Defense, Ubers and You! I play a Dragonslayer, almost every day; I’ve experimented with and used several sets of gear over multiple incarnations of the same character; always with the goal of doing Ubers faster and better. Lately I’ve been advising people to put their extra skill points in this build into Defiance, as the only Holy Shield synergy. Defiance because Blessed Aim’s passive bonus goes unused with ITD weapons and Smite and with the proper setup we usually roll with 90 max LR, stacked to hell, with some absorb on top. “You can never have too much defense†I say. Well the other day someone challenged that: “Why put any points into Defiance when Exile allows for 25K+ defense already? Why even us that much? Why max Holy Shield past the point of ~30% block? If resists and Lifetap are all we need we should be maxing resists auras for a bunch of 95 max resists right?†These are the question I was running into and I admit I didn’t know how to answer them. Well I decided to look into it.. Resists are very important during your standard Pandemonium event; I’m sure you’re all aware of this. Even without max resist increases from gear you only take a fraction of the intended damage from elemental attacks, yet a lot of people assume all of the danger in Uber Tristram stems from spell damage and Mephisto’s Conviction aura, this simply isn’t true. The monster levels in Uber Tristram are very high, as are the Attack Ratings of both the minions and the Ubers themselves. I believe a lot of the danger of Uber Tristram comes from being hit irregularly with multiple physical attacks at once, not overwhelming elemental damage like most of us are prepared for. There are more sources of physical damage than there are of elemental damage, physical attacks are more frequent and have the potential to do more damage than elemental sources. Also, the chance for an Uber to hit you, even with what might otherwise be considered “godly†defense is astoundingly high. Let’s look at Uber Baal taking swings at you at 10000, 20000, 30000, 40000 and 50000 defense at levels 80, 85 and 90 (rounded to nearest hundredth). Level 80 Chance to hit at 10000 defense: 71.81% Chance to hit at 20000 defense: 52.05% Chance to hit at 30000 defense: 40.81% Chance to hit at 40000 defense: 33.57% Chance to hit at 50000 defense: 28.51% Level 85 Chance to hit at 10000 defense: 69.97% Chance to hit at 20000 defense: 50.71% Chance to hit at 30000 defense: 39.77% Chance to hit at 40000 defense: 32.71% Chance to hit at 50000 defense: 27.78% Level 90 Chance to hit at 10000 defense: 68.22% Chance to hit at 20000 defense: 49.44% Chance to hit at 30000 defense: 38.77% Chance to hit at 40000 defense: 31.89% Chance to hit at 50000 defense: 27.08% See the ~3% difference between levels 80 and 90? Simply leveling up doesn’t improve your ability to mitigate damage enough. Even at extremely high defense ratings, at a moderate attack speed you’re taking many times the amount of physical damage that you’re used to or can prepare for; add in multiple sources of physical damage (albeit at a lower chance to hit) and you can be “one-rounded†probably more often than you think. Because of highly diminishing returns it would take a level 99 character about 325,000 defense to bring Uber Baal’s chance to hit to the minimum 5%. Obviously this isn’t possible but it illustrates my point that one can never have too much defense. The difference then, and the answer to my friend’s question, is that to not max Holy Shield and Defiance could cost cause you to be hit 20-30% more in Uber Tristram than you otherwise would, and I believe that being hit that much more is more dangerous than taking more elemental damage.
This doesn't factor in that nearly every smiter that kills the ubers has 75% block. It also doesn't factor in that the minions are lower level than the ubers themselves and will have lower AR.
If the AR of the minions was available to me I would also calculate their chances to hit, except Im not sure anyone wants 50 posts of raw data on every possible minion and their respective mlvls and AR. I simply illustrated Baal to show how much higher the chances are than normal PvM; we do know that the minions mlvls are higher and thus their AR is higher and overall chance to hit is more dangerous than outside of Uber Tristram - even more dangerous than the elemental damage therein. 75% Block (should) be a constant that, like you said, "nearly every smiter that kills the ubers has." Because the number is constant everywhere it doesn't need to be calculated. I didn't come up with any data (nor try to come up with any) on how many hits per second or average damage over time the Ubers and their minions might dish out, all I'm claming is that inside the Pandemonium event defense rating is more important than it is currently being given credit for, and I posted this for any curious Dragonslayers to read.
