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Possible Duplicate:
How do armor, resistances and missile/melee damage reduction interact?

The above question covers armor, resistances and DR (melee/ranged, or inherent monk/barb 30% DR). These are multiplicative and commutative (they resolve one after the other with no intervening steps, so order between them is moot). To clarify, I am asking for a complete view which includes where in the stack various skills and/or passives are applied.

How is incoming damage on a character resolved in the game considering various factors such as armor, resistances, class skills, damage reflection, shield block etc.? This significantly affects the utility of certain defensive abilities and when they proc, and I am interested in the big picture to understand the interplay between the various components.

Why is the order important?

It determines the amount of damage that is absorbed/redirected by the various character skills. For e.g. Force Armor would have stopped working completely post-hotfix if it resolved prior to armor/resists mitigation, as the initial incoming damage from Inferno mobs can easily be more than 2x of typical wizard hp (not using a low hp build).

Note: I am including an answer to indicate my current knowledge, but hope to get a more comprehensive post with all the various factors included.

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Alok
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    See chat. I've come around and I think there's a valid question in here with regards to when things like reflection and stuff proc. But as far as the purely damage-reduction aspects go, I think the other question covers it. Voting to reopen. – Sterno Jul 19 '12 at 19:09

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When you are attacked, there are several different stages that cumulatively determine how much damage you take:

  1. Dodge gives a straight % chance to avoid the attack completely
  2. Skills that reduce monster damage are applied
    • Monk: Resolve
    • Monk: Crippling wave with Concussion
    • Monk: Mantra of Conviction with Intimidation
  3. Armor and resistance will mitigate the values (multiplicatively)
  4. Skill based reduction is applied:
    • Barbarian: Ignore Pain
    • Demon Hunter: Gloom
    • Wizard: Force Armor
    • Barbarian: Relentless
  5. Shield will absorb a variable amount of damage based on the chance to block and statistics of the shield itself
  6. Damage absorption is applied:
    • Wizard: Diamond Skin
  7. Fatal damage may trigger:
    • Spirit Vessel for Witch Doctor
    • Near Death Experience for Monk

Thus, a character with a 20k hp pool may be able to withstand 200k incoming damage before dying - this is called as the Effective HP (SV/NDE is not considered when calculating ehp).

Not all of the above steps are always factored in:

  • Dodge doesn't apply to area damage effects (plagued, molten, desecrate, Ghom cloud)
  • Force Armor is limited to 2x of the actual HP, if damage before that phase resolves in excess of this amount then FA will not activate.

There are several posts in battle.net on the interaction between FA and DS, or you can read up on the (long ago nerfed) 4.7k hp regen build and how it worked.

Alok
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