Armor vs Phys res

@Zantai @grey-maybe @sir_spanksalot @Stupid_Dragon @RektbyProtoss @Ceno (pinging a well known doctor of Cadence since I used it in the test below)

I’ve made a test that agrees with what @BOG and @moongazer concluded
here and in Resistance works before block and armor? in independent tests
(I don’t know their methodology yet and hadn’t known what the result of the test was supposed to be) which is that

Physical Resist works before Armor


  • I have a save with a character doing constant Physical damage with Cadence (not having variable sources in gear such as weapons)

  • only 1 source of Physical damage - Cadence

  • I concluded that target dummy armor is slightly off in Grim Tools, 1517 instead of 1585? by analyzing differences between damages on various difficulty levels and matching it with different absorption levels

    • armor of dummy seems different in files but even if you use different armor it’s hard (at least for me) to explain the results
  • test done in Normal where Armor Absorption is 70% (slightly more in Elite and slightly more than that on Ultimate)


Anyway, after modding Target Dummy Physical Resistance (Defense Physical) to 20

  • I tried doing it in various ways because you can change it in dummy, in the difficulty adjustment, in dummy passive skills…

    • every time my damage dealt changed from 1734 to 1183 (sheet damage is 2796)

Now if Phys Res was working after amor, I would deal much more damage, around 1734 x 0.8 = 1382.2

Whereas calculation with Physical Res working before Armor I get 2796 x 0.8 - 1517 x 0.7 = 1174.9
and is very close to what I deal (1183)

From 1734 to 1183 there’s a whooping 32% decrease which was obtained just by increasing dummy’s physical resistances to 20% from 0%.


Sorry if my test is wrong (i.e. somehow this is Total Physical Damage I changed) / I modded badly (or perhaps Dummy is programmed differently than other monsters), don’t understand something. I encourage others to devise more tests confirming it or telling me what I did wrong.

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