What does %elemental damage get me?

Question

I just made a pair of daggers with +8% poison damage. I didn't have any decent Rivets available, so it was a choice between that and +8% bleed damage.

The dagger now has a listed bonus of "+8% poison damage".

Does this mean:

• Whenever the dagger deals damage, it deals an additional 8% of that damage as poison damage?
• Whenever my character deals poison damage from any source, it deals 8% more damage?
• Whenever the dagger deals damage, 8% of that is poison damage?

Or maybe even something else entirely? What's going on here?

Answer 1

I take it to mean an increase to the existing damage of that type. In your particular example, it would be option 2.

I've seen armour items with + percentage elemental damage. Because an armour item does not do damage by itself, it would not make sense to limit an increase in elemental damage to the item making that damage.

On the flip side, if you have + percentage elemental damage, and are not actually applying any of that type of damage, then the stat is wasted.