That is up to you my friend. The only thing you have to understand is how impen works and decide how much damage reduction you need.

Here's how impen math is done to my knowledge. Each point of impen is worth 1/66% damage reduction on crits. So lets say you build a toon with 2500 impen which is pretty common in PvP;

2500/66 = 37.8% damage reduction from crits.

Assuming a player with 1.7x crit multiplier attacks you and crits with an ability that has a tooltip of 15k.

For case with no impen;

1) 15k x 1.7 (for crit multiplier) = 25.5k
2) cyro 50% debuff = 12.75k before factoring in penetration or resistances

for case with 2500 impen;

1) 15k x (1.7-.378) (for crit multiplier - impen reduction) = 19.83k
2) cyro 50% debuff = 9.915k before factoring in penetration and resistances.

Total damage mitigated before defences = 12.75 - 9.915 = 2.835 --> that's about 22% flat out damage reduction

Considering things like divines and infused only offer marginal total of 5-10% DPS or stat increase, impen is flat out the best trait in PvP. Unless you are running some one shot QQ 6k weapon damage build that has no intention of ever taking part in sustained battles, it would be wise to run impen mostly for the case of PvP.

As for whether you can reduce someone's crit damage below base damage; (it is very unlikely);

To my knowledge, full gold impen gives 2000 impen. 25% from hardy would give another 1650. So the MAX you can get at the moment would be 3650 impen. So it is technically possible to reduce someone's crit to less than base IF and ONLY if they have a multiplier of (3650/66) = 1.55x approx. Considering everyone has a base crit hit damage multiplier of 1.5x, this means a player must only have 5% bonus to crit hit damage for you to be able to pull this off. This is never the case tho. Just the blue CP tree has so much bonus to crit damage. I believe most people would run more than 1.6X multipliers.

Hope this helped!

Blud wrote: »

@Vangy

Thanks for the great post!

I have been thinking about running one of those more ganky builds for when my guildies are not online. So, if I can't get away, I will probably die pretty quick. I have full impen sets for the guild pvp nights when we do sieges and sustained battles, so I will hang on to that.

Np! As for the shadow mundus, unless you are on a ganky build, you might wanna swap it out. Even on a ganky build, crits dont work on shields. So you can consider regen or spell/weapon damage etc.

To add a couple considerations:

• If running in a group, having one healer with transmutation set will give you another 1300 crit resistance.
• The maximum crit damage increase you can negate with crit resistance is 50%, meaning that for an unmodified base char who has 1.5 crit multiplier, you can achieve crit damage = normal damage. This is a hard cap.
• You achieve the 0.5 crit multiplier reduction at 3571 crit resistance, so the actual number is more like 1/71.5% than 1/66%
• As a rule of thumb, full gold impenetrable plus transmutation proc will bring you to cap (not quite but almost).

The stars you mentioned are considered separately from damage calculation. If I remember correctly, their reduction is applied prior to any mitigation calcs, tagging @Asayre for confirmation.

A 100 points in resistant provide 25% reduction, equivalent to approx. 1785 crit resistance rating.

Amdar_Godkiller wrote: »

Leandor wrote: »

The stars you mentioned are considered separately from damage calculation. If I remember correctly, their reduction is applied prior to any mitigation calcs, tagging @Asayre for confirmation.

A 100 points in resistant provide 25% reduction, equivalent to approx. 1785 crit resistance rating.

OK. So a hit that would normally register 8K and crit for 12K, would instead hit
 for 6K with a 9K Crit, then resistance cp + impens would reduce the 3K crit, and  
physical/spell resistance would offset penetration to determine how much of 
the 6K base damage would go through, right? So the resistance perk is no 
where near as valuable as hardy, ele. defender, and thick skinned, it seems.

If you have 100 in hardy and take an 8k crit, which becomes 12k
yes it will become 6k and 9k (a 2k, and 3k reduction respectively) of PHYSICAL damage
with resistant + impen gear, the 9k would then become 6k (a 3k reduction) of ALL TYPES of crit damage

Since there are, as you point out, 3 separate CP stars for resist, and it is possible to reduce critical strikes to a 0% modifier (without enemy having +crit damage CP star), resistant is arguably the most valuable.

Besides, if you had 0 hardy the crit reduction from 12k would have been 4k, it is still as good as hardy in the above example (with gear though) even after hardy reduces the damage

Hardy would not mitigate any spell damage whatsoever, so if you for example had 0 resistant and 0 ele defender you could get a 20k empowered proc frags crit to the face and die to mage's wrath the same millisecond.

holosoul wrote: »

Amdar_Godkiller wrote: »

Leandor wrote: »

The stars you mentioned are considered separately from damage calculation. If I remember correctly, their reduction is applied prior to any mitigation calcs, tagging @Asayre for confirmation.

A 100 points in resistant provide 25% reduction, equivalent to approx. 1785 crit resistance rating.

OK. So a hit that would normally register 8K and crit for 12K, would instead hit
 for 6K with a 9K Crit, then resistance cp + impens would reduce the 3K crit, and  
physical/spell resistance would offset penetration to determine how much of 
the 6K base damage would go through, right? So the resistance perk is no 
where near as valuable as hardy, ele. defender, and thick skinned, it seems.

If you have 100 in hardy and take an 8k crit, which becomes 12k
yes it will become 6k and 9k (a 2k, and 3k reduction respectively) of PHYSICAL damage
with resistant + impen gear, the 9k would then become 6k (a 3k reduction) of ALL TYPES of crit damage

Since there are, as you point out, 3 separate CP stars for resist, and it is possible to reduce critical strikes to a 0% modifier (without enemy having +crit damage CP star), resistant is arguably the most valuable.

Besides, if you had 0 hardy the crit reduction from 12k would have been 4k, it is still as good as hardy in the above example (with gear though) even after hardy reduces the damage

Hardy would not mitigate any spell damage whatsoever, so if you for example had 0 resistant and 0 ele defender you could get a 20k empowered proc frags crit to the face and die to mage's wrath the same millisecond.

That's why my heavy attacks with destro get 12K on some players...

I'm fairly sure I've read information that contradicts what @Vangy writes, i.e. that

dam_on_crit = min(1, 1 + (crit damage - crit resist) / 66) * dam_on_non_crit

i.e. that, first of all, shadow (and the templar passive / aggressive horn / beast trap) is not less but more effective if your target is running lots of impen (thief is ofc less effective and most pvp builds will still pick neither because of damage shields and because of how useful reg stones are in pvp). secondly, that crits can never cause damage below non-crits.

sadly, i cannot find the source for this and i never did extensive tests myself.

Vangy wrote: »

Amdar_Godkiller wrote: »

@Vangy @Leandor

So do hardy, thick-skinned, and elemental defender reduce crit damage on top of base damage?

How much crit resistance does 100 CP in resistant get you?

I'm on XBox and I'm only getting 250 crit resistance from each piece of legendary armor. Wouldn't this make 1750 the max resistance for 7 impens, or do post DB updates change this?

Yes hardy reduces all physical damage and ele defender reduces all spell damage. Typically, you'd want most of your points split across hardy and ele defender with some into better healing, thick-skinned and about 30 or so into crit resistance. Typically you want all these cos putting 100 into just 1 with diminishing returns is kinda meh. Plus like others have pointed out, ignoring one aspect of these stars is bad, cos you can get hit hard by a type of damage you are not CP-ed up for.

I'm about to respec around 20 of the 86 CP I have in elemental defender on my Vamp. Plus I'll be getting 13 more in the warrior for my vet levels. That's why I'm asking. Trying to decide between Hardy (currently 37 CP), Thick-skinned (13 CP), and Resistant (7 CP). Thanks for the info.

Leandor wrote: »

My personal stance is that critical resistance is the most important and effective means of damage mitigation in PvP.

But since you can achieve the crit resistance cap without CP, I prefer to distribute CP into the direct mitigation stars, as these provide a unique form of mitigation that can't be achieved otherwise. It also allows switchover from PvP build to PvE built by changing equipment as opposed to redistributing CP (to a certain extent).

So 100 points in resistant alone (no impens) mitigates roughly half of crit. It would prevent 2000 of the 12 K crit attack 100% of the time, but only in PVP and only if an attack crits. The other 3 would prevent 3000 damage on 12K hits in either PVP or PVE, but only ~33% of the time (physical vs magic/elemental vs DOT). Since DOTs are purgable, I'd say this has the least priority, and since I'm a Vamp, Elemental Defender still has the highest; but I think Hardy and Resistant are of roughly equal value for me. Thanks again. This has always confused me.

Ofcourse when all is said and done, you'd need to consider your build and figure out what you need. If you are a vamp, you'd want more pts in ele defender etc. The only other thing to take note of is that 120 pts in ele defender/hardy tree unlocks the 80% reduce stam cost on next ability. So most builds in PvP, really need this. Ie: I refresh shuffle or use caltrops right after a break free. It saves me so much stamina everytime and basically negates the cost of break free cos I get an almost free ability right after it. Caltrops costs like 7k stamina almost lol. 80% of it is like 5.6k.

Asayre wrote: »

Leandor wrote: »

If I remember correctly, their reduction is applied prior to any mitigation calcs, tagging @Asayre for confirmation.

You're right.

Thanks, mate.

ketroc wrote: »

Vangy wrote: »

Total damage mitigated before defences = 12.75 - 9.915 = 2.835 --> that's about 22% flat out damage reduction (impen)

Considering things like divines and infused only offer marginal total of 5-10% DPS or stat increase, impen is flat out the best trait in PvP.

Keep in mind that people only crit about 30-45% of their attacks. So that 22% reduction on crits is about a 7-10% reduction overall when you include attacks that don't crit. Still probably the best pvp trait on most armor pieces.

I don't like this evaluation of crit reduction because it misses reality. You're perfectly right mathematically but it matters a lot that you don't take 20k at once and get executed. The "burst" is why I say your evaluation is lacking in the practical idea of what makes impen powerful. Not even going into crit builds which are only out of favor 'because' of impen.

Leandor wrote: »

To add a couple considerations:

• If running in a group, having one healer with transmutation set will give you another 1300 crit resistance.
• The maximum crit damage increase you can negate with crit resistance is 50%, meaning that for an unmodified base char who has 1.5 crit multiplier, you can achieve crit damage = normal damage. This is a hard cap.
• You achieve the 0.5 crit multiplier reduction at 3571 crit resistance, so the actual number is more like 1/71.5% than 1/66%
• As a rule of thumb, full gold impenetrable plus transmutation proc will bring you to cap (not quite but almost).

I was not aware that there was a 50% crit damage reduction hardcap. Is this confirmed accurate?

So hypothetically, if I wear 7 impen, this is equivalent to around 24.5% crit resist. 100 points in Resistant gives another 25% equaling 49.5% crit resistance.

If I receive the Transmutation buff which gives another 18.2% crit resist, i effectively only gain 0.5% additional crit resist since it is capped at 50%?

This would also imply that if you run Transmutation on yourself, there would be little benefit in in stacking more than 31.8% crit resist.

It makes sense to hard cap at 50%, since you would otherwise punish a less well equipped/built char if she gets lucky, by making the crit count less than a non crit.

I'm very sure it is a hard cap, and it is aligned with the other mitigation hard caps (physical/spell mitigation).

This kind of direct, non-random mitigation needs a certain limitation to not make it overeffective (remember the guy who killed Illidan in WoW's burning crusade expansion by stacking evade to 100%?), and it cannot be by limiting opportunity, otherwise gear progression would have to be limited.

I'll wait for others better informed on the facts of hard caps, to either confirm or refute this specific issue.

impen is not hard capped but you can't reduce a crit to less than normal damage, the minimum crit modifier is 1x damage
you can bring 1.75x to 1x though
if you have 4700 impen and someone has 0 cp in +crit and is not an NB etc (they have 1.5x) their crit will do 1x (not 0.75x)