Sacred 2:Damage Mitigation

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The Basics of Damage Mitigation

The Damage Mitigation is an extremely important aspect in Sacred 2 Fallen Angel and its expansion, Ice and Blood. In essence, it means that a certain part of the damage the player takes is completely omitted before any other damage calculations begin (armor rating, resistances, etc.).

Damage mitigation usually appears in two types: single element and multi-element. Single element damage mitigation means only one type of damage mitigation, like "Damage mitigation: Fire 7.8%". Multi-element damage mitigation usually looks like this:

"Damage mitigation: Physical +25.8%"

"Damage mitigation: Magic +15.0%"

"Damage mitigation: Fire +15.0%"

"Damage mitigation: Poison +15.0%"

"Damage mitigation: Ice +15.0%"

as a trait on the same item.

Obtaining Damage Mitigation

Damage mitigation can be obtained in several ways:

1) Through an innate ability of an item

2) Through buffs and combat arts that grant it while they last

3) Through the Toughness skill

Availability of Damage Mitigation as an Item Modifier

Damage mitigation may be obtained through items. Single element damage mitigation may spawn on some Standard Armor (magic and rare), Set and Unique items, often without any skill prerequisite. Multi-element damage mitigation may spawn on rare, set and unique items. Usually the set and unique items do not require a prerequisite skill to access their innate damage mitigation trait. Rare items, on the other hand, require Armor Lore skill for items under levle 75, as the ones found in the Ice and Blood expansion or Armor Lore Mastery skill for items of level 75 and up.

Single or multi-element damage mitigation doesn't show on all armor types. It never shows on a robe-looking armor. Low-grade damage mitigation based on Armor Lore mastery shows at light armors - these are armors that do not look like each characters' plate armors and tend to provide less damage mitigation. Mid and High-grade damage mitigation shows up on heavy armors like the ones looking like Celdrahil's Torso for High Elf, Chestplate of Time for the Dryad, Edijian's armor for Seraphim, Armantin's armor for SW, and so on. The same goes for shoulders.

There is also a "mid-high" grade damage mitigation, which shows up on certain set items, and is better than the general mid-grade damage mitigation but is outclassed by a little paint by the high-grade damage mitigation trait.

"Stacked" damage mitigation trait means that 2 types of damage mitigation traits have been stacked in one item, thus providing substantially higher Damage mitigation output. This could mean multi-element + multi-element and multi-element + single element (usually physical) damage mitigation. An example: If the low grade damage mitigation is 11.0%, the mid grade is 13.0% and the high grade is 15.0%. Mid-high in this case would mean a number between 13.1% and 14.9%. It is found on various set items and is built-in. It also scales with the difficulty this item has been found in.

Availability of Damage Mitigation in Combat Arts

In Sacred 2, various buffs and combat arts provide certain damage mitigation. An example is the Inquisitor's Purifying chastisement buff with Inure mod. Inure mod provides 9.9% + 0.1% per CA level damage damping, which in essence is 10% Multi-element Damage mitigation. Another example is the Temple Guardian's Jolting Touch Combat art with the Shelter mod. Shelter mod provides reduction of incoming damage while active (25% + 0.5% per CA level damping).

Toughness

Toughness is a skill that provides basic multi-channel (all five damage types) damage mitigation, as well as additional armor rating per element type, which scales with skill level.

Damage that Cannot be Mitigated

Although damage mitigation can make a character near-immortal, there are ways to circumvent it.

"Additional damage" a character receives through Life Leech is NOT mitigated. In essence, this means that even if a character has 100% multi-element damage mitigation, if he/she gets successfully hit by an attack that has life leeching capabilities, he/she will not receive any damage from the attack, but the additional damage will hit him/her to its fullest extent. That is a very important thing to grasp when utilizing damage mitigation items.

Damage Over Time (DoT) is another type of attack that ignores Damage Mitigation. The only way to reduce damage over time is to use modifiers designed to resist it, such as Damage over Time: Poison -X%. In Ice and Blood, some enemies can launch devastating attacks that use damage over time, making Damage Mitigation less overpowered.

Additional Info

An easier way to understand damage mitigation is to convert it to "Virtual Hitpoints". With the exception of life leech and DoT combat arts, multichannel mitigation can be considered as virtual hitpoints. In essence, that means that if a player with 50% mitigation can take double the damage before they die, at 66.7% mitigation they can take 3 times the damage, at 80% 5 times, and at 90% 10 times the damage. The formula for this equation is as follows:

virtual_life = (life *100)/(100-mitigation%)

An in-depth analysis will provide this interesting conclusion:

One may start to wonder if he/she still needs Constitution. It looks like a waste if the player can reach mitigation values above 60% without Toughness. So one may ask him/herself: With only one choice - Toughness or Constitution, what would be the breakpoint in mitigation to take Toughness and not Constitution?

Example: If we put mitigation from Toughness at 15% on a certain skill level and say that Constitution doubles the hitpoints at the same level:

Constitution:

virtual_life = (life*2*100)/(100-mitigation)

Toughness:

virtual_life =(life*100)/(100-mitigation-15)

So Constitution is better if:

(life*2*100)/(100-mitigation)>(life*100)/(100-mitigation-15)

2*(100-mitigation-15)>(100-mitigation)

100-mitigation-30 > 0

70 > mitigation

So if the mitigation without toughness is below 70% constitution would be the better choice.