yes, I am quite certain that huge armor/huge vita bt pants are bis

Mitigation is important and I never neglect it, I just noticed and tested this stuff personally, when armor/all res gap becomes high, all res stops being effective. Like I would like actually to test it with someone, if Visaria can do it, it will be great, because he got the stats I am looking for. Like test bt pants like you have and same pants but without all res (extra vita is not needed) and see how you cope with mp8+ azmo blood pools or mp10 Ghom or whatever dot damage you can find.

By the way, anyone's up for a run on EU?

I have tried both types of gear, mass vit and mitigation - I cope with mp10 ghom just fine with eitehr Like I said, once you get to a certain point, vit (hp) really stops being a concern other than if you are concerned with d3progress ranking which values paper ehp higher than mitigation. This armor/allres/vit thing is a constant trade-off across several pieces of gear, zuni, tal's, bt, whatever. Make whatever choice makes sense for you is what I'm saying. Fyi, between 400 armor and 80 allres, it's no question...allres>armor for most mid-upper cmwizzes. Feel free to check mitigation numbers on d3up, so if anything, it's allres/mass vit pants that are BiS and not armor/mass vit. Also if you have sufficient LoH elsewhere, rare pants can > bt pants too, there's more than one way to gear cm.

This post was edited by ElijahBailey on Apr 2 2013 09:57pm

Well, point of high vita is to be able to withstand burst damage on higher mp's such as fallen maniacs, molten explosions, mallet lords on act 4 or take more hits if your nova or skin is on cooldown. 80 all res is a rare feature to have on all res piece, however I tested 80 all res bt pants (I had exactly 80 all res bt pants with added int) versus +370 armor bt pants and armor pants added more mitigation despite the numbers on item screen and d3up which, by the way, offers inaccurate information. It really comes down to testing and from my experience, high all resists without armor work pretty horribly. I feel like there is no need to go higher than 750 all res if you got 4,5k+ armor. On the contrary, adding more armor to your wizard doesn't have diminishing returns at all. I think same thing can be said about balancing ehp on a barbarian, except it's vice versa: all res over armor.

I am really not trying to impose my opinion though, I am using very gear demanding sns meteor build which doesn't work without enough mitigation. With a bubble instead of meteor and 3,003 breakpoint I feel like I wouldn't need so much armor/all res.

tldr: ~80ar > ~400armor for most of us but ofc will vary specifically person to person. Use a stat-check site to find out which BT pants works best for you!

I'm fairly sure D3up has any correct calculations in regards to mitigation - the exact forumulas are widely known and I've matched these numbers in excel back in the day. Whatever it calculates as your total damage reduction is your total damage reduction, regardless of whether you chose to stack more armor, more ar, both equally, or whatever - it absolutely does not matter if the result is the same damage reduction number (see links below esp the example comparing the high-allres wiz vs the high-armor barb). I'm saying for people to figure out what works best in terms of ehp, ehp:vit, mitigation for them by checking some stat sites (or spreadsheetsif they want to go old-school) and sure they can use d3rawr or something else but mitigation is something that is absolute - every site should have the same numbers in regards to this, the only difference is in the 'ehp' number and whether the sites use ehp with dodge, ehp without dodge, etc. etc. and d3up happens to show ehp for all of these options as well as your mitigation %.

how armor works with res:
http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/67319/how-do-armor-resistances-and-missile-melee-damage-reduction-interact

armor/resis gearing matrix:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Ag4BdvmMzezudEFJTUpBYU54aFZCX3JlcHhqSVhwOEE&output=html

This post was edited by ElijahBailey on Apr 3 2013 12:31am

Nice material, but kinda proves my point, especially the spreadsheet. Also, if having 50% mitigation from armor and 50% from resists is obviously better than having 30% from armor and 70% (even 80) from resists judging from a damage reduction formula.

No it doesn't prove your point - it proves the opposite. 80AR > 400 Armor for most of us. That is to say, your statement about armor BT pants being BiS is untrue. That's all...personal gearing preferences aren't always the best for everybody else.
Whatever it calculates as your total damage reduction is your total damage reduction, regardless of whether you chose to stack more armor, more ar, both equally, or whatever - it absolutely does not matter if the result is the same damage reduction number
Also - are you now agreeing that D3up numbers are correct and accurate? The mitigation calcs are really as straightforward as it gets - there's no need to 'test' them is what I'm saying, just use a site or spreadsheet if you're paranoid and save yourself a lot of time.

This post was edited by ElijahBailey on Apr 3 2013 08:31am

according to the spreadsheet after 800 resists with 3k armor - 80k resist would be the same deal as 400 armor. Thing is, I heard that d3up lies from Mannercookie's stream, of course he is not last instant of truth by any means but then I really did taste 80 ar bt vs armor bt and even with my ar/armor ratio being far from 800/3000 when 400 armor equals 80 all res according to spreadsheet, armor pants offered same or little more mitigation (I tested versus mp6 azmo and did short fights with elite packs). I will try to do some testing later, you can join me if you are on EU.

*ahem *ahem.

pardon me, but i actually tested the Mad1Lee route and came up with this:

if you noticed, he advised i run an armor roll zuni chest rather than %life. that was a win, hence, why i kept it on.

i pawned a SUPER vit roll pair of BT pants and tested vs my current res/armor roll pair. the winner stayed.


it's as easy as that. dprogress unbuffed eHP gives me that "sense" of knowing my wizard can handle some pretty hard hits, but actually playing the game and surviving multiple molten explosions and scissor arcanes and stacked plagued, speaks for itself.

please don't take this offensively, but if you like, you can create a comparable wizard to mine, buy and test the gear yourself, and make a statement. doesn't even have to be comparable, just run the tests, and see what happens. my observations are clear.


edit: to keep it simple, i only use gear that WORKS. (unless i'm testing) so don't get worked up trying to reinvent the wheel

This post was edited by Visaria on Apr 3 2013 09:27am

@Visaria - I agree with not re-inventing the wheel, that's what I'm saying - just simply look at the mitigation numbers on sites. They are 100% correct on damage reduction, there's really no need to re-test mitigation. Whether or not you want more vit vs more mitigation - that's a diff issue and could be personal preference. Also...I have a comparable wiz to either of you guys, if that makes my statements more valid. No need to go down that road again eh?
@haldursilver: Recommend getting the best weapon with socket that you can. If you can get to high enough damage (possible even with lower budget, not sure how much is 'limited') you won't need lifesteal on the weapon to survive, so you can get a better weapon with more dmg and no LS. And ofc increase resists, armor etc. etc. It gets expensive in the higher mp's so very few people run archon at the top mp levels. This might change once 1.08 hits but until then...

This post was edited by ElijahBailey on Apr 3 2013 01:13pm

what budget do i need to be able to farm mp5+?

thank you for youre help!

best regards,
Haldur