Resistance gear: Thorium armor

Post by sugarzombie

My level 54 warrior has 5 of 6 pieces of Thorium armor (the stuff with resistance to every school). My friends and I are playing in BRD, fighting fire elementals. With mark of the wild and 5/6 thorium armor, I'm still only getting about 20% damage reduction. I expected this gear (which I went through a lot of trouble to make) would make me super easy to heal when fighting multiple elementals, but that's not the case! It doesn't seam worth giving up all the Stamina & Strength on my normal gear.

So what is Thorium armor good for?

Post by 114933

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Post by Arideni

My advise to you is to not sacrifice Stamina for resistance, at least not in BRD. I am presuming you speak of the elementals deep inside, near the Molten Core.

There are two primary things that help in resistance fights: Stamina & resistance.

While you do not need resistance in BRD, depending on your level it can & by your own accord, does help. Perhaps your expectations of the resistance on the Thorium set was too great -- nevertheless, 20% reduction is a very large amount (though I figure you didn't actually parse & conclude that statistic). Do not be afraid of using cooldowns on those creatures, as the casters will probably need to recover after fighting 2 or 3 at the same time. Also, if you did happen to take Cooking, then go for it! and buff up before that section.

The basic rule of thumb while leveling is to stack, stack, stack that Stamina! If you have some resistance, fine, use it. Give up some Strength, but don't give up Stamina!

Of course, armor will not help against magical damage, so be very careful & stack that Stamina!
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One may also lava jump across the Dark Forge (left hand side of the bridge, a single elemental guarding it). Doing this will decrease the trash required to kill on the way to the Molten Core portal.

Post by 102953

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Post by Arideni

Just looked at the actual Thorium set & was quite impressed! It sucks, really bad.

According to someone elses' math, the set gives +46 resistance to all schools, but this is barely a dent & probably not enough to give "20%" reduction.

That's not even the problem, though -- resistance is good, but lack of any viable stats is very bad. Look on the bright side, the Thorium armor is great to level blacksmithing^_^;'

I hope this does not discourage you, as it probably taught you many things you may not even realize.

Post by 112770

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Post by Arideni

Excellent post, Quab! I couldn't recall BRD having been changed that much, =( The shame!

I do agree, though I didn't research those elementals, about the fire resistance. Point for point, you'll get more "bang for the buck" with dedicated & specifically tailored armor ("of Fire Resistance," etc.) as Quab stated. Now that we know they don't deal any physical damage at all...well, that's a great development!

So, you have about a 15% reduction, that's still impressive, but surely the loss of all stats on those items is hurting you just the same. Let us know how it goes next time!

Post by sugarzombie

with mark of the wild (a friend plays a druid), i was getting about 20% damage reduction (based on combat log)

the thorium armor was good for BS skill-ups, but i see now my expectations for it's damage reduction were just too high

btw, we 4-man brd with no cc (we do that for ST, too). my playgroup is in no hurry to get to 70... we actually are planning on running brd/strat/scholo/dm a bunch because we've never played there before.

Post by 102953

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Post by nossy

It actually would be a nice armor set if:

a) It gave some stamina stats
b) It was an official set that gave set bonuses
c) Didn't cost so damn much to make

20% resist is still pretty good. I mean, people are crazy about resilience, and it only mitigates critical stikes and a small amount of dots. I currently have 360 resilience (mitigates about 18% crit damage and reduces crit chance by 7% or so) and I still die pretty easy if 2-3 guys are hitting me.

The point is, don't expect something magical with either resilience or resistance, but a little may go a long way.

The biggest damage reduction you'll see is slapping on a shield, going into defensive stance, and stacking armor.

Resistance gear: Thorium armor

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