Diablo III

As one of those guilty of stacking Resists via items and skills (cough One With Everything and Time of Need cough), I have to wonder if this will be a net gain for my class. Hopefully the pros outweigh the expected cons.

Details of the mitigation and damage changes.

In a nutshell, many of the core defensive skills (War Cry - Impunity, Resolve, Seize the Initiative, Jungle Fortitude, Energy Armor/Prismatic Armor) are being nerfed. However, Inferno damage is getting an across the board nerf of 25%, making all characters inherently more survivable.

There are a few other tweaks, like Shadow Power going from 20% Life Steal for 3 seconds to 15% Life Steal for 5 seconds, to make it easier to manage.

To make up for the difficulty factor that the hardest of the hardcore will undoubtedly complain about, the "Monster Power" system will let people voluntarily choose tougher challenges (for greater rewards), so you can still feel like you're being a badass compared to those wimps who run "normal" Inferno.

nooooo not jungle fortitude!

huh, that actually sounds kinda neat.

edited 14th Sep '12 10:03:47 AM by Blissey1

Compare to Wiz's Hydra, Sentry feel totally useless for me even when I try the defensive nest tactic they mention. Hopefully this will be enough to make it feel useful.

It's kind of a null change given the nerf to enemy damage. Well, I suppose it's a relative buff to Bad Medicine.

I actually tend to use War Cry with Invigorate. It (often) works better than Impunity, since I've got a lot of health, and that 10% boost makes a decent addition to that. The regen is 1% per second, which also works well with a lot of health, though that's secondary at best.

I use it with Invigorate as well, although my Barb is only in Act I Inferno and I haven't hit the resist wall yet.

I'm a little bit further than that. I think. Was actually a while since I played last. Haven't even played since the patch. Been busy with other things. I also think it's good to take a break from playing once in a while, so it doesn't grow stale.

I use all war cries, since they make for good party skills. I'm not sure I've ever played alone with that character, actually. I'm usually the tank, unless it's something I handle less well, like those big things in the last act that do a ton of damage, but hit rarely.

edited 14th Sep '12 12:25:37 PM by AnotherDuck

Finally made it to Hell difficulty this weekend. Up till now, I kept having to dial back my Wizard's Intelligence and shift points to Vitality to stay alive through boss battles. Oddly, I've reached a plateau (lvl 53) where I can no longer do enough damage before running out of Arcane Power ... but I can't really afford to divert points from Vitality, either—staying alive is barely doable at this point! Hoping this is a temporary "awkward phase" that my character will grow out of ... really, really hoping.

at some point, resistances overtake vitality as the survival stat of choice. That's why force armor with the increased resistances rune is so popular. which boss fights in particular are you struggling on?

All defensive stats are multiplicative with each other, so theoretically you want a balance. The more of any one stat you have, the more relatively valuable all the others become.

Until I began stacking Vitality in earnest, I consistently got one-shot against Belial and Izual in particular. It also put me in pretty good stead against Diablo, and let me beat him by gradual attrition in Normal and Nightmare. Even now, though, it's pretty tough to survive uncommon spawn groups of any sort—Vitality or no—and always has been as a Wizard.

You don't really need to stack Resists until Inferno Act I. Really. I had about 150 Resists by Hell Diablo, though I offset it with having more than 600 Vitality. However, AFTER that you have to shoot for hard targets per act — Around 500 for Act 1, 650 or so in Act 2, and 850+ in Act 3. And even then you're still liable to be slaughtered when you're not paying attention. The next patch will likely change this of course with its Inferno damage decrease though.

on another note, you might wanna try out some public games. You'd be surprised how less a liability being squishy is when you have a barb or a monk or a witch doctor with pets tanking things for you.

what do those number translate to percent wise? I forget exactly how much resists my act II inferno WD has, but I know he's at 60%ish in all resistances and has around 23k health. and I have completed act II a few times like this.

edited 18th Sep '12 5:56:49 AM by Blissey1

500 total Resistance is about 61% to 62% reduction against opponents of level 61-63. 650 total Resistance is about 67% to 68% reduction against opponents of level 61-63. 850 total Resistance is about 72% to 73% reduction against opponents of level 61-63.

For 95% reduction, one needs around 1900 Resist All. It's not total mitigation, but it's darned close, especially if you combine it with a massive LPS score (3000 or so).

edited 18th Sep '12 9:28:12 AM by MyssaRei

Wow.

hmm, so I'm a bit below the resists standard for act II then. I guess it's a mix of Jungle Fortitude and Spirit Vessel that lets me have the least deaths in most group games I play.

Don't forget that you also have armor. Which does the exact same thing as resistance. Even if you don't intentionally stack it, higher level items will have more armor on them.

edited 18th Sep '12 3:56:27 PM by Clarste

eh, I find it's rarely physical attacks that kill me in inferno. It's stuff like mortar and reflect damage that gets me killed.

and if something does kill me with a physical attack, then the whole situation is likely going to shit anyway.

except for those damn exploding corpses when they have fast/teleport, fuck those things.

There's no difference between physical attacks and magic. Armor affects all damage, and physical is one of the elements covered by "All Resistance". The stats are exactly the same.

edited 18th Sep '12 4:20:23 PM by Clarste

really? So armor is basically resist all?

So it's additive (well, internally, I suppose) rather than multiplicative with respects to the resists?

edited 18th Sep '12 4:47:18 PM by AnotherDuck

Armor is physical damage reduction, and it is multiplicative with physical resistance.

Really? It says it reduces all damage on the tooltip. I have to admit I haven't experimented with it. It doesn't mention "physical" at all though.

edited 18th Sep '12 6:08:05 PM by Clarste

I'm quite sure armour reduces elemental damage as well, actually.