Damage Types & Ailments — Physical, Elemental, Chaos and Ignite, Freeze, Shock
Which damage type your character deals, and which ailments it inflicts, defines your build’s identity — and decides whether to funnel your stats one way or spread them thin. The defensive side (how you mitigate damage) lives in Defense Basics; this page covers the offensive side — how your damage lands on enemies.
Damage types
Damage is always one of five types.
- Physical — reduced by the enemy’s Armour.
- Fire / Cold / Lightning — grouped as Elemental, each reduced by that elemental resistance.
- Chaos — not elemental; reduced by Chaos resistance.
So physical is stopped by armour, while elemental and chaos are stopped by their respective resistances. This works the same on offence and defence (enemies have resistances too).
Some skills use damage conversion — e.g. converting physical to fire, so a single hit lands as part physical, part fire. Those builds benefit from the stats of both types.
Ailments
Ailments are secondary effects a hit leaves on an enemy. They split into damage-over-time and action-hindering types. As of 0.5 there are seven.
| Ailment | Source | Effect | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ignite | Fire | Fire DoT (20% of the hit’s fire damage/sec, 4s) | Damaging |
| Chill | Cold | Slows actions up to 50% (2s) | Hindering |
| Freeze | Cold | Freezes solid — can’t act (4s) | Hindering |
| Shock | Lightning | Target takes up to 20% more damage (4s) | Hindering |
| Electrocute | Lightning | Drops action speed to 0 — effectively locked down | Hindering |
| Bleeding | Physical | Physical DoT (15%/sec), much worse while the enemy moves | Damaging |
| Poison | Physical+Chaos | Chaos DoT (20% of combined damage/sec, 2s), stacks | Damaging |
A few things worth knowing:
- Shock isn’t damage — it makes the enemy take more damage, so it’s especially valuable in multi-hit or party setups.
- Bleeding only comes from physical damage dealt to Life by attacks (not spells), and hits far harder while the enemy is moving.
- Poison stacks — each application adds more chaos DoT.
- Note that PoE1 ailments like Sap, Brittle, Scorch, and Pin do not exist in PoE2 0.5. The seven above are the full set.
How ailments get applied
The key split is “chance to apply” vs “builds up to apply.”
- Chill always applies (100%) when you deal cold damage.
- Ignite and Shock get more likely the bigger your hit is (relative to the enemy’s ailment threshold).
- Freeze, Electrocute, Bleeding, and Poison start at 0% chance — you must add “chance to inflict” via gear, passives, or gems.
For the hindering ailments (Chill, Freeze, Shock, Electrocute), the strength/duration scales from your hit size versus the enemy’s ailment threshold — bigger enemies have higher thresholds, so they need bigger hits. The exact formula isn’t officially published, so just treat it conceptually: the larger your hit relative to the enemy’s size, the stronger and longer the ailment.
Enemy resistance, penetration, and exposure
Enemies have resistances too. Your elemental damage is reduced by the enemy’s matching resistance (30% fire resist means only 70% of your fire damage lands). High-resist enemies can stall a single-element build, and there are two tools to cut through:
- Penetration — treats the enemy’s resistance as lower for your hits only. The enemy’s real resistance is unchanged; only your calculation sees it lower. It applies to hits, not to damage-over-time.
- Exposure / Curses — a debuff that actually lowers the enemy’s resistance (Exposure is −20% by default, elemental only). It affects everyone hitting that enemy and can push resistance negative.
The two stack: drop the enemy’s resistance with exposure/curses, then penetrate what remains.
Applying it to your build
The most important beginner principle is commit to one damage type. A lightning build, for example, has increased lightning damage, Shock, Electrocute, lightning penetration, and lightning exposure all pointing the same way. Spread across elements and a mod like “increased fire damage” or “lightning penetration” only helps a fraction of your output.
One more thing: hit-damage stats and ailment (DoT) stats are separate pools. If you kill with damage-over-time (Ignite, Poison, Bleeding), stack “ailment / damage-over-time” mods; if you kill with hits, know those mods don’t carry over to your ailments.