FoH / Holy Bolt and -enemy magic resistance

atari wrote: 2 days ago

I've tested this in singleplayer first with hero editor items and now again with regular game items (Void,

Renewed Black Cleft,

Guardian's Light and

Entropy Locket) against demons and undeads. I can assure you that +Magic Skill Damage is working with

Holy Bolt. Maybe the numbers aren't correct but I needed 8-9 hits without those items and 5-6 with them against a

Zombie in

Blood Moor (and yes, I made sure that the skill level was the same in both cases). That sounds right for a 50% damage increase. Please test for yourself if you don't believe me.

Honestly, I don't know what to tell you. Your test provided a false positive, and repeating this just reinforces your belief that MSD was the reason. An Undead

Zombie in Bloor Moor with extremely low HP is the single worst target you could have chosen for this test.

If you test a Demon who actually has magic resistance and calculates magic then you'll be better off, but like I said it won't change a thing with +MSD.

Holy Bolt can double‑hit undead targets (FOH HB cannot), and that alone can create a stable “5–6 vs 8–9” Pattern even when MSD does nothing. The damage from HB is also not flat - it has a min/max as well, which will impact every attempt.

In the tgEXcalibur video - he originally had +MSD and -EMR gear on, and now after hours upon hours of testing and editing the video you'll see in the side-by-side comparison that the panel he created now only includes -EMR after he removed the old footage. Why do you think that is? There's no way a build that experiences a +50% boost to be completely abandoned and reverted back to standard gear after seeing no real change in damage. It just can't happen.. It would automatically be the BiS and be undeniably better in the eye test alone - yet his conclusions were it was much worse than the standard setup. The only thing that was incorrect was EMR, which does nothing for half of the targets but impacts the other half - and losing a plus skill for this when an extra skill could scale damage for both demons/undead would be more optimal in theory.

I've also tested it with

Fallen in

Blood Moor and the result was the same. +msd is working for

Holy Bolt (and doesn't work for the bolts from foh).

atari wrote: 1 day ago

I've also tested it with

Fallen in

Blood Moor and the result was the same. +msd is working for

Holy Bolt (and doesn't work for the bolts from foh).

Thanks for taking the time to actually test this and providing your results.

Knappogue wrote: 1 day ago

atari wrote: 1 day ago

I've also tested it with

Fallen in

Blood Moor and the result was the same. +msd is working for

Holy Bolt (and doesn't work for the bolts from foh).

Thanks for taking the time to actually test this and providing your results.

Thanks indeed @atari for all the testing! And to @D369 for the insights about the various mechanisms in play.

My problem with tgExcalibur's testing was that they compared the FoH

Bolts at different skill levels and thus base damage numbers, useful for comparing actual builds but less so when investigating mechanisms.

I can't say I've followed every turn in the discussion here lately. But currently it seems to me as if the regular HB (but not FoH HB) was updated to include MR/MSD modifiers for RotW, while still keeping the regular MR piercing ("as if MR=0") for undeads. (The latter is exemplified by the fact that

Achmel the Cursed and his minions, who are magic immune, melt to my Pally's

Holy Bolt s from main skill or FoH alike without any sunder or minus res gear - I just tested to re-confirm this.) This would also imply that the interpretation here is actually correct:

Knappogue wrote: 4 days ago

...
In in incredibly oversimplified process:

My original interpretation:

• Step 1: Look at monster Magic Resistance and treat it like it is 0% (regardless of actual value)
• Step 2: See that Magic Dmg is being applied by player
• Step 3: Apply xx -EMR (enemy monster res is now 0-xx).
• Step 4: Apply total damage

...

...but only since RotW. If my reasoning is correct, it might also be that the devs simply forgot FoH when making the adjustments to

Holy Bolt.

Knappogue wrote: 4 days ago

I always really do enjoy having conversations like this and having my mind changed.
Cheers guys!

Indeed!