RAWR. What's up with magic + fire resist and dragon breath? : V

» Sat Jul 07, 2012 6:34 am

Here's what I have:

Lord Stone = +25% magic resist
Otar = +30% elemental resist
Enchanted boots = +42% fire resist
Enchanted ring = +18% magic resist

So we have a total of 43% magic resistance and 72% fire resistance. These effects are supposed to be stacked, but dragon breath is still wrecking me.

Am I missing something? I fought a *minor spoiler*Revered*spoiler* dragon yesterday who could still take out sizable chunks of my health with his fire breath. Shouldn't I be blocking practically all of it? Magic resist is capped at 85%, I know, but I would think the fire resist covers the rest...

» Fri Jul 06, 2012 11:41 pm

Nope. From a thread regarding multiple damage resitances in skyrim.

If it's a multiplicative stack as others have noted, it should work like this:
Say you have a 40% shield, a 30% chest piece, and a 20% buff...
In a simple additive system, you would have 90% resistance (40% + 30% + 20%). This is a problem because a user could figure out a way to completely mitigate damage and render certain foes permanently harmless, and what fun would that be? Generally systems that use this method implement caps, either hard (user can't score higher than x%) or soft caps (after x%, all bonuses are reduced by y%)
In a multiplicative system the 1st item adds its full value (in this case 40%), but the next item only adds it's bonus onto the un-resisted portion of the damage. This works out as follows: 40% + (30% * 60%) + (20% * 42%) = 66.4% resistance. The result is a much lower effect when stacking items. This kind of system makes large-chunk items more effective than collections of small-chunk items and also guarantees that no one can ever reach 100% resistance, even without the use of maximum-caps.

» Fri Jul 06, 2012 10:01 pm

Its dependent on your health also mate. Low health means that you need more and more % of magic defence for the same health. You probably just need to start bumping up your health a bit now. Remember as they go up they do more and more damage, you need to keep up with them to stay level on the amount of damage mitigated.

» Sat Jul 07, 2012 5:15 am

Its dependent on your health also mate. Low health means that you need more and more % of magic defence for the same health. You probably just need to start bumping up your health a bit now. Remember as they go up they do more and more damage, you need to keep up with them to stay level on the amount of damage mitigated.

Agreed. Say you've hit the cap of 85% and the dragon is dealing 1500 points of damage before resistances (not that it would, lol.) Even though you're resiting 85% of the damage, you're still taking about 225 points of damage.

» Fri Jul 06, 2012 11:18 pm

Well, if I did my math right, I'm looking at only about 3/4 damage reduction on fire effects. Guess I need to go back and redo some enchantments :/

Thanks, everyone!

» Sat Jul 07, 2012 3:39 am

Remember, you're not going to get more than 85% after everything has been combined. 100% is a pipe-dream without going to SKSE. And I'm not sure SKSE can get around the 85% cap.

» Sat Jul 07, 2012 9:16 am

Remember, you're not going to get more than 85% after everything has been combined. 100% is a pipe-dream without going to SKSE. And I'm not sure SKSE can get around the 85% cap.

I read on UESP that magic resist is capped there, but with elemental resists, you can max out at about ~98%.

» Sat Jul 07, 2012 12:10 pm

The problem is, 85% does not mean anything, because scaled dragons/mages deal scaled damage, so you never know how much you block and how much goes through. I am absolutely sure that it is useless to calculate your resistance. It is, actually, a problem of the game programming, when they tweaked the game so much that the numbers stopped making any sense. Get as high resistance as you can and do not calculate.