Diablo 4 Players Can't Figure Out Why The Resistance Stat Is So Bad

Diablo IV players are scratching their heads in regards to the game's resistance stat, which according to one content creator, is about 10 times worse than any of the game's other defensive stats.

Kripparrian, who is known for creating content around Blizzard's ARPG franchise as well as Blizzard's digital card game Hearthstone, attempts to explain in one of his latest videos. He is playing a Sorceress and has stacked resistances thanks to the main Sorceress stat, Intelligence, also rewarding a bonus to all resistances. In doing so, he has learned that resistances don't seem to compare favorably when it comes to other defensive stats.

Breaking down the numbers, Kripparrian explains that every other defensive stat in Diablo IV, including armor and damage reduction from close, are vastly superior to stacking resistances. Armor, for example, grants both physical damage reduction and resistances to all elements, whereas pieces of gear typically only have resistance to one particular element. At first glance, a piece of gear that has a 50% elemental resistance roll may seem good. But in reality, it only raises the overall resistance to that element by a few percentage points, and overall offers very little actual damage reduction. A piece of gear with a good plus percent to armor value, on the other hand, raises overall mitigation to every type of damage by a higher percentage.

"Any form of resistance, on any piece of gear, is without question the worst stat on it," Kripparrian says. "Don't use a single piece of resistance gear, because it is a total waste until they review this horrendous system."

He uses two of the game's elixirs as an example. One elixir grants players 30% more Life, a significant boost, while another elixir in the same tier that increases a particular resistance stat by 20% only translates to less than 1% damage reduction overall.

"It's one of those situations where it's either a completely bugged system or someone forgot part of the equation, they missed a decimal at the very least," Kripparian writes.

Part of the issue, as Kripparian and other content creators like Onepeg note, is that the actual calculations behind resistances are incredibly confusing. Other defensive stats, like close damage reduction, are one-to-one in terms of how much damage reduction they give, whereas a piece of gear with plus 50% to a resistance only actually increases that resistances by a few percentage points.

"I don't know if it's a bug or not," Onepeg says. "All I know is right now the stats of what this says it is doing is incredibly misleading."

Funnily enough, the class that Kripparian says is among Diablo IV's weakest due to how resistances work, the Sorcerer, is also the game's most-played class. According to Blizzard, Diablo IV is the studio's fastest selling game ever, beating out both Diablo III and World of Warcraft's Shadowlands expansion. That means Diablo IV likely sold more than 3.7 million copies in its first 24 hours, although Blizzard has yet to reveal official sales numbers.