Cyclone armour on infinity: worth it?

Hey y’all, im just trying to min/max my Infinity self-wielding

Nova sorc - she currently is using an

Eth

Mancatcher, so i want to downgrade to a

Trident, just deciding if its worth it to go

Eth or not? The only real reason would be to use the cyclone armour, but is it even worth it?

My sorc also has max

Energy Shield, so she can pretty much handle anything already… but you know how it is when you really want to min/max

Thanks for the feedback!

Nope.
Cyclone armour absorbs damage before ES and resistance.
Assuming you have 90% Abs with ES and 50% res.
So lvl 21CA = 280 will save you 280*0,9*0,5 = 14 life

Understood, i though the calculation was different. I though it would just absorb or take flat elemental damage off anything incoming, then after it had absorbed it’s 280, then any remaining would go through es.

Cyclone armour absorbs damage AFTER ES, before MDR and then resistance.

For self-wielding Sorc, it is actually very good PvE.

For PvP, it could also be useful such as negating FoH damage.

Mocking is correct.
Nate was also correct but seemingly misinterpreted mocking.

Cyclone does indeed absorb BEFORE ES, res and all that jazz.

That's what makes it so bad.

Infinity CA, thanks to no synergies, absorbs a measly 280 dmg. That's already pretty bad starting out. But it is made infinitely worse by the order of events.

Say you're at 80% ES and 75% res (just random numbers). Say you then get hit for a 500 dmg elemental attack. That attack will (assuming no other absorbs and whatnot):
- Be reduced by 280 and use up your

Cyclone Armor
- The remaining 220 is reduced to 44 by your ES
- That 44 is dropped to 11 final damage by your resistances

Without CA you'd have 500 dropped to 100 by ES and then to 25 by res.

So because CA hits before all ES and res and all, any hit >280 will use it up in one go and it'll save you a grand total of 14 life in the end (slightly more or less, depending on actual ES/res% and such).

Now, IF CA hit after ES, you'd be looking at 500 dropped to 100 by ES which is then entirely absorbed by CA and CA could still take another such hit and then some. If it hit after res, you'd be looking at CA absorbing just over 11 such hits fully. If these were the case, it'd actually be good - excellent even if after res. But sadly (or luckily cuz rather OP on an already nigh-invincible sorc) this just isn't how it works.

The simple fact that CA goes first in PvM means it tends to get fully used up in 1 hit and will save you an amount of life so low that you'd be hard pressed to spot the difference.

PvP is slightly different because the pvp penalty reduction goes first (even before CA), making it slightly better. But beyond that, the concept still holds.

All that having been said, even with it being as bad as it is, if your aim really is to min-max (and not care about gold along the way), then technically it is to be used regardless. At least if you look at the raw character stats. Realistically though, I'd argue that the 10-20ish life it may save you do not outweigh the time it takes to even cast that CA, let alone the occasional repair time, making it actually negative in terms of min/maxing.

That having been said, if you're running one of those weird builds with high ES, low TK and low mana/regen then I guess it may be valuable enough to cast because the 280 being taken off before ES - while largely irrelevant for your life - do translate into quite a bit of mana saved for such builds.

Either way,

Trident reqs should be hit with just anni/torch anyways so you don't need to worry about it being

Eth to save stats. So...no reason to not go non-

Eth, other than looks (which I'd understand but doesn't count as min/maxing ).


Edit:
Turns out all of us were only half-correct, including Bisu being half-correct above this as well and fully correct below. See testing further down. Order matters!

Damn… i rolled mine in an

Eth

Trident already

After some trade to make an non-

Eth Infinity, I think what Bisu said was true.
I used souls to test:
ES(93%) then CA => CA gone really quick
CA then ES (93%) => CA was still there and I didn't lose a single life, only mana was lost.

Bisu wrote: 1 year ago

The conclusion was that when it comes to CA vs ES, the one that was cast later takes effect first.

Gotta say, never went that specific in my own testing. Mainly because it'd very much deviate from basically all other similar(ish) mechanics. Anything I've ever seen/done had CA go first. So that would indeed be news, even to me (which...I do love when that happens ).

Ok so that’s actually good news!

Sure i gotta make another Infinity, but the base shouldn’t be that hard to find, plus i still gotta put some points into strength to wear silkweaves anyways. And i have a +3es cta staff on swap, so it gets up to max absorb. Sounds like it’ll take my standard

Nova sorc into the “immortal” range (without all the specific immortal gear needed)

Thanks for everyone’s work on this!

When it comes to similar mechanics,

Bone Armor also works this way. If BA was cast after ES, then BA should absorb physical damage first. If BA was cast before ES, then ES should absorb first. There's probably no common use case for this in regular game play, but just want to mention it here since we are talking about detailed damage reduction sequence.

Basically, if you want to maximize the protection effect of CA and/or BA, cast them first, then cast

Energy Shield.

Well I'll be damned...I really did learn something new today. That's rare..at least in the context of D2 after 2 decades of it. Thanks Bisu!

Reason I'm saying that is I went and actually tested it cuz..seemed weird enough to need to try it.

The setup:
A random lvl 98 sorc with no gear other than an Infinity

Trident, life/light skillers, torch and anni.

Anya quests also completed. Dumped some random points into

Energy Shield, obviously, the rest kind of doesn't matter. That left her with -30 res on hell and 88% absorb on ES.
Took said sorc to

Valley of Snakes (on hell) for the ez-testing fire turret. Not only makes it nice and easy to step in/out and get an exact count of hits but the spread on damage is fairly low, giving you reliable (and blatantly obvious here) results without needing too many hits to confirm.

-----

Run 1 (Baseline):
No ES. No

Cyclone Armor.
After 10 hits, each hit took off an average of 105.2 life with a min of 99 and a max of 111.

-----

Run 2:
Only ES.

Expectation:
ES hits before res (in this case before the -res) so the 105.2 becomes an average of 80.92 which becomes 9.71 after the 88% ES which then turns into 12.62 actual damage as the -res is applied again.

Outcome:
After 10 hits, every hit took off either 12 or 13 life, perfectly matching expectations.

-----

Run 3:
Only

Cyclone Armor.

Expectation:
CA hits before the -res, meaning the 280 absorb is hit with 80.92 dmg at a time which should result in 3 hits being fully absorbed and the 4th hit leaving roughly 43.68 dmg to go through CA which with -res then becomes about 57, give or take. Hits 5+ would do the same as in the baseline run.

Outcome:
Hits 1, 2 and 3 were fully absorbed. Hit 4 used up CA and still hit for 58 dmg. Subsequent hits matched baseline. All in all, perfectly matching expectations.

-----

Run 4:
ES, followed by

Cyclone Armor.

Expectation:
CA hits before -res and before ES. The behavior for CA should hence be the exact same as run 3, meaning 3 hits would get fully absorbed and the 4th leaves about 43.68 dmg before res. ES would then drop that 43.68 to about 7 after res is applied at the end. Subsequent hits would then match run 2 and go back to 12 or 13 dmg.

Outcome:
Hits 1, 2 and 3 fully absorbed, hit 4 used up CA and still hit for 9. Subsequent hits back to 12 or 13 dmg. Perfectly matching expectations although hits 1-4 were apparently on the high end (but still well in line).

-----

Run 5:

Cyclone Armor, followed by ES.

Expectation:
Same as run 4 cuz casting order doesn't matter, CA hits before ES! Or...does it? Theoretically it should match run 4 but in case the order does matter, we would then expect the average 105.2 dmg to drop to 80.92 without the -res factored in, then be dropped to 9.71 via ES and only then hit the 280

Cyclone Armor. As a result, CA should be able to absorb 28 full hits and let 1 or 2 dmg go through as it expires on hit 29. 1 or 2 in that case being so low that even a couple hits on the low end would leave hit 29 still fully absorbed and CA only breaking on hit 30.

Outcome:
Well I'll be damned...29 hits fully absorbed back to back. Mana consumption as compared to run 4 hits 1-3 also went up massively (from..you know..0 ^^) since ES now actually did something. Honestly was not expecting this.

-----

So yeah, confirmed:
Order matters and

Cyclone Armor is made infinitely better if cast BEFORE ES. Though that is only true for the life effect as you will now use mana while CA is active which you wouldn't before. Bit of a trade-off there.
I do now wonder though if that's a D2:R thing in some weird code rework or whether this has been true since the OG days. Given, the application is niche AF and still kinda mweh but it seems too "important" for apparently none of us OG nerds to have known about for 20 years.





Actual data:

Thanks guys for carrying out your independent tests to confirm this. When in doubt, test, test, and test some more. Love that. =)

I agree that after 20+ years, sometimes it's small things like this that keep the game being "fun", regardless of how trivial they might be.

Would this help

Charsi,

Fara,

Hratli,

Halbu and

Larzuk make a little bit extra gold repairing CA charges, especially from those wealthy customers wielding Infinity in superior bases? We can only hope. It's not easy being a blacksmith nowadays, so anything helps. =P

Well...I'll be damned... Look at you Nate2.0 changing the meta for self-wielding Infinity

Nova sorc's!

Hey i just asked the question, Bisu and then schnorki are the real heroes here!

Yup so i used up a few charges on my

Eth

Trident, and it really does make a difference. I straight up wouldn’t take my

Nova sorc to the world Stone keep for fear of gloams (my

Nova sorc’s resistances are garbage - she’s primarily a cow farmer), with the cyclone armour then

Energy Shield it’s no big deal. Another place it helps is

Travincal, she can still kill the council on p7 but without CA she’d have to tele in and out a few times to allow her

Energy Shield to recharge, with it she can tele in, static 1-2 times, then

Nova until done!

Pretty nifty!

Now where’s that 4os non-

Eth, non-superior

Trident…

That...doesn't make sense though?

I mean, I get that your problem was having to tele out to let your ES 'recharge' (i.e. get some mana back). That's the general problem with a

Nova sorc in that you already use insane amounts of mana just casting

Nova, anything you lose via ES on top of that actually becomes quite painful.

This whole thing though, nice as it may be to have your life last a fair bit longer, makes the whole mana consumption issue even worse because CA won't save a single mana point anymore if you have ES going first. So your council problems should - if anything - be even worse now.

I used to still put some points into vitality (like 100ish) as an insurance for running into a mana burn elite or massive elemental damage, but with a low requirement base and a fall back for elemental damage in CA i really went the immortal route with zero points into vita, just like 15 into strength and everything else into mana.

With my charms and BO it’s like 2600+ mana points compared to ~2000 before!

Ah, ok. That'd do it then

Quality post here! Thank you for the research, scientific method for the win. Amazing job!