Resistances *do* work in the current push

[MongoJerry]

Since Bolty is on this kick about having us actually post information and stuff (the nerve!), I figure I'd report what Leme and I discovered about resistances. A lot of people in the beta say with great certainty that "resistances aren't implemented yet" and even Blizzard employees have said that "resistances will be implemented in the next push." However, Leme and I had suspected that there was some sort of resistance implementation in this push and while testing some other things, we discovered that resistances are indeed implemented in the current push... sort of.

The way resistances are implemented now is a straight damage subtraction. So, if I have +10 resistance to fire and I get hit with a 30 point flametongue, I will only take 20 points of fire damage. Similarly, if I get hit with a 400 point fireball, I'll only take 390 points of fire damage. One can quickly see how miniscule the benefit of resistances is versus high level mobs and players.

Also, for damage over time spells, Blizzard smartly made it so that the resistance damage subtraction occurs against the *total* damage of the dot spell. So, if I have +10 fire resistance and get hit with a dot spell that normally does 40 damage every 3 seconds for 30 seconds, I will end up instead taking 39 damage every 3 seconds (*not* 30 damage every 3 seconds). I think this implementation for dots is a good thing so that dot spells aren't penalized by resistance gear more severely than direct damage spells.

Obviously, the current effect of resistance gear is mostly negligible in this push, but I wanted to point out to Lurkers that it is actually there, even if it's small. We'll have to wait until the next push to find out what Blizzard really has in mind for resistances.

[lemekim]

And to keep up the pretence of testing useful stuff, I'll post the results of another test that we did, in fact the resistances conclusion was merely something we stumbled upon while testing something different.

There is various gear with +damage to fire/cold/shadow/etc magic skills. Some people already tested it before to see how it worked with regular spells (it works - 3 extra damage to 300 damage fireball yeay), damage over time spells (it adds the damage to total damage that the DoT spell would do), and if it works with wands (it doesn't). We wanted to see if it would work with Shaman's totems. Specifically searing totem - this totem, at my level, does 12-18 damage every 2 seconds to an enemy target. Increasing that damage even by 3 points would be a decent boost. In short, it doesn't.

None of the totems that we tested had any benefit from +8 fire damage gloves that Mongo was kind enough to make. Searing totem, Magma totem and Flametongue totem do not benefit from +8 fire damage. I watched carefully the damage done by Magma totem, and it was always 25, so the extra damage was not distributed as it is the case with DoT spells. Moreover, it would be easily noticeable with Flametongue totem, seems the occasional fire damage that it adds is also a constant value.

Another thing that Mongo did to mention. This is not completely confirmed yet (Bolty, want to help?), but even though the resists work a little bit, the AoE spells seem to be not affected by the reduction in damage. I would like to verify this with other spells, but the Magma totem, the only real AoE spell that Shaman has, was not affected by any resists, unlike Searing totem or other fire spells (including Flametongue buff).

[Bolty]

This is not completely confirmed yet (Bolty, want to help?), but even though the resists work a little bit, the AoE spells seem to be not affected by the reduction in damage.

AoE spells seem to be in a category by themselves. As noted during the two raids on Stormwind, although just about nothing could actually hit the level 90 guards, area of effect attacks could. Every time. Thanks to that, I sure died a lot :)

-Bolty