Posted this on reddit also but I figured I'd also post here in case it helps anybody.
I play a wizard and am progressing through act 4 inferno, and I wanted to know exactly how much defense I needed to run with in order to efficiently use force armor while maximizing my dps, so I did some research. The basic premise is that force armor will have its full effect on a hit of 135% of your EHP, and that it will prevent a 1 shot kill on any hit of less than 200% of your EHP. So therefore it seems most efficient to get your EHP to X where X is the amount of damage from common monster hits divided by 1.35. So to find out what this efficient EHP value is, we need the data of raw monster hits. Luckily, the brady game guide lists much of this information and here's what it says:
Most things in Act 4 and many in act 3 hit for 113k raw damage. This includes terror demons, subjugators, oppressors, morlu legionnairres, and corrupted angels. Most of these attacks are physical damage. However, it does not list the damage on the oppressors or the angel's charge. The guide does vaguely indicate that the oppressors charge is fire damage instead of physical. If anybody knows how much damage these abilities do please post them.
Two notable mobs hit for 142k raw damage - the morlu incinerator and the blood clan sorceror (fat sorceror guys). The blood clan sorceror's fireball is actually physical damage even though it appears to be a fireball.
Then there are the heavy hitters of acts 3/4. These guys hit for 170k raw damage. This includes armaddons, phase beasts (acts 3&4), soul lashers, and tremor demons (the armored guys).
Lastly, a handful of mobs hit for major damage but are basically completely avoidable. The mallet lord in act 4 with the long windup attack hits for 227k, as do the colossal gorgors in act 3. The skeletons with the enormous axes and the windup attack in the basement of act 3 hit for 284k raw damage.
What does this mean? For acts 3/4, you will be taking hits of 170k raw damage from attacks that are very difficult to avoid - phase beasts and soul lashers especially. So if you want force armor to have its full effect on those attacks, you need ~126,000 EHP. This is pretty easily attainable. It comes out to about 35-40k hp with about 175-225 resists if you have a fairly typical amount of armor. Obviously this depends entirely on your specific gear, so play with the calculator here - http://rubensayshi.github.com/d3-ehp-calculator/#intro
For me I get there with about ~39k HP and 170 resists after the reduction from glass cannon (with ~3500 armor with energy armor). With 35k hp I need about 225 resists. Here's a trick though - all of the 170k hits are physical damage, so you could potentially get just your physical resist up to 225 with 35k hp and not have to buy so much expensive resist all gear. Watch out for the 142k morlu incinerator fireballs though.
TLDR: Get about 126k EHP for acts 3/4 if you're using force armor. Hope this helps other people starting acts 2/3.
These are the numbers I've been looking for. Thanks for this post!
As I thought, I definitely got WAY too much defensive stats at the cost of DPS. I'm around 200k ehp, which is way more than needed for force armor to work, but also way, way, way too little for me to be able to play without it. Sounds like I'd need to be pushing will over 500k EHP to make prismatic armor the better choice again.
Thanks for the post, it's good to know. Though I'm wondering if it's worth it to try to push as high as you can the damage reduction, getting lower and lower vitality, and making for effective your life regen. I'm trying to get a bit a of life regen, and it feels like you need a ton of it to be noticeable. And most of the times, your deaths comes from 3 hits in fast succession.
This was my thought as well. Playing around with the calculator, 5500 armor unbuffed, 650 resist all (or focus on physical), ~9925 life with Force Armor and the Sorceress buff gets you the 126k EHP for act 4, and that's definitely doable, though expensive. Add 1000 life regen and you've got a passive full heal every 10 seconds.
However, if you have those sorts of numbers, getting 45k health instead of the life regen and going with Prismatic Armor would give you 725k EHP which is enough to live through 4 rapid 170k hits instead of only 2. Put that way, Prismatic Armor seems the way to go if you want to focus hard on armor and resists, especially once they even out incoming damage as Blizzard has said they're going to do in an upcoming patch.
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...and if you disagree with me, you're probably <insert random ad hominem attack here>.
I still don't get what you mean by making it effective.
Lets say you did perfect it, now instead of 1 shot you can get 3 shotted tops?
Yeah, that is the entire point of force armor. It means that you can get just enough EHP to have force armor reduce most hits to 35% while focusing on maximizing DPS. Since the mobs in acts 3/4 hit so hard, this is much more efficient than trying to build defensively where you would need massive amounts of defensive stats to take more than 3 hits anyways without force armor and you would therefore severely limit your DPS.
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I play a wizard and am progressing through act 4 inferno, and I wanted to know exactly how much defense I needed to run with in order to efficiently use force armor while maximizing my dps, so I did some research. The basic premise is that force armor will have its full effect on a hit of 135% of your EHP, and that it will prevent a 1 shot kill on any hit of less than 200% of your EHP. So therefore it seems most efficient to get your EHP to X where X is the amount of damage from common monster hits divided by 1.35. So to find out what this efficient EHP value is, we need the data of raw monster hits. Luckily, the brady game guide lists much of this information and here's what it says:
Most things in Act 4 and many in act 3 hit for 113k raw damage. This includes terror demons, subjugators, oppressors, morlu legionnairres, and corrupted angels. Most of these attacks are physical damage. However, it does not list the damage on the oppressors or the angel's charge. The guide does vaguely indicate that the oppressors charge is fire damage instead of physical. If anybody knows how much damage these abilities do please post them.
Two notable mobs hit for 142k raw damage - the morlu incinerator and the blood clan sorceror (fat sorceror guys). The blood clan sorceror's fireball is actually physical damage even though it appears to be a fireball.
Then there are the heavy hitters of acts 3/4. These guys hit for 170k raw damage. This includes armaddons, phase beasts (acts 3&4), soul lashers, and tremor demons (the armored guys).
Lastly, a handful of mobs hit for major damage but are basically completely avoidable. The mallet lord in act 4 with the long windup attack hits for 227k, as do the colossal gorgors in act 3. The skeletons with the enormous axes and the windup attack in the basement of act 3 hit for 284k raw damage.
What does this mean? For acts 3/4, you will be taking hits of 170k raw damage from attacks that are very difficult to avoid - phase beasts and soul lashers especially. So if you want force armor to have its full effect on those attacks, you need ~126,000 EHP. This is pretty easily attainable. It comes out to about 35-40k hp with about 175-225 resists if you have a fairly typical amount of armor. Obviously this depends entirely on your specific gear, so play with the calculator here - http://rubensayshi.github.com/d3-ehp-calculator/#intro
For me I get there with about ~39k HP and 170 resists after the reduction from glass cannon (with ~3500 armor with energy armor). With 35k hp I need about 225 resists. Here's a trick though - all of the 170k hits are physical damage, so you could potentially get just your physical resist up to 225 with 35k hp and not have to buy so much expensive resist all gear. Watch out for the 142k morlu incinerator fireballs though.
TLDR: Get about 126k EHP for acts 3/4 if you're using force armor. Hope this helps other people starting acts 2/3.
As I thought, I definitely got WAY too much defensive stats at the cost of DPS. I'm around 200k ehp, which is way more than needed for force armor to work, but also way, way, way too little for me to be able to play without it. Sounds like I'd need to be pushing will over 500k EHP to make prismatic armor the better choice again.
Lets say you did perfect it, now instead of 1 shot you can get 3 shotted tops?
This was my thought as well. Playing around with the calculator, 5500 armor unbuffed, 650 resist all (or focus on physical), ~9925 life with Force Armor and the Sorceress buff gets you the 126k EHP for act 4, and that's definitely doable, though expensive. Add 1000 life regen and you've got a passive full heal every 10 seconds.
However, if you have those sorts of numbers, getting 45k health instead of the life regen and going with Prismatic Armor would give you 725k EHP which is enough to live through 4 rapid 170k hits instead of only 2. Put that way, Prismatic Armor seems the way to go if you want to focus hard on armor and resists, especially once they even out incoming damage as Blizzard has said they're going to do in an upcoming patch.
Yeah, that is the entire point of force armor. It means that you can get just enough EHP to have force armor reduce most hits to 35% while focusing on maximizing DPS. Since the mobs in acts 3/4 hit so hard, this is much more efficient than trying to build defensively where you would need massive amounts of defensive stats to take more than 3 hits anyways without force armor and you would therefore severely limit your DPS.