Elemental Damage vs Spell Damage

Could someone please shed some light on the difference between these two? I’m a bit confused planning my skill tree between either/or/both.

Do certain spells like Ember Fusillade gain more benefit from higher elemental damage than it does spell damage?

Have they changed the way elemental damage and spell damage work since the last discussion I found on it in a thread created over 5 years ago?

Any and all help or insight or experience appreciated.

Thanks!

Elemental Damage will only effect spells and skills that do Fire, cold or Lightning damage while spell damage will increase any spells damage. There is no benefit from one or the other when using something like ember fusillade. Hope that helps.

Elemental damage affect any elemental damage, be it spell or attack.

Spell damage only affect spells, including physical or chaos spells.

the different types just add together.


Ember fusillade is:
Spell damage, Projectile damage, Area damage, elemental damage, fire damage.

each of these, would equally add into your Fusillade's damage.
+120 spell damage, +20 proj damage, +10 area, +200 elemeental, +20fire damage would be +370% increased fusillade damage.

now, if you had a wand that said, "gain 10% of damage as extra cold damage."
that cold damage, would be 10% of your base fire damage, then benefit from the spell, projectile, area, and elemental damage, but not the fire.
+350% damage.

infusions on Ember fusillade add LIGHTNING damage. so that would scale with spell, projectile, elemental damage, and lightning damage. note, the lightning beams are not area hits. so probably do not scale with area damage.

thus, spell, projectile, and elemental damage are the best stats, as they scale with any added non fire damage, and lightning infusions.

while area damage, and fire are good, but potentially slightly less useful.

Elemental damage also scales ignite damage, so if you're going fire and want to scale ignite you prefer elemental/fire damage over spell damage.