Calc: Equivalent +Skill Levels' Worth of a Facet

Before I get into the results...

One of the most fun things about D2 is twinking your char. Balancing various forms of damage, survivability, MF, etc. Always making minor improvements, sometimes making massive improvements. I've always found this so engaging, as far back as middle school when I started playing 1.09.

Since D2R launch I've been playing this hybridzon (or "Fishyzon") exclusively. This build's dual-element aspect, both of which also pack significant physical damage and therefore leech and huge versatility, is just so much fun to optimize. Off-weapon IAS, off-weapon +skills, and off-weapon physical damage sources all improve all of your attack modes (

Freezing Arrow,

Lightning Fury, and

Charged Strike). To make things even more interesting,

Charged Strike effectively has damage breakpoints...damage per bolt increases with each level, but at certain levels, the number of

Bolts also increments: 8 at level 25, 9 at 30, 10 at 35, and 11 at 40.

I've been mulling it over for a few weeks what will be my end-game

Helm. I can't stand

Shako. Worn it on probably 90% of the chars I've made over the years, and just completely done with it, especially now that we have this beautiful aesthetic remaster. Since I'm going to eventually use CoH (no

Teleport), I decided to go with a rare

Circlet with +2 skills, FRW and 2 sockets. Next the decision is, what to do with those sockets? My other end-game gear and the available IAS breakpoints dictate that I have at least 15% IAS in either my

Helm or on my amulet.

If I put IAS jewel in one of my

Helm sockets, then I can use a +2 skills

Blood Amulet (style points, FRW), or

Mara's Kaleidoscope (not as useful as you might think, with CoH covering resists).

If I don't use an IAS jewel, I must use

Highlord's Wrath or

The Cat's Eye, but I could put 2 facets in my

Circlet for serious style points. Double cold, or 1 cold and 1 lightning. Before committing to this, I wanted to see if it was worth it. Thanks to the absurdity of

Titan's Revenge and Spirit, I can still hit level 35

Charged Strike (for that 10-bolt breakpoint) with Cat's Eye. But would the lack of +2 skills on amulet offset the facet damage? How much does facet really add?

Below are the results of my calculations for one +5/-5 cold facet, assuming a monster with base 50% cold resists. One of the very nice things about

Freezing Arrow is that the Adds 24-38 Cold Damage mod from facet is not wasted -- it actually adds to your skill's splash damage as well and ends up being worth about a half skill point in itself.

With a fully-synergized level 35

Freezing Arrow, against a monster with 50% cold res, a perfect cold facet adds as much damage as +4.6 to bow skills! If the monster had 25% cold res, the facet would be worth +3.7 bow skills. Also nice that it does not increase the mana cost of the skill! XD

Hope this inspires others to do the math on their next build!
Thanks for reading!