Puzzling defense.

This is a request from Charan the moderator in relation to defense. Hopefully this info will help answer my puzzling questions.


EDIT-- People new to this thread ----
By the help of others posting, we've figured out the reason why defense is so bad atm for anyone without a shield. It's because elemental resistance cannot defend against players using penetration support gem, which lowers a players cap resistance. Hopefully GGG responds, or at least explains ways to practically defend against high spike elemental dps.
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Ive been doing alot of testing trying to understand why other players defense is nearly twice that of mine. Ive been getting alot of information and feedback from two other players i fight frequently and between the three of us, I cannot figure out why my toon cannot tank as well.

My dps reference is called Himavat, and my tanky referrece is ChoasBrand.

My toon is called - Hodeg (duelist) vs Himavat (duelist)
Both our builds have unwavering stance, he's using Ice bite for extra frost, while im using deft blade to bypass block. He uses a staff which gives him 30% block, which i bypass so much ive never seen him block. We both use anti freeze boots.

Hp - (mine) 1100 vs 920
Armor - 37% vs 8-14%
Resistance 110% cold vs 50%
Regan 14.5 vs about 16

He uses Glacial Hammer and attacks very fast, his dps is rated at 1k cold. I die from taking 2-3 hits, usually 2 hits is enough to drop 80-90% hp, and im forced to spam instant pots asap which keeps me in the game for another 2 hits.


Himavat (duelist) vs ChoasBrand(marauder)
Chaosbrand is using 2h unique hammer Voll, with anti stun amulet and anti freeze boots. Using Glacial Hammer as well.

Ill list the difference between my stats and Chaosbrand, and ill show how much defense he's lacking compared to me.

We both run with same hp
29% less armor then me.
50% less cold resistance
He has a little more hp regen
He is using Resolute Tech

EDIT
*I have also used Molten Shield, endurance cry, and pots which increase my armor by 90%. Ive stood against him with 67% armor and 110% cold resistance while being slaughtered.

*Ive used Sapphire flasks and extra resistance on pots which didnt help either.

*Ive taken off unwavering stance to test if evade is a factor...evade had no influence to this match up at all.


In the battle ChaosBrand vs Himavat, im told that ChaosBrand can take up to 2-3 hits BEFORE he has to pot, then he can last up to 8-10 hits from Himavat. ChaosBrand is using the same 2h slow hitting style, but uses Glacial hammer and Hatred to boost his dps. ChaosBrand wins nearly all fights they have.

Evade- My toon and Himavats have unwavering stance, which means we cannot evade. Chaosbrand can evade, but when i question the factor of evading in their fights, im told that ChaosBrand gets hit right away. ALSO the fact ChaosBrand can TAKE 2-3 hits before potting means evade isnt a factor in his defense.

Curses and Resistance- Because ive got 110% resistance to cold, when Himavat drops my cold resistance by 40%, ive still got 70% resistance to cold. Whereas ChoasBrand has around 50-60% at most. Which means he'll have 10-20% cold resistance when cursed.

Conclusion- If my defense if higher then ChoasBrand, then i should be able to stand up vs Himavat. It doesnt matter if ive got a tooth pick, as long as my defense is strong, i should be able to tank.

Thanks.

EDIT
*If im missing something in terms of my overall defense, id like to know. There is some type of defense atm which is around 300% more effective then my 110% cold resistance.

i think the surviving has to do with not your defenses but with your ability to stun chaosbrand. if one is using resolute tecnique and faster attacks then chaosbrand will be stunned more causing the potion to have more time to regen the hp and allowing him to take more hits.

its not so much the amount of hits you take but the time you have to take those strikes

perhaps also a fast recovery and more hp healed over time flask will help more than a panicked flask that heals less hp overall.

Problem is all three of us are immune to stuns.

Another problem is having 110% resist to cold, and a player using max cold + frost bite + cold penetration totally chewing through my defense.

My toon is biased to have higher elemental resistance, which means my dps isnt anywhere near that of Himavat or ChaosBrand. Ive traded my dps for defense, but my defense is 100% ignored.

Huge question Charan, if my toon has such gigantic cold resistance, shouldnt i be bouncing his dps off?

*Ill add a few more interesting factor into my original post.

You could divide the cold damage you receive by about 50% if you stacked your res up to 133%, since frosbite removes 32 and cold pen 26. Your current effective cold res is actually 52.

i also feel like people overestimate how much of their dmg is actually elemntal. even if the weapon was already half cold damage and half physical damage then thats 25% of the damage that is still physical which effectively reduces the different between your cold defenses by 75%. not to mention if his staff has another element in its damage then that element is not in any way converted over to cold damage.

i believe glacial hammer will increase the physical, cold, and other elemental portions of the damage.

as for armor the % dmg reduction the tooltip gives you is also based on a very small monster of your level hitting you. everytime you add more damage it decreases the damage reduced as well as increasing the damage taken so 25% and 12% damage reduction might be close the exact same damage reduction against a higher damage. the equation is something like you need 36 times the amount of armor as the damage number to reduce only 25% of the damage. also im not sure if the pvp damage reduction is calculated when the damage is to be dealt to you or before the damage reaches your armor i actually think it might not be reduced until after your armor as the equation involves an attacking character value not a defending character value. also if you use a granite its kindof like adding 8 million armor to an armor value of like 12 no matter how much armor each of you originally had you still kinda have about 8 million armor.

so basically the difference in your armors is a lot less than it might seem by simple number values but this still does not fully answer the riddle even if the flasks used are different.

perhaps 100% faster heal on flask stacks with the hp regen?

here we go maybe chaosbrand makes hivat block more and with higher dps it would be calculated as a block animation similar to a stun where as your hits bypass his block 40% of the time as well as doing less dps making him not go into block animation even if he does block. he probably blocks your hits more than you think as 30% of 30% block still leaves him with 20% block. if you dps is low enough he wont have a block animation block works the same as stun but without taking damage and doesnt get stopped by anti stun

maybe it would help to be able to spectate their fight maybe you will notice that chaosbrand takes those 2-3 hits over a much larger span of time due to hiamats block animation

Thanks for your post.

In terms of armor, i have fought him with 67% armor and using 10,000 armor pots, also using sapphire flasks to no avail.

In relation to making ChaosBrand making Himavat block, i could agree it could make a difference, although i made another toon a Marauder yesterday without deft blade but more hp, and found no change to my defense.

perhaps the key is lightning res? i noticed a lot of good dps gear adds lightning damage a lot of low level pvp players are using 150 or more lightning damage from boots and such. maybe chaosbrand has a lot of lightning res. if you are getting shocked even once there is a huge dmg boost as well.

i think you are not as far behind as it seems because if chaosbrand is able to survive just one more hit and calmly use that 100% faster regen potion that heals more over time then it will seem like he lives a lot longer just by being able to take the one extra hit before using the potion.

Ive made a 3rd toon to test this out. What ive found is HP regen was twice as effective at keeping me alive then any other stat. More useful then Sapphire flaskes, granites, pots, resist, armor, evade. Even better then max hp, i wonder if this is intended?
I know hp regen is an obvious stat to go after, but i would have thought having higher defense in other areas would help balance toons to be just as effective.

My personal feeling towards this, is it -may- limit pools of players to always get certain types of skill nodes, which in turn, will limit some types of build since most points are spent in the same area...i could be wrong, just my feeling.



CHILL and FREEZE.

They're based off critting, and the duration is based of the amount of damage dealt vs the player attacked.

When testing chill and freeze vs my friend, i found something interesting which id like to know more about.

With 110% cold resist and 1312 hp, i could never be chilled or frozen. with 1200 hp and 110% resist i could never be chilled or frozen.
( I lowed my hp, but kept my resistance the same to see if my hp had an effect)


Ice spear 50 dps - 56% resist with 1312 hp = chill but never frozen 1sec

Ice spear 50 dps - 39% resist with 1312 hp = chill and frozen 1sec

Ice spear 50 dps - 75% resist with 1312 hp = I could never be frozen or chilled, even with crit flask.

So i dont know if my resistance to cold being 75% caused the damaged to be reduced so I could never be chilled or frozen.

Im going to test increasing his dps to see if this will cause my toon to be frozen and chilled differently then listed above.

-I do not know if the above information is what it appears-

But this does raise an interesting thought. It makes sense, that someone with a higher cold resist has immunity to frozen and chill at different resistance levels.

When looking at this idea more, it still contains alot of meta game without negativly effecting the game. Such as, someone with 100% cold resist cannot be chilled, unless frost bite is applied, and if the player is using cold penetration, then the player with 100% can be frozen and chilled. But a player with 130% cold resist can never be frozen, but can be chilled. Someone with even higher are totally immune to the effects of cold - problem is having such a giant resist to cold, your nerfing yourself in other ways.

-I dont know if this is even a viable idea, or thought. But to me it makes sense that someone with HUGE resistance, resits the element and it's effects. I am aware that skill nodes have the ability to reduce elemental effects, but this doesn't mean this idea isnt valid. Also when thinking about this close, it also makes the use of elemental penetration more interesting because it wouldnt be used for dps, but for the added elemental effect, same with frost bite etc.

Im sure ill get flamed for this.

why not just use the boots ? also shouldnt 100% cold resist make you take 0 damage which would mean your chill time would be less than .o3 seconds or something which the game negates the effect. i read some sort of article about freeze mechanics.

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myr wrote:

why not just use the boots ? also shouldnt 100% cold resist make you take 0 damage which would mean your chill time would be less than .o3 seconds or something which the game negates the effect. i read some sort of article about freeze mechanics.

I didnt use the boots because i was testing chill and freeze. Also yes, your correct, my 110% should reduce the dps considerably, yet this isnt the case vs Himavate.