Maximum Life
The main sources of maximum life are as follows:
1. Random affixes on chest armor
2. Socketing with ruby
3. Some shout skills and passives of the Barbarian (Barbarian only)
4. Open world exploration, obtaining permanent bonuses from Lilith’s altar
Up: Diablo 4 does not encourage blindly stacking maximum life. Players also need to combine a certain amount of defensive ability to increase effective life (EHP) which is key.
Life Recovery
Life recovery methods are as follows:
1. Use potions to immediately recover 35% of maximum life and recover a certain absolute amount of life within 3 seconds (depending on your potions level)
2. Helmets and amulets have a chance to have random affixes that regenerate life per second
3. Random affixes that recover life on kill can appear on equipment such as helmets, amulets, and rings. Socketing with a skull on weapons can also obtain this attribute.
4. Some skill effects and passive effects will recover a certain percentage of your life when met.
5. Healing wells in the wild, blood springs in dungeons, doctors in towns.
Up: The mechanism of life recovery in Diablo 4 is weak, and in most cases it mainly relies on eating potions. Effects such as high recovery、high steal、high hit recovery life in POE are basically non-existent in Diablo 4. Especially compared to the damage caused by the enemy to you, it is even more insignificant, so for some healing recovery equipment affixes, you can also consider it at a low priority and give way to better output affixes.
Fortify and Barrier
Barrier can be deducted instead of blood when you take damage. After obtaining the barrier, there will be a blue film covering the blood ball.
The barrier has a duration and will disappear after the time is up. The duration of multiple barriers is calculated separately. So sometimes there will be a situation where it decreases one by one.
After Fortify is obtained, there will be a deepened red outline around the blood ball.
Barbarians and Druids can easily obtain fortify through talents. When your fortify value is greater than or equal to your current life value, you will enter a fortified state and gain an additional 10% global damage reduction.
Fortify also participates in the calculation of suppression damage together with life.
Armor and Resistance (Key)
Armor
Armor in Diablo 4 is the main way to reduce damage and applies to both physical and elemental damage.
The current formula for armor damage reduction is temporarily unknown. According to known information, the effect of armor damage reduction is related to the level difference between players and monsters.
The higher the level of monsters, the weaker the player’s armor damage reduction effect.
Based on the monster level, player level, and current armor value of the player, an armor damage reduction rate can be calculated. We assume that this reduction rate = 60%. Then the physical damage reduction rate is 60%.
In addition to reducing physical damage, armor also has a reduction effect on elemental damage (fire,cold,lightning, poison,shadow), but the reduction effect has a discount.
In PVE (when fighting monsters): only 50% of physical reduction effect (half effect), for example, the previous example of 60% physical reduction rate, for pve elemental damage it is 30%.
In pvp (when fighting other players): only 65% of physical reduction effect (half effect), for example, the previous example of 60% physical reduction rate, for pvp elemental damage it is 39%
Resistance
Resistance is divided into five categories: fire, cold, lightning, poison, shadow.
The resistance to elemental damage reduction is intuitive. For example, if a player has 10% fire resistance, then the fire damage received *90%. With 60% lightning resistance, lightning damage received *40%.
It should be noted here that elemental damage reduction is calculated in stages.
1. First reduced by armor. For example, if you receive 100 points of fire damage, armor first reduces 30% of the damage and the inflicted damage becomes 70 points.
2. Further reduced by elemental resistance. For example, if a player has 10% fire resistance, then the received damage = 70 * (1-10%) = 63 points.
3. If at this time the player still has other fire damage reduction affixes or effects, continue to reduce the 63 points of damage.
If players have the armor affixes [the fire damage you receive is reduced by 12%]
Then at this time the player receives fire damage = 63 * (1-12%) = 55.44
It should be noted that different sources of damage reduction are calculated multiplicatively. For example, if a player has 50% fire resistance and also gains the attribute [fire damage taken reduced by 50%], then the player will not be 100% immune to fire damage. Instead, the reduction is calculated separately, and the player will ultimately take 25% fire damage and reduce it by 75% (this example does not consider armor’s reduction of elemental damage).
Up: According to the decomposition of the resistance formula, the actual benefit of elemental resistance has become not so high. Therefore, when considering equipment affixes, more attention should be paid to damage affixes, followed by resistance affixes. Prioritizing stacking armor can also bring a lot of elemental damage reduction. The benefit of elemental resistance is actually weakened due to the role of armor.
Other Damage Reduction Affixes
In addition to armor and resistance, there are also some affix effects that can also reduce damage. They also add a new calculation link in the process of participating in damage reduction calculations to further reduce damage. The specific list is as follows:
1. In PVP, all professions can gain an additional 92% damage reduction (if you don’t play pvp, don’t worry about it, it’s just a balancing method for designers)
2. Random affixes on chest armor have a chance to produce some specific damage reduction affixes, such as reducing ranged damage by xx%, reducing close-range damage by xx%
3. Skill-induced damage reduction effects, such as Rogue’s Dark Shroud
4. Some legendary affix effects, such as the affixes listed in the previous resistance section.
5. An additional 10% global damage reduction obtained in a fortified state
These damage reduction affixes will be added up and then calculated if they are the same. If they are different types, they are still calculated multiplicatively.
Dodge
When you are hit and judged, dodge will give you a chance to avoid being hit and completely avoid damage and various defensive states after being hit. However, continuous ground damage cannot be dodged.
Ways to obtain dodge attributes:
1. Each point of dexterity gives a 0.025% dodge chance
2. There is a chance to brush out in random affixes on leg armor and boots.
3. Some passive talents of Rogue directly increase dodge chance by 3%
4. Some legendary affixes such as “you increase x% dodge chance against enemies affected by continuous damage effects”
It is worth noting that different dodge attributes are calculated separately and will not be added together.
For example, Player A’s Rogue obtained a 30% dodge chance through dexterity attributes and passive talents, and also obtained a legendary affix [“you increase your dodge chance against enemies affected by continuous damage effects by 20%”], then his final dodge chance is not 30% +20%=50% Instead, judge whether it is successful according to 30%, and then judge again according to 20%
This ensures that there will be no situation where dodge is full to 100% resulting in invincibility. And a single dodge attribute cannot be stacked to 100%.
In summary: Through the above decomposition summary, Diablo 4’s defense mechanism encourages multiple effects to stack up. Stacking a single defense effect is often not the best solution.
Everyone needs to improve a certain amount of life, a certain amount of armor value and appropriate resistance in order to have a good defense.
On this basis, if you have the ability to further obtain some additional damage reduction methods through legendary affixes and skill effects, it will be safer.
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