Why are hammers affected by concentration?

[:1]I've never really understood why they are affected by concentration as afaik hammers are pure magic damage, does this apply to other magic attacks then such as beserk etc?|||Because Blizz designed it like that Conc also works at half effectiveness when applied to hammers. Presumably that's some kind of pathetic attempt to balance the char :P

There's really no link between magic attacks/skills. Berserk works exactly like other melee/physical attacks, except that the physical portion of the damage is all converted to magic at the end. The necro skills (teeth, bone spear/spirit) can't really be affected by anything other than skill level/synergies.|||I thought as much, just seems really inconsistent, if it affected only magic damage I think it would do a lot to balance some of the classes out.|||Since 1.13, BH doesn't ignore magic resistance of undead and demons anymore, so I think it's OK in pvm. If there were items which offer percentual magic resistance (and not just the safety belt recipe), it would be balanced in pvp as well. Concentration working at half strength would be fine then.|||Back in the original D2, Concentration boosting Blessed Hammer's damage was a bug. Blizzard fixed it in v1.04, but then Blessed Hammer became too weak to be a useful skill. Hammer-din players were upset. Therefore, in v1.05, Blizzard gave the (originally unintended) damage boost back to Blessed Hammer. By doing that, Concentration boosting Blessed Hammer became "by-design".


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Presumably that's some kind of pathetic attempt to balance the char :P




Yep, hubb knew it



I don't remember when the half effectiveness was added. That gotta be related to balancing, too. Blessed Hammer was overpowered at one point. Probably after synergy was added in v1.10.|||To see that it originally came from a bug does seem to make qa lot more sense to me, it seemed quite inconsistent to me, it doesn't even mention anything about it helping on the skill tab.|||didnt fanatacism used to help too? iirc the damage still shows this fact when playing classic.|||Indeed, both Fanaticism and Might affect the listed hammer damage on the LCS in Classic. But that is an artifact of the LCS- just Concentration improves actual hammer damage there.