Going mad with defense

[helvete]

How smart would that be? I suppose a zealot with a good exile, maxed defiance and holy shield, and generally very high defense items could get his defense up above the 30k mark?

With 75% block, how often would his armor typically be hit? (Thinking of using a 4k+ ethbugged stone, eth helm to further up defense.)

I know some monster types alway hit (the pindleskin-type, anyone with freezing arrow, etc) but there are some lvl 85 areas that can't spawn them?

The idea being to build some zealot or concentrate barb with only 5% chance of being hit, and with 75% block on top of that, only 1.25% of attacks would actually have a chance to reduce armor durability. Furthermore, not a lot of life is needed as long as resists are high, which would allow for more equipment choices.

How much defense would be needed to lower eg pit monsters chance to hit to 5% when character is lvl 90?

[helvete]

Don't tell me no one has even tried this, or made some calculations?

[Darkflight]

Best guess: 50000.

[stephan]

CtH = 100 * AR / (AR + DR) * 2 * alvl / (alvl + dlvl)
AR = Attack Rating; alvl = Level of Attacker; dlvl = Level of Defender; DR = Defense Rating

CtH*(AR+DR) = 100 * AR * 2 * alvl / (alvl + dlvl)
AR + DR = 100 * AR * 2 * alvl / ((alvl + dlvl)*CtH)
DR = 100 * AR * 2 * alvl / ((alvl + dlvl)*CtH) - AR

If we consider a monster with 1000 AR, you would need:

100*1000*2*85/((85+90)*5) - 1000 = 18428 DR

With 3000 AR (the AR of a devilkin) you need ~55k DR.

[NASE]

what about ...


http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=130865

???

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

How smart would that be? I suppose a zealot with a good exile, maxed defiance and holy shield, and generally very high defense items could get his defense up above the 30k mark?

The idea being to build some zealot or concentrate barb with only 5% chance of being hit, and with 75% block on top of that

I've done both the high defense paladin and high defense barb builds, and from my own experience, I'd say that conc barb is superior, although there are advantages and disadvantages to both.

The thing I don't like about the paladin is that to max out defense you still have to pump defiance as a synergy for holy shield, even though you get it for free with exile. To me, this is inefficient. Also, if you want a pure defense build, you actually get more defense (assuming use of gear with similar defense ratings) with a conc barb build and a defiance mercenary than you get with the paladin build.

Unfortunately, in both cases, going all defense generally tends to result in a mcuh slower killer than you otherwise would get. Ultimately, I don't think the defense is worth it. Yes, you get hit way less, but if you are able to kill more quickly, the enemy has fewer attempts to hit you.

[WebDragon]

Perhaps the idea is to prioritize defense over life. Big defense, low vitality investment, lets say, big strength investment. That way, you bank on your huge defense rather than huge life to stay alive and benefit by having a huge strength score to give you a solid boost to damage.

And for the record, I think there are way too many monsters out there that bypass your defense for this to work.

[Ax2Grind]

Specifically, elemental attacks that bypass defense.

Remember the rule concerning overusing attack rating: it's better to hit 90% of the time and deal good damage than hit 95% and deal a lot less. In many cases, going that extra mile for a few thousand more AR isn't worth it, and getting tens of thousands more causes you to sacrifice too much in other areas, like damage. I'd think the rule is the same with defense.

With my Exemplar build, the ideal shield is Exile, but going by the 50% synergy rule I only placed ten points total in Defiance. Considering slowing the enemies down has a similar effect (getting hit much less) while having other benefits in most cases, if going for a heavily defensive Exemplar I'd max out the synergy, while still letting the shield yield the aura, and hire a Holy Freeze mercenary armed with Reaper's Toll. With additional slowing mods I could effectively negate the loss in damage I suffer from the transferred skill points while maintaining equivalent damage when Decrepify triggers.

Defensive doesn't necessarily mean ultra-high defense, just getting hit less. Know from where to pull your sources and you shouldn't have to Sacrifice (pun) much or at all.