Damage Reduction Mechanics

Resistances
Resistances refer to the Fire, Lightning, Cold and Poison resistances you can see on your character screen. In addition, it is important to remember Magic Resistance as some critters deal some significant magic damage. On AfterMath, you have a base resistance cap of 60. This can be increased by wearing +max-resistance gear. This cap will also be decreased by 1 per character level over 80, up to -20 at level 100. The hard-coded cap for resistances is 95. === Resistance Difficulty Penalties === Upon entering Nightmare Difficulty, your resistances will drop by 50. This penalty increases by an additional 100 upon entering Hell Difficulty.

Note: Magic Resistance is immune to this penalty. == Absorbs ==

Absorbs come in 2 forms: Integer Absorbs and Percentage Absorbs. Both of these do the same thing: Reduce the damage you take by the amount listed before damage is dealt and then heal you by the same amount after damage is dealt.

Integer Absorb X reduces the damage you take by X, then you take damage, and then you are healed X hit points. If X is greater than the amount of damage you have taken, you will be healed instead. The big advantage for integer absorbs comes in damage per frame attacks such as Diablo's firestorm. For example, if you have 25 integer fire absorb and would normally take 1000 damage per second from a damage-per-frame attack: As you can see, 25 integer absorb is enough to negate over 1000 damage per second without even taking resists into consideration against the right attacks. Integer absorb is much less effective against flat-damage attacks, however. If that same attack only did damage once, you would reduce the 1000 damage by 25 and then be healed by 25, leaving 950 damage to be taken.
 * Damage per frame: 40 (1000/25)
 * Integer Fire Absorb: 25
 * Damage taken per frame: 15 (40 - 25)
 * Damage healed per frame: 25
 * Total damage taken (healed) per frame: (10) - You gain 10 life per frame.
 * Damage taken (healed) per second: 250.

Absorb X% reduces the damage you take by X%, then you take damage, then you are healed by X%. The advantage to absorb % is that it is just as effective against one-shot attacks as it is against damage-per-frame attacks. While all flat integer reduction gear is uncapped % absorbs are hard capped at 40%.

== Damage Reduction ==

Damage Reduction can refer to any of the following:
 * 1) Damage Reduced by X%. This reduces the amount of physical damage you would take by X%. This value caps at 50% but can be stacked in order to protect against amplify damage curses.
 * 2) Damage Reduced by X. This reduces the amount of physical damage you would take by X.
 * 3) Magic Damage Reduced by X. This reduces the amount of non-physical damage you would take by X.

== Poison Length Reduction == Poison Length Reduction refers to the amount of time you will be under the effects of poison. If a typical poison attack deals 1000 damage over 4 seconds, you will take 1000 damage before the poison wears off 4 seconds later. If you have 75% poison length reduction, however, you will only suffer poison damage for the first second, taking 250 damage instead.

Note: Poison length reduction is NOT subject to difficulty penalties on AfterMath. == Order of Reductions/Resistances == Damage reduction and resistances are always applied in this order:

1) Defense - Check to see if you are struck by a physical attack. 2) Shield block/claw block - Check to see if you block the incoming attack. 3) Amazon evade - Check to see if you avoid the incoming attack. 4) NRG shield - Reduce damage to health and redirect to mana. 5) Integer Damage reduction (and magic damage reduction) - Reduce attacks by XX where XX is your integer damage reduction, such as damage reduced by 10 or magic damage reduced by 10. 6) Resistances (physical or elemental) - Reduce attacks by Y% where Y is your resistance to that element. 7) Absorbs - Reduce damage by Z% where Z is your absorb%. Reduce damage by ZZ where ZZ is your integer absorb. 8) Take Damage. 9) Check for death - note you can die after taking damage from absorbed elements and before healing from those absorbs. 10) Absorbs - Gain health of ZZ where ZZ is your integer absorb. Gain health of Z where Z is the damage reduced by your absorb%.

Example : Incoming melee attack: You have 4500 life, 50% block chance, 50% defense change, 25% dodge chance, 10% energy shield 100 integer damage reduction, 30% physical damage reduction and 0 replenish life.

1) Defense: You have a 50% chance to be hit. Monster scores a hit half the time. 2) Shield block: You have a 50% chance to block. Monster scores a successful attack 25% of the time (.5 * .5). 3) You have a 25% chance to dodge the attack. Monster scores a successful attack 18.75% of the time (.25 * .75). 4) You have 10% damage redirecting to mana from energy shield. You take .9X damage from the hit to your health orb, where X is damage dealt. 5) You have 100 integer damage reduction. You take .9X - 100 damage from the hit. 6) You have 30% physical damage reduction. You take .3(.9X - 100) damage from the hit. 7) You do not have any physical absorb % or physical integer absorb. You still take .3(.9X - 100) damage from the hit. 8) Let's assume the monster deals 1000 damage per hit and you. You take .3(.9*1000 - 100) damage = .3(900 - 100) damage = .3(800) damage = 240 damage per hit. [You get hit slightly less than 19 times per 100 swings. This gives an average damage of 45 damage per swing. Based on the 4500 HPs you were given above, it will take this monster 100 swings to kill you in abscense of any potions.] 9) If you have 240 or less life remaining, you will die. Otherwise, you are alive. 10) You did not have any absorbs - you do not gain any life back.