Completely confused, "...up to" and "+55"

[D.K.night]

Here's the question.

Which is better?

"...magical spells and effects up to 15"

OR

"...+15 Shadow Damage"

Are they the same? Or is the "up to" meaning a random value from 1 to 15, which will be added to your base spell damage? I know the "+15" value is calculated based on how long of a cast time your spell is, or if it's a DoT, it gains the full damage over the duration of the spell.

But in closing...the two examples are NOT the same, correct?

[Havoc Jack]

The two are the same, except that "magic spells and effects" will also affect your fire spells (warlock, right?). There are a lot of things which, although worded differently provide exactly the same effect.

(And by the way, DoTs are calculated based off of the effect duration, divided by 15.)

[Kroikey]

You sure those two items would be the same effect?

"up to 15" and "+15" don't seem the same to me and I'm sure I've seen a post explaining this fact to another person. If so blizzard wants shooting for that blatant misdirection and non-standard way of displaying things

[rgirty]

The up to bonus has something to do with spells that take less than 3.5 seconds. You get the full effect of UP to bonus on spells like SWP but not on spells like MB. The +shadow damage in white lettering you see on items is straight damage added to every shadow spell. I think this is right anyway, i had a similiar question the other day and this is what i concluded from the answer.

[Lamer]

Well against a resistant-less foe, 15 is added. But if the enemy has some sort of magic mitigation, only a portion of the +15 is added, so both ways of expressing it are right.

[djIgneo]

These are some pretty vague responses...I'm totally confused!

[DopeBat]

bonus that u gain calculates from:
up_to*cast_time/3.5
so if u got "adds up to 100 healing", with
flash heal u'll get: 100*1.5/3.5=43 bonus to heal
greater heal u'll get: 100*3/3.5=86 bonus to heal

Cast time less then 1.5sec, counts as 1.5sec. So shadow word will get 43 bonus from "adds up to 100 damage", and this 43 will be made during full shadow word duration. Not on every tick.

And with pure +healing/damage bonuses i didnt tested well, i guess it should be w/o casting time, but i dont know...

[xXmarkXx]

I allways saw it as "...magical spells and effects up to 15" can add anywhere between 1 and 15 more damage and the "...+15 Shadow Damage" always adds 15 damage.

Either way more damage is a great thing.

[bpaige]

Right, up to damage is based on the length of cast time for the spell....plus whatever is always a plus to your damage of course after the mitigation of your target on both types.

[Havoc Jack]

I've typed out what I know about this sort of thing in another threadalready. It's the second post so you don't have to look that far.

And confusing wording is par for the course.