Frozen Orb Damage.....specifics needed

[NERDmanWhippy]

I understand that Frozen Orb (f/o) does cold dmg as well as Piercing dmg....Cold resists maxed (95%+) will negate most cold damage...but the piercing dmg, can it be reduced by Damage reduction or not....IM not sure If im gonna use a SS or a custom 120% All resist pally shield...it all depends on DR/Piercing of FO...please explain F/O dmg...thanks...

J

[Archon_Wing]

Not to sure about the piercing damage but:

I'd asume that each shard does the damage listed in your window?

I'd just like to say that with cold mastery running you will need a lot more than 95%

That's because it reduces your resists by a percentage. If someone had 75% cold mastery. 200 resists gets cut to 50, not 125.

If you truly wanted to negate cold damage, the best way is to use cold absorb, such as the blackoak luna

I assume you are dueling a sorc. Then, a stormshield would be pretty crappy then ;)

So yea, use the 4d shield. But you'll need something of the likes of raven frosts to stand a chance against frozen orb

[WarBlade]

I understand that Frozen Orb (f/o) does cold dmg as well as Piercing dmg....

Err . . . Piercing Damage? AFAIK there's no such thing. There's a "Piercing" effect available from an Amazon skill and some items for missile weapon attacks (no bug comments please) and a mention about how Cold Mastery "Pierces" Cold Resistance, but no "Piercing Damage"

I suspect you've been misled by some understated mention of Cold Mastery.

Basically Orb does Cold Damage minus the target's Resistance. That damage can then be made more effective by the ability of Cold Mastery to further impact on that Resistance. Note that the Cold Mastery percentage is applied in a multiplicative sense to the Cold Resistance.

Example: Your target has 50% Cold Resistance. You use Lvl 20 Cold Mastery listed as being an 85% reduction. That's removing 85% of 50% = 7.5% net Cold Resistance.

Normally, the diminishing returns of Cold Mastery means the skill is never built that high so you can safely assume your high resistance character won't be so severely impacted by it as in the example I presented above.

[Archon_Wing]

Normally, the diminishing returns of Cold Mastery means the skill is never built that high so you can safely assume your high resistance character won't be so severely impacted by it as in the example I presented above.

That is true. Usualy most sorcs don't bother maxing cold mastery, but those that would intend to duel would have a high level. ;)

I'm assuming this a duel against a sorc because well, there would be no other reason for worrying about fo damage.

[-Tempus-]

there are some very good post about how this all works but something to note is you will always take damage from orb if you are in hell. often sorc pks will have skills of +40 end even higher if they arent legit :angry:

the best way to take little to no dmg from orb is to use stuff like
GA
2 raven frost
snowclash
blackoak shield
and mass resist to cold.

the last part is the most needed (over 500% to cold)

now if you are doing duels you'll end up using somekind of rules ( id hope) so you may not be able to use all of that but if you want to run after pk sorcs in public games its fun to have a char setup like that.

[NERDmanWhippy]

Im running 90% resists to cold/20% absorb in hell....all my resists are 90% except lightening, which is 95%/20% absorb....FO kicks my arse in hell....so what you are all saying is that 2 ravens may be more beneficial than just one with max resists?....Also, ty for clearing up the "piercing" question....

J

[WarBlade]

- 2 Ravenfrost Rings (2 or 3 20% Cold Absorb sources is desirable)
- Plenty of MDR
- Resistances are ok, but even when maxed there may be builds out there that can cut it down. :unsure:

[Archon_Wing]

90 cold resist isn't much ;)

Level 20 CM takes it down to down to around 15%. You got the hell penalty which cuts it down to -85%. Ah yes.

absorb is the way to go. Although stacking too much absorb is usually not allowed in a "legit" duel.

[-Tempus-]

if you were to use all the cold absorb items you still will take mass dmg from very high orb/pierce in hell games. lev 20-25 isnt going to be a problem but when they run with 35-40 you will have big problems.

one of my paladins has all the absorb items in the game a long with +400% to cold and he still takes dmg to very high orb
2 raven frost
blackoak with P sapphire
snowclash
GA plate

cold mastery
lev 1 is 23%
lev 10 is 71%
lev 20 is 85%
lev 30 is 91%
lev 40 is 95%
lev 47 is 97%

If a target has 75% Cold Resistance and you use Skill Level 1 Cold Mastery, the target's resistance will be 75 - 75% * 0.23 = 57.75.

now if you have 500% to cold vs lev 40 cold mastery you end up with 400 - (400% * 0.95) = 20

1000% to cold :o\ vs 40 cold mastery is only 50
2000% to cold vs 40 cold mastery is 100
so what cold mastery does is bypasses a % of your resist to cold

[Elric of Grans]

Hail Tempus,

Perhaps I understood it wrong, and if so then someone needs to nit me, but I thought Absorb was completely separate to Resistance. As such, pierce can hit you as hard as you want: so long as they do not kill you too quickly, absorb should more than take care of Frozen Orb. After all, 20% Absorb is better than 40% Resistance: it's 20% removed from the damage, and then returned to your life (assuming you have any lost life to be restored). Er... I hope that actually makes sense ;)

[Tommi]

Yup. Absorb % and Absorb items which Tempus listed should do it (especially 2 raven frosts). I'd skip resistances altogether against a high level cold mastery.

Damage reduction stuff is found here in the case you wonder:
http://www.hut.fi/~tgustafs/damagereduction.html

Cheers,

Tommi

[-Tempus-]

i have all that stuff on one of my paladins. i did that to pissoff pk sorcs :lol:
with 2 raven frost rings, snowclash belt, blackoak shield, GA plate something like 400% to cold i still take dam to very high orb in hell games if they also have high pierce

[Dani]

the best way to take little to no dmg from orb is to use stuff like
GA
2 raven frost
snowclash
blackoak shield
and mass resist to cold.

the last part is the most needed (over 500% to cold)

As far as I understand. If you have 50%+ Cold Absorb, and more life than a single shard of the Orb will do, you will never die (your life should go up and down from damage, absorb, damage, absorb, etc.), regarless of resistances or Cold mastery. So if you're high level enough that single Black Oak shield will render any cld attacks useless. (And it does seem to work in practice, my Paladin has the Luna on the alternate weapon tab just to thwart PKs.)

[the Langolier]

now if you have 500% to cold...

I was under the impression that maximum resistances was 75% (ignoring items that increase the max) no matter how much you actually had. Even if you have 500% resistance to all, it will be capped at 75%. Of course, in hell difficulty with the -100% penalty, resistances would be sufficient to still increase the max to 75%.

[WarBlade]

As far as I understand. If you have 50%+ Cold Absorb, and more life than a single shard of the Orb will do, you will never die (your life should go up and down from damage, absorb, damage, absorb, etc.), regarless of resistances or Cold mastery.

That's pretty close, but not quite true. Unfortunately in order to absorb, a character must have the amount to be absorbed already missing from it's life.

Resulting from that, one shard might do X damage and the character gets hurt. A second shard doing X-1 or X-2 etc will behave as you say and the character will 'heal' before taking damage. Unfortunately if the second shard does X+2 or X+4 etc, that little bit extra will carry it beyond the threshold you were hoping to stay under.

If none of that makes any sense then just take it on faith that you reallly need to account for the damaging power of 2 shards rather than one before absorption is guaranteed.

[-Tempus-]

I was under the impression that maximum resistances was 75% (ignoring items that increase the max) no matter how much you actually had.  Even if you have 500% resistance to all, it will be capped at 75%.  Of course, in hell difficulty with the -100% penalty, resistances would be sufficient to still increase the max to 75%.

max resistances is 75% but you can use the GA plate to bring that upto 90% toall. you can then add in other items to gring it upto 95% toall.

the 500% or more to cold is used because orb has pierce attack that will bypass a % of your resist to cold. there is also conviction and the necro lower resist spell. if you have 75% to fire and someone can lower your resist by 100% you need to have over 175% to still have max after they use their spell on you. thats why if you fight a FOH/conv pal you need mass resist to lightning or mass absorb. but those skills dont work the same as orb and high lev pierce. all those other skills will lower your resistances by a % but orb and pierce bypass it by a %

Dani: i put all the absorb items on a 91 paladin of mine. when he goes with all coldabsorb + mass resist to cold + salavation he will still take dmg from high lev orb/pierce in hell games. oh and if i take off all my resist cold items and only use absorb i take a lot more dmg.

i'm still looking for someone that happens to have a orb sorc with +40 orb/pierce

[Dani]

Dani: i put all the absorb items on a 91 paladin of mine.  when he goes with all coldabsorb + mass resist to cold + salavation he will still take dmg from high lev orb/pierce in hell games.  oh and if i take off all my resist cold items and only use absorb i take a lot more dmg. 

Yes you will take damage. For the first shard the absorb does nothing. The second and all after that might slightly lower or raise your life depending on that random damage. In theory at least you shouldn't receive lethal damage if you have enough life (3 times shard damage to be totally safe I guess).
If in reality you can receive lethal (cold) damage in such situation, then absorb does not work as documented.

And yes, I've never died to Orb with that Blackoak using paladin, though I have no idea what level skills the Sorcies were using.

[NERDmanWhippy]

well, just to report...my pally hit level 99, and im getting out of softcore, now that I got me an all purpose killer (ww barbs still get me most of the time). But I wanted to post info...

Level 39 orb/mastery does about 75 dmg each cast with:

clean GA
Clean Veil of steel
50% all resist Herald of zak
Silence Zerker
level 7 all resist aura (cant remember the name of that one)
2 ravenfrosts
t-gods (str and light resists/absorbs)

thats all the resist gear I got LOL...I guess my gloves are interchangeable :)

all the while this is going on, Tstorm at level 37/37 mastery is doing about 45 dmg each time it hits :)


J

[Dani]

Nice info, but you only have 40% absorb. I'm starting to think it would be better to go for absorb and +life gear, at least for duel purposes, but probably only viable for superhigh life chars, like Barbarian and Weredruid, seeing as you'd need to have enough life to survive with a good margin a very high level TS or Meteor. (Ok maybe not Meteor, too hard to work in duels, although it reminds me of baiting a dumb whirling barbie into whirling so I could lay a 8,5k firewall parallel to his path...yup he fried before his whirl ended)

Btw - my Paladin setups is: 20DR Gaze - Um, Shaft - Um, 15DR String, Raven, Dwarf Star, Zakarum - PDiamond, Lightsaber, and a bunch of charms ofcource - all of which are defensive in nature (Defence, life, res, recovery, run/walk). Gloves and Boots change and aren't really relevant, nor is the amulet. Alternate weapon tab is another Lightsber with Blackoak. As I said, it's been forever since he was last killed by a PK. Seems to be virtually immune to elemental damage, and well, 75% block and 65DR goes a long way for him to be able to escape even some of the cheaters. But yeah, I don't duel (much), so don't really know how well prepared the assailants (pks) are.
Now if he were to go witchhunting, he'd don a GA - Um to be inserted when found :P, a Tgods and Rising Sun. (and pre-switch to the Luna)

[NERDmanWhippy]

Ya Im thinkin bout the Black oak instead of the HOZ for "witchhunting"...I got gear for blasting most chars in legit PvP, but Ive been havin probs with pesky Bugged DR sorcs. I figure, that I can Absorb their attacks, and they wont be able to leech health as I chipp away at them. The only prob Id have with the Blackoak, is that I have exactly enough to use the Veil of steel with the HOZ on, so Id have to HEL or -15% the helm, but I want to use the Veil b/c its cool as heck, and has good resists, and you never see it pratically used in duels at all ;) ... Figure Ill start a trend of "Sigon-Set Looking" Sorc Witchhunters. As for having good health, with all that gear on im pushing over 1.3k health (hehe 1.10k with DR gear on)....my only question is that Ill have the 81% cold absorb @ 95% cold resist with one raven on...is this enough to gain health from FO?

J