Minus Resists vs Plus Skill Damage

I’ve been using a Crescent Moon Phase Blade on my Tesladin with Grief on switch for light immunes - but I’m wondering if a 4x 5/5 Light Facet + Zod Ethereal Runemaster could be better?

Is there a calculator for this? What would be stronger? -35% Enemy Light Res or -20% Light Res and +20% Light Skill Damage?

Depends how much res the monster has.

A rule of thumb is that at 50% res, then minus 5% res results in a roughly 10% increase in effective damage (twice as effective as +skill%). Exact ratio is 0.5 divided by 0.45, and hopefully that makes sense.

At 0 res, minus res is equivalent to +skill%.

At 95 res, minus 5 res would DOUBLE your damage. Ratio is 0.10 / 0.05

You would notice minus res most against champs, uniques, and bosses, since they often have higher res than most normal monsters.

EDIT: if focusing on lightning damage (Grief on switch for immunes), I’d stick with Crescent Moon. Static Field is OP and you need speed.

The short answer is "it depends". On the remainder of your gear and the targets on your route that is.

If all you have is base damage (say 100 for the sake of easy math) and all your targets have 0 resistance, then dmg and -res are effectively the same. 5% dmg would yield 105 total. And -5 res would cause your 100 dmg to do 5% amplified dmg due to the -5 res, resulting also in 105 total.

Now, if you don't just have base lightning damage but already have things that give you +%dmg, things shift because further +%dmg would be added to the existing and not work multiplicatively while -res would still work the same. So say you have 10% +dmg already, then you're at 110. Add 5% dmg now and you get to 115 (+15% onto the base 100). If you now get -5 res though, you do 115.5 effective damage (105% * 110 dmg). So the more %dmg you already have, the further it shifts towards favoring -res. The same concept works in the opposite direction as well.

And to then make it a bit more complicated for you, you also need to look at the resistance of your target mobs. If they're at 0 resist, then -5% res would give you 5% more dmg. If they are at 50% res however, then you would normally do 50 dmg (100*0.5), with -5 res you'd end up doing 55 instead (100*0.55) as their resist is down to 45%. That's suddenly a relative increase of 10%. I.e. the higher your target's resistances are, the more it again shifts in favor of -res. At the same time, if you are running an Infinity merc or are running your own Conviction or something, it shifts in the opposite direction as you've already got -85 res from his aura or even more from yours. Also keep in mind that you can't drop mobs below -100 res so if you're already there due to a high lvl Conviction, further -res is entirely useless on pretty much any mob except ones with immunities you just broke.

The answer hence sadly isn't quite as simple as "-res is better" or "+dmg is better". It really depends on your build, gear and farming route.

Thanks all.

I have a Zod already (although I'm loath to spend it since it's self-found and a souvenir) and I have enough "money" to afford to make this Axe if I really wanted to.

Just wanted to know if it was going to be worth it.

I run organic Conviction (Level 25) and there are already monsters in Chaos whose immunes I can't break, so I'm guessing switching to such an Axe would make things worse.

moonlit wrote: 4 years ago

Depends how much res the monster has.

A rule of thumb is that at 50% res, then minus 5% res results in a roughly 10% increase in effective damage (twice as effective as +skill%). Exact ratio is 0.5 divided by 0.45, and hopefully that makes sense.

At 0 res, minus res is equivalent to +skill%.

At 95 res, minus 5 res would DOUBLE your damage. Ratio is 0.10 / 0.05

You would notice minus res most against champs, uniques, and bosses, since they often have higher res than most normal monsters.

EDIT: if focusing on lightning damage (Grief on switch for immunes), I’d stick with Crescent Moon. Static Field is OP and you need speed.

Hello,

with +skill% you mean something like Lightning Mastery I assume?

So the statement is when a monster reaches 0% resistances minus enemy resistances and % damage are equal?
So from 0% to -100%?

What is the value of the flat damage you get from plus skills or other sources of flat damage?
Where can you find the calculations that tell you what gives you more damage?

For example, a Nova sorceress who already reaches -97 enemy minus resistances with Infinity and griffons?
When wearing a Sunder charm would it make more sense to invest in skill level?

Atmicinclusion wrote: 2 years ago

moonlit wrote: 4 years ago

Depends how much res the monster has.

A rule of thumb is that at 50% res, then minus 5% res results in a roughly 10% increase in effective damage (twice as effective as +skill%). Exact ratio is 0.5 divided by 0.45, and hopefully that makes sense.

At 0 res, minus res is equivalent to +skill%.

At 95 res, minus 5 res would DOUBLE your damage. Ratio is 0.10 / 0.05

You would notice minus res most against champs, uniques, and bosses, since they often have higher res than most normal monsters.

EDIT: if focusing on lightning damage (Grief on switch for immunes), I’d stick with Crescent Moon. Static Field is OP and you need speed.

Hello,

with +skill% you mean something like Lightning Mastery I assume?

So the statement is when a monster reaches 0% resistances minus enemy resistances and % damage are equal?
So from 0% to -100%?

What is the value of the flat damage you get from plus skills or other sources of flat damage?
Where can you find the calculations that tell you what gives you more damage?

For example, a Nova sorceress who already reaches -97 enemy minus resistances with Infinity and griffons?
When wearing a Sunder charm would it make more sense to invest in skill level?

I think it just means that when you have +400% lit skill damage from Lightning Mastery, -res is more important than having +405% lit skill damage.

Should be added that +%dmg is most effective on Cold Sorc as her mastery provides -Res and not +% Dmg like fire and lightning do. +5%dmg/-3% res Cold RBF are not that expensive and realy worth it on a cold build.