Puzzling defense.

it seems amazing how much some lvl 10 or whatever cold res rings help agaisnt marviel i mean for your first toon its really the key to beating her. instead of getting 2-3 shotted its like she is barely hurting you or freezing you so maybe it has something to do with your resist mechanics in pvp. also with the curses dont forget sometimes the tooltips are off im sure it will be easier to gauge in ob but that is cool that resist cap is effectively cap i always hated super stacked resists in d2 its like why can this dude just be completely immune to me just by a gear swap?

but i always thought resist was sprisingly good in this game i think you need to test your resist against some high damage cold only spells and report back like test vs a freezing pulse witch. meanwhile mebbe i scan the mechanics thread real quick see if theres some info onr esists i dont know about.

i keep saying the panic flask is going to be the difference. panick flask is like half hp recovered over the same time its jsut you get 50% of it immediatly after 2 sips thats like a lot of hp!! i noticed it on my flasks i have my 1 flask is high hp recovered and my 2 flask is 50% recovery instantly and the difference is more than double.

also theres a flask effect that gives you +res during the effect as well as one that dispells curses maybe chaosbrands flasks dispell the resistance curse or close his res gap.

As facelicker says, you can't counter the effect of a penetration gem without using a sapphire flask.

If you have 110% resist, capped at 75%, and your opponent has a 26% cold penetration linked to glacial hammer? You will never have greater than 49% effective resistance against that GH, without raising your resist CAP somehow.

It goes like this:

Resist score (77%). You start with 110%. Elemental weakness subtracts 33%, leaving 77%.
CAPPED resist (75%) - Minimum of resist score, resist cap. In your case 75%.
Final effective resist - the penetration subtracts here and you're left with 49%.

The only way for you to make the effective resist go any higher currently is to raise both your resist score and resist cap. Either with a unique that improves max cold resist, or with a sapphire flask. Trouble with the sapphire flask is its terribly useless short duration.

I don't know what you should do, I think both dual strike and glacial hammer are very strong in PvP. So not sure exactly how to counter, just explaining mechanics.

Some possibilities:
- What kind of gear are you wearing? hybrid EV/AR? Pure AR?
- Tried enfeeble? That'll lower the cold damage too.
- Any defensive controls in your setup? Something like bear trap might help you kite a little bit while doing some damage.
- Cannot be Frozen, a unique sapphire ring would help tremendously. But that's kind of cheese to be required to know your opponent's build before fighting him, to win.

There are much better people to suggest pvp strategies than me. I just wanted to pipe in on the resist/cap/penetration mechanic. By the way: that hammer should be on the order of 70% elemental damage. Your physical reduction is probably actually very high against his GH (smaller physical component, greater rate of reduction). But it doesn't matter because the part that's owning you is the cold damage.

Interesting.

The more i read about resistance, the more i think it's pointless just like armor. The amount of time spent on maxing, or using a sapphire flask becomes a waste of time.

Ill prob just be repeating myself, but can anyone explain if elemental damage is defend-able? It's seems using anti shock/freeze is -FAR- more useful then resistance. Also hp regen is -FAR- more useful then even trying to max elemental resist.

If this is how PoE is suppose to be, then in future making a toon for PvP will be very brain dead easy in terms of defense. Depth in terms of resistance and armor mean nothing, just hp and regen with unique gear vs the type of element.
However i do strongly feel this narrow pathing defensive will limit PvP not encourage it. Melee PvP seems already very biased into two forms, duelist lighting spike dps, or viper shield. Both work, yet both do not rely on resistance for defense. Because if what explained above is true, a resist capped viper+shield style will still suffer harsh reduction due to penetration. But they gain an advantage when using block.

Winning isnt my goal, just understanding defense. With my testing vs Himavat, i made a hp regen toon, and Himavat gave me anit stun amulet, and Volls hammer. Guess what, i killed him nearly everytime with bad resistance.

@Zakaluka, thanks for your posts. In terms of armor and immunity to curse pots, both of us use them which means using enfeeble is a good idea, but not always reliable. At armor, i ran into him with 67% armor and used a granite for testing and found no difference.

Barnabas,

I think you're right about 1v1 PvP. Everything is so easily hard-countered. So either you completely dominate or you get completely squashed, rarely any middle ground.

I think though, that a carefully built well-rounded TEAM will be very difficult to beat in 3v3. You wouldn't want a gimmick team stacking the same abilities but a varied group that has many different skills.

Probably most people will stack life and resists. A moderate number of people will go for block, and some few will get evasion. I can't see many people at all going for armour.

Anyway, I think penetration needs a context-nerf for pvp. Keep its function, half the value; or keep the value, revert the function to the same as a lower resist curse. It's too bad, because I don't think it'll happen: all the current tuning of mob resist in the game are set up for the way penetration works right now. So changing it is a lot of work. And if you just half the value/mana cost multiplier, would they still be worth using in PvE? Somehow I doubt it.

Be interesting if im raised an important topic, or i'm a total noob. Id like to see alot of depth and balance in this game, as i see no reason for it not to have strong pvp balance. This isnt hard to do for what im referring to, ie- Huge cold attacks vs huge cold resist, to me it makes sense at least.

Just to confirm penetration and resistance.

If someone has 100% resist and penetration lowers the cap but not the resist, then a player only need to have resistance equal to the curse. If penetration lowers the cap and resistance, then players need resistance equal to the penetration and curse? Which one is true?

it doesn't do either of these, really. But in practice, what penetration does is the same as if it lowered both the RESIST CAP and the RESIST SCORE together.

Mark's explanation is a lot more precise, and he says that my wording is incorrect. But my wording has the exact same result as his. It's also easier to understand than his explanation.

Against a 40% elemental weakness curse and a 30% penetration, you can ONLY USE 75%+40%=115% resist. If you have 115% resist you wind up capped at 75% after elemental weakness (115%-40% = 75%). Then the penetration puts you at 45% resist.

Now, if you have higher resist? It's useless. Say you have 120% resist score. EW drops that to 80%. Cap drops you to 75%. Penetration still sends you to 75% - 30% = 45%.

So you still only need resist cap plus enough to overcome the curse. You eat extra damage from penetration no matter how over-cap you are. The only way to overcome it is by adding to both your RESIST SCORE and your RESIST CAP together.

"

Zakaluka wrote:

it doesn't do either of these, really. But in practice, what penetration does is the same as if it lowered both the RESIST CAP and the RESIST SCORE together.

Mark's explanation is a lot more precise, and he says that my wording is incorrect. But my wording has the exact same result as his. It's also easier to understand than his explanation.

Against a 40% elemental weakness curse and a 30% penetration, you can ONLY USE 75%+40%=115% resist. If you have 115% resist you wind up capped at 75% after elemental weakness (115%-40% = 75%). Then the penetration puts you at 45% resist.

Now, if you have higher resist? It's useless. Say you have 120% resist score. EW drops that to 80%. Cap drops you to 75%. Penetration still sends you to 75% - 30% = 45%.

So you still only need resist cap plus enough to overcome the curse. You eat extra damage from penetration no matter how over-cap you are. The only way to overcome it is by adding to both your RESIST SCORE and your RESIST CAP together.

I see - so in theory from a dps players POV, playing against someone with high resistance, it's for cost effective to use penetration then cursing - since a curse can be removed by pots and resistance. Also reducing someones cap resistance is far stronger then lowering the value. IMO only way penetration can be defended is by increasing your cap, which only certain classes have access to, or using Purity, which only gives 4% to cap? Seems penetration is the real killer, but also having 75% resist doesn't do what i personally thought it would.