Magic damage, too much mitigation? (in General)

Magic damage can be reduced by the following effects, listed in order;

1) Ranged penalty
2) AMF
3) Mage Shield
4) Troll Skin Armour
5) AC Enchantment
6) Endurance
7) Protection


I've got a very mediocre magic reduction set up on my Tank, MgS (+23), TSA (+22), AC (+39), Endurance Aura and Protection (4). Taking just my armour into account, magic damage is reduced to around 55.14% (nearly ½ damage) on the first round of combat. This will increase due to the TSA's loss of Magic reduction in following rounds.

As it's unknown exactly how Protection works, I've left the reduction from my base protection out of this calculation.

Consider next the Endurance reduction reaching the 75% cap (hard from an aura, but possible in some cases). That would reduce the damage taken to 13.79%. But I've still left some factors out.

I'm going to simplify the reduction of 'split' DD spells to be exactly equal over all targets. We need a minimum of two minions to get a ToE aura on a MgS wearer, so let's look at what FB would do in the first round of combat;

(From 100% Damage)
1) Ranged/Split target penalty: 35%
2) Mage Shield +23: 26.95%
3) Troll Skin Armour +22: 21.021%
4) AC Enchantment +39: 19.3%
5) Endurance 75% cap: 4.82%

No matter how large your FB is in the first round of combat, you will only do (on average) 4.82% of it’s damage to my Tank minion. This will increase to 6.3% in the second round and 7.52% in the third (for as long as both my minions live).

My equipment can still be upgraded quite easily and I'm not even using AMF.

It's not as much reduction versus MM, (assuming combat starts from the first MM attack) taking the first attack down to 11.03%, but that's still nothing to sneeze at!

Physical damage doesn't have that much scope for mitigation available. It would take an AC of 452 to get a 95% damage reduction to physical damage.

Endurance also blocks physical damage remember :)

Here is one attack against you with FB lvl 1.2mil

Play-by-play

Good Guy Tate
The Chant cast Dispel Magic on all enemy Minions (329,522)
The Chant cast Ablative Shield on all friendly Minions (59644)
Mage's Protection fizzles under Dispel Magic
Tate cast Dispel Magic on all enemy Minions (60,000)
Lyle's Protection fizzles under Dispel Magic
Tate's Vampiric Aura fizzles under Dispel Magic
Ranged Combat
Mage's Fireball hit Lyle [77901], Tate [117625]


R.I.P. Lyle
Mage's Fireball hit Tate [335265]
R.I.P. Tate

Krasko, you miss the point.

My set up isn't great. I started my tank late and he's very small. He doesn't have a lot of HP. the same for my tatoo. It's very small for my level.

I used myself only as an exmaple of how much a medicore amount of gear can reduce magic damage.

Sahde, you're right. Hitting the cap with a ToE you would only need 380 AC to get a 95% reduction...

One last thing Krasko, (simplifying again.) a 1.2 Mil FB should do on average around 600K to a single target, so let's say 300K to two.

Lyle then took around 26% of the damage you could inflick. I don't think that's too bad at all.

especially as my TSA is at the BS...

;)

GL,

Couple of things to keep in mind.

First. Most FB's esp the 1.2 million FB overwhelms your TOE by a lot.

Second. Each area of protection is a layer, not additive.

Third. AC enchantment of +39 is only about 8.2% DD reduction. Not 19% as in your example.

Most FB mages have FB's that overwhelm the TOE by a lot. For instance, take the largest FB vs the largest tattoo. 1.67 million (without AG's counted) vs 1.4 million. With the AG's about 1.8 million FB. So 400k of the FB is blowing right though any potential TOE I might have. Thats still a lot of fire damage to take.

If you can keep multiple minions alive you can split the FB and get it under the ToE cap without much trouble.

Jack Crow 450k pr with a ToE of about 500k lvl, large AMF, and two high AC mage shield walls could take on that largest FB spell and win. I spent a lot of time working out how best to reduce that magic damage. By the time I'd had enough of mages, the ToE wearing mage was taking a hit of 35k in spread fire, with the walls taking only 7k per hit. All that from an FB spell of over 1.6 million in level......

But...

Magic damage reduction is very very powerful, especially when you combine the various different ways you can shave that damage down. However the downside of placing so much emphasis on defense against one type of attack is that you leave yourself vulnerable to physical damage. I couldn't stop one tank team at my level. Not one. A few draws but nothing noteworthy. All that defensive strength was useless against physical damage.

Ranger, sorry that 19% was a running total of what the damage had been reduced too, not the individual figure it was reduced by. By stage 4) the damage had been reduced to 19.3% of it's total.

johnny, bar outrageous AC, ToA inflated Dex and/or massive NW spent on DBs, how do you mitigate tank damage?

It's far easier and cheaper to mitigate magical damage...

I think I took damage reduction as far as it would go; all I had left was increasing my AC and that's just a matter of spending.

With so many more tank teams higher up I suspect concentrating on offense rather than defense is the key. Where tanks are concerned you need to be hitting harder, faster for more times rather than trying to cut their attacks down.

Be Conan in his loincloth rather than some knight in armour, half blind and moving in slow motion....

Now there's a visual.

Yes. Loincloth posting. The new 'drunken posting'.

Or an interesting animal thong posing pouch!

Ann Summers has some that make their respective animal noises when squeezed! ;)

Yes, the elephant one is my particular favourite....

"I suspect concentrating on offense rather than defense is the key. Where tanks are concerned you need to be hitting harder, faster for more times rather than trying to cut their attacks down."

That's why I'm taking magic attacks down to 5% and spending my cash on the most damaging weapon in the game and pairing it with BL. ;)

Now, all I need is an unlimited bankroll!

I personally wouldn't include 1) in your calculations, yes more minions does mean reduced damage per minion but it doesn't reduce the total magic damage inflicted on you, just splits it amongst more minions, also the ranged penalty only lasts in ranged and is less in rounds 2 and 3 of ranged (I think?) and isn't effected by equipment. If you take this out and the TOE factor since it reduces physical damage as well you only get about a 40% reduction from your equipment which can be achieved by an AC of around 200.

As far as equipment that reduces Physical Damage, there's AC, DB's, Enforcers Bow and Ethereal Chains, a couple of these things aren't particularly effective I know but they must have some use.

Derek, Why would I want to not include those? I'm not comparing magic damage reduction of a particular strat to physical damage in another.

I'm trying to show how all available reductions methods can be easily combined to reduce magic dmage, easily, to next to notihng.

Spread damage helps ToE's reach their caps.

And;
"but it doesn't reduce the total magic damage inflicted on you, just splits it amongst more minions"

For FB, yes it does. FB deals more overall damage the less minions it has to target. A same level FB hitting 4 minons does less total damage than one hitting a single. I simplified this in my calculations, as I have no idea how much more damage is done for a single target.

If I wanted to look at physical in it's entirerity, it would indeed look something like;

Ignoring dex and multiple hits...)
1) EC reduciton to Str
2) EXBow reduction to Str
3) AC
4) Endurance
5) Protection

A lot less interesting than magic damage reduction.

"less in rounds 2 and 3 of ranged (I think?)"

Yup, 30%, 20% and 10%. I included these in the FB calculations I gave above.