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 after all other damage calculations (armor rating).

Damage Mitigation protects against all damage sources of the 5 elemental damage types, including Damage Over Time (DoT), which bypasses armor resistances but can still be lowered by the corresponding Damage Mitigation channel.

"Damage Mitigation +x%" modifier is cumulative, which means that values from different sources are simply added to each other (1+1=2) and can reach 100%, making a character effectively immune to a particular damage type.

Damage Mitigation can only be reduced when attacked by an enemy that has Ancient Magic Mastery. There is no in-game way to tell which enemies have it, but there are only two in the unmodded game who can greatly reduce the Mitigation of Fire damage and even break immunities (100+% of Fire Mitigation). Extreme care should be taken around these 2 enemy types if a character greatly relies on Fire Damage Mitigation to survive:

• The red Young Dragons with their homing Fireballs (both Elite and non-Elite variants)
• Temple Guardians in the Wastelands who throw Fire Traps (Elite versions only).

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 level 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 chest armors like the High Elf's Pearl Armor, the Dryad's Ivy Armor, the Seraphim's Ancient Armor, the Shadow Warrior's Enforcer Armor, and so on. The same goes for the shoulder armor of the same suits.

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).

This is a list of Combat Arts that provide Damage Mitigation (some will require modifications to be taken first):

Dragon Mage

Dragon Familiar - Provides Damage Mitigation: Fire

High Elf

Incandescent Skin - Provides Damage Mitigation: Fire

Cascading Shroud - Provides Damage Mitigation: Physical

Crystal Skin - Provides Damage Mitigation: Ice

Inquisitor

Purifying Chastisement - Provides Damage Mitigation: All types

Shadow Warrior

Ruinous Onslaught - Provides Damage Mitigation: All types

Grim Resilience - Provides Damage Mitigation: Physical

Temple Guardian

Jolting Touch - Provides Damage Mitigation: All types

Archimedes Beam - Provides Damage Mitigation: All types

Fiery Ember - Provides Damage Mitigation: Ice

Icy Evanescence - Provides Damage Mitigation: Fire

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. Life Leech is a damage type unto itself, separate from any of the five main elemental damage types, and there is no protection from it, apart from blocking/reflecting the attack that would've inflicted the Life Leech. The two modifiers which cause Life Leech damage are:

• Leech Life From Opponents +X%
• Life Leeched Per Hit +X

Additional Info

The fundamental difference between build-in Damage over Time, caused by Spell Damage Based Combat Arts and the periodic damage caused by Secondary Damage Effects (open wounds, burn, poison) is the latter's dependence on flat damage. The periodic damage of a Secondary Damage Effect is directly proportional to the inflicted damage that caused the effect. Periodic damage caused by Secondary Damage Effect depends on how much damage the character has received: for example, if character's armor absorbs 75% incoming damage, periodic damage caused by Secondary Damage Effect will also inflict 75% less damage.

Damage Mitigation protects from periodic damage caused bySecondary Damage Effects twice - first Damage Mitigation reduces incoming direct damage (periodic damage, caused by Secondary Damage Effects, depends on how much damage has received the character), secondly DM reduces damage from incoming DOT (open wounds, burn, poison).

• For example, 50% Damage Mitigation reduces damage over time at 50%, and then another 50 %, a total of 75% mitigation.

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.

See Also

Damage Mechanics for Spell Damage Based Combat Arts