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in: Magical attribute, Diablo II Gameplay, Diablo III Gameplay, Character stats

Damage Reduction

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Damage Reduction, sometimes abbreviated DR, is a decrease to the overall damage taken by a player character that is not based on a scaling rating like Defense or elemental resistances. It comes in two forms:

  • A subtraction from the total damage of each non-magical hit, or each magical hit, depending on variety. This form is often specified as Direct Damage Reduction or Magic Damage Reduction.
  • A percentage based reduction. In Diablo II this applies only to physical damage and is often called Damage Resistance or Physical Resistance.

In Diablo II, Damage Reduction comes from magic suffixes or special modifiers on items. In Diablo III, it can be granted by skills and Legendary or Set item powers and is only based on percentages.

Diablo II[]

The second game includes several possible item suffixes which reduce damage by an absolute quantity per hit. It also includes rarer effects that reduce physical damage by a percentage, found only on Rune Word, Unique and Set Items.

Damage Reduced By (integer)[]

This item trait reduces the damage of each hit of a certain type, either all Physical Damage or all Magic Damage. When it prevents Magic damage, this is displayed as Magic Damage Reduced by (integer); the physical version has no additional specifier. The type and amount prevented depends on the specific suffix, and the level of the item.

For each hit of the correct type, the damage reduction amount is simply subtracted from the total. In a scenario that a Fallen would normally hit a character for 5 damage, ignoring all other penalties, "Damage Reduced By 3" will reduce the damage taken from 5 to 2. It can reduce damage dealt to 0, but not below 0; damage reduction never causes healing from attacks.

Magic Damage Reduction applies to all Magic damage. Unlike Resistances, which only apply to elemental damage (Fire, Cold, Lightning and Poison), this applies to "general" Magic Damage as well.

These item suffixes are quite common and can appear on Magic or Rare Items as well as Uniques, Sets, and Rune Words. However, the amount reduced by them is generally too low to be considered useful beyond very early game. Apparently Blizzard had intended this attribute to be standard on some Body Armors, but this idea was dropped.

Damage Reduced By (percent)[]

This modifier removes a percentage of the physical damage done to a character; it could be thought of as Resist Physical, analogous to other Resistances.

The Über Bosses from the Pandemonium Event possess a similar resist damage attribute.

It is generally considered to be a more important statistic than the integer Damage Reduction attribute in spite of the fact it is capped at 50%, normally due to there being little place to stack the former attribute or to utilize Sol Runes as elemental damage is also a concern, especially in later stages of the game. In any case, this attribute is most certainly a helpful one when being attacked by missiles or melee weapons.

Unfortunately, this attribute is also significantly more difficult to find, as it cannot spawn on Magic or Rare Items. Can be found on:

Damage Taken Goes To Mana[]

Same as effect of Energy Shield (cap 95%). Can be found on:

Diablo III[]

The third game has a wide variety of percentage-based effects that increase or reduce damage taken and dealt by the player characters or their enemies. Most, but not all, apply to any damage rather than limited to certain types. Physical-specific damage reduction is now also present in the form of physical resistance, although it is treated like any other resistance rating.

A few effects distribute a portion of damage that would be taken to allies, Followers, pets, or even enemies (damage reflection). While damage redirected to friendly targets depends on the survival of the damage sharer, it can be reliable enough to be counted as Damage Reduction. Unlike other Damage Reduction, the order of the effects does matter to determine the amount taken by the target: The redirection happens after other percentage decreases, so all recipients take same amount of damage based on the defenses of the character that was actually hit.

Blocking, Resistances and Armor each contribute another percentage of damage prevented. Several effects increase damage taken, which can be thought of as negative or inverted Damage Reduction. Others decrease damage dealt by enemies, which reduces damage to all allies, and has conditions such as hitting an enemy or applying Crowd Control to the enemy. These are not considered Damage Reduction in the same way as constant, "flat percentage" decreases, but once the various percentages are calculated, all are combined multiplicatively to determine the final damage.

Calculation[]

Separate sources of Damage Reduction that would apply to a given attack can be thought of as allowing a percentage of the damage through, and stopping the rest. These allowed percentages can be multiplied together to find the final damage. It can be thought of as each DR effect applying one by one (the result is the same regardless of order), with each percentage decrease applying only to the damage remaining after previous decreases.

Percentage reduction has a degree of diminishing returns, since each effect eliminates a percentage of a fraction of the original attack, rather than a percentage of all of the original attack. But, the relative change to incoming damage a player will see when they acquire a new DR effect will exactly match the percentage stated by that effect, unlike the effects based on accumulating "ratings" like Resistances and Armor.

From classes and skills[]

The Diablo III "melee classes", which usually engage in close-quarters combat, each get constant 30% damage reduction to all attacks.

Passive Skills which provide Damage Reduction are most prevalent for Barbarians, with Superstition (20% non-physical) and Sword and Board (30% when using a shield), as well as Nerves of Steel (95% for a few seconds after being saved from death). Most other classes get one such skill: Vigilant (Crusader, 20% non-physical), Sixth Sense (Monk, 25% non-physical), Jungle Fortitude (Witch Doctor, 15%) and Blur (Wizard, 17%). Demon Hunters and Necromancers do not have direct damage reduction passives.

All classes also have Active Skills that reduce damage (sometimes depending on a specific Rune), usually for a short period:

From items[]

"Reduced damage from melee attacks" or "Reduced damage from missile attacks" may appear as secondary item properties.

The bulk of Damage Reduction from items is usually in the form of Legendary or Set item unique powers. A high proportion of six-/seven-piece class sets grant Damage Reduction as one of their set bonuses.

The Unity damage splitting ring can be used to achieve 50% Damage Reduction by equipping it on both the player character and their Follower, and giving the Follower one of the "Your follower cannot die" items (Enchanting Favor, Skeleton Key, and Smoking Thurible).

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