All Path of Exile damage types and ailments, explained

In Path of Exile, knowing the different damage types and ailments is key to improving your character’s damage. Damage comes in various forms, each with its own traits. Ailments are conditions that you inflict on enemies using certain types of damage.

Undrestanding damage and aliments can be crucial for creating a great build in PoE. The two are related to each other since one or two types of damage determine the ailment. Therefore, it is essential to understand how they work together. This guide explains all the damage and ailments types in Path of Exile.

All damage types in Path of Exile

Path of Exile has Physical and Magic damage (Image via Grinding Gear Games)

In Path of Exile, there are two main kinds of damage: spell and attack. All sources fall into one of four categories of damage: attack, spell, secondary, or damage over time. Understanding these categories can help you improve your gameplay.

A single hit can include different types of damage, but each has its own modifiers. Damage over time always involves one type of damage. There is no such thing as damage without a type or one that fits multiple types. As you collect more powerful items in PoE, elemental damage becomes more important, which can be used as a force multiplier that boosts your character's strength.

Think of physical damage as the basic form, with elemental damage adding extra power as you level up and get better gear, such as Unique armor.

Initially, there are five types of damage:

Physical Damage: This is the standard type, usually dealt by auto-attacks and most weapons. It can cause bleeding or other effects like Corrupted Blood.
Fire Damage: It is an elemental type that inflicts ignite on enemies upon dealing critical hits. Fire damage over time is often called burning damage.
Cold Damage: Another elemental type that can chill enemies and freeze them on critical hits is Cold Damage. Cold damage over time can also chill enemies.
Lightning Damage: The third elemental type that can shock enemies on critical hits. Lightning damage has a wide range of damage values. Lightning damage over time is rare and found in a few specific cases.
Chaos Damage: The rarest type that bypasses energy shields to damage life directly. It cannot be reflected and often causes poison, dealing damage over time. Many chaos skills also cause additional debuffs that deal chaos damage over time.

All ailments in Path of Exile

Exploring all the ailments in Path of Exile (Image via Grinding Gear Games)

Ailments are effects that are usually applied by hits with certain types of damage, which can be used to create excellent builds in Path of Exile. Each is linked to one or more types of damage. The main elemental ailments are ignite, chill, freeze, shock, scorch, brittle, and sap.

When you hit an enemy, there's a chance to cause ailments based on the damage type in the hit. This chance can be improved with passive skills, gear, or gems. Enemies need to take damage from a hit to get an ailment. There’s no limit to how many a target can have at once.

Here are all ailments and their related damage types in Path of Exile:

Bleed: It is associated with physical attack damage. Bleeding enemies take 70% of the hit's physical damage over time, and moving enemies take an extra 140%. Bleed lasts five seconds.
Poison: It is associated with physical and chaos damage, making the target take 20% of the hit's combined physical and chaos damage over time as chaos damage. Poison can stack on a target, with each stack lasting two seconds.
Ignite: It is associated with fire damage. Ignite burns the target for 50% of the hit's fire damage over time, lasting four seconds.
Chill: It is associated with cold damage. Chill slows the target's actions by up to 30% based on the hit's cold damage, which lasts up to two seconds.
Freeze: It is associated with cold damage. Freeze stops the target from acting based on the hit's cold damage. Freeze lasts between 0.3 to three seconds.
Shock: It is associated with lightning damage. Shock makes the target take up to 50% more damage from all sources based on the hit's lightning damage. Shock lasts two seconds duration.
Scorch: It is associated with fire damage. Scorch reduces the target's elemental resistances by up to 30% based on the hit's fire damage and four seconds duration.
Brittle: It is associated with cold damage. Sap increases the chance of critical hits against the target by up to 15% based on the hit's cold damage, and it has a duration of four seconds.
Sap: It is associated with lightning damage. Sap makes the target deal up to 20% less damage based on the hit's lightning damage, and it lasts up to 4 seconds.

Ailments are similar to debuffs, but the key difference is that the former are linked to damage types, while the latter are related to skill effects.

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