Combat Mechanics Guide: Armor, Resistances, Damage Multipliers, Lucky Hit, and Overpower

Toughness summarizes how much raw damage of each type you can take after mitigation. Its headline value is an average comparison across damage types, not proof that every individual defense is covered.

Hover Toughness in Character Stats and inspect Physical and elemental breakdowns. Use the difficulty screen's recommended Toughness as a reference, not a guarantee.

Raising only the headline number while missing one weak Resistance, low Life, or insufficient recovery.

Repair the weakest damage type first, then review Life, Barrier, recovery, and conditional mitigation uptime.

Current Armor mitigates all incoming damage, Physical and Non-Physical. Armor and Resistances are ratings with diminishing returns, Physical Resistance is its own resistance type, and old per-Torment penalties were removed.

Compare the Toughness breakdown before and after an item change at the same difficulty, tracking both Armor and the relevant Resistance.

Carrying pre-overhaul rules—physical-only Armor, a fixed 70% Resistance cap, or Torment Resistance penalties—into the current game.

Instead of chasing a retired fixed cap, compare how one gear slot improves the weakest Toughness type.

Barrier is temporary absorption generated by specific effects. Fortify is now a reserve consumed to heal missing Life, not universal damage reduction. Damage Reduction applies only while its listed conditions—such as Close, Injured, or Blocked—are met.

Observe Barrier amount, Fortify reserve, healing rate, and conditional mitigation icons separately. Distinguish idle values from real combat uptime.

Assuming any Fortify reserve grants the retired fixed mitigation, or summing every Damage Reduction value directly.

For one-shots, prioritize Life and Armor/Resistances. For attrition deaths, review Barrier refresh, Fortify healing, Potions, and Life on Hit.

First establish the main skill's weapon damage and rank, element and skill tags, and target conditions. In Patch 3.0, gear damage multipliers stack additively with one another while still counting as multiplicative damage overall. Do not multiply every [x] as a separate legacy bucket.

Lock the main skill, change one item, and compare its tooltip, active-buff state, and results against the same enemy. Test conditional effects in combat if the town panel cannot show them.

Judging only Attack Power, counting multipliers for the wrong element or tag, or multiplying every gear [x] separately.

Separate always-on multipliers, boss-maintainable multipliers, and short-window multipliers, then choose by real uptime.

Critical scaling applies only when an eligible hit Crits; Vulnerable scaling applies only while the target is Vulnerable. Chance, application source, duration, boss uptime, and damage magnitude are separate variables.

Check whether the main skill can Crit, how reliably Critical Chance is supplied, who applies Vulnerable, its duration, and whether it can be refreshed on bosses.

Stacking magnitude with low Critical Chance, no Vulnerable application, or assuming a damage-over-time effect Crits without explicit support.

If activation is unreliable, trade magnitude for chance or application first, then scale the multiplier after uptime is stable.

Lucky Hit uses an eligible skill hit as the entry to an effect roll. The effect's “up to X%” alone is not the final rate; also inspect the main skill's Lucky Hit Chance, gear bonuses, direct-versus-over-time behavior, and target conditions.

Read Lucky Hit Chance on the detailed skill tooltip, then verify the effect's damage type, target state, and cooldown requirements. For multi-hit skills, rely on the skill display and controlled testing.

Applying the effect's maximum chance directly to every attack, multiplying by hit count without support, or ignoring conditions and internal cooldowns.

For proc-dependent builds, compare the skill's own chance, attack frequency, and the value of the resulting effect as one package.

Patch 2.3 removed the inherent additive portion based on Life and Fortify. The trigger grants up to 50%[x], and because Overpower is rarer than Critical Strike, current builds center on stacks or guaranteed sources from skills, modifiers, and gear.

Watch Overpower stacks on the action bar, the spending condition for a guaranteed proc, eligible skills, and whether stacks are consumed correctly after activation.

Using the retired Life/Fortify formula, stacking Overpower damage without a reliable trigger, or expecting unsupported damage-over-time effects to Overpower.

Stabilize the guaranteed-proc cycle and eligible skill first, then tune Overpower scaling, attack cadence, and boss uptime.