How Much Conviction is Sufficient?

[Nicodemus Phaulkon]

Good Morning, Lurkers:

I'm curious about the game mechanics involving Conviction, and its application in a PvM role.

Quoting the Summit, Conviction at slvl 20 yields -90% Defense and -125% Resistances. Personal experience reveals that Conviction at slvl 31 yields -95% Defense (obviously hit a cap at some point, there) and -180% Resistances.

Now. My question would be exactly HOW MUCH Resistance should a paladin be efforting to offset from Monsters in Hell difficulty? Does the -125% remove their resistances completely... or do you actually need/benefit from higher percentage "removal"?

Elucidate, please?

*tips helm*

[Tommi]

It actually depends on monsters you are encountering. My rationale has been the following:

It is worth to increase this aura to a total level of 15, to get -100% to enemy resistances. Putting more into this skill is not adviced, because of three facts: 1) Hell bovines and most act 5 monsters have 0% resistance to elements they are not immune to, 2) resistances cannot be lowered below -100%, and 3) immunities are not affected by Conviction.

Some monsters, like act end bosses and critters in act 4, have higher resistances. Especially if you are playing an avenger you may want to push Conviction above level 15 for the cases when monsters have higher than 0% resistance in elements they are not immune to. Highest conceivable Conviction is -200% (level 35), which would reduce a monster with 99% resistance to -100%.

On the defense reduction side, it depends on your level, ar, and monsters' level and defense values, if conviction is worth increasing over level 15. There is a 95% cap for to hit, which is reached quite quickly with conviction.

Cheers,

Tommi

[Chameleon]

Good Morning, Lurkers:

I'm curious about the game mechanics involving Conviction, and its application in a PvM role.

Quoting the Summit, Conviction at slvl 20 yields -90% Defense and -125% Resistances.  Personal experience reveals that Conviction at slvl 31 yields -95% Defense (obviously hit a cap at some point, there) and -180% Resistances.

Now.  My question would be exactly HOW MUCH Resistance should a paladin be efforting to offset from Monsters in Hell difficulty?  Does the -125% remove their resistances completely... or do you actually need/benefit from higher percentage "removal"?

Elucidate, please?

*tips helm*

Pretty much the same answer as Tommi. Hopefully better worded :P.

I won't talk about -% to defense as this is too dependant on clvl, mlvl, AR, DR, the type of monster you are fighting, your equipment, etc., etc.

The most important thing to note is that a monster cannot have more than -100% resistance.
slvl 15 yeilds -100%
Monsters with 0% resistance, will have -100% with slvl 15, thus if this char is going to be a cows only guy, then slvl15 is all you need.

slvl 30 yeilds -175%
Several monsters, uniques/act bosses espesically, have some resistances, upto 75%, if you are going to be fighting these guys a lot and you want to lower them to -100%, you are going to need to reach slvl 30.

edit *** did a quick check, a monster can have 95% resistance, thus you need slvl35 for above statement ***

[WarBlade]

The above replies spell it out fairly well.

I'll just add by saying I prefer to take a Conviction level to around 20 and after that the gains are too insignificant to warrant investment.

My reasoning is that with all the Unique monsters running around hell with Fire Enchanted, Spectral Hit etc, having augmented resists, running into monsters with +40% etc. to the element you are trying to inflict is fairly common. And those are in addition to the likes of Diablo who'll already be resistant to Fire and Lightning, plus other regular monsters that may have secondary resistances to penetrate.

There are other benefits too, such as ensuring maximum the chill/freeze time that monsters suffer.

It's nice to be able to push things down to -100% even if they start in positive figures.