We all know resist reduction is king currently, but at what point is more damage simply better?
I’m undecided with my hellborne commando whether to go 2x entropic coil (more chaos/fire dmg, + skills demon fire and hellfire mine) or judicators signets (resist reduction and also life/energy regen, and hp). What do you think is better?
I have bwc+modifier, viper, elemental storm, thermite and hellfire mine for debuffs (yes, bwc and elemental storm do not stack)
Well, the resist reduction from the judicators signets won’t stack with Viper. So there is that to consider. That said I see it more as an OA + defenses option (signets) vs raw damage and a little (chaos) resist reduction from the coils. I lean towards the signets myself, but I tend to go for high-regen and the signets are a great way to get regen coupled with a large helping of OA.
Thanks. Yeah the signets regen, hp and proc help immensely with tankiness though i noticed clear speed to be slightly better with the coils.
Is viper better than the ring’s debuff? From what i understand the viper debuff also depends on weapon damage?
OA wise i think i have enough (around 2600-2700, using chariot of the dead) and i have 50% crit damage.
It’s all in the monsters’ resists, I guess.
If a monster is 90% resistant to your main type of damage and you do 100 damage per hit, you’re hurting the monster for 10HP. With 10% reduction, you’ll hurt it for 20HP, but to get the same 20HP through increased damage, you’d have to double your damage output (and that includes any damage modifiers already applied).
Numbers pulled out of my rear, just to give an idea.
As you stack RR more and more, it does lose some value, but it is one of the only multipliers you have for damage. Generally, look at the %age of the reduction, and that %age is what is added to your DPS as “true” dps. No matter what, you will at least gain that much DPS from using Resist reduction, while extra damage has to get factored through those resist reductions you might already have.
Lets go a clean numbers case of you doing 1000 DPS, with 50% resist reduction already.
You can add an item which will increase your raw DPS by 250, or 25%, or grant you 15% more resistance reduction.
1250 with 50%, or 1000 with 65%. The 65% means no matter what, you are at least doing 650 damage to the target, before any other resistances the target has. If they have 0 resistances, you are getting 650 damage extra to your DPS, or 1650 DPS. At 80%, you have 850 DPS after resistances.
With the 1250 50% case, you have 625 “true” dps, or 1875 on a 0 resistance target. On an 80% resistance target, you instead have 875 DPS. As you can see, a 25% DPS increase barely beats out a 15% RR on a high resistance target. But it is insanely rare to find something granting a 25% increase in DPS, while a 15% RR is fairly common. Most enemies in ultimate come with a fairly high chunk of resistances as well, which means RR has more overall effect in higher difficulties than trying to just add more DPS.
Well, open hand of mercy has -%enemy resistances, viper has -%ele resistances. Just saying…
^will the elemental resistances reduced by the ring stack with those of viper?
from memory, the only ones that can stack on top of each other are -n% resist.
both:
-n resist; and
reduced n% resist;
only the largest one at any one time applies.
also; the point at where the maths happens is different for reduced n% resist… i know there is a really good resist guide somewhere on these forums… check the stickies methinks! 
It doesn’t stack, my bad i thought different types of that type of reduced resist will stack
Well, The point in using the signet over viper is when you need another resistance reduced, besides elemental. For example, both work for fire res reduce(the largest will apply) but signet only will work for chaos RES reduce.