What is physical and non-physical damage in Diablo 4?

There are different types of damage that you will come across in Diablo 4, and they can be broadly grouped under two basic categories, i.e., physical damage and non-physical damage. The difference between these two categories shouldn't matter much during the initial stages of the game, but as you progress to the endgame stages in World Tier 3 and World Tier 4, it's important to know the type of damage a build does.

Given that Diablo 4 is a roleplaying game with several different classes, it's understandable that different damage types will be involved. However, the game does very little to explain to its players what these types are.

---

What is the difference between physical and non-physical damage in Diablo 4?

As the name suggests, physical damage refers to the direct damage that a player does to an enemy using their weapons. This damage does not take into account any imbuements or elemental effects that may be involved whatsoever. However, it does consider critical strikes, but only those not influenced by elemental buffs.

For classes that wield many melee weapons, some of their core skills only revolve around dealing physical damage. To put this into perspective, the better the weapon, the better its damage output will be in Diablo 4. Most of the nodes on the Paragon Board influence your physical damage abilities in the game.

On the contrary, non-physical damage refers to all the other types of damage in the game. This includes:

• Fire Damage
• Cold Damage
• Lightning Damage
• Poison Damage
• Shadow Damage

If you're coming from another MMORPG with a more well-defined status effect system, it should be noted that Diablo 4's non-physical damage types are tied to specific skills. You cannot get non-physical damage directly on a weapon, and the non-physical damages in isolation don't always have innate status effects.

For example, not all Sorcerer abilities that do Fire damage will apply the burning DoT. Cold damage, similarly, cannot innately freeze enemies despite proccing. Freezing just so happens to be the expected flavor of an ice-mage, so only certain Cold-themed abilities can freeze, which is a behaviour tied to the ability itself rather than the elemental damage type.

Every class in the game, including those which would be considered marital classes, has some avenue to deal elemental (non-physical) damage. Barbarians have Aspects of the Elements, Rogues have Imbuements, and so on. The more magically gifted classes, of course, have greater elemental affinity - most notably, Sorcerers can branch out into building towards Fire, Lightning, or Cold equally well.

Should you be focusing on only physical or non-physical damage or both?

Unlike the physical damage output of a character, very few nodes on the Paragon Boards are able to influence the level of elemental damage that a character does. However, some nodes affect the skill damage output of a character. And in most cases, skill damage also directly translates to elemental damage in Diablo 4.

What's more interesting is that in certain cases, these elemental damages tick over time, weakening the enemy and making it easier for you to finish them off using physical damage. During build crafting, you must pay equal attention to skills and abilities that deal physical and non-physical damage, respectively, along with the different damage buckets that are present in Diablo 4. While the former can be used to decimate targets, the latter can be used to soften them up, reducing the overall elimination time for a particular target or a group of enemies.