Magic Damage Reduction vs. Damage Over Time

[XCodes]

Simple question, how many times per second does Magic Damage Reduction (and, against Diablo's spells, Physical Damage Reduction) apply against Damage over Time spells? I'm guessing it depends on how often the damage over time spell "hits" which would be once every few frames, but I'm not sure, and an exact number of frames would go a long way in telling me what to shoot for in the way of MDR and PDR.

[Dodgydave]

Integer MDR and PDR are applied each frame (so 25 times per second) AFAIK.

[aj2000]

Also keep in mind damage phase (correct me if I'm wrong on any of the below):

EShield
Integer PDR/MDR
Resistance (Also amplification from conviction, amp ...etc)
% absorb
Integer absorb***

Also keep in mind the most common by frame element attacks in the following order:

Lighting - most common per frame attack (ie gloams ...etc)
Fire - 2nd (firewall, meteo leftovers)
Cold - Not sure if there are any per frame damage cold attacks...
Phsyical - Hell nila snakes, beware

This makes integer lighting absorb one of the best absorb you can get (hence tgod's popularity), cheaper source would be blackhorn face. Integer absorb for fire is also decent for diablo, summoner, vampirelords, shamans, balrogs ...etc...

For cold integer absorb, forget it, stick to % resist and % absorb.

I won't go into pros and cons of integer MDR / PDR, just know that PDR / MDR don't work as efficently when your stacking high resistance, so try not to stack them together but focus on one or the other. hence PDR integer > MDR due to less common PDR% gear. Although MDR will still help especially vs lighting attacks, especially if your lighting resistance is low

[XCodes]

Exactly, I'm combining this with EShield.

With all the information I'm getting, it might actually be a good idea to either avoid general +skills and even +sorceress skills to keep my E-Shield at a moderate level (looking at +6 at most, from Andy's, Anni, and Torch), that way I can take advantage of my highly-stacked Integer DR. This has also shown me that Gerke's Sanctuary is mostly overkill after I get a String of Ears and Gladiator's Bane.

In the end it's not a build that can handle Ubers, but Baal runs and the like should be easy (even if it takes a little while) because of it's sheer unkillability (I'm aiming for ~70% absorb from E-Shield and literally thousands of Mana).

[aj2000]

1 pt in eshield is more then enough for normal builds, as warspear on switch along with some basic +skill gear should let your hit 70%.

Also note that a rare few attacks can bypass your es, do a search I don't recall them off the top of my head.

Finally, keep in mind that even with say 1000 mana, a killer hit or a few strong hits will mess it up even with insight and max telekin. the problem is that es takes full damage, so if you have say 75% all res, es actually takes 4x effective elemental damage then you would have, considering max tele and conversion ratio of .825M:1H, 1000 mana only roughly corresponds with around 300 hp of sponge when facing elemental attacks. It would work better vs physical attack, as there are less PDR% gear in the game then resist and you'll probably gett 1.2Kish effective hp sponge outta your mana assuming no PDR% gear.

Be fun to optimize it though... in SC.

[XCodes]

Basic +skill gear tends to not have PDR or MDR on it, or have such small amounts that 70% protection simply doesn't suffice for what I'm going for (all damage to mana, what the ES doesn't cover the PDR/MDR does). Whats more, I'm not going for *any* lightning attacks and will only have Frozen Armor on the cold tree, so by accepting +Fire Skills or +Sorceress Fire Skills instead of +all skills I can open up some more interesting gear options by sacrificing some 5% bonus defense and an excessive 1% absorbtion by ES.

I did a search and didn't find anything about attacks bypassing ES in this forum back to 2004. I know that Poison in fact bypasses ES and that Mana Burn enemies will kill my ES very quickly, but I already have countermeasures in play for those.

Furthermore, 1000 mana isn't even close to what I'm shooting for. The character itself will probably have a huge investment in Energy, taking it past at least 600. A rare/crafted ring or amulet can easily add over 100 mana. Frostburns with over 800 base mana brings it up to about 1100, and then a CtA Battle Orders can add another 60% with my gear setup to make that 1760 mana, and that's with a lot of rounding down and not taking any of my 5ish rare jewels into consideration (depending exactly on what Shield I wind up going with.

Finally, any crazy-*** combination of mods can shred an HC character and thats why I've never really found the mode that fun in practice (despite loving the idea), but I really don't see why a character based around being invulnerable would be unplayable in HC.

I'd really appreciate it if you started with the assumption that I thought some of this through and not just try and buzz-kill me and dis-credit my idea with things you don't recall off the top of your head.

[stephan]

I don't want to sound condescending but it seems you want to make a pure Fire sorc for Baal runs, and that just doesn't work.

[aj2000]

Sheesh bro, don't get your panties in a bunch, try to be abit helpful and get a handful of teenage angst thrown at me.

[XCodes]

I don't want to sound condescending but it seems you want to make a pure Fire sorc for Baal runs, and that just doesn't work.
I was using the WSK monsters as a standard, but I looked it up and, as it turns out, the most damaging Physical and Magical attacks (barring Ubers) are Mephisto's Skull Missile and Reanimated Horde's Charge, although both are far above the second-most powerful attack. Knowing that, Baal runs aren't the standard anymore.

Sheesh bro, don't get your panties in a bunch, try to be abit helpful and get a handful of teenage angst thrown at me.
Regardless of whether or not you're trying, you're not being helpful at all. You said the build doesn't work because there are attacks that bypass ES but then completely fail to note what attacks those are and which monsters make them so that a plan to circumvent that problem can be made. That's not being helpful, that's just criticizing for it's own sake.