If you ever wonder why does defense suck

That's because of PvP damage scaling formula.
It's not only reduce the damage you do, it also makes stackable damage reduction less effective.

This thread is new-players oriented.

Let's say your 75% max res character got hit by some unnamed spell that has 350k tooltip damage, 75% penetration, and T=0.9:

  (((350000 / 0.9) / 180) ^ 0.58) * 180 * 0.9 = 13917

quite a lot, most likely you're dead.

Practical maximum of reduced elemental damage taken can be achieved with a dual Nebuloch Juggernaut, resulted damage taken multiplier would be like 0.23:

  (((350000 *.23 / 0.9) / 180) ^ 0.58) * 180 * 0.9 = 5934

  5934 is 42% of 13917, total damage taken multiplier is 0.42 instead of 0.23

Even if you have 75% reduced elemental damage taken, even if you using Incandescent Heart, you still most likely getting instantly killed because that unnamed spell gonna hit you at least 4 times per frame for total 23736 damage.


Damage reduction can be important if your build has extremely high eHP.
Otherwise you don't need to stack 'reduced damage taken' of any sort.

The only thing that is wrong are the skills that hit multiple times with 1 attack/cast. That is literally the only reason why damage seems unreasonably high.

Also the defenses are actually ridiculous as well. Even now against skills that abuse the shit out of T-value you can make nearly immortal tanks.. There is nowhere near enough damage around to kill tanks if they ever properly fix the way T-value is calculated for skills that hit multiple times.

And all these tanks are mana guardians with 18k+ ES and legacy aegis, aka 'the only way to semi-afk on arena'.

Unfortunately , the pvp calculation numbers from your equation do not fit the damage you deal/receive.Or let's say nobody has 350k Y damage against 75/75/75 all resistances chaacter. 480k Y damage vs 0 resistances character was the best one could get when i was actively playing pvp. This is like 280k Y damage vs 7575/75 char assuming that char has 88 pen.

I had 1.1M tooltip DPS with EO(non crit damage on other words) on my wander with 88 penetration.(3.8 attacks per second) I've never seen myself one shotting 13,917 life. My one shot range was about 8-9k life. And believe me, we tested for hours. Overlap was as mentioned before what was making KB so powerful.

Both damage and damage reduction move on an exponential curve, the only thing that's linear is hit point and hit point recovery, and almost all of them also have diminishing returns, but the example you mentioned is one of the few that can be an exception, because theoretically reaching 100% reduced damage taken would negate all damage, ignoring the formula, but there are some sources from enemies that additively affect that stat such as inquisitor's augury node. In the past even resistance used to be a similar case when there were less all elemental penetration and conversion talisman could negate all other penetration making 100% resistances worthwhile.