Hey guys, I've been looking to find a thread with meaningful discussion about AR and when it might become bad to keep stacking it. Since I havn't found one, I thought I might start up a thread using my current stats and maybe people could help me (and others who're curious) understand it better.
I'm going to start off by listing my profile, damage/toughness while self-buffed and current defensive stats;
Self-buffed (without Unwavering Will active) damage and toughness:
Damage - 675k
Tougness - 5,085,000
1750 Physical & Arcane Resist
1875 Cold, Fire, & Lightning Resist
2156 Poison Resist
This is without Unwavering Will active which boosts them by roughly 300-350 each.
Self-buffed I have 221k HP. I only have 273 Life per Second, 364 Life per Hit, 0 Life per Kill, and 0 Life Steal.
My armor is 5826 which is a 62.47% reduction in damage. With Unwavering Will active, it goes up to 6646/65.50% so I don't think getting more armor is that helpful and I'm currently working on the 25% bonus armor from Paragon levels (filled up AR first). I'm at 7% out of the 25% available.
On T3 since I have virtually 0 Life per Second/Life per Hit, I can die extremely fast to ranged mobs if I'm not paying attention even though I can kill things very quickly (Elites drop pretty fast too since I have a level 60 SoJ with arcane damage on it). Since it's seemingly ranged mobs that give me the most trouble, I'd like to focus my defence on taking less damage from this.
Taking my Physical Resist into account atm, when mousing over WITHOUT Unwavering Will active, it says it reduces physical damage from level 70 mobs by 83.33% + 16.99%. That's a lot, I don't see another 16.67% being as helpful as getting more HP, Life per Hit, or anything else for that matter.
My belt is String of Ears which currently reduces damage from melee attacks by a whopping 27% which allows to me survive melee attacks fairly easily. Is there an item that reduces ranged damage by 25 - 30% or more?
I still have 6 pieces of level 60 gear to replace which will no doubt bring up my toughness some but only 2 - 3 of them will give me increased toughness once replaced since the others are dedicated to damage. I also planned on replacing my Diamonds with Topaz once I can craft them, which will be around a 90 AR loss.
So, my questions are;
1. How does the percent damage reduction from AR work, where is the +16.99% coming from and how it is added?
2. What is the most important stat/stats for Wizards after getting around 80% damage reduction from AR? Is 80% a good number to stop?
3. Is there an item like my belt that, instead of giving 27% reduced damage from melee attacks that will give roughly the same to ranged?
4. My goal is to be able to destroy mobs and elites very quickly while being able to live in full T4 group (if other people are pulling their weight) since that's where I'll be farming since T5/T6 is just too slow, but I'd still like to be able to maybe solo T6 for EXP later in the expansion. What would you change about to gearing strategy to help me accomplish this? I love my Arcane Torrent build, have been with it since 60 and it's amazing.
EDIT: My profile is NOT showing the stats I've enchanted into, it's showing what was still there so some of it might seem a little bad.
anyway all Defensive bonuses you get are multiplicative except block value.
So its armor X restist x elite reduction x damage reduction from melee/range.
as they all are multiplicative and AR and Armor have diminishing returns you will never reach 100% mitigation. at most you will get 99.9999...%
As for AR VS Armor. That's an whole other story. but looking at gear (wizard) you get 10% of your int as AR and 100% of your STR as armor (but a int class don't get to much STR)
SO onwards to your questions.
1. the + sign is a bit confusing. but it is "correct" but it means your AR + 17% or if you calculate it AR*1.17.
2. as everything is Multiplicative and has diminishing returns you will want to get a healthy mix of armor and all resist and reduction stats.
Here's the formula that I use to estimate damage reduction: (1-Reduction from Resistance)*(1-Reduction from Armor)*(Raw Damage)*(1-.17 from blur passive)*(1-Reduced Damage from Elites)= Actual Damage that you take.
So for example if you have 70% Reduced damage from armor, 80% reduced damage from Resistance, you chose Blur as one of your passives, you have items that reduce damage from elites by 25% and the boss would hit you for 1 million, if you are completely naked, the actual damage you will take will look like this: (1-.7)*(1-.8)(1 million)*(1-.17)*(1-.25)= 37.4k damage. As you can see, your total reduction would be 1- 37.4k/1mil = 96.3%.
Short answer is it's never bad to stack AR as a wizard. Except for the slots like chest and pants that can roll over 500 armor, AR on a piece should always be better than an armor roll (not counting those that use Energy Armor, which can put armor rolls on par with AR depending on your actual stats). Damage mitigation is always good to have and you can literally never have too much. Even if you have so much mitigation that you can't get illusionist to proc, you can still use more (since more mitigation means less damage taken which means your life replenishment stats are better).
As for your low life replenishment stats, you can put paragon points into LoH, which is what I do. With good mitigation, that LoH can go a long ways.
As for your low life replenishment stats, you can put paragon points into LoH, which is what I do. With good mitigation, that LoH can go a long ways.
This, pretty much. I've put 50 paragon points in both LoH and Regen and it makes a huge difference compared to AR or Armor. I also use templar and Magic Weapon + Deflection to live well on T4 when playing solo.
I swapped my AR paragon points to life regen at 70. Not sure if it is actually better, but ~8k life regen/sec feels better than 235 all resist.
Personally I like the AR more than Life regen because I used my other points on LoH. With around 6-8k LoH I don't really need much life regen, and the AR makes LoH even better since AR mitigates damage. I only have 42 points in AR but without it, I take almost 16% more damage.
I swapped my AR paragon points to life regen at 70. Not sure if it is actually better, but ~8k life regen/sec feels better than 235 all resist.
Personally I like the AR more than Life regen because I used my other points on LoH. With around 6-8k LoH I don't really need much life regen, and the AR makes LoH even better since AR mitigates damage. I only have 42 points in AR but without it, I take almost 16% more damage.
I use LoH and regen, I have enough toughness to do T2/3 in my DPS gear but healing it back feels too slow.
A good rule for every class: stack AR up to ~900-1100. Then think about Vit/%Life.
I disagree. I'd rather stack AR and armor as high as I can and just keep enough hp to not get 2-3 shot by things. That makes it easier to manage loh/life regen and such. If you take 50% less damage, your LoH is twice as good, in other words.
Like a lot of others on the official forums, I tend to think vit and life% are overrated for most people.
I swapped my AR paragon points to life regen at 70. Not sure if it is actually better, but ~8k life regen/sec feels better than 235 all resist.
I second that. It's really subjective though; I just noticed that with life regen it just feels safer than with the 250 allres. I guess it's because over 8k LPS are actually quite noticeable; if you manage to escape a mob's range for ~5 seconds you already regenerated enough life to take another hit.
@Life vs mitigation: In my opinion it's all about balance. For a good balance I feel that mitigation is way more important, but completely neglecting life won't cut it either. I'm at 96.5% mitigation but only 300k life and feel that I could use a bit more life now. Whenever I go too strong in either direction I end up in an uncomfortable situation; it's so easy to swap 3-4 items and end up with 600k life but bad mitigation and vice versa. And in the end, I just play with whatever "feels best".
There is not much point going beyond 1500 AR as you get ~5% dmg reduction for ~500 ress after it. And you need about 10-11k armor for ~80% reduction. I'm thinking of rolling some items with armor as opposed to all ress.
from what i have learned and was told maxing AR so high can be kind of redundant at a point. You could easily roll a bit more vit without sacraficing much AR keeping your AR still high (which yours is extremely) and doubling your life. you wont take double damage just by taking away a reasonable amount of AR and you will be better off.
However if you are bound on staying with that kind of vit, then life regen / LoH will do wonders since your pool is so low.
There is not much point going beyond 1500 AR as you get ~5% dmg reduction for ~500 ress after it. And you need about 10-11k armor for ~80% reduction. I'm thinking of rolling some items with armor as opposed to all ress.
The problem is if you're at say 80% total damage reduction, and say 500 AR puts you to 85%, you're not just gaining 5% reduction, you're taking 25% less damage since you go from taking 20% to 15% damage from mobs. Or, you're taking 33% more damage at 80% mitigation than someone with 85% mitigation. That's why AR and armor is always good.
With my current knowledge and testing, i came to the conclusion that 5 armor is better than 1 AR. So i usually try to roll armor on pieces that can get only 100AR but close to 600 armor like chest and pants. While I haven't testes all possible skill/ gear combinations it seemed like this holds for all cases.
That depends on your actual values of AR and armor. For me, 1 AR is worth about 5.44 armor, and I don't use EA. If you use Energy Armor or crystalize, it swings a bit more in favor of Armor. That's also part of the reason I use my spreadsheet. I also go for armor on chest and pants for the same reason.
from what i have learned and was told maxing AR so high can be kind of redundant at a point. You could easily roll a bit more vit without sacraficing much AR keeping your AR still high (which yours is extremely) and doubling your life. you wont take double damage just by taking away a reasonable amount of AR and you will be better off.
However if you are bound on staying with that kind of vit, then life regen / LoH will do wonders since your pool is so low.
Higher AR and armor definitely does wonders for your life replenishment. That's the purpose of damage mitigation: sustainability. The purpose of life/vit is to live through burst damage and give a bit of a cushion depending on the sustained damage.
The reason I say vit is overrated is because once you have enough total EHP to survive a couple large hits from whatever you want to survive, extra vit likely won't help much at all. Also, if you don't have much Armor or AR, you'll take damage faster than you can replenish it, meaning you either have to kite (and lose edps) or you die more often, resulting in slower play.
In the end, as Bagstone said, it's about balance, and everyone will have their own balance. I happen to prefer around 200k hp and then as much AR and armor as I can get. For higher torment I wouldn't want to go much higher anyway, because it will make replenishing it a pain.
How do you guys have such high damage reduction? I think I'm under 70% damage mitigation, but my AR is over 2k. I forget exactly what my Armor is, but I do know my pants have Armor stacked. I also use blur.
How do you guys have such high damage reduction? I think I'm under 70% damage mitigation, but my AR is over 2k. I forget exactly what my Armor is, but I do know my pants have Armor stacked. I also use blur.
I always talk of total mitigation, which is a multiplicative combination of armor, AR, and blur damage reduction. When I calculate my personal mitigation, I'm around 94.1% in my gear set (though what I have equipped now is a little difference since I was trying some normal mode speed bounties). That means whena mob hits for 100k, I only take 5.9k damage.If I add 100 AR to that, I would only take around 5.5k, or about 6% less damage. Let me phrase that another way: 100 AR makes me take about 6% less damage. That's pretty similar for every 100 AR I add, though there's some slight scaling issue due to how armor and AR add to total mitigation.
As for the "10 armor= 1 AR" statement people like to quote on occasion, itis only true if you have 10x the armor as your AR. For wizards, that's nearly impossible since we get AR from our primary stat. Most of us are probably floating around the 6:1 ratio. For example, based on my torrent farming gear stats, 1 AR gives me 2933 EHP. 10 armor gives me 5311 EHP. That means my 1 AR is worth about 5.5 Armor. To give another example, that means an armor roll of 400 on a piece of gear gives me about the same EHP gain as a roll of 72 AR, which is why I prefer an AR roll on most pieces.
How do you guys have such high damage reduction? I think I'm under 70% damage mitigation, but my AR is over 2k. I forget exactly what my Armor is, but I do know my pants have Armor stacked. I also use blur.
I always talk of total mitigation, which is a multiplicative combination of armor, AR, and blur damage reduction. When I calculate my personal mitigation, I'm around 94.1% in my gear set (though what I have equipped now is a little difference since I was trying some normal mode speed bounties). That means whena mob hits for 100k, I only take 5.9k damage.If I add 100 AR to that, I would only take around 5.5k, or about 6% less damage. Let me phrase that another way: 100 AR makes me take about 6% less damage. That's pretty similar for every 100 AR I add, though there's some slight scaling issue due to how armor and AR add to total mitigation.
As for the "10 armor= 1 AR" statement people like to quote on occasion, itis only true if you have 10x the armor as your AR. For wizards, that's nearly impossible since we get AR from our primary stat. Most of us are probably floating around the 6:1 ratio. For example, based on my torrent farming gear stats, 1 AR gives me 2933 EHP. 10 armor gives me 5311 EHP. That means my 1 AR is worth about 5.5 Armor. To give another example, that means an armor roll of 400 on a piece of gear gives me about the same EHP gain as a roll of 72 AR, which is why I prefer an AR roll on most pieces.
How do you calculate it? Isn't it under details and first line under defense? When I hover my cursor over it tell me a percentage. Is that not my damage reduction?
where dr1, dr2, dr3, etc. are the AR, Armor, Blur, or any other damage reduction stat. MobLevel is the level of the mob, which I think is 73 at max level since it used to be 63 when the cap was 60. The in game values are based on lvl 70, if I'm not mistaken, because they just use your level for that stat.
where dr1, dr2, dr3, etc. are the AR, Armor, Blur, or any other damage reduction stat. MobLevel is the level of the mob, which I think is 73 at max level since it used to be 63 when the cap was 60. The in game values are based on lvl 70, if I'm not mistaken, because they just use your level for that stat.
I find it much easier to go with survivability factors instead of damage reductions, actually. Unless you want to alt-tab and load spreadsheet instead, that is.
Toughness = HP*armor_mod*res_mod*...
Where armor_mod is inverse of the damage reduction from armor, so it's "1+armor/3500" at lvl 70. Res_mod is "1+res/350". This makes it quite obvious what to pick, just take the mod which increases the respective factor by higher % of its current amount.
For examply, say, you've got 300k HP, 7k armor and 1.4k resists and you're making a choice between 100 AR, 600 armor(let's say it's a chest piece) and 10% life. Without any other modifiers considered life is the best toughness booster(though not necessarily the best choice, since it doesn't affect incoming healing), but if you have paragon armor boost, then it's a different story.
Anyway, the AR vs armor will most likely ever be a question(due to 4 primaries) on shoulders, chest piece and pants. Other slots have more valuable stats available and to add insult to the injury, they roll less armor values than those. Chest and pants will almost always be better off with armor rolls at a decent gear level, however. High paragon level makes it even more advantageous.
where dr1, dr2, dr3, etc. are the AR, Armor, Blur, or any other damage reduction stat. MobLevel is the level of the mob, which I think is 73 at max level since it used to be 63 when the cap was 60. The in game values are based on lvl 70, if I'm not mistaken, because they just use your level for that stat.
I find it much easier to go with survivability factors instead of damage reductions, actually. Unless you want to alt-tab and load spreadsheet instead, that is.
Toughness = HP*armor_mod*res_mod*...
Where armor_mod is inverse of the damage reduction from armor, so it's "1+armor/3500" at lvl 70. Res_mod is "1+res/350". This makes it quite obvious what to pick, just take the mod which increases the respective factor by higher % of its current amount.
For examply, say, you've got 300k HP, 7k armor and 1.4k resists and you're making a choice between 100 AR, 600 armor(let's say it's a chest piece) and 10% life. Without any other modifiers considered life is the best toughness booster(though not necessarily the best choice, since it doesn't affect incoming healing), but if you have paragon armor boost, then it's a different story.
Anyway, the AR vs armor will most likely ever be a question(due to 4 primaries) on shoulders, chest piece and pants. Other slots have more valuable stats available and to add insult to the injury, they roll less armor values than those. Chest and pants will almost always be better off with armor rolls at a decent gear level, however. High paragon level makes it even more advantageous.
My main issue with toughness is it factors in too many things. It includes single resists, so you might have some item showing as higher toughness with armor than AR, but it's because you have +lightning resistance or something like that. Against anything except lightning, the item could be worse. Or maybe it has +melee damage reduction, which is great for melee damage, but useless for projectiles that are all too deadly for wizards. That will be overinflated in toughness since it factors in that too. That's why I prefer EHP and damage reduction. That way I know exactly what I'm getting, in a conservative way since I use AR and ignore single resists.
What I prefer to do is stockpile some pieces that might be useful, then play around with them in a spreadsheet to see what they actually do.
I do agree that for chest and pants, wizards are almost universally better off with armor than AR (I prefer both, but that depends on where you get your vit from).
I'm going to start off by listing my profile, damage/toughness while self-buffed and current defensive stats;
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/PKHustle-1444/hero/40996176
Self-buffed (without Unwavering Will active) damage and toughness:
Damage - 675k
Tougness - 5,085,000
1750 Physical & Arcane Resist
1875 Cold, Fire, & Lightning Resist
2156 Poison Resist
This is without Unwavering Will active which boosts them by roughly 300-350 each.
Self-buffed I have 221k HP. I only have 273 Life per Second, 364 Life per Hit, 0 Life per Kill, and 0 Life Steal.
My armor is 5826 which is a 62.47% reduction in damage. With Unwavering Will active, it goes up to 6646/65.50% so I don't think getting more armor is that helpful and I'm currently working on the 25% bonus armor from Paragon levels (filled up AR first). I'm at 7% out of the 25% available.
On T3 since I have virtually 0 Life per Second/Life per Hit, I can die extremely fast to ranged mobs if I'm not paying attention even though I can kill things very quickly (Elites drop pretty fast too since I have a level 60 SoJ with arcane damage on it). Since it's seemingly ranged mobs that give me the most trouble, I'd like to focus my defence on taking less damage from this.
Taking my Physical Resist into account atm, when mousing over WITHOUT Unwavering Will active, it says it reduces physical damage from level 70 mobs by 83.33% + 16.99%. That's a lot, I don't see another 16.67% being as helpful as getting more HP, Life per Hit, or anything else for that matter.
My belt is String of Ears which currently reduces damage from melee attacks by a whopping 27% which allows to me survive melee attacks fairly easily. Is there an item that reduces ranged damage by 25 - 30% or more?
I still have 6 pieces of level 60 gear to replace which will no doubt bring up my toughness some but only 2 - 3 of them will give me increased toughness once replaced since the others are dedicated to damage. I also planned on replacing my Diamonds with Topaz once I can craft them, which will be around a 90 AR loss.
So, my questions are;
1. How does the percent damage reduction from AR work, where is the +16.99% coming from and how it is added?
2. What is the most important stat/stats for Wizards after getting around 80% damage reduction from AR? Is 80% a good number to stop?
3. Is there an item like my belt that, instead of giving 27% reduced damage from melee attacks that will give roughly the same to ranged?
4. My goal is to be able to destroy mobs and elites very quickly while being able to live in full T4 group (if other people are pulling their weight) since that's where I'll be farming since T5/T6 is just too slow, but I'd still like to be able to maybe solo T6 for EXP later in the expansion. What would you change about to gearing strategy to help me accomplish this? I love my Arcane Torrent build, have been with it since 60 and it's amazing.
EDIT: My profile is NOT showing the stats I've enchanted into, it's showing what was still there so some of it might seem a little bad.
anyway all Defensive bonuses you get are multiplicative except block value.
So its armor X restist x elite reduction x damage reduction from melee/range.
as they all are multiplicative and AR and Armor have diminishing returns you will never reach 100% mitigation. at most you will get 99.9999...%
As for AR VS Armor. That's an whole other story. but looking at gear (wizard) you get 10% of your int as AR and 100% of your STR as armor (but a int class don't get to much STR)
SO onwards to your questions.
1. the + sign is a bit confusing. but it is "correct" but it means your AR + 17% or if you calculate it AR*1.17.
2. as everything is Multiplicative and has diminishing returns you will want to get a healthy mix of armor and all resist and reduction stats.
3. dunno check the game guide here (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/belt/#type=legendary )
4. i say focus on healing instead of toughness. you really only need enough to survive bursts and getting trapped in a ground AoE.
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So for example if you have 70% Reduced damage from armor, 80% reduced damage from Resistance, you chose Blur as one of your passives, you have items that reduce damage from elites by 25% and the boss would hit you for 1 million, if you are completely naked, the actual damage you will take will look like this: (1-.7)*(1-.8)(1 million)*(1-.17)*(1-.25)= 37.4k damage. As you can see, your total reduction would be 1- 37.4k/1mil = 96.3%.
Here's my profile:http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Gannicus-1239/hero/40487774.
As for your low life replenishment stats, you can put paragon points into LoH, which is what I do. With good mitigation, that LoH can go a long ways.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
Like a lot of others on the official forums, I tend to think vit and life% are overrated for most people.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
@Life vs mitigation: In my opinion it's all about balance. For a good balance I feel that mitigation is way more important, but completely neglecting life won't cut it either. I'm at 96.5% mitigation but only 300k life and feel that I could use a bit more life now. Whenever I go too strong in either direction I end up in an uncomfortable situation; it's so easy to swap 3-4 items and end up with 600k life but bad mitigation and vice versa. And in the end, I just play with whatever "feels best".
However if you are bound on staying with that kind of vit, then life regen / LoH will do wonders since your pool is so low.
That depends on your actual values of AR and armor. For me, 1 AR is worth about 5.44 armor, and I don't use EA. If you use Energy Armor or crystalize, it swings a bit more in favor of Armor. That's also part of the reason I use my spreadsheet. I also go for armor on chest and pants for the same reason.
Higher AR and armor definitely does wonders for your life replenishment. That's the purpose of damage mitigation: sustainability. The purpose of life/vit is to live through burst damage and give a bit of a cushion depending on the sustained damage.
The reason I say vit is overrated is because once you have enough total EHP to survive a couple large hits from whatever you want to survive, extra vit likely won't help much at all. Also, if you don't have much Armor or AR, you'll take damage faster than you can replenish it, meaning you either have to kite (and lose edps) or you die more often, resulting in slower play.
In the end, as Bagstone said, it's about balance, and everyone will have their own balance. I happen to prefer around 200k hp and then as much AR and armor as I can get. For higher torment I wouldn't want to go much higher anyway, because it will make replenishing it a pain.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
As for the "10 armor= 1 AR" statement people like to quote on occasion, itis only true if you have 10x the armor as your AR. For wizards, that's nearly impossible since we get AR from our primary stat. Most of us are probably floating around the 6:1 ratio. For example, based on my torrent farming gear stats, 1 AR gives me 2933 EHP. 10 armor gives me 5311 EHP. That means my 1 AR is worth about 5.5 Armor. To give another example, that means an armor roll of 400 on a piece of gear gives me about the same EHP gain as a roll of 72 AR, which is why I prefer an AR roll on most pieces.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
Armor_dr = Armor / (Armor + 50*MobLevel)
total DR = 1-(1-dr1)*(1-dr2)*(1-dr3)...
where dr1, dr2, dr3, etc. are the AR, Armor, Blur, or any other damage reduction stat. MobLevel is the level of the mob, which I think is 73 at max level since it used to be 63 when the cap was 60. The in game values are based on lvl 70, if I'm not mistaken, because they just use your level for that stat.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
Toughness = HP*armor_mod*res_mod*...
Where armor_mod is inverse of the damage reduction from armor, so it's "1+armor/3500" at lvl 70. Res_mod is "1+res/350". This makes it quite obvious what to pick, just take the mod which increases the respective factor by higher % of its current amount.
For examply, say, you've got 300k HP, 7k armor and 1.4k resists and you're making a choice between 100 AR, 600 armor(let's say it's a chest piece) and 10% life. Without any other modifiers considered life is the best toughness booster(though not necessarily the best choice, since it doesn't affect incoming healing), but if you have paragon armor boost, then it's a different story.
Anyway, the AR vs armor will most likely ever be a question(due to 4 primaries) on shoulders, chest piece and pants. Other slots have more valuable stats available and to add insult to the injury, they roll less armor values than those. Chest and pants will almost always be better off with armor rolls at a decent gear level, however. High paragon level makes it even more advantageous.
What I prefer to do is stockpile some pieces that might be useful, then play around with them in a spreadsheet to see what they actually do.
I do agree that for chest and pants, wizards are almost universally better off with armor than AR (I prefer both, but that depends on where you get your vit from).
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard