Zap, Improved Zap and Death Zap

These perks cause collateral damage to enemies close to enemies that take a hit from your weapon’s projectile (and Prospero’s Magic Bullets):

Zap deals 8.5% (rounded down, as with almost all calculations) of your Damage per Shot to enemies within range

  • Most elemental perks’ damage is a function of your Loadout Attack, so they don’t increase in the course of a run when you get Attack perks, and +Attack from chests (nor do they take the admittedly minor damage reduction of multishot), but Zap, like Shrapnel, does
  • Only the nominal Damage per Shot is considered - so it doesn’t matter if the shot is weakened by Piercing, Bouncy/Boomerang, Dividing or Dimensional
  • Zap damage is not affected by Hero passives (e.g. Blazia’s Wrath, Frostina’s Snowball, etc)
  • Zap damage is improved by Berserk
  • Haven’t tested with Focus shots but suspect it will not apply

With Improved Zap,

  • All enemies in the zone of a hit receive regular zap damage
  • The closes enemy will receive Improved Zap damage of 50% of the Damage per shot
  • The next enemy will receive 80% of that (approx. 40% of the Damage per shot)
  • The next next enemy will receive 60% (approx. 30% of the Damage per shot)
  • The above damage is instantaneous with the hit; in subsequent frames all of the enemies take a small additional damage (10 in my case) that I haven’t figured out the reason for

Death Zap deals x0.45 of your Loadout Attack to enemies in the blast zone - which means it doesn’t benefit from any bonuses/perks/gear that increase your damage per shot. It also stuns nearby enemies for 0.8 seconds (since version 1.9.6)