Question about difficulty penalties, -res, energy shield, and telekinesis

[this_barb]

Question about difficulty penalties, -res, energy shield, and telekinesis

Its better to describe the situation instead of askin the question. here it is

Basically, I was testing some things to see if resistance gear (even though it was not enough to completely negate my cold mastery) had any effect on damage taken to life on my friend's 20tk/20es orb sorc (he has 88% es). Anyway, he put on his damage gear which consisted of Ormus Robes and 15/-15 Facet'd shield, his resistances went way down considering he only got 20% from anni, 23% fletch, 45% from grim spur, and 30% from anya. he took a considerable amount of damage to his life (some of the damage passed through energy shield and took out his life) with this setup (his mana buld was empty after 1 orb though). And then he equipped his 30% vipermagi, and 70% Sanctuary Large Shield, and I hit him. That nearly completely negated the damage he took. I could barely notice his life good down after 3-4 orbs (he lost about 800 mana per orb with this setup).

Can someone tell me why this is like this?

 

[Thrugg]

In fact I don't think resists have much to do with it here. As you have CM, he would not have been reducing the damage much with his cold res anyway.

First, you know all PvP damage is multiplied by 17%. With a good level FO you're doing what, about 400 per spike? So they are each being reduced to ~70 after the penalty.

The ES then applies, before resistance. He takes 88% of the damage to his mana pool and 12% to his life. With 20 TK he is only taking 75% of that 88% damage in mana, so about 50 mana lost per spike that hits, and maybe 10 damage per spike.

This is all before any of his gear is considered. This is what gets through the ES.

After ES, you apply MDR, and this is where I think the difference is. Vipermagi has around 10 MDR and Sanctuary has 7 more, plus whatever else he might be wearing. Ormus, on the other hand, has none. Now that MDR applies to each spike that hits him, practically erasing all damage. But without it, it gets through to the next step.

Next is resists. With no resists and your presumably decent CM, he is getting his damage doubled here. So the 10 or so getting through per spike in the first place is turning into 20 per spike. He gets hit by enough spikes that this is a decent amount. In the resist gear case though, the damaeg has already been reduced to nearly nothing, so even if your CM overcomes his res, there's no damage left to double.

I am not completely sure on this theory as I don't know enough about your damages or what your friend was wearing, but that's my best guess.

 

[this_barb]

I do 1300 damage per spike on my orb. so after pvp penalty, thats 221 damage.

 

[this_barb]

here is what i think, since my orb does around 1285 (~1300), the damage after pvp penalty would be 221. then since he has a 89% energy shield, the damage he would take to mana would be 48, and then he would have anywhere from 16 - 20 MDR, and anywhere from 5 - 9 cold absorb, can anyone give me a second opinion? Im not sure how absorb works when he is at full life. All I know is that his life doesn't budge at all when I hit him with orb.

 

[Jedi]

absorb:

1. x life gain
2. x damage reduced

so 9 cold absorb at full life should be 9 damage reduced.

 

[Jedi]

i couldnt follow the original post 100% but i try to add something.

if u hit your friend with orb ( or any other element) first of all energyshield is effected. ES mana pool will get the full damage because resistance arent applied at this stage.

after manapool is empty your lifepool comes into calculation.
1.resistance
2. mdr and absorb

after he equipped his resistance gear i count:
30% anya
20% anni
70% shield
30% viper
etc.
those numbers bring us to 150% allready if not more ( sorry i am not familiar with all itemnames but if we add "fletch23% " or this "grimspur" he should be near to have 75% positive res versus a cold sorc in normal difficulty.
the damage that is left after resistance and the pvp penalty should be really low and in case u have MDR and cold absorb the damage taken is pretty low to maybe zero in your case.

after the first hit and the mdr and cold absorb were not enough he lost a bit life but after 2nd hit he gains double from absorb again. so 9 cold absorb =18.

also orb damage in general is not a really damagetive skill. those little spikes should be calculated all seperatly when they hit so the absorb takes effect for each again.

i think the previous poster explained it correct then.

regards Jedi

 

[Liessa Wyrmbane]

here is what i think, since my orb does around 1285 (~1300), the damage after pvp penalty would be 221. then since he has a 89% energy shield, the damage he would take to mana would be 48, and then he would have anywhere from 16 - 20 MDR, and anywhere from 5 - 9 cold absorb, can anyone give me a second opinion? Im not sure how absorb works when he is at full life. All I know is that his life doesn't budge at all when I hit him with orb.

It goes like this:
1. Damage(base) = 1285
2. Damage(pvp) = 1285 * 0.17 = 218
3. Damage(ES) = 218 * (1 - 0.89) = 23
4. Damage(mdr) = 23 - 20 = 3
5. Damage(resists) = 3 * (1 - his res)
6. Damage(absorb) = ...

As you can see, his cold absorb, cold resistance and your cold mastery are pretty insignificent factors in this case because your damage has already been reduced to 3 (assuming 20 mdr) after ES and MDR. Without the mdr from vipermagi and sanctuary he takes much more damage.

 

[this_barb]

i was hitting him in hell, and shouldnt the 23 damage be doubled because of my cold mastery? (even if he has all that resist, i would still take him down to -100)

 

[Liessa Wyrmbane]

i was hitting him in hell, and shouldnt the 23 damage be doubled because of my cold mastery? (even if he has all that resist, i would still take him down to -100)

No, the 23 is not doubled, but the 3 (23-20) is, because mdr comes before resists.

 

[this_barb]

oOOO, its all becoming clear for me now, thanks.

 

[Thrugg]

The fact that MDR comes before resists is usually considered a bad thing in PvM, because your resists are reducing the damage, so effectively reducing the usefulness of MDR.

But in PvP when you can often expect to have negative resists and so damage gets increased, the fact that MDR comes first actually makes it more valuable.
Combined with the PvP penalty to all damage of 17%, MDR is very cool for PvP use. I hadn't realised before just how useful in combination with ES! Each point of MDR is basically whacking about 65 points of raw damage. Nice.

Apologies for underestimating your FO damage, btw, as you might be able to guess I do not play sorcs much, so I just looked up the tables. I guess the damage goes up faster once you get over slvl20? But the logic still applied.

 

[this_barb]

so basically in this calculation, 1 magic damage reduce works 2x as effectively as 1 cold absorb? (since mdr is taken before resistances, and absorb is taken after, it would make sense)

 

[Thrugg]

Heh, yes and no

Cold absorb has the added effect of giving life back, which can make it 2x as useful as a straight reduction also. However, because of the order, you only get the life back if you are not at full life when you are hit, so it only has the doubled effect sometimes.

But yes, assuming he's at full life and that you can get him all the way down to -100% res, you are correct.