

In both scenarios each hit on a target will have a 20% chance to proc Area Damage on the 19 nearby standing other targets. For the second setup you'll hit 20 targets for 100 damage with 174% Area Damage denoting its total damage as T ''. In the first setup you'll hit 20 targets for 110 damage with 150% Area Damage, whereas we denote its total damage as T '.

The most common issue is deciding whether to roll 10% Damage or 24% Area Damage on a weapon assume you were to hit 20 targets with those different weapon rolls. Let's take a step back from the two planners and first understand a more simplified scenario. The correct playstyle is to self-cast Hydra twice and afterwards channel for 15 consecutive seconds, since Etched Sigil does not override pre-existing Hydras. This a massive issue, explicitly for newer players simply "holding down Arcane Torrent" is massively gimping the overall damage output. This inherently means that any Hydra casted from Etched Sigil within a Greater Rift will ignore 174% Area Damage (respectively 150%), while the self-casted Hydra benefit from the aforementioned primary affix. This is a common pattern and rule of thumb within Diablo III ( "procs can not proc procs"), which is further explained in the guide Proc Coefficients Explained (coming soon!). However, any Hydra that is casted by a Legacy Etched Sigil, also commonly referenced as non-selfcasted instances, will have a proc coefficient of 0. Hydra itself has a proc coefficient > 0 on all its runes, which means that the skill itself is eligible to proc Area Damage. Any ability with a proc coefficient of 0 is not eligible to create Area Damage instances the proc coefficient value itself does not have any further effect on AD, as long as the value is greater than 0. For an ability to be eligible to proc Area Damage on an damage instance only one thing needs to be given: The skill must have a proc coefficient ≠ 0.
