WoW|An explanation of +damage and +healing items

We may all be surfing the WoW boards while at work today (even if we're aren't at work!) but I saw this post and thought it was interesting enough to warrant posting here.

daelo wrote:

There is some confusion about how these effects work and how effective they are, so I wanted to explain what they do.

When an item has the effect "Increases damage and healing done by magical spells and effects by up to 20", the damage dealt or hit points healed by one of your spells will be increased by a fixed amount up to 20. The actual amount that the spell is increased by is not determined randomly, but by which spell you are casting. You are not recieving a random bonus value between 1 and 20 whenever you cast a spell. Some random items, such as those with the property "of Shadow Wrath", indicate that they provide "+X Shadow
Spell Damage". The actual amount of the bonus is again determined by the spell being cast. There are a few items that do provide a random bonus, such as Dreamweave Gloves, but their effect notes the randomness by stating that item's bonus as "up to 1 to 19." Once again, the bonus received could be reduced depending on the spell being cast.

Spells with longer casting times such as Fireball and Greater Heal will receive the full bonus listed every time they cast the spell. Spells with instant or short cast times receive a fraction of the bonus listed. As an example of such a spell, Flash Heal (Rank 7) only receives approximately 43% of the item bonus. Talents or other effects that might change the casting time of the spell will not change the bonus; the amount received is a property of the spell being cast.

Most long duration Damage and Heal over time spells have the bonus divided amongst every tick. So Renew, which lasts 15 seconds and heals an amount every 3 seconds, has 20% of the bonus applied each tick. In a similar fashion, channeled spells also have the item bonus divided amongst every tick of the spell's duration.

Lower level spells receive a greatly reduced benefit from these effects.

These effects all stack. So if a Mage is wearing 3 items that provide up to +20 Fire damage, you will have a combined +60 to Fire damage. This means every high level Fireball cast will inflict an extra 60 damage to the target.

These bonuses are also added to the effect of the spell before the 50% bonus from a critical spell hit is applied.

Note that there is currently a bug in the game that affects heals over time such as Renew and Rejuvenation. The +healing items worn by the caster are only providing the appropriate healing bonus if the caster is also the target of the spell. Direct heals such as Greater Heal work fine, and the +Healing bonuses are being appropriately applied. Damage over time spells are also working properly. We're working to fix this bug, but currently I can not provide any kind of ETA on the fix.

Daelo
Game Designer

EDIT - The thread is here.

Good to know!

Thanks for posting the explanation, Eezy - I was wondering how that worked myself.

Spells with instant or short cast times receive a fraction of the bonus listed.

It sounds like wearing a couple of +14 damage items for my Hunter''s Arcane Shot might or might not help me much, depending on what the penalty is like for Instant cast spells. Anyone with experience care to comment?

I was wondering about this. I have a belt that does +11 healing to any healing spells. So that means if the spell heals 361-431, then with the belt it will heal 372-442?

My reaction is kind of ""big whoop"". It hardly seems worth replacing my +7 Int +6 Spr belt.

So that means if the spell heals 361-431, then with the belt it will heal 372-442?

Tecnically, probably not, based on my reading of the full post.
It''s based on casting time (and I think spell rank).

It sounds to me that, basically, these things are sort of calculated by damage/healing per second.

Spells with longer casting times such as Fireball and Greater Heal will receive the full bonus listed every time they cast the spell. Spells with instant or short cast times receive a fraction of the bonus listed.

I don''t know what the cast time for Fireball is, but let''s say it''s 10 seconds. So an ""up to 20"" item is basically a 2 D/HPS boost. A 10-second spell will get full bonus while each of 5 2-second spells will get 20% of that bonus.

I guess that makes pretty good sense.

Edit: Please remember that those numbers (especially ""an ''up to 20'' item is basically a 2 D/HPS boost."" ) are purely hypothetical and used for example purposes only... but I think the interpretation is valid.