Path of Exile 2 Damage Conversion, explained

In Path of Exile 2, damage conversion is a crucial mechanic that allows players to modify their skills’ damage types, enhancing their effectiveness in different builds. With multiple damage types in the game, understanding how to convert one into another can lead to powerful build optimizations, which you may find quite useful.

How Path of Exile 2 Damage Conversion Works

Whether you’re using passive skill nodes, unique items, or support gems, knowing how to manipulate damage types can drastically change how your skills function. Most Skills in Path of Exile 2 deal multiple of them at once, influenced by numerous in-game mechanics. Most abilities do not deal a single damage type; instead, they often convert a large percentage of Physical damage i𓆏nto an elemental ty🔯pe while retaining some of their original Physical damage. This is inherently tied to the skills.

For example, Freezing Salvo converts a portion of its Physical damage into Cold damage, with the remainder staying Physical. Because of this, the skill benefits most from Cold and Physical damage modifiers while still interacting with other elemental damage bonuses. If you have a ring that gives you added Fire damage, Freezing Salvo will deal a small portion of Fire Damage because it is not a pure element. The gains from this will be small, however, because the skill mostly does Cold damage, and any +DMG type that doesn’t match it will not benefit or improve the DMG type.

Thanks to the unique mechanics of the Widowhail Unique bow, you can forcefully convert a majority of a damage type into a different one based on the most significant damage on your equipped quiver. This allowed me to turn Freezing Salvo into a skill that does mostly Fire Damage, and this is just one type of Damage Conversation available to you in Path of Exile 2.

Damage types can be converted into others using specific items, passive nodes, and support gems. Using Freezing Salvo as the example again, the Cold damage it deals can be converted into purely Fire damage using the Avatar of Fire capstone node in the passive skill tree. With Avatar of Fire, Freezing Salvo no longer deals any Cold damage or applies ♈Freeze/Chill effects. Instead, it only deals Fire damage and gains the ability to apply Burn.

Avatar of Fire prevents you from dealing any type of damage that isn’t Fire, thus, the above-mentioned methods of boosting damage or converting damage will not functionally work with the node active. The only way to increase your damage would be to purely focus on boosting Fire Damage. Using +Cold Damage items or skill nodes would have no benefit despite Freezing Salvo 🀅being tagged a Cold damage ski💫ll.

This is also the case with purely elemental skills, such as Flame Blast. These do not benefit from any damage type other than their default element. However, if you convert Flame Blast’s Fire damage to another type, such as Cold, by using a unique item, it will no longer receive any benefits from Fire damage bonuses. This is even though Flame Blast was originally a Fire damage skill.

All Damage Conversion Methods in Path of Exile 2

Path of Exile 2 is a massively complex game even without throwing Damage Conversion into the mix. With it there, though, you must actively consider📖 when and how you want to convert damage into another type without suffering the potential penalties involved. Here are all the ways you can accomplish this goal.

• Using Unique Items – Unique items like Painter’s Servant gloves convert all elemental damage into all three elemental damage types at the cost of potentially lowering the effectiveness of nearly pure elemental skills.
• Using Support Gems – While not a direct conversion, Support Gems like Chaos Infusion, reduce the amount of damage non-Chaos damage skills do to gain extra damage as Chaos damage. Depending on how your build works, this can be a huge benefit or a massive curse.
• Passive Tree Nodes – The capstone node, Avatar of Fire, converts all of your damage into Fire at the cost of some overall damage.

Damage Conversion Takeaways

Ultimately, Damage Conversion is an optional but powerful tool for your build. Some builds may not require it at all, so ensure it aligns with your playstyle and overall build strategy before com✤mitting. The key takeaways you must understand are the following:

• Damage conversion allows skills to change their base damage type, altering their effects and interactions with other mechanics and allowing for some truly unique setups.
• Most abilities are not purely one damage type, meaning they can benefit from multiple types of damage bonuses.
• Pure Elemental skills only benefit from their respective elemental damage type unless converted.
• Path of Exile 2 features a different approach to damage conversion compared to Path of Exile 1, making it a key mechanic to understand for optimizing builds that intend to use it.