to have an increase in damage even after losing the 33 int.

---------- Post added 2012-05-21 at 04:58 PM ----------

Don't forget, int increases elemental resistances, which is very useful post Act 2

Yeah, I'm keeping the other stats in mind. I'm just doing act III nightmare now, but it seems the question I had in the OP was still something I didn't understand, oddly enough. I think I just didn't come across the question when doing normal.

[Amontoya86]

Don't forget, int increases elemental resistances, which is very useful post Act 2

Where can I read up on more info like that cause I wasnt completely oblivious to that.

[Angrybutcher]

I too had this question as it didn't seem right, then I realized something. Remember that Int does a percentage of damage increase. At that low of stats, the amount of damage you gain from percentages are rather low. After roughly level 35, Int starts to have more priority over pure weapon damage as far as pure damage is concerned. Just remember the usefulness of every stat, even Dexterity and Strength to a point.

[Darsithis]

Where can I read up on more info like that cause I wasnt completely oblivious to that.

Mouse over intelligence on your character sheet

Increases .1 per 1 point, so 32 points (my barbarian) is 3.2 points of resistance, which is about 4% total reduction

[Kivana]

My Wiz is now lvl 35 in Act 1 Nightmare and i just got her a sweet sword off the AH for 5k. It boosted my damage by roughly 150 and it had 25 LESS int on it, but was faster and had more DPS.

Also try to keep an eye out for weapon upgrades with sockets and ALWAYS slap your best red gem in it, those increase your damage even further
It seems weird i know but you will get used to it.

[Archimand]

the higher your weapon dps is the higher int will increase in value

good way to increase dps is +damage on rings/neck/off hand

weapon speed and ofc skills

at the beginning int is nearly useless think 2-4 damage ring worth more then around 70 int

but later when your base dps on weapon increase that 70 int will be worth more then 100 dps