PoE 2 Damage Types Reference — Physical, Elemental, Chaos & More

Damage Type Quick Reference

Physical Damage and the Armor Formula

Physical damage is the most common damage type in the early game and from melee skills. Unlike elemental damage, physical damage is not mitigated by a simple flat percentage resistance — instead, it is reduced by your Armour stat using a formula: Damage Reduced = Armour / (Armour + 5 × Hit Damage). This formula produces diminishing returns against very large hits.

Physical damage can also be directly reduced by the 'Physical Damage Reduction' stat, which works like elemental resistance — a flat percentage reduction applied before the armour formula. Endurance charges grant 4% physical damage reduction per charge. The combination of Armour formula + flat physical reduction makes layering both very effective for physical tanking.

Physical damage is the foundation of conversion builds: many skills convert physical damage to elemental damage (e.g., Glacial Hammer converts to cold, Fire Conversion Support converts to fire). Once converted, the damage benefits from elemental resistance penalties on enemies and elemental damage passives, and is no longer reduced by armour on enemies.

Elemental Damage — Fire, Cold, and Lightning

The three elemental damage types are the most build-diverse in Path of Exile 2. Each has identical resistance mechanics (capped at 75% by default) but unique ailment interactions. Fire deals Ignite, which burns the enemy for additional fire damage over time based on the hit that caused it. Cold deals Chill (reduced enemy action speed) at any hit and Freeze (complete action lockout) on critical strikes exceeding a threshold of enemy life. Lightning deals Shock, which increases all damage taken by the shocked enemy by up to 50%.

Elemental Penetration is the primary way to make elemental skills more effective against high-resistance targets. Penetration ignores a fixed amount of the enemy's resistance — a skill with 25 fire penetration treats a 75%-fire-resistant enemy as if they had 50% fire resistance. Penetration is especially valuable in the endgame where bosses and rare enemies have naturally high elemental resistances.

Elemental Exposure (from skills like Combustion Support and certain ascendancy nodes) reduces enemy resistances rather than ignoring them — the target's fire resistance drops by 15-25% for a duration. Exposure stacks with Penetration: if an enemy has their fire resistance reduced to 50% by Exposure, and you apply 25% penetration, you effectively treat them as if they have 25% fire resistance.

Chaos Damage — Energy Shield Bypass and Resistance

Chaos damage is unique in that it bypasses Energy Shield entirely — it hits your life directly even if you have full ES. This makes Chaos damage disproportionately dangerous for Energy Shield builds that rely on ES as their primary health buffer. The Ghost Shroud buff (available through specific ascendancy nodes and unique items) creates a separate Evasion-based layer that partially absorbs chaos damage.

Chaos Resistance is capped at 75% like other resistances, but most characters start with -60% Chaos Resistance at character creation — far below zero. Raising Chaos Resistance requires specific gear affixes, which compete with other resistance slots. Most players target 0-30% Chaos Resistance on mid-game builds and push toward 75% cap only with significant endgame gear investment.

Chaos damage scales from the Chaos damage passive nodes, Witch starting area, and specific unique items. The Occultist ascendancy path has the most Chaos-scaling nodes. Chaos damage cannot ignite, chill, or shock — it has no ailment interaction, which makes Elemental Focus support not useful for Chaos builds.

Damage Conversion — Rules and Priority

Damage conversion allows skills to deal a different damage type than their native type. For example, a Glacial Hammer converts 60% of physical damage to cold damage — it still shows 'Physical' on the tooltip, but the converted portion deals cold damage for purposes of resistance and ailments. Conversion applies before damage multipliers, making it extremely efficient — converted damage benefits from both the original damage scaling AND the converted type's scaling.

Conversion has a strict ordering: Skill conversions apply first, then Support gem conversions, then passive tree conversions, then item conversions. Total conversion of any damage type is capped at 100% — you cannot convert 120% of physical to fire; the cap ensures no damage is double-counted. If two sources attempt to convert the same damage type and the total exceeds 100%, they are applied proportionally to sum to 100%.

The most important conversion principle for building: once damage is converted, it cannot be converted again. Fire damage that was originally physical (via a fire conversion support) cannot then be converted to chaos — the conversion chain is one-step only.

Elemental Ailments Comparison

Verdict: Shock is the most universally impactful ailment because it increases ALL damage from ALL sources to the shocked target — not just lightning. This makes lightning builds that reliably Shock enemies synergize with secondary damage sources.