Prioritizing Damage Reduction

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

I've been looking at damage reduction more closely now that I have a better understanding of how it works. I have two remaining questions. First, what order is damage reduction applied if you have two types of damage reduction?

For example, if you have a character equipped with shaftstop (%DR) and duskdeep (integer DR) the damage would be different depending on which one goes first. For ease of calculation, lets say you get hit for 100 points of damage.

If direct DR goes first, you'd get 100-7 = 93. 93 * .7 = 65 damage taken.
If % DR goes first, you'd get 100 * .7 = 70. 70-7 = 63 damage taken.

Granted, in this particular example the difference isn't much because we only have 7 points of integer damage reduction. However, if we're loading up on a lot of IDR, then it would appear that order could make a BIG difference.

My second question is which type of DR is more desirable (and obviously this will be partially answered by the first question). I see pros and cons to both types. %DR seems initially to be the most useful, because as enemies start dealing more damage, your damage reduction scales up with it. On the other hand, I think I remember hearing that %DR is capped at 50%, meaning there is a limit to it's usefulness. Integer damage reduction does not scale up like %DR meaning you need more of it to get the same effects in high damage areas, but on the other hand there is no cap on IDR, so more is always more.

My initial impression here is that if IDR is calculated first, then the more IDR you get, the less important %DR becomes, as you'd be taking a percent of an ever-smaller number. On the other hand, if %DR is calculated first, then the top priority should be hitting the 50% cap on %DR first, and then going for IDR second.

[PhatTrumpet]

My initial impression here is that if IDR is calculated first, then the more IDR you get, the less important %DR becomes, as you'd be taking a percent of an ever-smaller number.
You've pretty much got it here.

PDR (what you call "IDR") for PvM.
%DR for PvP.

[thegiantturtle]

EDR
PDR
%DREDR is Enemy Damage Reduction. Skills like taunt and weaken. That's followed by integer damage reduction (your IDR, more commonly called PDR). After that comes percentile damage reduction.

If you have alot of PDR, than %DR isn't very useful. I personally believe in PDR over %DR. 50% DR will double your survivability against physical attacks against all enemies. That sounds good, but PDR can make you invulnerable to many attacks. Alot of situations are dangerous not because of the amount of damage an enemies does, but how many enemies there are and how often they are hitting. That's where PDR really can outstrip %DR.

Also, if you use EDR skills, PDR greatly outshines DR. Every barb I've ever made extensively uses battle cry. Just a couple points and I can make do with 1/3 the AR while enemies lose 1/3 their damage, which then gets dropped even further? I'm in.

[SSoG]

Most enemies in hell actually deal less than 100 average physical damage (early Hell monsters might deal 60 per attack, while those deadly archer packs are only hitting for 80 per attack). Really, on the truly high-end monsters (Venom Lords, Minions of Destruction, Hell Cows) can hit for 140 average physical damage. As a result, in 90% of situations, one point of PDR will reduce more damage than 1% DR.

The thing is, though, PDR becomes less effective in the really, really dangerous situations (might enchanted Frenzytaurs, anyone?). As a result, while PDR is more effective 90% of the time, the 10% of the time that %DR really shines is the most dangerous 10% of the game. For that reason, I have come up with a completely arbitrary conversion- generally, I consider 1% DR to be worth as much as 1.5 points of PDR (so 50% DR is roughly equal to 75 PDR in terms of survivability). Obviously the big advantage of PDR is that you can get more than 75 PDR (pretty easily, at that), while you can't get more than 50% DR- that's why I tend to prefer PDR rigs to %DR.

Having lots of PDR doesn't really lessen the effectiveness of %DR, although it seems like it would. If you have 0 PDR and a monster normally kills you in 30 seconds, then 50% DR will boost that to 60 seconds of survival. If you have 50 PDR and a monster normally kills you in 30 seconds, then 50% DR will boost that to 60 seconds of survival. In both situations, 50% DR doubles the length of time that you will survive, so there's really nothing wrong with mixing the two.

If you have any EDR, though, then PDR gets REALLY effective in a hurry. If you are a Necro or Barb, PDR is worth so much more than %DR that it's not even worth considering the latter. With decrepify, 50 points of PDR are as effective as 100 points of PDR without it. With a super high-end Taunt (slvl 45 or so), 50 points of PDR are worth as much as 500 points of PDR without the Taunt. As I said, it gets really powerful really quickly. This mechanic is the reason why my absolute favorite barb builds all rely heavily on Battle Cry and PDR.

[FrankWest]

....

*Applauds* Absolutely brilliant. I've never heard it explained better.

The (Barb-related) reasons you list are why I enjoy my Singer so much. No matter how bad of a position I get into (PvM, of course) there's absolutely no way to kill me, if I'm paying attention. And the principles and knowledge laid down by you and TheMightyGoat are to thank for it. :grin: :thumbsup:

[bmathew]

But how does this work for elemental attacks. Like poison, lightning etc. Ive heard of an overflow mechanism from SS0G's Abbot Guide but I dont think I kind of understand it properly. Let us say you find a Gloam and you get attacked by it. How does this fair against it. Im working on a character based on this and Im having tonnes of fun and all :)

[helvete]

But how does this work for elemental attacks. Like poison, lightning etc. Ive heard of an overflow mechanism from SS0G's Abbot Guide but I dont think I kind of understand it properly. Let us say you find a Gloam and you get attacked by it. How does this fair against it. Im working on a character based on this and Im having tonnes of fun and all :)

I think gloams do some physical damage, so that would make overflow work. However, if they don't do any physical damage, overflow won't work, and you'll need more resistance.

Overflow only works on attacks which do both physical AND magical damage.

Example (if I understood it right):

Character has 50 idr and 20 imdr.

Monster does 20 damage and 100 cold damage.

Monster hits. If it had not been for the overflow bug/feature, then the 20 physical damage would have been negated by the 50 idr, and the 20 imdr would negate 20 out of the 100 cold damage, making for a total damage of 80 cold damage before resistances and absorb.

HOWEVER:

When having both idr and imdr, none of them are left "unused". In this example, there's still 30 idr which shouldn't do anything. But this idr will work on the cold damage when all the physical damage is negated, making for a total of only 50 cold damage before resistances and absorb.

This works both ways, however idr is so much cheaper and easier to get more of, so not a lot of people socket 3 Mal runes in a helm, etc.

(I'm not entirely sure this is how it works, only about 85% sure)

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

If that's true helvete, then that's something I didn't know about at all. Although now that I think about it, it would appear that it works as you describe. I remember a barb that I had that could literally bask in Hell Diablo's PLBoD attack and take no damage. I always thought it was because of my 75% lightning resistance combined with some lightning absorb, but now that I heard you describe it, it was probably because I also had a lot of pdr, which was probably causing overflow on the physical half of the attack.

To answer bm's question though, no it shouldn't work at all on the elemental attacks. I also imagine that if the attack is all elemental (like the venom lord's fire breath attack) that pdr wouldn't help you there either. I always thought gloams did all lightning damage, but I'm not sure now.

[acceleration turkey]

dont skill damage reducers such as weaken work ineffectively against enemies with %boosted damage, such as from a boss aura, because the curse takes away from the %boost and not the total damage?

anyone know if mods like "extra strong" count as completely new flat damage or as base damage with a %boost? same for champions, etc.

[thegiantturtle]

dont skill damage reducers such as weaken work ineffectively against enemies with %boosted damage, such as from a boss aura, because the curse takes away from the %boost and not the total damage?

anyone know if mods like "extra strong" count as completely new flat damage or as base damage with a %boost? same for champions, etc.You're correct. If enemies have enhanced damage, EDR% isn't nearly as strong.

[SSoG]

But how does this work for elemental attacks. Like poison, lightning etc. Ive heard of an overflow mechanism from SS0G's Abbot Guide but I dont think I kind of understand it properly. Let us say you find a Gloam and you get attacked by it. How does this fair against it. Im working on a character based on this and Im having tonnes of fun and all :)

PDR doesn't help against elemental attacks. If an attack deals both physical *AND* elemental damage, then the rollover will occur, but most dual-type attacks only deal very low elemental damage totals (so the PDR isn't helping you that much). The PDR/MDR overflow bug is only really of use against LLDs (low-level duellers).

If you have a good PDR rig, you are still going to want to max your resistances.

dont skill damage reducers such as weaken work ineffectively against enemies with %boosted damage, such as from a boss aura, because the curse takes away from the %boost and not the total damage?

anyone know if mods like "extra strong" count as completely new flat damage or as base damage with a %boost? same for champions, etc.
You are correct, EDR% reduces the %Boost and does not work against total damage. Also, Extra Strong does count as a %Boost, so EDR% is less effective against Extra Strong monsters.

In fact, the only mods that a good PDR rig really fears are Extra Strong, Might Enchanted, and Fanaticism Enchanted, since these are the only sources of ED% that the enemy can possibly get. Good PDR/EDR% characters (such as a Decrepify spamming Tankomancer- don't laugh, I've built one- or a Battle Cry Barb) are actually the only builds in the entire game that find Might Enchanted to be scarier than Fanaticism Enchanted, just because it gives a larger ED% boost.

[Jaedhann]

How does PDR work when you are amped? Say you get 100 damage while amped and you have 75 PDR. Would you receive (2*100)-75=125 or (100-75)*2=50?

-Jae

[Ax2Grind]

The full order of damage enhancement and reduction should've been linked to early on so no confusion would've occurred. The link should still be in the stickied Statistics FAQ, just wade through.

[stekkelino]

hi, I was checking some skills and i stumbled upon the skill 'cyclone armor' of the druid elemental tree

I noticed it gave alot of damage absorbtion going from 40 to 268 at lvl 20, now seeing t-gods gives 20 lightning absorb and you can see the difference with that, id figure you could become nearly invincible with +75 res and say lvl 10 CA (148) absorb. mix this with a few items that grant + max res. and a bunch of pdr/%dr stuff, you could get a pretty nice tanker or am I wrong in this, dont knwo much of game mechanics and dont have the time nor currency to try it out tho

[helvete]

hi, I was checking some skills and i stumbled upon the skill 'cyclone armor' of the druid elemental tree

I noticed it gave alot of damage absorbtion going from 40 to 268 at lvl 20, now seeing t-gods gives 20 lightning absorb and you can see the difference with that, id figure you could become nearly invincible with +75 res and say lvl 10 CA (148) absorb. mix this with a few items that grant + max res. and a bunch of pdr/%dr stuff, you could get a pretty nice tanker or am I wrong in this, dont knwo much of game mechanics and dont have the time nor currency to try it out tho

It's an interesting thought, but the term "absorb" in the case of CA is different from item absorb. It's much the same as Bone Armor, just that BA "absorbs" physical and CA "absorbs" fire/lightning/cold.

The 268 points "absorbed" just mean that after 268 points of cold, fire or lightning damage, the CA will disappear, and you will take damage as usual until the CA is recast.

HOWEVER: Wind druids will pump CA because it's a synergy. They will also max all the CA synergies, and have an insane amount of +elemental, +druid and +all skills, making for a fully synergized CA lvl 35+. CA's resistance is always 0, so gloams and the like do their full damage to it. I'm not sure how many "HP" a lvl 35 fully synergized CA has, but you MAY get away with your resists at -100 if you're very careful. Very, very careful.

[stephan]

Also not that CA is bypassed by poison.

[helvete]

Also note that CA is bypassed by poison.

However, Antidote potions give 50% poison resistance and +10max poison resistance over 60 seconds (or something)

If I know I'm going into a poisonous area with a character with very low poison resistance, it helps to buy 10-20 Antidotes and drink them all.

[thegiantturtle]

How does PDR work when you are amped? Say you get 100 damage while amped and you have 75 PDR. Would you receive (2*100)-75=125 or (100-75)*2=50?

-JaeAs mentioned, PDR comes befor %DR. amp lowers your %DR by 100, so it's closer to the latter: (100-75)*(1-(DR%/100 - 1))


The full order of damage enhancement and reduction should've been linked to early on so no confusion would've occurred. The link should still be in the stickied Statistics FAQ, just wade through.Or just jump to Tommi's Page (http://users.tkk.fi/%7Etgustafs/damagereduction.html#ApplicationOrder).

[FrankWest]

However, Antidote potions give 50% poison resistance and +10max poison resistance over 60 seconds (or something)


I believe it's 30 seconds, but durations stack. The routine you describe is exactly what I do if I'm running Andy or getting ready to whack Lilith. Chug them lil' pots. :thumbsup:

Impressive how few people know that about antidote potions, as I always hear people talking about Lilith's poison being unmanagable for them...

[SSoG]

How does PDR work when you are amped? Say you get 100 damage while amped and you have 75 PDR. Would you receive (2*100)-75=125 or (100-75)*2=50?

-Jae

Amp is negative resistance, and PDR comes before resistance. The correct order would be (100-75)*2=50. Yes, a high-end PDR rig can make you essentially amp-proof, unless the monsters are also ES, Might-Enchanted, or Fanat-Enchanted.