[MXL:U] FAQ & Mechanics Guide

 Overview 

 1. Items 

1. Apply "+999 to I need a life because I have 6 Sha'ads" Mystic Orb onto weapon. If no green text saying "Orb Effects applied to this item are doubled," then it failed. There is a 2% chance for success so simply use an oil of renewal to re-roll (refresh) the item and try again until you succeed.
   
2. Once you get the effect, apply oil of luck for a 100% chance to get the lucky bonus.
   
3. Generally for WDM builds, its favorable to re-roll a superior base weapon until you get 50-60% ED and AR% (if you character needs it), and then apply the Sha'ad Mystic Orb. Of course, this means its going to take longer, but you will end up with a better base weapon.
   
4. Doing step 3 will allow you to "by-pass" the 350% ED cap when you socket a runeword into it. This is because the pre-RW base item is considered a separate item from the post-RW. Example: 97% ED from superior + luck oil roll -> MO up to 350% ED -> Apply RW and get ED% from RW -> Apply more MOs up to 700% ED cap.
   
5. Note that not all RWs will allow you to reach the 700% ED cap. If you don't get at least 150% ED from the RW itself, you will run out of MO space first since you can only apply 15 of any MO to an item.
   

Spoiler:

1. Tiered Unique Weapons: Just use 2 Arcane Crystals + Oil of Enhancement to re-roll the item and try until double MO effect.
   
2. Rare Weapons: Unfortunately, you need to use oil of renewal so you will lose any nice affixes you managed to obtain. Still possible, but time-consuming.
   
3. Sacred Sets/Uniques: You need to find a new item since no method of re-rolling these exists.
   

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

Code:

Arcane Shard/Crystal (will take 1 charge per roll) + Oil of Jewelcrafting + Rune + Jewel = Rune + New Jewel

• Everytime you use the recipe, your jewel will lose 5% iLvl per roll (rounded up) - so that's 5 ilvls per roll until iLvl 79, and then it will start dropping by 4 iLvls per roll etc. Keep in mind the iLvl here will affect how many/what kind of affixes can appear. I generally tend to roll no more than 6-8 times per jewel.
  
• Use Grig's Online Tools Affixes list to see what affixes will be favourable for your character.
  

1. First of all, use this: http://modsbylaz.hugelaser.com/itemonly.html (also found in offline documentation) - This will give you the description.
   
2. Next, see if you can obtain an item with that o-skill so you can have a look at the damage etc. in-game: First consult the "items with o-skills" page in the offline documentation. Keep in mind this list does not encompass possible o-skills from rares/crafts, SSSUs or Elemental RWs. You'll have to search separately in offline documentation for those. A list of o-skills that can appear on crafts/rares can be found here: 
   http://grig.vlexofree.com/itemprops-3d.html
   
3. For some older skills e.g. Hades Gate, no skill description exists in the offline documentation. Your best bet here is to look into the older documentations to find out here: http://median2008.wikispot.org/Index AND here:http://www.diablowiki.com/Category:Median_XL_Skills
   
4. The basic idea is, try to obtain that o-skill or proc in-game so you can read the skill description on it. If you can't, then search through the documentations to see if anything is written up about it.
   
5. Example - the in-game skill description for "Time Strike" (oskill on Assassin "Ligeia" RW) is very vague, and the proc for this can be found on many items throughout the game - we want to know more. Looking into the 2008 MXL wiki reveals this: http://median2008.wikispot.org/Time_Strike. Now we know exactly what more levels do, the Next Hit Delay value and various other mechanics.
   

 2. Farming 

• Socket random grey throwing weapons you find with rune and sell. Depending on which Act and difficulty you are currently on, as well as the level of the rune you socket, will affect how much gold you get. Other quality (white, magic, rare etc.) work too but you will need to downgrade it with rune + catalyst of destruction before socketing it (you can use a jewel to punch in a socket for the rune if it didn't spawn with one).
  
• Level 0 Challenge (apples and gold drop).
  
• Invest in full set of honorific gear MO’d with GF% + socket with tir runes and run underground passage level 1 in either hatred or terror. In terror, the cave dwellers will give around 50k-200k gold depending on gold find. It's a bit of a chore putting together this gear, but if you're always struggling with gold because you're a gambling addict, this will pretty much fix any gold problems until you hit Destruction.
  
• Sell Sacred items to Destruction Act 5 Vendor for up to 500k gold.
  

• Hatred Act 1 Andariel – always drops 1 unique
  
• If you haven't done the Horadric Staff quest, you can run the Claw Viper Temple quest and disenchant the "Staff of Kings" and quest Amulet for 2 arcane shards. This is the best place to run before you do LC1 for arcane crystals. However, if you finish the quest this method becomes void so only make the staff once you have enough crystals.
  
• Hatred Act 3 Mephisto - always drops 2 uniques.
  
• Once you hit around level 80-90, invest in a full set of honorific gear MO’d with %MF/ED and socketed with Lums. Each Hatred TA run will net around 10-25 Uniques. Just make sure you have around 10k Def (which should be easy) and this is probably one of the fastest ways to powerfarm arcane shards.
  
• You can kill 2 birds with 1 stone by running Destruction Nithalak and get Uniques + 3x Stat signets
  

• Destruction Nithalak drops 3x Stat Signets every time and also has a chance to drop SUs which can also be disenchanted further into Stat Signets by using Catalyst of Learning.
  
• Use Catalyst of Learning + Unique Jewel/Ring/Amulet (very common drop in Fauztinville)
  
• As of 6e Terror K3KBA, Duncraig & Fauztinville is effective for Stat Signets, as you can just speed farm the areas on high players setting for Sets and then Disenchant using Catalyst of Learning
  

• Terror/Destruction K3KBA - Speed farm the totems here for sets. The skeletons can be additionally killed for a chance to drop sets.
  
• Terror Duncraig - A bit harder than K3KBA but still a good source of sets with a bit of MF%. Note that Terror Duncraig won't drop SUs.
  
• Terror Fauztinville - Another good place to come for sets!
  
• Terror Cow Level - This place is great for casters since the cows in here have no immunities. Set drop rate seems a bit low, but you can make up for that with killspeed.
  

• Destruction Chrysaor: This place is great for casters and high single target damage characters. Less effective in multiplayer since you might not always get a good map roll.
  
• Destruction Duncraig: You'll want at least 200-400 MF% and come here with as much killspeed as possible. Other than the obvious, reanimates, proc fest and %damage to undead does very well here.
  
• Destruction Bloody Foothills: This area isn't so bad if the other uberlevels are too hard. You can usually net around 1-2 SUs per full run.
  
• Destruction Fauztinville: The high density generally tends to net a decent amount of SU rings/amulets/jewels.
  

• MF only affects items that have different "states" of quality(E.g. Rings[magic, rare, unique], but NOT runes, UMOs)
  
• MF% only comes into the equation once the item drops. E.g. If the game determines a Sacred Cap will drop from a monster kill, its destined to drop. From there MF% will affect your chances of it being a magic, rare, set or unique. Keep in mind that even though sacred items can drop in Terror, they cannot be Uniques until Destruction Act 1 onwards. Same applies for Set items, however as of 6e, sets can drop from Level 115 areas so most Terror Uberlevels can now drop set items.
  
• 100% MF just means your chances are doubled from what the "resting" chance is (i.e. 0 MF%). If we take an imaginary number and say you have a 0.1% base chance to roll a unique quality item, with 100% MF you have 0.2% chance. Because of this, if Player A with 100% MF can kill 10 monsters per minute and Player B kills 25 at 0% MF, Player B is being more effective (because we are trying to balance killspeed versus effective MF%, assuming all other variables stay consistent).
  
• Bosses like Chrysaor have a 100% to drop Uniques so MF has no effect here, just bring as much killspeed as possible. Same concept applies to other bosses like Mephisto etc.
  

 3. Boss Mechanics 

• Each boss has a "base resist[BR]" and a "randomized resist[RR]." RR will randomize every second to value between 0-400.
  
• If BR + RR < 100, the boss will drop that particular immunity. 
  
• Example: Secret Chrysaor has base fire resist of 75%. RR randomizes 55 168 20 59 over 4 seconds. So on the 3rd second, BR(75) + RR(20) < 100, so the boss will drop Fire Immunity for 1 second (because the next RR value was 59) and have 95 Fire Resist. This 95 Fire Resist is now subject to -enemy fire resist from our equipment (hence why people stack -199 to ensure heroic bosses ALWAYS have -100 resist).
  
• So skills that debuff the boss (e.g. Mythal, Phasebomb, Spellbind, Colosseum, Bane etc.) will lower the value of BR, allowing more leeway for RR. -Enemy resist from items have no effect on BR, they only come into effect once the immunity is dropped.
  
• Example: With 0 debuffs, Secret Chrysaor has 75% all resists. This means his immunity will only drop if RR falls to a value between 1-24 (i.e. 6% chance per second). However, if we debuff his BR for Physical to 0 (i.e. -75) using Bane, RR can now be any value between 0-99 and his Physical Immunity will drop (i.e. 99/400 = 24.75% chance per second).
  

MarcoNecroX wrote:
Astrogha has 75% all (1000% poison)
Bull Prince Rodeo has 85% all (since Ultimative v6d)
Quov Tsin has 75% all (1000% poison)
Secret Chrysaor has 75% all (1000% poison)
Brachyceran has 90% all (1000% poison)
Diablo Clone has 85% all (1000% poison and fire)
Kabraxis has 90% all (1000% poison)
Athulua has 85% all (999% poison)[/size][/color]

• Kill him before he has a chance to cast the Worm Curse - this would require some sort of 1-shot method + dropping his base resists to force him to drop his heroic shield more often.
  
• Find a way to stop the morph - this one may be a bit confusing as to how you would go about countering this. You may have noticed that there are various "Morph" affix on some items. An idea might be to override that Worm morph with another one, cancelling out the movement penalty for you to be able to move away. And surely enough, after a quick flick through the items section in the offline documentation, we find the SU Long Staff "Shamanka" that all classes can use. Simply place this item on switch and everytime you get morphed into a worm, switch weapons and the druid morph will override the worm one.
  

 4. Class Specific Questions 

Diablo 2 Wiki wrote:

• An animation takes a certain amount of frames to display, depending on the class and action being rendered.
  
• Each animation is calculated in frames. Since the game runs at 25 frames per second, one frame is equal to 1/25 of a second. A certain value must be met (the breakpoint) before a frame will be removed because you can not remove parts or percentages of a frame. I.e. values in between breakpoints, essentially do nothing.
  
• After meeting the required value to drop a frame, the animation will take exactly one frame less.
  
• The removal of multiple frames requires progressively bigger amounts of an attribute to be met, with diminishing returns. This keeps animations from being completely removed.
  

 5. Others 

LFAQ in Offline Documentation wrote:Q: What triggers 'on Melee Attack' procs?
A: On Melee Attack triggers every time you swing a melee weapon at an enemy. (Swinging in the air does nothing.)
Bows and throwing skills don't trigger 'on Attack'.
Note:Apparently, non-'Normal Attack' skills require a successful AR check.
(Thanks terryys.)

Q: What triggers 'on Striking' procs?
A: On Striking triggers any time you actually hit a Monster with a weapon-damage carrying attack. (i.e. 1/2, 3/4, 3/2 etc.)
This includes multi-hits from skills like Retaliate, Wychwind, Faerie Fire, etc.

Q: What triggers 'on Kill' procs?.
A: Weapon carrying attacks or poison attacks that take more than 1 frame to kill their target. Therefore, kills from spells (other than poison) WILL NOT trigger on kill procs.

Q: What triggers 'when Struck' procs?
A: When you get hit by a physical attack.
Shield-blocked attacks don't count. Avoided/dodged attacks don't count.

Q: What triggers 'when You Take Damage' procs?
A: Like it says. This includes anything other than damage over time from poison or life drain.

Q: What triggers 'when Attacked' procs?
A: Any melee attack, regardless of whether it hits or misses or you dodge it.

• Cap Value - This is the point where a stat ceases to be effective until you reach the "roll-over" point.
  
• Roll-over Value - This is the point above the Cap Value, where your stat will "restart."
  
• Simple Example - Your Damage = 1000 / Cap Value = 400 / Roll-over Value = 800 / Your Real Damage Output = 200
  
• As you can see in the above example, any damage between 400-800 is "in limbo" and has no effect until you reach the roll-over point.
  
• The damage value we're dealing with here is the TOTAL damage, so even if the LCS shows that you are slightly under damage cap, -enemy resists will force that damage above the Cap Value, sending your total damage into limbo, and thus dealing no damage.
  

GhOsT(eth) wrote:Elemental Damage:

• Lighting: 83886 - Damage rolls back to 0 around 167773
  
• Fire:83886 - Damage rolls back to 0 around 167773
  
• Cold:83886 - Damage rolls back to 0 around 167773
  
• Poison: 83886 - Damage rolls back to 0 around 167773
  
• Physical Damage (NO elemental damage included): Guessing same as other known caps 83886 - Damage rolls back to 0 around 167773
  

Spoiler:

GhOsT(eth) wrote:Life: 32767
Mana: 32767
Stamina: 32767

• Minion's damage cap - 2000 BASE damage (this is from sLvls). This value can then be taken over 2000 using "%Minion Damage" affix from items. In this respect, minions do not have a Cap Value or Rollover Value (as far as I know) because it doesn't go into "limbo" by raising damage above 2000.
  
• Minion Life Cap - Based off the information on Barb Spirits HP capping at 135-145k, one would assume that this applies to all summons, it's just a difficult value to reach for others. Also thinking back to our damage Cap Values, I would make an educated guess that the Rollover Value is at around 270k-290k. So in other words, the "Limbo" value is between 135k-290k hp for minions (speculation).
  
• Minion Resist Cap - At sLvl 5, minions have a base resist of 75% which is subject to the resist penalties in Terror/Des (so 25%/-25% respectively with no minion resist from items). The Minion Resist cap FROM ITEMS is 75%, meaning in Hatred you can have 150% all resists, 100% in Terror and 50% in Destruction. No need to worry about Cap Values and Roll-over for resists.
  

• Definition: Simply put, it is the number of frames that must pass before a skill with NHD can deal damage again to a target. 
  
• For example, we have multiple Claw Tornados going out, and we notice that this skill has a NHD of 4. So if two consecutive CTs hit the same target within 4 frames of each other, the second CT will deal NO damage because 4 frames has not passed. But if the damage takes place like this: 1st CT -> 4 frames later -> 2nd CT hits, then both CTs will deal their damage.
  
• This applies to ALL NHD skills, meaning it doesn't just have to be a second CT, it could be a mix of different skills with NHD.
  
• Example: 1st CT hits -> 3 Frames pass -> Wychwind hits (which has NHD = 5). In this case, wychwind damage is denied because the monster is still "recovering" from the first CT hit and has to wait for 4 frames to pass before another skill with NHD can deal damage.
  
• Conversely, if we take the above example and replace Wychwind with Thunder Hammer (no NHD), it would look like this:
  
• Thunderhammer Example: 1st CT hits -> 3 frames pass -> Thunder Hammer hits. In this case, both CT and ThunderHammer deals damage because TH HAS NO NHD.
  
• This is designed to prevent some skills from being able to multi-hit every frame, while others have purposely no NHD to serve as a multi-frame hitting skill.
  

Spoiler:

 6. Theorycrafting Tips 

• Skills - What passives and active skills are available to us and where/why do they excel?
  
• Items - This includes class-only runewords, sets, uniques and craft/rares and the oskills, stats and passives these offer.
  
• Speeds - How slow or fast is my chosen class? Can this be remedied? For example, a paladin has much slower cast frames than a sorceress. However, a quick look in the offline documentation reveals to us "Hierodule" Paladin-Only Helm RW which will morph us into a sorceress, giving us the full advantage of the sorceress' cast frames and BPs.
  
• Weaknesses - What is the limitation of my class/build? I.e. there are just some things your build will NOT be able to do efficiently. Many of these flaws can be remedied, but there are just some innate ones E.g. a pure caster will not be able to defeat Brother Laz who requires a method to apply OW, so for that particular fight, you will have to re-gear/re-spec.
  

• Are we using an o-Skill? This buffed by +skills items will free up many skill points in your tree, allowing you to put more into passives. But is the oskill any good?Compare similar slvls against your innate class spells to see which is better. Keep in mind some skills have multi-hit components so you need to factor those in.
  
• What does placing points into X skill actually do? In other words, is it worth maxing some skill or passive? Or does 1 point do enough for what we need out of the skill? Or is better to place specific amounts of points? (e.g. The unholy paladin caster skill "Slayer" - you might want to only raise these in 10s in order to synergize for your main skill, Mindflay).
  
• Once I've found my skill set, what compliments them best? E.g. should I invest full points into energy, or spread my stats around? In order to be able to answer this question, you need to understand what the skill does, how it applies damage and what affixes help increase damage as much as possible for that particular skill.
  
• Where will my chosen skill fail? For example, if we are a lightning sorceress, we are going to need a secondary source of damage to deal with lightning immunes (or something to break that lightning immunity e.g. Mythal, Phase Bomb etc. This option is not available to all characters, hence fall under the "class advantage" section).
  

• Offense is the best defense - often the mentality behind glass cannon builds, the idea is to deal so much damage that you either put enemies into Hit Recovery animation by dropping their hp by a certain amount per hit (more info in Hit Recovery section) or just killing them outright. Forcing enemies into HR + slow target% is a deadly combination, as it forces their animations to take longer (but not the Hit Recovery Animation)
  
• Block - Dex based characters will be able to achieve a max block of 75%. Some will require more or less dex depending on their base shield block rates. Keep in mind you will need FBR to compliment this in order to avoid getting block locked (consecutive block recovery animations can "lock" out any other actions).
  
• Defense - Primarily the survival strategy of most melee based characters, enough defense can mean enemies only have a 5% chance to hit you with physical attacks. The best thing about this is that it triggers no recovery animation since you never get hit in the first place.
  
• Summons/Reanimates - some builds can utilize other monsters to be meatshields, allowing you to deal damage while your enemies are distracted.
  
• Skill based survival skills - these are quite specific to the character in question. Examples might be: Perfect Being (assassin dodge), Sacred Armor (Paladin), Black Mass (Necromancer)
  
• Crowd Control Skills - these skills will incapacitate the enemy in order to buy you time to deal damage. E.g. Thunderslam (Barbarian), Black Sleep (Paladin), Elvensong (Druid).
  
• HP - Some characters who have a lot of life return per vitality point can reach high amounts of life by investing in Vitality/life via stat points/items/skills. Keep in mind morphs carry over these conversions E.g. Shamanka SU Long Staff druid morph will give you the life return per Vit point of a druid.
  

• What affixes do we need on our items? -Enemy resist? Physical EWD? +Skills? Defense? Dex or Vitality? Prioritize these and pick accordingly. Think about these affixes as limited resources and that spreading your character too thin will force it to be weak because it is "confused" as to what it needs to achieve. Choosing one will require you to sacrifice another (E.g. choosing to socket Perfect Amethysts for Dex% will mean you are sacrificing all other possible affixes you could obtain from that socket like Vit% from Perfect Rubies, jewelcraft affixes etc.)
  
• Early Game Items - if you are twinking you might not need to consider this section. However if you are not, then you need to think back to our skills discussion and find out what compliments our main skills and survival.
  
• Mid Game Items - how will you transition with this character to end-game? I.e. what items are relatively easy to get? E.g. A caster could get shrinecrafted items as their mid-game setup by farming Terror Fauztinville.
  
• End Game Items - Which items will utilize our characters strengths and cover the flaws/weaknesses in our build?
  

• Area based specific farming? For example, a character purely focused on farming SUs from Duncraig.
  
• Defeat all uberlevels and bosses? Something like this will require as much versatility as possible and likely have to sacrifice kill-speed in the process (remember our mentality from the items section - everything is a limited resource and picking one affix will require you to sacrifice another).
  
• Funny or "Eye-candy" joke character? This kind of character doesn't aim to be the strongest, but to provide entertainment to the user.
  

7. List of ways to lower enemy's Base Resists

• Holy Paladin Skill
  
• Alpha Centuar Reanimate - sLvl 5 Colosseum (hidden shrine craft & bless / maybe BPR charm too, not sure of renanimate pool on that charm)

• Lowers Enemy Physical Resists -50 of any enemies that step into circle
  
• Looks to be around 6 yard radius.
  
• Duration fixed at 5 seconds (the circle itself), regardless of sLvl
  
• Extra sLvls grant more bonus fire damage and Hard Points lowers timer by 0.2 per sLvl to a maximum of 5 seconds.
  
• Stacks linearly with Bane (seems to be able to go lower than -100). Unsure if Mega-Impact Overrides it (I'm guessing it does since mega-impact over-rides Bane).

  Spoiler:

• Necromancer Scythe
  
• Amazon Spears

• 25% chance on Attack.
  
• Reduces enemy physical resist by -25.
  
• Duration seems to be around 2-3 seconds.
  
• Over-rides Bane, unsure if it over-rides colosseum (most likely does).
  

• Necromancer Skill
  
• Rare/Crafted Assassin Claws oSkill
  
• SU Battlestaff oSkill
  
• "Cinande's Craft (Paladin Holy Melee Set) - Full set bonus gives +13 Bane as of 6e (P.S. this set is godlike)

• Requires a friendly minion as target and casts a large AoE effect that lowers any enemies' phys resists that get hit by it.
  
• Duration fixed at 10 seconds regardless of sLvl.
  
• -2 extra resists per sLvl (no diminishing returns)
  
• Stacks with Colosseum but not with Mega-Impact.
  
• Skill itself caps at -100 but since it caps at a floor of -75 phys resist (6e change), essentially any sLvls above 16 are useless.
  

• Amazon Ennead Skill
  
• Rare/Crafted Paladin Helms - 3% CTC sLvl 11 on Attack
  
• SSU Broad Sword - 5% CTC sLvl 16 on Attack
  

• Hard Points decreases timer (Diminishing Returns) and soft points increases duration by 0.4 sec per sLvl. Unsure if timer caps at 5 sec maximum.
  
• -50 enemy physical resist when hit by projectile for a duration based on sLvl
  
• Stacks with Bane, so assuming it also stacks with Colosseum.

  Spoiler:

• Druid Skill
  
• Rare/Crafted Gloves - 100% CTC on Death sLvl 24 (put this on a merc)
  
• Rare Amulets - 2% CTC on Attack - sLvl 1
  
• Necromancer Wand - "Frantic" 2 Magic Elemental RW - sLvl 13-23.
  
• 4 Piece Amazon Javelin Set - sLvl 4
  
• 4 Piece Paladin Holy Caster set - sLvl 8
  
• SSSU Crystal Sword - 5% CTC on Kill - sLvl 13
  
• SSU Sacred Globe - 100% CTC on death - sLvl 43
  
• Technically Mephisto Renimate from SSSU Dart Thrower, but he seems to die instantly when reanimated so from a practical view-point, not really useful (unless it gets fixed).
  

• Skill places a sparkly AoE (maybe around 6-8 yards). Any enemies in the radius get their elemental resists lowered.
  
• Lowers enemy elemental resists by -40.
  
• Per extra sLvl: Duration increases by 1 second, Hard Points lowers timer by 0.2 seconds (to a maximum of 5 second timer)
  
• Stacks with Phasebomb. In this picture, we can see Mythal and Phase Bomb stacking linearly and is not subject to the 1/5 penalty as everyone believes it is. You can see because this elite originally had 100 Lightning Resist (i.e. Lightning Immune), yet has it's base resists dropped to 10 (-90 from Mythal/PB). This monster is now no longer immune and subject to -110 Enemy Lightning Resists from our items to drop their resists further.
  

  Spoiler:

• Assassin Uberskill
  
• "Cliffs of Dover" 4x Stone Elemental RW - 5% sLvl 17 when struck.
  
• SSU Spear - 5% CTC sLvl 10 on Attack
  

• Places a small totem at your feet. After 2 seconds, this explodes, sending a slow moving nova outwards. Anything hit by this will have their resists lowered.
  
• Any physical damage dealt to a phased enemy will return 50k damage back.
  
• -50 Enemy Elemental Resists (fixed)
  
• Extra 1 sec duration per sLvl.
  
• Stacks with Mythal.
  

• SSU Mace - 2% CTC sLvl 1 on Attack
  

• Not sure if it's worth mentioning, but starfire was an old sorceress skill I believe. You can only get it as a very low CTC on Attack on the SSU mace. Unsure of related mechanics.
  
• -10 enemy resists for 2-3 seconds (unsure)
  

1. Lowering heroic bosses' BASE resistance causes them to drop immunities more often. If you don't understand why, read the heroic bosses section above.
   
   
2. Allows element based casters to focus on a SINGLE element, provided they have a method to break immunities reliably (i.e. one of the elemental methods above). This means you don't need to invest in secondary trees/skills and can focus all your stats/MOs/items on a single extremely powerful element. Look at %spell damage/-enemy resist etc. as a limited resource and that spreading it around means less damage overall. Once an immunity is broken, the rest can be dropped to -100 via items.
   - E.g. Monster with 100 fire resist (i.e. Fire Immune). Mythal drops it by -40 (now FR = 60), and with -160 enemy fire resist from items, we can drop their resists in the DAMAGE CALCULATING phase to -100. This is because any monster that is NOT immune to an element is subject to -enemy resist mods from items. However, when they are IMMUNE, the -enemy resist does nothing and also cannot be hurt by that element.
   - For this reason I think the "Cliffs of Dover" RW boots may be one of the best caster items in the game. Find a good balance between defense and LAEK and you could have this proccing quite often.
   
   
3. Having -enemy physical resist gives INSANE damage boost to WDM based chars - this is because of the way damage is calculated, -enemy physical resist comes into the equation AFTER total damage (EWD included) is factored.
   Simple example - You deal 100 base damage with 100% EWD from items/skills to deal 200 total damage. From here -100 enemy physical resist increases your END TOTAL damage to 400. However, if the -100 came in EARLY in the equation, it would just work like EWD and our total damage would only end up as 300. You can see that the -100 phys resist coming in at the END of the equation allows for more damage.

8. Hit Recovery Animation - things you didn't know

• If a hit deals some amount of damage (to be explained later), the model taking damage has a chance to go into Hit Recovery Animation (HRA).
  
• Poison CANNOT trigger HRA (game engine ignores poison altogether).
  
• A Frozen unit CANNOT be put into HRA.
  
• Every character model has a base number of frames required to complete one HRA.
  
• These frames can be decreased (faster) via FHR% when certain breakpoints are met.
  
• These frames CANNOT be increased (slower) via "slows target%" modifier.
  
• The "Hit" that triggers recovery is the total damage of ONE single instance. For example an assassin with maxed ways using Broadside will only trigger HRA if each single knife deals the HR value. It takes all physical/magic/light/fire/cold damage from that single instance (i.e. a single knife) into account.
  
• Conversely, a sorceress using Thunderstone will only have 100% chance to trigger HRA on an enemy if a single charged bolt projectile deals 4/16th of enemy's max life (why it is 4/16th is explained below). However, the advantage here is that since there are several projectiles here, only dealing 1/16th of max life will be likely enough to trigger HRA (37.5% chance per charged bolt, and there are many from Thunderstone).

• First of all, understand that the game needs to obtain the "HR" value - this is simply the %of max health of our target that we need to deal in damage in order to put them into HRA.
  
• For many things, this HR value is 1/16th of enemy's max HP. However there are some exceptions to this (full list can be found in the link supplied above).
  
  Now here is where it get's interesting. I'm going to use 1/16 as the HR Value for the following examples (as of 1.1x, this is the most common Divisor Value, although it is subject to change for MXL):
  
• If damage dealt was 4/16th damage of enemy's max HP or over, it has a 100% chance to go into HRA.
  
• If damage dealt was between 2/16 & 4/16th of enemy's max HP, it has 75% chance to go into HRA.
  
• If damage dealt was between 1/16 & 2/16th of enemy's max HP, it has a 37.5% chance to go into HRA.