Damage modifications

[whyBish]

well, if you had 8 Paly's with their auras "properly" phase spread, you'd limit the poison duration, post cloud, amazingly, but that's beside the point).

If you had 8 pallies,
who would be supplying the skellies?

[Tommi]

"QUOTE 
3. In which order are Energy Shield, Bone Armor and Cyclone Armor applied?


All I know is that they all seem to take effect before resistances."


Interesting post.  Maybe I read this incorrectly, but thought I would speak up.  I don't know about energy shield and bone armor, but cyclone armor now works after resistances.  If you have higher resistance to an element, the cylone armor stays active longer and you wont take any damage.

For instance I can survive 5 Souls shooting chain lightning at me with 75 lightning resist (from wizard spike) and cyclone armor; and the armor is still active as I run and hide and recast the cyclone armor.  :P  But if I have magic find gear on (alibaba) and around 30 lightning resist, and get hit by a few Souls, the cyclone armor is instantly destroyed and I die. 

I think in 1.09, cyclone armor took the full damage of the elemental attack.  Now it takes a smaller percent of the damage based on your resistances, but still protects you 100% while its active of course.

Could it be that Jarulf missed something and that "target effects" in the step 2 don't include Bone Armor and Cyclone Armor?

This needs to be tested more...

Cheers,

Tommi

[Crystalion]

Any input, correction, comment, additional info and so on most welcome. As can be seen, several black holes still exists

Here's a couple tidbits:

v1.10 (release at least) allows Lifetap to lifesteal for ranged attacks. Since a throwing dagger with Lifetap charges presented itself while I was shopping for a lower resist charges wand for the real testing I wanted to do (listed below) I thought "hey, it's destiny, I should test this again".

So I'm in players 2, lan, v1.10, and I get injured, take off my +replenish gear, throw a couple test daggers (to make sure I didn't miss any life stealing gear) and then lifetap a weenie blood moor fallen and throw a dagger, killing it.

Whoa, double take! I gained 10 HPs! ... checks D2data, yep yep, fallen, 1-4 HPs, adjusted for players 2, hmm...

Try again, +9 HPs. Again. +10 HPs. Hmm. I'm gaining, with "50%" Lifetap, more life than the fallen itself has.

Test melee. Yep, as expected, only gain ~+2 HPs. Remove elemental damage (magefist). Retest. Same deal.

Watch carefully... ranged Lifetap seems to fill my life globe over a substantial period of time, as if I'm getting multiple steals. Hmm. That would be a bug, most likely. Hmm. v1.10 couldn't need to be patched, could it? :blink:

...

The test I was really going after is patterned after an excellent test/thread started by Olon97 at AB when the LL was down: Static Field and minus lightning resist from Crescent Moon

I took a naked -act 5 barb with vit fully pumped (clvl 33, 759 HPs) called killme just outside the rogue camp to be a test subject. He went to akara after every time he was hit by static, to restore his HPs. Although the 17% PvP penalty and lack of precision in the HPs display makes the numbers a bit fuzzy, they are still distinquishable...

0% resist: 33 damage
35% resist: 21 damage

(note that I restored killme's .d2s file a few times during testing, so I could boost his Natural Resist to 35% when I wished but restore him to 0% later, keeping him naked the whole time)

0% resist, Sorc learns Lightning Mastery (at +1 for slvl 2): 33 damage

(note that LM doesn't seem to have an effect, but Sorc was not restored, so all further tests are done with LM)

0% resist -31% from charge of lower resist: 33 damage

(from this we see no benefit to Static from negative resist, which is expected since that was a big snafu many versions ago with conviction/static one hit kills)

So nothing is particularly stunning here, but it gets more interesting...

35% resist, -31% resist from LR: 31 damage

Ah, so Lower resist does help Static (there was some question of this so it's good to confirm).

Now we get weird. I used a cubemain tweak to convert a mana potion into a crafted wnd (wand) with -50% enemy lightning resist. The Sorc held that for all of the following statics:

0% resist, -50% pierce: 49 damage

0% resist, -31% LR, -50% pierce: 45 damge

(yes, you read that right! throwing in a LR actually reduced the damage)

35% resist, -50% pierce: 37 damage

35% resist, -31% LR, -50% pierce: 47 damage.

(good, LR is back to doing something useful)

Even though I've looked at Olon97's excellent "fit" for his results, I don't see a decent "fit" for these numbers. Something is a bit odd here.

Naturally someone "should" reproduce my numbers, as I might have made a testing mistake (I was careful, but I am sick, and I've not had great luck with numbers in posts lately :D )

...

Well, I'm off to test other things now (including the intriguing post claiming cyclone armor, unlike Energy Shield and Bone Armor, seems to be acting as elem mdr after resists).

[Guest]

edit: fyi, iirc holy bolt doesn't work on undead, for healing (bears testing, but that's my recollection).

It sure is good at hitting them at least in 1.10. I'm quite sure my Cleric made a skelly survive for several minutes vs Diablo.

As to the unsummon trick to cursor minions (now that all classes have that mouse action option) I recall many people saying it doesn't always properly show immunities

That would be item gotten resists which aren't accounted for in the mouse-over. There hasn't been any conclusive tests on this though (ie how it exactly works).

[Jarulf]

So this means that Fire Golems will no longer heal from fire? :(

At least in older versions, the fire golems absorbtion was handled through a completely different (and unique)system than normal absorbtion.

It is true however that they have changed quite a lot in regard t the whole skill system which has implications for how attacks are handled too. I think it is still the same for fire golems though.

[Nadreck]

Crystalion I have a "fit" for your data. It looks like the game first adjusts the damage according to the target's resists:
damage = damage*(100-resist%)/100
then if target's resist lightning < 0 make a second adjustment to cancel the first adjustment:
if resist% < 0 then damage = damage*100/(100-resist%)
however the game counts the -50% enemy resist from the wand in the first adjustment but not the second one (or the if <0 thing).

This seems to explain your results. Note I have not checked anything in the game, I am merely making up an explanation to account for your data.

[Crystalion]

It sure is good at hitting them at least in 1.10. I'm quite sure my Cleric made a skelly survive for several minutes vs Diablo.

I just moded necroskelies to not have regen, injured one, then partied up and threw holy bolts at it.

Yes indeedy, they fixed this in v1.10 release. Holy Bolt does heal party undead (at least skelies). Nice.

[lemekim]

At least in older versions, the fire golems absorbtion was handled through a completely different (and unique)system than normal absorbtion.

It is true however that they have changed quite a lot in regard t the whole skill system which has implications for how attacks are handled too. I think it is still the same for fire golems though.

I am not sure about the fire absorbtion, but to answer the original question, fire golems have 100% fire resists in all difficulties, and thus are immune to fire. Since they cannot take any damage, they also cannot use it to heal themselves (assuming their absorb is not capped), so in short, the fire golems cannot heal from fire anymore.

THe absorbtion would come in though in cases of fighting bosses with conviction or with LR cast on the golem, it would be interesting to find out what exactly would happen then.

[Guest]

Yes indeedy, they fixed this in v1.10 release. Holy Bolt does heal party undead (at least skelies).

The answer from most Clerics on that though is usually "not nice", since it's impossible to aim at a certain person when you have a summoner in your party.

You also mention it as a "fix", but from what I understood before (1.09) the bolts went through undead (and un-healed healable) allies, so this seems more like a bug to me.

The same goes for the FoH bolts going through seemingly everything (and not healing), the mpq files says the opposite of this but they still do.


[Edit] Forgot a slightly important word or two.

[Crystalion]

The answer from most Clerics on that though is usually "not nice", since it's impossible to aim at a certain person when you have a summoner in your party.

Understood. I've often heard people wanting Holy Bolts to pierce. If HB power was toned down, piercing might be a good mod.

You also mention it as a "fix", but from what I understood before (1.09) the bolts went through undead, so this seems more like a bug to me.

I said "fix" because it is a change, iirc, from what I saw in v1.10 beta: the bolts did intersect with party undead, but they did *not* heal.

Alas I was not so foresighted as to save an install of v1.10b1 and v1.10s to go back and test my recollections, nor have I habitually kept my scribbles in good enough order to find/trust anything about prior testing. Were this not "just a game" I would take a little more care (e.g. if I were employed by Blizzard on the project, or if the salvation of Humanity depended upon my efforts here ;) )

Of course I've also relied, in the past, on forum search (which is terrible here at LL atm). It is conceivable that I posted my test results in passing (about HB) in one of the many HB posts I made (or the few maggot lair posts).

As to FoH: I know it seemed illogical/buggy in the beta, but I've not tested it in release. Even if it is still buggy, the change to release HB does indeed seem likely to me to be an intentional "fix".

[Crystalion]

Here's a couple tidbits:

But wait!--there's more...

(lost cable connectively for hours after a blackout, so I did some v1.10 SP/lan testing)

Someone suggested they were seeing a diff in how long their cyclone armor held up, and ascribed it to resists (i.e. they suggested that maybe CA comes after resists).

Testing indicates, for SP at least, that this is not so, as follows:

pvp test, slvl 10 telekinesis with stated 12-13 lightning damage, each testee zapped 10 times...
0% resist: 22 damage (~ expected)
60% resist: 9 damage (~ expected)
0% resist with slvl 1 cyclone armor up (40 "absorb elemental"): 19 teleks dropped the armor (~ expected)
60% resist ditto: 20 teleks dropped it (~ expected, if CA taken before resists).

If the poster (AB?) was not imagining things, then perhaps CA can be restored or benefited in some other way.

...

I asked, fairly recently, if Malice's -100 DR effect works vs. bosses, so I did a test:
Griswold is marked in monstats.txt as a "boss" so I gave him more mlvl (match my test char), more HPs, more regen and more DR.

I confirmed that my thrown daggers (fire animation if they hit, due to magefists) missed him a lot, then I wacked him with malice a bit and resumed the throwing... they basically hit every time (I wasn't patient enough to look for 5% miss and I had turned off his blocking).

iirc only Malice has this property? (-DR per hit) Blade Fury assassins might consider using Malice vs. tough DR bosses (like DC) to pussycat them for the party (the -DR appeared fairly "permanent") as a monster with 0 DR can be hit 95% of the time (apart from blocking) if you are close to their level.

For example, if DC is 110 and a player is 90 and we zap his 2940 DR "permanently" down to 0 by Malice (30 hits at range by Blade Fury, e.g.)...

to hit: n/(n+0) * 2 * 90/(90+110) = 1 * 2 * 90/200 = 90% to hit. (pretty damn good I'd say).

Alternately a Dragon Talon specialist could use Malice (damage doesn't come from weapon for kicks) to get his DR down faster than BF (10 attempts to hit a second possible with studly DT, 5 attempts always with BF). Etc. Etc. Depends on how cowardly you want to be in Pussycatting him. From what I hear, being cowardly with DC is a pretty good idea.

Naturally there are other ways to lower a monsters DR, so I'm not saying Malice is the only way to go. But getting a monsters DR to 0 and having it stay there without maintanence might be really useful in certain situations.

This is similar to the effect of high level Taunt taking the monsters AR down to 0... if they use AR (many attacks don't, of course) then they will only hit you 5% of the time (and you can block, perhaps, or dodge, etc.). Getting Taunt to that level is absurdly hard of course. (and if they do hit you, their phys damage output is reduced alot... not sure where the cap is, if any). Still, as hard as high level Taunt is, it is certainly easier than getting your DR to be ~20x the monsters AR in most cases (that actually matter) (unlike my test with Malice and Gris, Taunt won't work on bosses etc., so the comparision is not entirely apt).

[Guest]

If the poster (AB?) was not imagining things, then perhaps CA can be restored or benefited in some other way.

Testing any type of elemental damage reducers would be needed?


And if you feel like testing it, in regards to OnEvent skills/abilities on the whole - in regards to their whole "works before anything"

* You have Chilling Armour on

* Teleporting with a Rogue/Mage merc, and that one standing at the same place as you, due to immediately attacking.

That will result in something, when I was probably on something, this happened:

* They then happen to be targeted by a spell, which as it doesn't hit you, doesn't hurt you, but the CA's OnEvent still works - it sends bolts away!


[Edit] Blah.

[AtomicKitKat]

Battle-cry works on bosses. But it has the dual drawbacks of a low range and somewhat short duration(usually under a minute)

[Jarulf]

Griswold is marked in monstats.txt as a "boss" so I gave him more mlvl (match my test char), more HPs, more regen and more DR.

Actually it is the other way arround. Those would NOT get the boss modifications :)

Boss modifications are basically applied to random unqiues and super unqiues only. Since he is not a random unqiue and is not part of the super unique table, he won't get those bonuses (neither would for example Diablo and other act bosses).

[Crystalion]

Since he is not a random unqiue and is not part of the super unique table, he won't get those bonuses (neither would for example Diablo and other act bosses).

Precisely! That is to say, I wanted to know if -100 DR from malice would work on the "tough" monsters, like Izual, Diablo, Meph, Baal, etc. I picked Griswold because he's easy to get to, and not troublesome, but has, like the aforementioned monsters, the "boss" flag.

However I concede, if it wasn't obvious from my post, that verifying -100 DR works on the important "bosses", or if it doesn't work on some monsters, was not part of my (limited time) test.

Naturally if you or some other code reader comes along and precisely defines what an effect does/doesn't work on, then I'm happier. :) But I can't presume on your time and most of these things aren't too tedious to verify to deny anyway.

[Jarulf]

Precisely! That is to say, I wanted to know if -100 DR from malice would work on the "tough" monsters, like Izual, Diablo, Meph, Baal, etc. I picked Griswold because he's easy to get to, and not troublesome, but has, like the aforementioned monsters, the "boss" flag.

However I concede, if it wasn't obvious from my post, that verifying -100 DR works on the important "bosses", or if it doesn't work on some monsters, was not part of my (limited time) test.

Naturally if you or some other code reader comes along and precisely defines what an effect does/doesn't work on, then I'm happier. :)&nbsp; But I can't presume on your time and most of these things aren't too tedious to verify to deny anyway.

I think the -DR should be easy to verify. It should be part of the ToHit procedure. The only reason I don't look much at the 1.10 patch is that it is getting booring looking over the same game for the xth time. They have rewritten it so many times that it is geting out of hand. Much is still the same though so it is not as fun either. Just tedious. The last patch has changed the coding style a bit as well though. Not surprising since it is mostly one man doing it and he was not at Blizzard when they started out with D2 I think. The game has also been changed in that it is now heavilly driven by txt files and thus, much is general code with few hard coded things and less such tidbits to look for and build arround when looking at the code. Still, it is not that different.

[greatdane]

If the poster (AB?) was not imagining things, then perhaps CA can be restored or benefited in some other way.

I was imagining things. :)
I bought into a myth that was circulating other boards. What I probably was seeing was the increased mana from Wiz Spike left me with enough to recast CA after the Souls hit me. Souls have mana drain/steal. And I also survived the remaining damage after CA was destroyed due to higher resists.

Thanks for testing and clearing this up.

[Squalish]

It doesn't seem to do much.&nbsp; A test can be arranged as follows:

NM Meph will kill your maxed (as in 23/23, pretty easy to arrange) skeletons due to the poison cloud (pick players4+ to give him some HP).&nbsp; It is a race between the skeletons regen and the poison.&nbsp; If you cast Life Tap on Meph, your damage rate will slow down.&nbsp; The skeletons _should_ be gaining HP whenever they hit, but what happens is that you lose more skeletons.&nbsp; Life Tap seems not to help skeletons, perhaps it works for melee players (I have none).

Meph is not the only monster that LT seems to be useless (for skeletons) against, if it wasn't for Lower Resist and Firewall, it would be pointless.&nbsp; There is a good chance that when you think LT is working for skeletons, it is merely the high regen rate.

NM and hell Meph are leech immune, as my fury/feral WW found out very quickly.

Leech immunes are, to my wolf and to characters that rely on leech to survive, now more powerful than any of the other immunities barring physical, and they now occur in many monster classes they didn't before. For example, I find myself unable to kill skeletons for any extended amount of time unless there is a leechable skeleton shamon-type thing to ressurect them, paradoxically.

Does a Prayer Merc help?

[Crystalion]

Leech immunes are, to my wolf and to characters that rely on leech to survive, now more powerful than any of the other immunities barring physical, and they now occur in many monster classes they didn't before.&nbsp; For example, I find myself unable to kill skeletons for any extended amount of time unless there is a leechable skeleton shamon-type thing to ressurect them, paradoxically.

Life Tap certainly was changed for v1.10 (it now "works" ranged, albeit clearly broken, in the player's favor)... but I strongly suspect that it can still be used to leech off of anything. Should be tested of course, but, iirc, it always worked before (v1.10 that is).

Naturally you need to shop charges of LifeTap (unless you're a Paly using that runeword shield, or have a necro in party) and have them on your weapon switch. I have a slvl 5 charges LT wand atm, which I think does 26 seconds (more than enough, don't you think?) with a decent radius.

Hope this helps.

[librarian]

Heiho,

I want to add that LT is _not_ affected by any leech drain abilities besides physical resistance.
And I must be sick to send my old Necrozon out spitting ExAs onto harmless monsters on such a peaceful day, but before I forget it again and again I settled out to get this clear:
- in 1.10 you can leech with Exploding Arrows.
- in 1.10 you gain life via LT with Exploding Arrows - including the above mentioned behaviour for ranged attacks

Merry Xmas everybody O_/