Bloody Pox and Monster base life reduction resistance

Grim Dawn Gameplay Discussion
1

edit: TLDR, came to the conclusion, monsters have 0% base reduced health resistance on normal, 12% on elite and 18% on ultimate, which then gets the passive from grimtools added to it

Original post:
After playing my bloody pox build for a while, i was curious about its damage against heroes and bosses, and what damage i could expect vs celestial enemies so i started doing some tests.
This is my current build and what i tested it with (without using blood of dreeg, pneumatic burst, devotion procs and deathchill aura)

Against yellow and white enemies it was not that easy to test, but the damage i got at the first tick of pox seems to be lower then i calculated.

Bloody Pox tooltip damage:
5.409 vitality damage, 1.481 bleeding, 1.169 poison. Also enemy health reduced by 13-17% and 13-19% from fevered rage.

Ultimate, Walking dead, level 67
Health: 8.831, first tick damage: 7.323
Looking at grimtools they have 25% vitality resistance
Expected damage 5.139 vitality damage + 2.298 to 3.179 reduction damage

Ultimate, Fleshwarped Thrasher, level 68
Health: 44.382, first tick damage: 16.143, also 25% vitality resistance
Expected damage 5.139 vitality damage + 11.539 to 15.978 reduction damage

Ultimate, Cold One, level 68
Health: 24.550, first tick damage: 10.573, also 25% vitality resistance
Expected damage 5.139 vitality damage + 6.383 to 8.838 reduction damage

Well all these died to quick to get more numbers, let’s try some heroes.
This time i used the curse for -48% bleeding resist and -30% poison/vitality resist

Ultimate, Milton Hart, level 69
Grimtools states: 88% health reduction resist, 25% vitality, 18% bleed and 33% poison
Health: 515.422, tick damage displayed as: 6.761, dot tick displayed as: 3.029
Expected vitality damage: 6.761,25
Expected bleed damage: 1.895,68
Expected poison damage: 1.133,93
Total expected dot damage: 3.029,61
Expected reduced enemy health damage: 16.081 to 22.266
Well the damage numbers on this were consistant. Ticks constantly for 6.761 and 3.029, it also matches the expected vitality and bleed/poison damage.
But the expected 26-36% reduced enemy health damage is nowhere to be found, despite there only being a 88% resistance to it.

Let’s try a different hero then, this time without the curse again.
Ultimate, Baarog the Bloodied, level 71
Grimtools list resistance as: 75% reduction, 25% vitality, 18% bleed/poison
Health: 1.026.480, tick damage: 26.262
Health: 944.910, tick damage: 25.111
Well thats looking promosing,
Expected damage tick 1: 5.139 vitality damage + 66.721 to 92.383 reduction damage
Expected damage tick 2: 5.139 vitality damage + 61.419 to 85.041 reduction damage
Well at least there is some enemy health reduction going on.
Let the poor guy regen back to 100% hp
Bloody pox duration is 8.2 seconds, which means it should tick the enemy health reduction 8 times and the vitality damage 8 times.
With the life reduction resistance the 26-36% becomes 6.5%-9%, let’s round down to 6-9%, and for the remaining health ill round all numbers up.
After 1 second Barrog should be at at minimum at 91% and at most 94% health
After 2 seconds Barrog should be at at minimum at 83% and at most 89% health
After 3 seconds Barrog should be at at minimum at 76% and at most 84% health
After 4 seconds Barrog should be at at minimum at 70% and at most 79% health
After 5 seconds Barrog should be at at minimum at 64% and at most 75% health
After 6 seconds Barrog should be at at minimum at 59% and at most 71% health
After 7 seconds barrog should be at at minimum at 54% and at most 67% health
After 8 seconds Barrog should be at at minimum at 50% and at most 63% health

Cast a bloody pox on Barrog and wait out its full duration, he ends up with 791027, which is around 77% health.

So i’m a bit confused about what i’m missing here, from the test with milton hart it seems theres at least another 12% life reduction resistance that is not listed for grimtools, and if i would use 88% life reduction resistance for barrog the damage range seems to match as well after going back to the walking dead, thrasher and cold one, there seems to be a base 15% life reduction, unless i’m missing something in all of this?

2

I haven’t fully gone through all of your math, but I do know that damage dealt by Health Reduction is dealt as Vitality and it is doubly resisted as such.

3

What Ceno said. Skimming your points, it looks like you’re generally just testing Pox’s damage on the first tick. After that though, do remember that life reduction works off of current health rather than the max health value. So it will contribute less and less damage as an afflicted enemy takes damage.

4

Well thats what i thought initially as well, but the milton hart test was from full health until he died, and the damage was consitently the same, no differece in the numbers at all, for the barrog it does show the reduction in damage over time, hence why after a full duration it should go into the 50%-63% range remaining, but it ended up with 77% remaining.

Since milton hart was the weird one i tested him multiple times with the same result, which is why i came to the conclusion that there must be a base reduced health resistance for all enemies then (assuming the grimtools data is 100% correct on the passive bonus).

Of course the easiest way to test this is with the soldiers war cry, but i have no soldiers levelled currently

5

So after making a new character, using a stone to unlock ultimate + all difficulties and handing in 5 scrap on old arkovia on normal, managed to get level 2 war cry on soldier
33% reduced enemy health on usage, simple enough easy to test
The first expected number is only taking reduced health resistance into consideration
The second expected number is adding reduced health and vitality resistances
The third number is multiplying both resistances
All numbers are rounded up
(for elite and ultimate only)

Walking Dead
Normal, 0% reduced health resistance, 0% vitality resistance
75 health, 25 damage, 50 health remains, expected 25
63 health, 21 damage, 42 health remains, expected 21
55 health, 18 damage, 37 health remains, expected 18.333~
50 health, 16 damage, 34 health remains, expected 16.666~
45 health, 15 damage, 30 health remains, expected 15
No problems here!

Elite, 0% reduced health resistance, 15% vitality resistance
323 health, 80 damage, 243 health remains, expected 107, 91 or 91
271 health, 67 damage, 204 health remains, expected 90, 76 or 76
246 health, 61 damage, 185 health remains, expected 82, 69 or 69
215 health, 53 damage, 162 health remains, expected 71, 61 or 61
191 health, 47 damage, 144 health remains, expected 63, 53 or 53
Seems more like 25% resistance then 15%

Ultimate, 0% reduced health resistance, 25% vitality resistance
537 health, 109 damage, 428 health remains, expected 178, 133 or 133
478 health, 97 damage, 381 health remains, expected 158, 119 or 119
443 health, 90 damage, 353 health remains, expected 147, 110 or 110
398 health, 81 damage, 317 health remains, expected 132, 99 or 99
397 health, 81 damage, 316 health remains, expected 131, 99 or 99
Seems more like 38-39% reduction

Barrog, the Bloodied
Normal, 75% reduced health resistance, 0% vitality resistance
580 health, 48 damage, 532 health remains, expected 47.85
560 health, 46 damage, 514 health remains, expected 46.2
530 health, 44 damage, 486 health remains, expected 43.725
520 health, 43 damage, 477 health remains, expected 42.9
490 health, 40 damage, 450 health remains, expected 40.425
All seems fine here!

Elite, 75% reduced health resistance, 15% vitality resistance
4359 health, 159 damage, 4200 health remains, expected 360, 144, 306
4236 health, 154 damage, 4082 health remains, expected 350, 140, 298
4113 health, 150 damage, 3963 health remains, expected 340, 136, 289
3997 health, 146 damage, 3851 health remains, expected 330, 132, 281
3885 health, 142 damage, 3743 health remains, expected 1282, 129, 273
Feels like about half of the expected damage when multiplying reduced health resistance and vitality resistance.

Ultimate, 75% reduced health resistance, 25% vitality resistance
7350 health, 127 damage, 7223 health remains, expected 607, 0, 455
7283 health, 126 damage, 7157 health remains, expected 601, 0, 451
7212 health, 125 damage, 7087 health remains, expected 595, 0, 447
7136 health, 124 damage, 7012 health remains, expected 589, 0, 442
7063 health, 122 damage, 6941 health remains, expected 583, 0, 437
I don’t even get how these numbers drop so low

Milton Hart
Normal, 88% reduced health resistance, 0% vitality resistance
2397 health, 95 damage, 2302 health remains, expected 94.9212
2315 health, 92 damage, 2223 health remains, expected 91.674
2238 health, 89 damage, 2149 health remains, expected 88.6248
2162 health, 86 damage, 2076 health remains, expected 85.6152
2089 health, 83 damage, 2006 health remains, expected 82.7244

Elite, 88% reduced health resistance, 15% vitality resistance
16021 health, 0 damage, 16021 health remains, expected 635, 0, 540
16021 health, 0 damage, 16021 health remains, expected 635, 0, 540
16021 health, 0 damage, 16021 health remains, expected 635, 0, 540
16021 health, 0 damage, 16021 health remains, expected 635, 0, 540
16021 health, 0 damage, 16021 health remains, expected 635, 0, 540
Well something is obviously going on here…

Ultimate, 88% reduced health resistance, 25% vitality resistance
35439 health, 0 damage, 35439 health remains, expected 1404, 0, 1053
35439 health, 0 damage, 35439 health remains, expected 1404, 0, 1053
35439 health, 0 damage, 35439 health remains, expected 1404, 0, 1053
35439 health, 0 damage, 35439 health remains, expected 1404, 0, 1053
35439 health, 0 damage, 35439 health remains, expected 1404, 0, 1053
Well something is obviously going on here…

So from this test, i think its safe to assume theres a reduced health resistance based on difficulty, which seems to be 0% on normal, 12% on elite and 18% on ultimate. and the vitality and reduced health resistances are multiplicative. (i wonder if veteran has 6% resistance)

Well with no way to reduce enemies reduced health resistance pox is going to be very lackluster vs any enemy with 82+% reduced health resistance, guess it’s time to respec

6

1

It would seem so. Learn something new about this game everyday :smile:.

I’m guessing Milton spawned with a shield with enough shield block damage to nullify your War Cry damage on use?

7

I’m guessing since the difficulty gives him 12% and 18% reduced health resistance, and the passive gives it another 88% it becomes 100% and 106%, meaning reduced enemy health just gets negated