My thoughts on the Resistances in Diablo 4

PC General Discussion
1

First, I thought it was a bug. All my calculations didn’t fit.
I thought resistances are reduced by 40 % just meant, that if you have an item with 20 % resistance, you only get 12 %.

Res_new = 1 - (1 – Res_old) x (1 - 0.6 x Res_item)

But this is not how it is working. This is only how it should be working in a normal world.

For example:

You have 50 % resistance and are getting a new item with 20 % resistance and the last item didn’t had resistances. That’s

Res_new = 1 – (1 – 0.5) x (1 – 0.6 x 0.2) = 1 – 0.5 x 0.88 = 1 – 0.44 = 56 % resistance.

So, in World Tier 4 with resistance already at 50 % an additional item with 20 % resistance should give you an additional 6 % resistances. That should be meant by diminishing returns.

This is how it works, and I might add as a former math tutor, that the person inventing such an idiotic system would instantly fail my class:

You are getting normal diminishing returns for all World Tiers.

Res_new = 1 - (1 – Res_old) x (1 - Res_item)

And if you get R % resistances in World Tier 1 or 2, you get
0.8 x R in World Tier 3 and
0.6 x R in World Tier 4.

That means 60 % resistances is a hard cap for resistances in World Tier 4.
Because all non-physical damage is divided 50/50 between armor and resistances, your resistances will always reduce the magical damage by less than 30 %.
On the other hand, your armor has a hard cap at 85 % (I have heard.).
This will give you not only an 85 % damage reduction versus physical damage, but also a 42.5 % damage reduction versus magical damage.

To be totally clear here, your magical resistances will have less impact on your magical damage reduction than your physical resistance, also called armor.

Let’s do some more calculations.
Let’s assume you have a sorceress or necromancer with 1000 Intelligence, which is getting you 30 % to all resistances. And let’s assume you have some resistances up to 50 % and some at 30 %.

50 % resistances at World Tier 4 would be 83.3 % in World Tier 1 and 2.
30 % resistances at World Tier 4 would be 50 % in World Tier 1 and 2.

I have done some calculations with my level 78 necromancer and I could get 1 % more damage reduction (from 73 % to 74 %) with about 60 more armor, that is 60 more strength. 60 more Intelligence is giving me 0.6 x 3 % = 1.8 % more damage reduction against magic, but with extreme diminishing returns from item resistances.

With resistances (at World Tier 1/2) above 80 %, your resistances from more items are decreased by 80 %, with resistances above 50 %, all item resistances will be decreased by at least 50 %.

To get from 50 % resistance to 55 % resistance in World Tier 4 you need to get from 83.33 % to 91.67 % in World Tier 1/2.

0.9167 = 1 - (1 – 0.8333) x (1 - Res_item) = 1 – 0.1667 x (1 - Res_item)

0.1667 x (1 - Res_item) = 1 - 0.9167 = 0.0833

1 - Res_item = 0,4997 => Res_item = 0.50

That means, to get from 50 % resistance to 55 % resistance you need an item stat with + 50% to all resistances. With about 300 more armor you would get at least the same result (+ 5 % physical resistance is worth more, because you can get up to 85 % and it works for physical damage, too).

You could also get 2.5 % more health instead of 5 % magical damage reduction (resistances only count for 50 % of the damage reduction). One Royal Ruby would get you 4 %.

What gem gives you 50 % to all resistances?
None! You would need about 8 (more precise about 8.3) Royal Diamonds to get to 50 % to all resistances and that would result in 5 % more magical damage reduction (the 50 % part) or 2.5 % more damage reduction from magical sources.

Or you could use one stat with 4.5% damage reduction to all damage. Because from 50% damage to 45 % damage, that is a 9 % damage reduction to the magical part, 4.5 % to the whole damage would be equal, but much better because there is no hard cap. And 4.5 plain damage reduction is no high roll [3.1 % – 7.3 %].

My conclusion.

Why do you think 60 % resistance should be a hard cap?
For necromancers and sorceresses this is especially hard, because with high Intelligence you are already near the cap. With 1000 Intelligence I can only get between 30 % resistance with no resistances on items at all and under 60 % with as many resistances on items as possible.

That means, putting no magical resistances on items is the best for every sorceress or necromancer.
And all other classes will also profit more from other stats. Maybe some easy to reach paragon nodes will be nice, but on items and gems, resistances are no good option.

3 Likes
2

Already known. Blizzard does not care. They said they might fix it by the start of season 2 if they get around to it.
And I am not kidding that is what they said. Giving NM dungeons useless xp is more important than the broken damage reduction for 2 of the 5 classes in the game is just not a priority.

9 Likes
3

Man, you wrote a novel. Did you watch the campfire dev chat? Resistances are completely broken and will be fixed sometime in or after Season 2. Stack Armor for now, simple.

4

I may have missed that, the chat was quite lengthy.
Some quotes from the dev chat:

(1)
“…we want to encourage players to get more resistances as they go higher in World Tiers…”

(2)
“…because it’s fairly complex interaction this is something that’s gonna take a little more time to dial in the right solution…”

On (1): it has the opposite effect and it’s impacting two classes heavily.

On (2): I don’t think the situation is that complicated.
Additive bonusses need to have a cap.
Multiplicative bonusses don’t need a hard cap, because higher values are much more expensive to get.

Yes, some testing is needed, but at least a whole season without proper resistances is no solution.

And the solution is written in my first post.
Just apply the 40 % malus directly to the individual bonus, not to the end result.

How could that even slip through quality control?

2 Likes
5

Wonderful post. I love posts by people that are competent mathematically explaining to the kids why the systems in the game are poorly designed, with Resistances being just one of them.

6

Awful lot of typing for something we already knew. They spoke about this in the campfire thing and are working on fixing them for season 2.

TL;DR, just go for armor, max life and damage resist from close

7

Adults that are incompetent at math who read at a 3rd grade level upset over a substantive post pointing out that the Devs don’t even seem to comprehend why the issue is an issue to begin with.

Some of you are huffing something crazy.

1 Like
8

I talked about math and that a hard cap of 60 % is really bad, but I think I should elaborate an that a bit more.

We are not really interested in our resistance, but in the damage we get.
With 60 % resistance, we still get 40 % damage.
With 30 % resistance we are getting 70 % damage.
So while doubling our resistance, we are not doubling our mitigated damage.
Keep in mind that doubling the resistance is very expensive in Diablo 4, because of the multiplicative scaling. Getting from 30 % to 60 % is not even possible on World Tier 4.

Because we are interested in minimizing the received damage, we are looking at percentage values normally near 100 %. If you get 95 % damage mitigation vs 90 % damage mitigation, you are doubling your damage mitigation. It’s only 5 % more, but because the distance to 100 % is halved, the damage is also halved.

So technically, 99 % is 10 times as good as 90 %. And this works great with damage reduction of different kinds. But that also implies, that a hard cap at 60 % makes resistances useless. The first maybe 30 % are making sense, but the diminishing returns plus the hard cap are making anything near 50 % useless.

9

there are no reisntaces that makes casters none starters period. Roll babrarian only need that class in D4. thats it. immune to most schools of cc, insaine ammout of damage and damage mitagation, why even talk about Mages, or necros?

10

Its mostly that it screws sorcs over badly

Sorc is already the squishiest class, but its also the most popular. They are waiting for players to switch to other classes in season one befor they fix it… because they dont want the class thats already the most popular to actually be strong as well. Or else, more ppl would just want to play the class

But its nots a bug
This was set in intentionally by the devs… which is beyond stupid because sorcs dont get strength like other classes so our base armor stays low no matter what

11

On paper, intelligence gives resistances, but your character has no resistance if you are in World Tier 4, so it’s actually a stat that doesn’t exist. Isn’t that incredibly fascinating?

1 Like
12

They tried getting fancy with resistances and they broke them all because it was just too complicated as your calculations showed.

So they have to go back to the drawing board and try to simplify the calculations because as you said they just don’t work.

13

I know now the fix has come in the season 3 patch!

In the past things worked fine for me and in season 3 I started dying suddenly when I went to world Tier IV

The build effort time spent load on my evolving Rogue Builds, since D4 was released, has gone up exponentially in season 3!

Everything I had begun to understand in this game’s player managed core component, “Armor”, suddenly didn’t work!

I was dying all the time unexpectedly in combat with bosses I used to be able to manage and farm for drops in World Tier IV! I could not go in dungeon with higher level players with a higher intelligence ratio in their build.

When I discovered the elemental damage was the cause, I had to restructure my build parameters design and I discovered the resources (armor drops) were changing their affix combinations to new mixes with the patch and was beginning to not provide the affix combination that I had learned I needed very often with more resistances in the mix and needed skill ranks with only 4 maximum affixes.

I was able to get some equipment in place on my character before the drops really started changing for the worse.

I was trying to get at least two different affix resistances on each piece of armor (Helm, Chest, Pants and boots. Gloves appear not to drop resistance affixes so I used Intelligence).

My goal was to get a total resistance around 120% for each of the 5 elements with a 2 skill resistance affixes per piece (except gloves) while in a constrained environment of 4 affixes in each piece.

That meant losing two desirable affixes per piece for more elemental survivability!

What a shock! Completely rethinking everything I had learned to do using the online templates for a building guide and refining results through Season 1, 2 and 3 before the patch!

I spent hours in trial and error attempts with the game tools on hand after retreating to world Tier III.

I created an excel spread to try to understand the difference between what I knew to date, what the game interfaces have been telling me and game play experiences.

But, I now see that the leveling of armor will be a problem in continual rebalancing if I don’t stick to the same elements per piece with the upgrades and tweek the weak affixes with Gems.

My character is now at a 70% cap, but I am not comfortable with the margin of error that could exist at this point because subtle changes cause the game interface to suddenly drop below the 70% cap.

My spreadsheet numbers don’t match the mouse over numbers in stats! They are lower if I add up all of the values expressed in the profile interface including intelligence effects and paragon board nodes.

Does anyone know if the reported resistances count everything accurately?

It would be nice if I could take those numbers to the bank and look for what I am missing in my excel sanity check?

As I understand the changes that have occurred so far, if my efforts produce results that are to high in any element, there are algorithms that take over and lead to other game play loss of joy by dying unexpectedly!

Do I need to know the reported elemental range for each element as a min-max appropriate target to manage?

Has anyone come up with the math and design for configuring 5 different affix resistances across four pieces of armor that totals a reported value of resistance in a range of about 120%? to 160%? for level 94 in WTIV resistance each as a two affixes on each piece and then tweaking the differences needed with intelligence, jewelry and gems with the continuous armor upgrades as you level to stay in the safe zone from level 50 to 100 as a guideline with the current drops that are happening with only 4 affixes per armor piece in rare and legendary?

14

You’re the real necromancy.