D4: Resistances & Monster Lore Book

I thought it was strange how in the last quarterly update there were not any resistance affixes on the items. Of course that doesn’t mean that they won’t have them because they wanted to show off other affixes in that list. However, I wanted to bring up some additional topics.

D4 needs an in-game monster lore book that gives us a list of their attributes such as Monster-X has low lightning resist or Monster-Y has low fire resist, alot of armor and attacks at this speed. This can allow players to research certain dungeons that have specific monsters and plan to clear them with certain builds. Perhaps the pack leader monsters have lots of armor and health so crushing blow benefits alot or they also introduce an armor piercing affix to break through heavy armored monsters.

What we need for resistances:

  • Have a cap but it can be increased with certain affixes. Say 100 is your max but affixes can increase it to 110 or 140.
  • Have both % increases and a flat increase amounts

So lets say 100 may be the max resist amount but an item can have increased max resistances by 10 or 20 putting your new max to 110 or 120. % and a flat amount for affixes is also necessary where having say 50% increase to resistances is relative based on lets say if you only have 20 lightning resist currently that would only give you an additional flat 10. So clearly you need to increase you base amount a lot before adding in % increases and cap. It’s a good mix and match game for resistances for itemization.

  • Also, affixes that reduce monster resistances by x amount or % amount. This can be different from D3’s “increase your lightning spell damage by 20%” which effects your spell damage whereas if a monster has 200 lightning resist and you have -25% to monster lightning resist, you’ve brought it down to 150 total compared to if you had increase your lightning damage by 25%. Both have their uses and are different ways to approach elemental damage.
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Have they even confirmed or stated that monsters will have resistances? If so, I must’ve missed it.

Sadly no.
Feels like such a mistake if they dont. Best, and easiest way, to increase build diversity to include both single dmg type and multi dmg type builds.
And make combat more interesting.

immuneties should not be a thing though. That goes in the opposite direction, and reduces build diversity, since you always must have a way to counter those.

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If I recall, they mentioned at Blizzcon 2019 that dungeons would have certain modifiers and certain monsters. Its been a while but I thought I got the impression there would be specific ways to gear your character to better clear the dungeons. I may have assumed this meant there would be resistances for monsters but they gave the impression that there would be heavy investment into creating unique dungeons.

But this is why I thought they should make a monster lore book in-game to see attributes they give monster types.

A fair assessment. In that case, hopefully we’ll learn more in the coming quarterly updates.

Why would anyone increases Res if he/she already has 100% ? ^^ Or do you mean 100% is not really 100% absorbed damage ? I hope not, let’s keep the classic D2 system with 75% cap ! But affixes that increase that cap would be great.

No Immunities but monsters with high Res, yes. For Keyed Dungeons, as Azuna suggested, but also for random lvl40 monsters in the world, to keep it a little bit challenging from time to time.

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Would love to have something like this.

I would also like the resistances to have a consistency, like all the drowned being resistant to the same element (although the amount of resistance can vary) to allow for easy identification. We could even return the D1 mechanic where the more monsters you kill, the more info about them you get… or possibly for bosses, you could find lore books giving more insight into attack patterns and other stats to allow for better preparation.

For me, immunities could exist, but I’d want them to be rare and optional so players can choose to battle it… I would also like some way to bypass it either through a non BiS item (possibly with an affix like “all cold damage becomes fire damage”) or a temporary effect (like potion) meaning that single element players would just have to prepare slightly more in order to overcome such an enemy.

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I agree, I always hated the rating system in D3. Keep it simple, everyone understands 100% with 75% cap.

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I meant the D2 classic resist system, just used 100 instead of 75 really. I like the D2 resist system because there are more variables to factor in over D3 when building up your resists when you have a flat number that increases it and a %,all resists as a flat number and %, as well as affixes that can increase the “cap”.

I saw that they used +25% cold resist on an item in a D4 screen shot way back so this potentially means we could be getting a good ol’ D2 resist system.

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https://sm.ign.com/ign_in/screenshot/default/ahm4o07x0mkl1575335678974_j88x.jpg

there’s the resistance on d4 boots. why on earth do these boots have a four digit defense number :confounded: why are blizzard so dead set on making numbers outrageous? it’s all relative blizzard. you don’t need high numbers to compete with other games that have high numbers.

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You cannot have a 100% cap, especially by default, because that means you can become immune to this damage type. 75% already means avoiding 3/4 of damage, 80% is 4/5… 90% must be the absolute max, including affixes that raises the cap.
Using a 100 rating means using a formula of some sort to determine how much damage you take, which in the end is very close to how D3 works.