Hello! I normally play D2 but I landed on this game somehow and I actually really enjoyed playing it at work the past two days (lots of boring down time here). I like discovering things myself so I haven’t read too much about the game here, but I do have a question about armor types.

Is there a way to distinguish between whether you’re taking physical or magical damage? I notice some armors have very high resistance to one but minimal to another and I’m not sure if I should be going for an equal balance of both, or just one type. I play a Barbarian if it matters, made it to level 18 but re-rolled because the game got really difficult without having any good gear.

Thanks for your time.

Basically what matters the most when you're playing with 0 fg investment is the level of the armor.
I would also avoid both types of robes.

Because barbs want high vita, they will find plates > chain > scale > leather. This is partly due to vitality giving a % bonus to your physical defense also, so the higher your physical defense the more the vitality will boost it.

Mobs are more common to using physical attacks as well as there are 2 types of mobs:
Mobs which heal = cannot deal magic damage
Mobs which can use damage charms = 50/50 chance to use charms roughly.
This leads to 75% of attacks taken being physical.
You can tell if you're taking magical damage as there will be a small picture of a damage charm at the start of the line from the mob when it attacks.

Especially at early levels though it's way more important to use higher level armor, a level 5 leather will be better than any level 0 armor. presuming neither have ee.
This is the same for weapons. You are currently using a heavy weapon which has a slower attack, ideally use a level 5 or 10 weapon when you get to those levels over the level 0 heavy.

This post was edited by Bigheaded on Dec 30 2021 11:59am

Thanks a bunch for that. Really helps me understand what I should be using, much appreciated.

This post was edited by messyhairs on Dec 30 2021 12:18pm

not a problem, for charms it's worth noting the only thing which matters are the stats.

a tier 1 charm with 5 strength or 100 health is better than a tier V with no stats as the charm damage/heal is only useful for casters, barbs have 5 intel so do not bother with this.


Also, stat only strength and vitality, as all of the barb weapons need strength where only axes and battleaxes do not mind if strength or dex. so it's just easier to just stat all strength.
there's further instruction here if you really want to know too much detail: https://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=84442301&f=74&o=20

Noted. I do have a Tier III charm that gives me a bunch of Health so that’s what I’ve been rocking the whole time. I find myself using it occasionally to heal mid-fight but it’s not very effective, usually I just exit the catacombs and wait until I’m healed up. I also went pure Vitality my first run through to level 18, but I’ll mix in some strength and see how that works out. I’ll check that link out as well, appreciate it.

Quick question about this as I have always wondered (not enough to do anything about it tho lol). Do half the mobs have heal charms, so that it is 75/25? I thought the melee/caster ratio was around 60/40, but the way you explained it above would make sense.

to be honest the 50/50 is a presumption and not something i've looked into. So to answer that all i can say is i dont know.
There are more mobs which are forced to use damage charms due to their abilities than those forced to use heal charms, so that's a suggestion that it's at least somewhat biased to being not 50/50.

Ok yeah, that makes sense, thanks!