There are five elements used which involve damage and their corresponding Secondary Damage Effects which are a sub group of Detrimental magic effects:
Damage is calculated separately for each damage type. It is important to understand resistances and how they are applied to damage. Each weapon or spell that inflicts injury delivers some combination of these five damage types; perhaps all physical, perhaps half fire and half magic. In the discussion below, any reference to damage applies to any or all of the types separately. For example, physical damage and poison damage are each calculated using their respective damage and resistance values, then once computed, the two types are added to arrive at the final figure which is subtracted from the target's health.
All elemental damage types have their own elemental damage converter which may be socketed to increase its elemental damage as well as the chance to inflict their own corresponding Secondary Damage Effect which is also a type of Detrimental magic effects:
Weapons can be socketed with damage converters that will change a part of the damage type that is already native to the weapon. Most weapons start with Physical as a damage type. The above damage converters will convert a percentage of the original weapon damage (usually from Physical) & all of the other elemental damage on the weapon into the new, chosen element. For example, if a player wanted to enhance fire damage, he would socket one "Chunk of Lava" into their chosen weapon and that would give them ~30-50% of the previous damage now as fire damage instead of Physical. The more elemental damage a player can produce, the better the chance of applying the relevant Detrimental magic effects as well as being able to target a monster's weakest resistances. While weapons with more than one additional elemental damage type are rare, you can get guns with physical, magic, fire and poison damage native to the gun (though they are very rare).
As well, all monsters may and usually do have weaknesses against specific damage types. Having the correct damage type versus an enemy's weakest resistance towards that damage type can result in a significant increase in damage as well as increasing the chance to inflict its correlating Detrimental magic effects.
Elemental Damage Type Effects on Weapons
Damage type elements, when socketed, change the appearance of the weapon and will imbue it with glows depending on the type of element socketed as well as extra animated effects. A weapon with no element socketed within it will have no extra color or animation unless it is a unique or legendary. It is possible to tell what kind of damage type a weapon has by checking its color and animation. Damage types on weapons can be a mix of many of the damage types (elements). The highest element damage type on the weapon is what will "win" and give the weapon its color and animation.
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- Physical - No extra special colors or animated effects upon the weapon.
- Secondary Damage Effects (Detrimental magic effects) - Can potentially inflict Open Wounds (Damage-over-Time) if the correct modifiers, weapon or skill lore unlocks are chosen. Socketing elements into a weapon will actually lower the physical Damage-over-Time of Open Wounds, as the weapon will then have a percentage of its physical damage converted into another element.
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In addition to the visual effects on the weapons, projectiles fired from weapons also have different effects based on the primary elemental damage type of the weapon.
Magic Staff projectiles (Granted by taking the Magic Staffs skill):
