DR and Crit Immunity

[Quidix]

(Background: I'm thinking of rolling a dual wield build with Insightful Strike, but fear too many mobs will be able to counter it)

Having not made it to epics yet, I'd like to know how common DR and crit immunity monsters are in epic areas? How common are they for bosses?

On damage reduction, I've heard stories of 20DR, how common is that in reality? Seems it would make a large number of built almost completely useless.

Thanks!

[Khazrak]

Haven't played much epic content yet myself, but I can say that I've seen some very high DR already. CR 13ish vampires have high DR/Alchemical silver (10 at least), and crit-immune things are... fairly constant. Even the CR 8 bats/snakes in the Watery Cave seem capable of ignoring sneak attacks for some reason.

The chief issue with insightful strike is you need to have a niche besides damage, because even with a tiefling using Insightful Strike + TWF + Combat Insight, your dependence on both DEX and INT as stats puts you behind a two-handed wielder in damge... AND you're got to deal with crit immunity. Northlander Hewing exacerbates the issue.

So, while I don't have epic content experience, I CAN say that A) crit immune things will suck, B) make sure you have a role besides raw damage in a fight because that role can already be covered (and done better) by sneak attackers or STR-based smashers.

[Camera9]

I'll write what I remember but this values can float a little bit from the actual DR. I'll try to be more accurate next time:

-The highest DR I know of belongs to the Balor, which makes sense because you need both alchemical silver and a good aligned weapon (never seen them around). The demon can soak something like 50 points of dmg (per hit). To give you an idea of how bad it is, a crit of 300 will drop to 150/120.

-One of the worst DR is in the lizards' cave where mobs can soak something around 65 points of damage on a crit and I'm still not sure how that is explained. They probably have a greater stoneskin always active.

-Elementals in general soak a lot, if I'm not mistaken it's something around 10, maybe slightly more.

-All the epic bosses in general have always soaked something around 30-50 points on a crit, depending upon who you're facing: the golem in the forest of dragons has a huge DR (30-40 per hit?) but the green dragon is a little bit weaker (20?). The frost king giant can also soak around 30 on a crit and the same goes for the fire giant king (or whatever the name is XD).

-The mushrooms in the dragon forest are also terrible because they soak something around 10 and they're immune to crits.

-I'm pretty sure almost everything in epic areas has some RD. Reaching Woods are, perhaps, the only exception. You can have a lot of fun, critting the gnolls ^_^
Over the Cloud Peaks, Yetis can soak around 5, Giants around 3. I haven't done Duergars in a while but they have some DR for sure, maybe 5? Trolls if I'm not mistaken don't soak any damage.

I hope it helps

P.S. In this case the kind of dmg was 90-95% Phisical Dmg.

[Reckeo]

Straight from the Wiki:

Epic Precision allows the Swashbuckler to apply Insightful Strike damage to foes immune to critical hits.

If you were planning on making a Swashbuckler.

[Quidix]

Sounds like DR really is quite the pain then!

Was not planning to go 12+ Swashbuckler, so wouldn't be able to benefit from Epic Precision with what I had in mind.

[Valefort]

It's not so bad, undeads and elementals are your bane but otherwise it's okay. You can get by with a bless weapon wand spam for undeads, should you really need to kill some.

Lizards have % resistance against slashing btw.

[Camera9]

They might have piercing resistance too, since my toon deals both kind of damage.

[Quidix]

So overall dual wields are weak vs two-handers?

[chad878262]

So overall dual wields are weak vs two-handers?

Depends on the build. I general if you want a TWF build there are several viable ways to get a strong build.

1. Sneak attack based with epic precision
2. STR or DEX (with deadly defense) Ranger
3. GTWF Tempest STR based.
4. DEX Bard with dread pirate and rogue dip
5. F12 to get extra damage from melee mastery and epic specialization, such as kukri weapon master.

May be some others I'm forgetting, but this should give some ideas. I was running around with a couple great weapon warriors this morning and i didn't think my twf build was weaker than them... did maybe 35 less damage per hit, but 60 damage vs 95 when you're hitting twice as often is still worth while.

[Quidix]

Thanks chad, now you just have to tell me how you managed to get to 60 per hit with dual wield!

Wouldn't most of those builds do more like 30 per hit, which if you're facing 10 or 20 DR is super annoying?

[chad878262]

Depends... bard has a few spells and inspire courage to boost damage, ranger has bane of enemies. Tempest build could be something like F12/T5/BG4/x9 and go edm÷gtwf... there are lots of ways to get damage... also note EW is going to give stacking +2xdex damage per round which dr won't stop.

[Egg Shen]

I’ve got a non-sneaker dex/intel based twf build that is just about to hit level 30. I haven’t muled the necessary wands over to play around in all these areas mentioned above (saves can be an issue...), but I’ll make it a point to do so in order to provide some real feedback.

You’ll want to find ways to sneak damage in when you can (certain classes can boost it, feats, weapons with built in elemental damage and flame weapon wands), but even if you’re only getting 10 damage through per hit, at 12 attacks per round you’ll be contributing against tough enemies, and enemies without a ton of resistance/reduction will be rendered into bloody ribbons in very little time at all.

[Hoihe]

I’ve got a non-sneaker dex/intel based twf build that is just about to hit level 30. I haven’t muled the necessary wands over to play around in all these areas mentioned above (saves can be an issue...), but I’ll make it a point to do so in order to provide some real feedback.

You’ll want to find ways to sneak damage in when you can (certain classes can boost it, feats, weapons with built in elemental damage and flame weapon wands), but even if you’re only getting 10 damage through per hit, at 12 attacks per round you’ll be contributing against tough enemies, and enemies without a ton of resistance/reduction will be rendered into bloody ribbons in very little time at all.

120 damage a round, assuming everything hits, is considered nothing apparently, or so am I told.

[samb123]

I’ve got a non-sneaker dex/intel based twf build that is just about to hit level 30. I haven’t muled the necessary wands over to play around in all these areas mentioned above (saves can be an issue...), but I’ll make it a point to do so in order to provide some real feedback.

You’ll want to find ways to sneak damage in when you can (certain classes can boost it, feats, weapons with built in elemental damage and flame weapon wands), but even if you’re only getting 10 damage through per hit, at 12 attacks per round you’ll be contributing against tough enemies, and enemies without a ton of resistance/reduction will be rendered into bloody ribbons in very little time at all.

120 damage a round, assuming everything hits, is considered nothing apparently, or so am I told.

But that wouldn't be 120 per round. That's 120 if both attacks hit. You'd have 6 attacks per round, with each weapon. So, 12 attacks total. Probably 5 of those 12 attacks will miss.


Now, here's the thing. We're discussing DR. The guy with the two-hander also isn't doing a lot of damage. The guy who doing a lot is probably the wizard or caster druid/cleric, when it comes to creature with any kind of physical DR or resistance. Why? Because magic would penetrate physical DR or resistances.

[chad878262]

Well built two hander is doing at least 350-400 per round, even after dr is taken off. there are no spells that can match that damage capacity, except maybe quicken to allow two spell in one round. Limited casts per test though. Casters power comes from dc spells, not damage. A strong damage spell does about 175 average damage (like epic spells). Avasculate is a different monster against high hp targets of course.