Sacred 2:Damage Mitigation

I. 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 your character had just taken is completely omitted before any other damage calculations begin (armor rating, resistances, etc.).

The damage mitigation is usually 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.

II. Obtaining Damage Mitigation.

Damage mitigation can be obtained in several ways:

1) through buffs and combat arts that grant it while they last

2) through an innate ability of an item

3) through the Toughness skill

1) 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).

2) Damage mitigation may also be obtained through items. Single element damage mitigation may spawn on magic, 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 lvl 75, as the ones found in the Ice and Blood expansion or Armor Lore Mastery skill for items of level 75 and up. The next thing you should be aware is that single or multi-element damage mitigation doesn't show on all armors. It never shows on a robe-looking armor. Low-grade damage mitigation based on armor lore mastery shows at light armors, if I can call them like that - 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 HE, Chestplate of Time for a 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 on.

3) The Toughness skill provides basic multi-channel damage mitigation, as well as additional armor rating per element type, which scales with skill level.

III. Additional info.

First of all, I'd like to STRESS the fact that the "additional damage" your character receives through life leech, for example, is NOT mitigated. In essence, this means that even if your 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. Although damage mitigation can make your character immortal, there are ways to circumvent it.

An easier way to understand damage mitigation is to convert it to "Virtual Hitpoints". If you take the life leech away from attacks and some combat arts, then you can consider multichannel mitigation as virtual hitpoints. In essence, that means that if you have 50% mitigation you can take double the damage till you die, at 66.7% mitigation you can take 3 times the damage, at 80% 5 times, at 90% 10 times the damage: virtual_life = (life *100)/(100-mitigation%)

An in-depth analysis will provide this interesting conclusion:

One may start to wonder if you still need constitution. It looks like a waste if you can reach mitigation values above 60% without toughness. So one may ask him/herself: if i have have 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.