I’ve become curious about finding a build that works with high stacked integer damage reduction, both regular and magic. I’ve been looking at a bunch of items that have these stats, and trying to figure out which class and build would take the best advantage of them. I’d love to hear your thoughts!
One example build I came up with is this kind of “safety WW” barb:
Helm: Vampire Gaze with a Sol
Ammy: Chromatic Amulet of Life Everlasting (best of luck finding it)
Armor: Gladiator’s Bane with a Sol
Weapon: Grief if possible, or a high-roll eth Oath in a Balrog Blade otherwise
Shield: Gerke’s Sanctuary with an Eld
Gloves: Steelrend
Belt: String of Ears
Boots: War Travs
Rings: Crafted Safety Rings with max DR and 11 allres. I know, this is even less likely than the amulet - but honestly, these slots could also just be considered “open”, or the rings replaced with a Dwarf Star and a Nagelring for extra MDR and life, and you can get the resists back from charms since you are not off by much.
With even the min rolls on an Anni and a Barb torch, this gets to 75% all res on Hell, given the skill bonuses to 1 point in NR. You also end up with 35% total damage reduction, 77 Damage Reduction, and 68 Magic Damage Reduction, and after BO, >2k life with max block. Looking at a popular online character planner, a Hell Bovine (on Hell) would do 5 DPS to this guy. 5! You could be surrounded by 10 cows, go afk for 10 seconds, and still be at 75% health when you came back.
I’m wondering if there are better class/build options, though. What do you guys think? I didn’t look at Paladin because it seems too easy, and Smiters/Zealers don’t even need DR/MDR with all of their existing defensive tricks. But that could obviously work too, especially since you can put on an Astreon’s for even more DR.
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I made an MDR/Replenish stacking trapsin. Peasant crown, spirit shroud, dungos, sandstorm, frostburn, gerkes, dwarfstar, dual resist replenish ring, maras, hoto.
Basically she doesn’t take damage from most elements and what little damage does leak through gets replenished in seconds. I have a +2 replenish/ 12% damage to mana jewel in the spirit shroud. Going to socket a dol in my peasant crown next, for +19 just on the helm! Only 38 MDR, but can still get a better dwarfstar. 84 replenish altogether.
All this so I don’t have to use healing pots, haha.
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Lol that sounds awesome and like a lot of fun. I’m hoping for some new runewords or balance changes that support these stats even more. Maybe there’s something that can be done for druids and spearzons with these things too.
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I remember i made a barb will full sol rune in every socket can have in 1.09. he is immue to phy dmg in nm cow until item break by cow attck. Item durability drop very fast when it got a lots hits
Speaking of Assassins, I mocked up a kicksin with mostly the same gear, gores, 20 ias gloves, and - Lawbringer in a phase blade. It seems really interesting with the high rate of Decrep procs.
if your into LLD try a lvl 30 kicksin
lvl 19 Fade + 10 Fade from Claws on swap + 2 Shadow Disc circlet with 2 socket +2 Shadow Disc amy with some other leet mods on it
fade will be lvl 33 this way(33% DR)…+String of Ear(15% DR)…total of 48% DR at lvl 30 without needing prebuff gear
4 socket Ornate Plate with Quad Sol Runes
Artisan Grim Shield of Deflecting(3 socket + 20% IBS)…add 3 Sol rune in it
Sander Gloves(Set item) needed for ias bp
Craft pieces
Safety Rings -2 Magic dmg and -4 Physical dmg
Safety Boots -2 Magic dmg and -4 Physical dmg(War Boots)
Weapons Choices
Strengh Runeword made in a Cutlass(25% Crushing Blow)
cant be use–> crushflange…with a dmr full focus build its impossible to use crushflange to reach the 3/3/3/3/9 frame sequence…but a Strenght Cutlass enable to reach 3/3/3/3/8
Option 2: Artisan Blade Talon of Amplify damages(3 socket 5% amp proc)
3 Jewel with 1-60 Light dmg.6 str…9 dex…40 Def
1-180 light dmg…18 str…27 dex…120 Def for 3 copy
Option 3: same as above but rare version
Amp + 30 ias + 2 sockets + 2 Martial Skills + 1-180 Light dmg + knockback
Items granting highter resists/Sorb
HolyThunder(5% max Lightning Resist +60% Lightning resists)…good vs javazon & FoHer
Darkglow(+5% cap to all)
Hotspur +15% max Fire resist)…but thats kin of bad for kicking dmg :S so prob screw that XD
craft Safety Shield(10% Magic Sorb)
Spirit Sword( 8 magic sorb(not %)
with 48% DR…a total of -71 dmg…that should nullify melee lld dmg entirely
(gonna assume 2 soj were used in those maths to boost fade to lvl 35 for a sexier number(50%)
for a hit of 2000 dmg…it should go down to 95.6
a hit of 1500 dmg…should go down to 54 dmg
a hit of 1000 dmg…should go down to 12.3 dmg
a hit of 852 or less will do 0 dmg
assuming % dr is calculated b4 the raw reduction
It’s the other way around, DR goes before DR%
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then Sol gear mean nothing XD
thx for clarifying the math order
Orb Energy shield build focused on mana. Its a build i play for years fo fun. It is using DR and MDR to negate dmg which doesnt go into energy shield virtualy resulting in immortal character 
If dr% goes first and Dr goes second it would be super powerful, right now the only thing I can think of is that old overflow bug between Dr and mdr lol
It does as direct reduction can negate incoming dmg completely. % will never do that. And keep in mind some skills like diablo’s lighting inferno have Physical damage part.
thats only valid for ES Sorc cause ES can suck up 95% of the dmg deliver
i dont think he’s seeking to build the es immortal sorc build so
dmg over time barely do any dmg :S…fire wall was the only skill doing some damage b4 they patched it…its easily walk out from and at 75% fire resist its irrelevant dmg
and ppl dont exactly use dmg over time to whack their opponent(except poison builds like rabies/nova nec)…though those at high lvl cant even be mitigated well without sacrificing a ton of own dps :S…not gonna harm it beyond like 2% of the skill dmg even with a full dmg reduc set up
even at lld levels it would be impossible to mitigate it all if was calculated after 50% DR…but as Kise wrote to me…its calculated b4 the dr so…its entirely meaningless in case of non-es builds
edit: at best it will negate a lvl 9-30 player dmg which is running around in junk gear…it would not even work on a lvl 9 in top jewels gear + Cleg sword doubling dmg at 50% chance
Why no he isaskng for dr, MDR builds? Immortal Queen sorc is prime example of build like that.
What do you mean by that? You can get multiple hits in short period of time and direct damage reduction greatly helps against that.
Most importanty this is also noticable against certain enemy magic/elemental skills. These skills do great amount of dmg with dmg per frame or per second. Idk right term but i thing you get it.
Skills like fire inferno are extremely deadly, yes MDR is there to help but some monsters also Physical dmg in these attacks.
Diablo lighting hose and fire Storm both have 50% of damage in form of Physical dmg and DR helps there a lot.
I think dmg reduction stat is highly over looked by majority of player base even when it is very good.
do you mean that Diablo Firestorm and Lightning breath do things like
200 attacks of 60 dmg each(12000 dmg) within 1 sec…or something like that ? in such case then raw reduction would indeed reduce its dmg greatly if all hits are low amount
honestly i saw my merc die in firestorm b4 despite having max resists(75%)…but when it came to my own char it barely had any effect for firestorm(made little to no sense as to why my merc would be harm while i would not be)…neither my sorc or merc were using raw dmg reduction gear…at least not for magic(except for spirit shield)
the thing though…is can Diablo 2 handle 200 attacks within 12 frame(1 sec ?)
while its possible to like stack up multi-layers…i would think it would fry up the servers
edit: here…simulation of a perf lvl 9 lld barb XD…took me a bit of time to arrange it
d2 maxroll.gg/d2planner/dp0106fu
add the ttp and dot where they belong…link updated…also gave him a merc :3
445 Life
Life Replenish +15
58 Mana
block rate 75%
Fire Resists 72
Cold Resist 75
Lightning Resist 37
Poison Resist 75
Physical dmg 398-529
Attack Rating 1076
Poison dmg 154
strangely maxroll show Crit rate as 62% instead of 73%(as if sword and mast proc triggered separatly)
edit 2: actually made a slight error…i had a better option for weap jewel XD
I belive bosses do more dmg to mercenaries.
But if we talk dmg of diablo’s firestorm, it does:
24-32 physical
62-72 fire
I m not completely sure how it deal dmg tho. Its said on the wiki it is 10-30 hits.
So if you tank his while firestorm standing still in it i understand that it will do on average 15x 30 Physical damage for example and 15x70 fire damage.
With 30% Physical resist and 0 damage reduction you will take total Physical damage 15x21=315. If you would have no reduction at all, you will take 450 physical dmg.
If you have two Sol runes in equip with some reduction from gear having total +29 dmg reduction, total dmg you would took will be 15x1=15.
Fire part of damage is less concerning if your resistances are 75% its doing only 15x17,5.
To make it simple, 75% fire resistance 19 magic damage reduction with 32 physical damage reduction should make you untouchable vs his firestorm.
His lightning inferno is more problematic as it does 216-234 Physical and 378-468 lightning per second. Pretty much impossible to tank that much Physical dmg.
Lightning inferno is currently bugged in NM and Hell so fire inferno is only issue when you fight him really. And that can be pretty well negated.
Diablo is specific case tho. There is many things where dmg reduction is very useful. If you remember poison Snakes. High damage reduced by stat was only way to to make them harmless. Generaly speaking monsters dont do that much dmg unless boosted by auras or other stuff so having high dmg reduction can greatly improve your survival.
Wow, thanks for all the cool ideas, guys! Here’s what I’m thinking of actually trying (!), maybe when Ladder starts:
Affordable Immortal Kicksin
Wep: Azurewrath with an Eth
Helm: Vamp Gaze with a Sol
Ammy: * of Life Everlasting (assume that I can only get this mod, but maxed)
Shield: Gerke’s with an Eld
Armor: Glad’s Bane with a Sol
Gloves: Safety Gloves with 20% IAS and any other random/useless mods (being pessimistic here)
Boots: Upp’d Gores
Rings: Dwarf Star and a Safety Ring with 11RA
Lowest Possible torch and Anni (I’m assuming these will be more accessible given what the dev team has talked about).
When doing this in the character planner I took the worst possible stats in every possible item, except for maxed DR and MDR.
Skills: 20 in DT, DS, and Venom, and 10 hard points in Fade. That seems to be a good balance of where the diminishing returns get really punishing. Not sure where to put the remaning points. Even assuming just level 85 for the Glad’s Bane, that leaves 13 points. Warrior? Master? Maybe they will make chargeup skills actually good?
Stats: With a Might merc and a Reaper’s Toll giving decrep, DTalon does 9.9k dps against cows on Hell. Not huge but enough to fuel DS pops. Without Reaper’s I could use CoS but the dps goes down quite a bit to 6.8k.
With enough dex for max block, she ends up with 1071 life and a low 2.8k defense, and is short about 35 to all resists even after Fade, which would need to come from other charms. But she has 81 DR and 88 MDR, which are actually huge. With Decrep going hell cows achieve 0 dps against her. Without Decrep it’s 7 DPS. A lot of dangerous attacks would just do basically nothing. She won’t have much MF unless she gets it on switch, but man she seems pretty much unkillable.