Psy

This has been floating around in my head for a while but I haven't put it in words before. Basically, damage mitigation is biased against spell damage.

As many of you may know, armor doesn't actually suffer from diminishing returns as an increase of X armor will always yield the same additional lifespan (until you're at the 75% cap). For example, to quote a thread from the warrior forums:
Relevant information to how this is calculated (and the source of the quote) is here. In my opinion, this shows significant foresight on the part of Blizzard.

However, when you look at the system in place to combat spell damage, the results are quite different. To resist 75% of the damage of an enemy that is level X, you need 5x resistance. Therefore, your average percent resistance against a level 70 enemy is (Resistance * 75 / 350) or (Resistance * 3/14)

Now then, lets do the same thing as Satrina did above.
1) 116.7 resistance, 5000 HP. Against an enemy that deals 200 DPS, you live for 33.33 seconds.
2) 233.3 resistance, 5000 HP. Against an enemy that deals 200 DPS, you live for 50 seconds.
3) 350 resistance, 5000 HP. Against an enemy that deals 200 DPS, you live for 100 seconds.

The first increase of 116.7 armor increased survival duration by 16.67 seconds, while the second increase of 116.7 armor increased survival duration by 50 seconds. Equal increases to resistance increase your survival duration by higher and higher amounts.

As a side note, I also find it annoying that anyone can go to the auction house and pickup random greens "Of X Protection" and get enough resistance to effectively neutralize a specific damage type, and yet the same cannot be done for physical damage.

Anyway, this is probably totally unimportant in the grand scheme of things, but I felt like writing it anyway. Any thoughts?

 

• Cryect

Yeah, its pretty well known the more resist you stack the better. I'm actually in the middle of gathering data trying to figure out how the table for partial resists works exactly based on your resistance level and mob level.

Really I think Blizzard came up with a not such a great way of doing magic resistance and if anything it should work like it does for armor where all armor has natural resistance and you always mitigate a constant amount not chance based.

 

suicuique

Actually its the same for avoidance too.

2% dodge is worth WAY MORE when you have very high total avoidance (parry+dodge+miss).
The more avoidance you got the more worth avoidance upgrades become.
Think going from 30% avoidance to 35% avoidance vs going from 70% avoidance to 75% avoidance.

NOTE: This is not a post about the value of an avoidance setup (this has been done to death lately in these forums). Just a remark, that the Mitigation mechanic is special in a very certain kind of way.

 

• Chicken

Got to agree with this, it might equal out to the same thing over time, but the potential to get unlucky with the current system for resistances can be really annoying at times... Especially when an encounter relies on resistances.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

Boevis

I would actually argue the opposite, Blizzard did a horrible job of balancing armor.

 

Psy

What would be interesting would be if they made two types of spell resistance, much like armor and avoidance for physical damage. There would be one stat that reduces all damage taken by a specific percentage and another to give a chance for full resistance. Seems like it'd balance things out, but I seriously doubt any such system would be implemented at this stage of the game.

/sigh

 

• Maligne

Just because the two systems don't work the same way doesn't mean the end result isn't the same. Each side (resists/armor) can be tweaked (as I'm sure they were early on) to produce the same resist/avoidance/reduction rates for spells and physical attacks over the long haul. Now, binary versus partial resist spells seem to throw a wrench in single occurrence situations, I think because they were designed to produce the same effect over a period of time.

What better cc is there for a druid than polymorph?

 

Ezareth

You guys aren't really considering a huge factor here.

Sure resistance seems to have increasing returns.

However, there are 5 schools of magic(4 main ones) and each has it's own resist tree.

Armor reduces ALL physical damage.

In addition to this, armor comes naturally on all gear based upon the armor type, the Ilvl of the item and the quality of the item. It is in essense a "free" stat.

Resistance however takes away from an items other stats. Maxing your resistance makes your character overall less effective, which is why you can max it out. Point per point resistance is relatively expensive, try to put together a 350 resistance set for 75% resist and see how gimp your character becomes.

 

• Falk

Wrong end of the cannon, but 5-point mangled rip on high-armor opponents beg to differ.

I get what you mean though. :P