Resistances are a set of values displayed on the Character Screen. They are numerical values that can resist a percentage of damage from various elemental attacks: Fire, Cold, Lightning, Poison, and Magic/Holy/Arcane.
In the first two games, resistance directly corresponds to the percentage of damage prevented. For example, if a character's Fire Resistance is 20, all incoming Fire Damage that the player receives is reduced by 20%. Starting with Diablo III the system switched to a scaling "rating" system similar to Defense.
General Information[]
In order to gain resistances, the player(s) must equip items that grant their character(s) a bonus toward his/her/their resistances. In most cases, this has to be done with items of Magic quality, or better. However, in Diablo II/Lord of Destruction, certain Class-specific Items, like the Paladin's Shields and the Necromancer's Shrunken Heads may have innate mods that grant resistances. The Paladin Shields increase all resistances, while the Shrunken Heads give the Necromancer Poison resistance.
Diablo I/Hellfire[]
Resistances are first seen in Diablo I/Hellfire in the form of Magic, Fire, and Lightning. These values cap out at 75%, with the word "MAX" appearing on the character screen whenever the hero has reached that cap.
It should be noted that no one but the Barbarian from Hellfire can ever amass a form of resistances without aid from equipment. This results in players finding 2 good pieces of equipment for resistances most of the time; without them, the various magics at work in the later levels will annihilate the hero(es), no matter their Vitality. Fortunately, there are no resistance penalties for progressing into the Nightmare/Hell difficulty levels, as opposed to the sequel.
Diablo II/Lord of Destruction[]
The Paladin, Assassin, and Barbarian have their share of advantages when it comes to resistances. The Paladin's Resist Fire, Resist Cold, Resist Lightning and Salvation Auras can help him increase his and the nearby party's elemental resistances, as long as they are active. Upon use of the skill Fade, an Assassin gains a bonus to her resistances, among some other benefits as well. The Barbarian has the skill Natural Resistance to increase his own elemental resistances permanently.
Elemental resistances can also be permanently increased by a Scroll of Resistance, which is created by powerful healers like Malah in Harrogath. It increases all resistances by 10 in Diablo II: Lord of Destruction (for a total of 30, after it has been used on all difficulties).
Minimum Resistances[]
The lowest value of all resistances is -100. Having a negative resistance value naturally increases the amount of damage a character or creature takes.
A character's base elemental resistances vary with each difficulty:
For Diablo II:
For Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, the penalty was increased:
The Paladin's Conviction Aura, Necromancer's Amplify Damage, Decrepify and Lower Resist Curse and Barbarian's Grim Ward (synergized by Find Potion) can lower enemies' resistances even if the enemy is immune to given element (but in case of immune monsters, they work at 1/5 effectiveness only). Cold Mastery and -enemy resistance affixes from items work only if the enemy is not immune to given element.
Maximum Resistances[]
A character's and hireling's default maximum resistance value is 75%, although certain items and the Paladin's Resistance Aura synergies can raise that number as high as 95%, the cap for elemental resistances. Therefore, a character or a hireling can never become totally immune to elemental attacks with resistance alone. However, with the help of integer absorb effects (not percentage absorb effects), a character can reduce low enough amounts of Elemental Damage that would be inflicted to zero, or even heal from it.
Monsters' and summons' resistances are not capped and they can become immune to a given element with resistance ≥ 100.
Elemental Resistances[]
There are 4 types of Elemental Resistances that a player can acquire:
- Fire
- Cold (Reduces damage taken and freeze duration)
- Lightning
- Poison (Reduces damage taken and poison duration)
Other Resistances[]
There are 2 uncommon types of Resistances that a player or a hireling can acquire, and these ones are unaffected by difficulty penalties:
- Physical (Has a limit of 50% and is found on some Unique Items, the Ber Rune, 2 Set bonuses and Fade skill) - note that those are usually described by "Damaged reduced by X%", but that's just plain +X% to Physical Resist in reality
- Magic (Has a limit of 75%, but can only be raised to 10% only with a Crafted Safety Shield)
Absorption[]
Absorption is a special modifier that is closely related to resistances, and can greatly enhance them as well. See its article for more information.
Sunder[]
Sunder is a special modifier found only on 6 {{{1}}} charms, one for each element, reducing immune monsters' resistance to 95 (and allowing it to be further lowered by items and skills). See its article for more information.
Diablo III[]
Resistances were heavily reworked in the third game. The penalties for progressing in harder difficulty levels were removed, and the summed percentage calculation was replaced with a rating system with diminishing returns, similar to Defense/Armor rating. The damage reduction from resistance stacks multiplicatively with that from armor and other forms of Damage Reduction to form the character's toughness. The number of resisted damage types was expanded to cover all attacks, even non-magical ones: Physical, Fire, Cold, Lightning, Poison and Holy/Arcane. Holy damage is subject to Arcane resistance; on the Character Screen these are listed together, but on most items only Arcane is named explicitly, since Holy damage is almost never encountered from monsters.
Resistances are subject to diminishing returns: the more you get, the less effective each next point becomes. There is no maximum cap for resistances, but it is impossible to raise protection to 100% through resistance alone. It is possible to become immune to one or two damage types at a time, since for each one except Physical, there is a Legendary Amulet that makes a character immune to it.
Resistances are less effective against monsters of higher level than the player. This does not occur in solo play due to level scaling (after the Reaper of Souls patch), but if a low level character joins the game of a higher level character, the lower level one will not receive as much of a percentage reduction from their resistance rating as they normally would.
- Increasing resistance rating
- Random magical attributes on items include bonuses to resistances. The numbers below are for the standard bonuses at level 70.
- A bonus to all resistances can appear as a primary attribute of an item. The maximum bonus is 100, or 130 for Ancient Items.
- A bonus to any of the specific resistances ("elements") can appear as a secondary attribute. The maximum is 160, or 210 for Ancient items.
- Randomized traits of a single item cannot include two different kind of resistance bonus. This means a bonus to a specific element cannot be combined with a bonus to a different element or with a bonus to all resistances.
- Enchanting can be used to add or remove a resistance bonus on an item. It is subject to the same prohibition from having two different kinds of resistance bonus on one item.
- Some Legendary or Set items come with higher resistance bonuses. In many cases, the item's randomized traits can also include resistance bonuses, and the final number displayed is the sum of both.
- Resistance does not appear as a random attribute on weapons or off-hand items other than shields.
- Some skills can add either a percentage bonus or a set amount to a hero's resistances, further improving his/her protection from the elements.
- Players can gain up to 250 points towards all resistances from Paragon levels. These do not scale with character level, always 5 per point.
- Up to 78 resistance to all elements can be gained from each Diamond socketed into a piece of armor.
- Bottomless Potion of the Diamond briefly increases all resistances of the character when used.
- The Harmony passive skill can partially convert single resistances to resistance to all elements.
- Due to the nature of these types of ratings, a percentage bonus to a hero's resistance ratings will always result in a lower percentage of actual reduction to damage received. For instance gaining +10% damage to all resistances will reduce damage by less than 10%. However, percentage increases are more effective when the pre-increase rating is higher, unlike constant increases which are less effective due to diminishing returns.
- Reducing resistance rating
- There is no way to reduce enemy player resistances. The only way to reduce one's own resistances is the Glass Cannon Wizard passive skill.
- Monsters may sometimes reduce the player's resistances, for example with the Curse of Resistance skill of Enslaved Nightmares or Diablo.
- Interaction of resistances with other statistics
- Intelligence adds to all resistance ratings at the rate of 10 Intelligence per one 'whole' point of resistance. However, Strength- and Dexterity-base classes should generally try to get their resistance from direct resistance bonuses, since they receive no other benefit from intelligence.
- Armor rating adds to general damage reduction at one tenth the rate of Resistance rating. However, sources of Armor provide approximately ten times as many points. Thus, the two attributes contribute about equally on average, although both experience diminishing returns, so it is better to keep them in balance than to maximize just one. Since each class's primary stat contributes heavily to one of these two ratings, players should usually prioritize the other rating.
- Resistance against damage is unrelated to Crowd Control effects from that damage (e.g. Chilled from Cold attacks or Stunning from Physical attacks). See the main Crowd Control article for details of resistance and diminishing returns of Crowd Control.
- Resistance on enemies
- Almost no monsters have permanent resistances or immunities in Diablo III.
- The only known exceptions are Rogoth the Eternal and Keeper Hashemel, who are immune or nearly immune to Cold and Fire damage, respectively.
- Many monsters have skills that allow them to become temporarily immune, or highly resistant to damage.
- Corrupted Angels could shield themselves against one damage type before patch 2.1.2.
Character Attributes | |||
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Diablo I | Diablo II | Diablo III | Diablo Immortal |
Strength — Damage |
Strength — Damage |
Strength — Damage • Armor |
Strength — Damage • Combat Rating |