Resistance

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Resistance is a type of defence that reduces damage of a particular type by a percentage of the total damage. Players and enemies all have a resistance stat to each of Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos damage, and these are raised or lowered independently. Increases to 'Elemental resistance' are applied to fire, cold and lightning but not chaos.

Resistance has a default value of 0, where it does not affect the damage taken. Maximum resistances are soft capped at 75% by default but can be increased to a hard cap of 90%.

Negative resistance causes the defender to take more damage from that damage type. For characters, the completion of each act permanently reduces all resistances by -10%, to a total of -60% when a player reaches endgame.

Calculation

Final Damage = D * (100-R)/100

Example: being hit by 1000 fire damage, with a fire resistance of 30%, means you would take: 1000 * (100-30)/100 = 1000 * 0.7 = 700 damage

The higher your resistance gets, the more effective an increase in resistance is in reducing damage taken. This makes increases to maximum resistance a particularly valuable stat. For example, increasing resistance by 10 from 0% to 10% will reduce damage taken from 100% to 90%, or 10% less. But increasing by 10 from 60% to 70% would be reducing damage taken from 40% to 30%, reducing damage taken by a quarter.

Resistance Penetration

Having Penetration in a damage type reduces the effective resistance of enemies you damage with that type, thus increasing the damage they take. It only applies against positive resistances; it has no effect once the effective resistance is 0 or negative.