So got in a little debate with Hunter, wanted to hear others opinions.

I said an uber topaz, ruby, sapphire. That gives you 32% absorbed damage to each element, and 110% to all res (psn still 50%).

Hunter said uber skulls, for DR obviously.

I think the uber skulls are pointless for a few reasons.

1. DR is easy to max on a hdin. 10% mancer set, 2x bers in mancer helm for 20%, 10% enigma, 10%+ from frozen armor. That's 50% already.

2. I understand over 50% is to counter the effects of amplify damage curse which does -80%. Though this curse is on you a LOT its still only on you maybe 20% of the time.

3. DR helps vs physical attacks. Paladins though have very high defense and 75% chance to block. My druid has 48k defense with frozen armor on and the highest chance to be hit is from a minion of destruction which does like 7% chance to hit. Most others are 5% which means 95% chance you wont get hit. And even if the hit goes through, you have a 75% chance to block. Which gives you a whopping 98.75% chance of not getting hit.

4. Elemental spells hit you 100% of the time (unless your a zon with dodge, and i think assassins may be able to claw block it? not sure). Never the less, it helps to have good resists and absorb. You want about 275% all resists in case you have conviction or lower res on you (similar to the theory with amp but makes a bit more sense since these attacks will ALWAYS hit you).

5. 32% absorb all elements frees your rings from needing to swap out for absorbing rings. Not to mention with max res practically nullifies elemental attacks. This allows you to use rings for max FCR.

Thoughts? Ideas? feel free to contribute.

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The body is but a vessel for the soul, a puppet which bends to the souls tyranny. And lo, the body is not eternal, for it must feed on the flesh of others, lest it return to the dust from whence it came. Therefore the soul deceive, despise and murder men.

You and I have different views on the word "easy". I don't consider bers or SM full set to be "easy"1. I do consider 3x skull "easy" though. If I *did* have all that gear, I might consider diamonds to stack my resists before absorbs. Only time you need 40% absorb is against very strong elemental attacks, so I would just toss on rings for that.

Has anyone tried tossing Sur's in for the increased %magic dmg? I wonder what it would actually bring you to.



1 taking SM set and Ber donations and then I will feel that it was easy

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People who live in cinder block houses can throw whatever they want.

normally id be on your side, but id rather save the sockets in helm for life.
im pretty sure frozen armor doesnt give dr%, only flat dr. could be hidden though but i havent heard it gives dr%. the sorbs are better choices imo but only if you can find a way to get 50% DR without using sockets for other gear. on a hammerdin, i dont think thats the case.

you are also forgetting skills like tornado which autohit. Elemental skills have regular res to nerf their damage on top of the absorb. Physical skills only have DR% (flat dr isnt doing anything in hell so its no use). And considering all the issues with double tornado and next hit delay, those skills can be a real issue.

If it was flat dr points then it would be pretty useless. Similar to Iron Skin which gives +1% dr per level and Max Resist which gives +1% magic res per level. Frozen armor gives +1 every 2 levels.

How many enemies use tornado? I think Juggernaut may.

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The body is but a vessel for the soul, a puppet which bends to the souls tyranny. And lo, the body is not eternal, for it must feed on the flesh of others, lest it return to the dust from whence it came. Therefore the soul deceive, despise and murder men.

haha xD

Well if you can afford a dscale, sm set, enigma, and the other stuff... chances are bers are easy. Its highest rune I've found personally, I've found 2 and I gave 1 away.

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The body is but a vessel for the soul, a puppet which bends to the souls tyranny. And lo, the body is not eternal, for it must feed on the flesh of others, lest it return to the dust from whence it came. Therefore the soul deceive, despise and murder men.

errrrr. wrong, try again.

look at the skills. They dont mention anything about %reduction or magic resistance. its flat damage reduced and flat magic damage reduced. having magic resist or damage reduced% on those skills would be completely overpowered obviously.

if it somehow is %dr and %magic resistance, then its improperly labeled and definitely should be changed to flat dr and mdr, because those skills are already strong (Frozen armor is completely overpowered too)

tornado (only a few that i know of, im pretty sure there are more): summoner, amon, darkness, los druid (which does around 15k i think with max dr%).

with your setup, you need to go with skulls. like blue said, there arent too many bosses with giant single-hit elemental spells...most are small damage multi-hit spells (firestorm, orb, charged bolt, etc)

dont argue with me and pious at the same time... we were right...

so 3x uber skull? or 2x uber + 1 celestrial sphere?

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People who live in cinder block houses can throw whatever they want.

Before talking so much, learn a lil bit about game mechanics. Ur talking bullshit.

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"I am who I am. Your approval isn't needed"

What else is new with Cory.

Read carefully the quote I did and you will discover why

@Cory:

Iron skin gives neat dr per level, not %dr.
Natural res gives neat mdr per level, not %mdr.

Juggernaut doesnt cast tornadoes, but molten boulder, fissures, and other fire skills.



congratulations! you is da Mastah of DeeAblow too! ( diablo 2)
jah/ber runes and specially Sm set are NOT easy. Soz. GG. Try again later.

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"I am who I am. Your approval isn't needed"

I think my little joke went over your head. xD

I run 2x skulls, 1x diamond, and I have a big enough stack to repel LR or conviction(though not both) in hell.

It's also not a bad idea to throw Ruby/Topaz/Sapphire to max sorbs/elemental res, though this leaves poison lacking.

If you have maxed absorbs, then resistances don't matter very much, so maybe don't worry so much about stacking them. With maxed absorbs and -200% resistances, you still cutting the monsters's damage by 40%. With -100% res, you're cutting the damage by 60%. With 0% res, you're cutting the damage by 80%, and with 75% res, you're cutting it by 95%.

It doesn't help for poison though, and I'd agree that poison in HU is pretty over the top. I think it was Hell Andy's poison that does about 10k dmg, despite 75% res, before wearing off (I don't remember the res or reduction well). Antidotes are your friend, but if the poison is constantly applied, then I guess there's not much else you can do but try SoBarbs/Fade/Cleansing. I've got a sorc with Nat's armor (75% reduction) and it does practically nothing against major poison sources.

Poison is actually useless, wear a metalgrid or party with someone who does/druid.

Elemental damage from counters do massive damage, so sorb and stack is definitely useful. The difference in surviving even a2 ardual is easily clear when you have constant 75 res and your res juggles between 75 and 20 - even with 40 sorb.



Poison lasts twice as long in hell, so you're not even reducing it to it's normal damage with nat's armor. Try slapping on 275% reduction and you'll see a difference.

Yes, you will see a difference in the damage you're taking when your resitances change from 75 to 20. The difference will be exactly +220% more damage taken with that drop in resitances. Relative to Ardual's actual damage, it's not a big change (11%), due to the 40% absorbs. It's that small change that my post is meant to describe. If your character was taking 10 damage at 75% res, then they're taking 32 damage at 20% Res, but the damages are so small that the res just doesn't matter that much. The numbers should be relatively small (reduced 80%) after the absorbs have kicked in. True, SoBarbs/Fade/Cleansing are all very effective against poison, I didn't meant to say that they were not. I had not considered that the doubling of duration was applied as a "+100% duration" mod. In that case, 175% reduction does make sense, as "+100% - 175% = 25%" (I've been told that 25% duration is a hard-cap). If I can find a nice hat with 75% reduction for that sorc, perhaps I'll give it a try and see if I can get down to 50% it's Normal duration. If it really does, then I'll consider what I can do about the final 25%.

1000 damage, 40% absorb, 75% resistance
75% of the damage is resisted, 250 damage
40% of 250 damage is converted to health, 100 damage
Total damage taken 50.

1000 damage, 40% absorb, 20% resistance
20% of the damage is resisted, 800 damage
40% of 800 damage is converted to health, 320 damage
Total damage taken 160.

More than a 220% increase in damage.

Ummm

Looked right to me.

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I was never more at home than I was in battle. - Solomon Kane

i fail at math, sup?

i have no idea why anyone is even mentioning numbers about absorbs when he clearly mentioned his setup and it would benefit him to stack skulls in there anyways. the dscale already gives 20% of each sorb, no need for ruby/saph/topaz considering his setup. the DR is more important.

the ruby/saph/topaz would be much better suited for a smiter or zealot using a higher DR% setup.

Keep in mind that this thread is supposed to be the hypothetical discussion of what would be best in the 3 sockets of the level 95 unique pally shield Shield. There is no specific character mentioned, so there is no setup to consider.

I mentioned the absorbs because there were some ideas in the thread about whether or not to include a Celestial Sphere in the shield, so my post was to show that the Sphere wouldn't be as useful as maxing his absorbs.

There was also a point in one of the posts about how a Ruby, Sapphire, and Topaz would leave poison resists lacking, which is one of the reasons my initial post brought up the topic of poison reduction and antidotes.

I admit that stacking dr% beyond 50% didn't seem important to me, since it's pretty easy to get either Fade, Cleansing, or Spirit of Barbs when you're high enough level to use DScale. Curses shouldn't last that long when you've got one of those anti-curse skills going. Stacking resistances didn't seem that important either, since absorbs can't be lowered and when maxed, they make resistances less important.

If the paladin did not have curse resistance, then they should figure that into their gear. Perhaps use one of the ring slots or ammy slot for Whisp Projector or Metalgrid. With curse resistance, most cases of Amp damage go away in a few seconds. Most Paladins should be able to avoid a hit in those seconds due to high defence and block rate. If for some reason the Amp is constantly spammed, and the opponent is primarily physical damage (like in PvP), then I agree that elemental absorbs are not useful. For that specific situation, you might want to switch to a more phys-resistant setup (such as Weakness curse on the opponent). You'd lose the +Skills from DScale, but that probably won't change your damage by more than 15%, so your fight will last a little longer. At least you would last long enough to finish the fight.

i guess he didnt SPECIFICALLY say he was a hammerdin, but taking the fact that hes using enigma and a full mancers set (mentioned in the first post), id say its safe to assume he is. but for the sake of discussion in general, heres my 2 cents:

skulls wouldnt be for stacking DR% over 50...it would be getting to that point. using 10% DR from mancers set and 10% from enigma, hes short 30% dr. 2 skulls would get him close, 3 putting him over by 6%. im not a fan of the ber runes in helm taking sockets for str from thysts/dext from emeralds/%life and vit from rubies. the ber runes for the DR% arent my thing

theres nothing wrong with the 12% extra sorb, but for most bosses even the 20% combined with 75 all res seems to be enough elemental protection. if its really necessary, swapping one unique ring for the extra 20% is always an option.

now i completely agree with you otherwise for other builds. im not big into the over 50% DR to cover amp either, especially on a paladin. considering the paladin will be having max block with hshield and a ton of defense (should be pretty easy to reach over 100k with the defense from dscale and other gear), melee/amp shouldnt be too much of a worry. so once you get 50% DR from other gear (smiter or zealot or even other builds), then no question the extra sorb is worth it.

There was a thread a couple months ago about how important it was to cap dr%. The summary of my contribution to that thread was the "Effective Life" of the player relative to the element being resisted (phys in that case). I bring it up now, because the 6%dr missing from the 2 Skull in shield setup was equivalent to +22%Life. Even if you used a lvl 5 Fade item to gain another 5%, you're still missing out on +4%Life. The +%Life in this case takes effect after all regular +%HP gear such as the 10% on Enigma.

Here's a small table of resistance to one element and the effective life buff:
This table is meant to illustrate how important the lasts % of absorbs or phys res can be when it comes to maximizing your apparent life. It shows Absorbs being more important that resistances because they give a lot more effective life, but also they cannot be lowered. Although the numbers make it look like resistanves with Absorbs are awsomely godly, the numbers you come across start to become so low that you may as well pump your offense and drink a healing potion instead of capping your res.

Moral of the story:
If you've capped your Absorbs and dr%, but you're still taking huge hits, then those hits are either Magical damage or Poison.

the boost to survivability from having 40% sorb compared to 30 are HUGE, from personal experience with my pally at the start of the season. I generaly used res auras to cap my sorbs and got fana from the nec i was running with. Capping his Dr% along with maxed res and sob meant he was able to do all of hell baals minions + baal with a belt and a half of juvs. In comparison, my druid last season needed a good half cube of juvs along with a belt in order to do the same task and that was with around the same ammount of life.

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it is, but my point is that i think DR% comes first when you have a shield like dscale. my view is if and only if you get 50%DR from gear (not ber runes in sockets though), should a dscale be socketed with more sorbs, for reasons that you said (res auras to cover the rest of the sorb) or a unique ring to cover it. there are hardly any bosses in the game that require even 30% absorb of all 3 elements; usually a boss will have a very strong one element that can be covered by one of the 2 methods just mentioned.

Talking strictly from my own experience at the start of the season. When we were on route to hell baal, the lower res and conviction was really hurting our summons and the 3 of us too. I switched to salvation for that to counter it, but when there was conviction from the horadrim ancients along with Lr we were in real trouble. With 30+ passive absorb, you can use slavation to keep everyone else alive and pretty much negate lr+conv together.

You don't need ber runes to hit max dr% and if you can get near to full absorbs without using a res aura then you are free to use other party friendly auras like convic/fanat. I tend to switch between pretty much every aura on a pally, and every aura has its own hotkey. If I can pick and choose the aura with the most benefit to the party without lowering my own survivability then thats a massive +1 for me.

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Jah runes!! FTW

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I was never more at home than I was in battle. - Solomon Kane

Now Fury mentions hrs...

Did anyone think about putting 3 x sur in that shield?
+18% magic skill dmg... maybe worths if the rest of the equipment covers resists, sorbs and def...

♥

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"I am who I am. Your approval isn't needed"

Does +% magic damage work. Thought thats why they removed it from facets, because it didn't work.

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I was never more at home than I was in battle. - Solomon Kane

pretty sure it wont. I tried that with a sanc zealer and there was no increase to the magic damage from the skill.

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