Munchkin stuff (Av3)

[Murreh]

I don't know if it's relevant to anything, but I had a moment a couple days ago and had to do some playing around with munchkin stuff.

 

Given the difference between 50% armor on one piece and 5 10% pieces (which is 20% less effective overall, about 60% damage taken instead of the "expected" 50%) you want as much armor on a single piece of gear as you can get.

Runestones that grant 4% physical damage reduction update the character sheet's "armor" listing.

Hostile Effect Resistance does not affect armor (at least not on the character sheet, easily tested with a Radiant Choker) and neither do Golden Runestones.

If "physical damage reduction" and armor are basically the same stat (besides armor giving the extra half-as-much non-phys resist) and HER and Runestones are basically the same stat, and having more of a single stat on a single piece of gear (or place in the calculation) is better...

...does it really matter which enchantment is placed where? Are Golden Runestones actually more effective on gear that already has HER, and is there any real difference between putting 4% Physical Damage Reduction on your four lowest-armor pieces of gear (possibly 6%, 6-7%, 6-9%, ~10%) or putting it on your four highest-armor pieces (probably 40%, 38%, 14-16%, 10%)? Golden Runestones on Avenger's Greaves, Evasive Wrap, etc... or wherever you have room... does it matter?

 

As far as I could tell, the answer is no. There were plenty of setups where the 4% Physical Damage Reduction rounded 79% armor to 80 or 85% to 86, or times when that 4% HER from a Golden Runestone was the difference between 88 and 90% acid resistance, but *where* I put the enchantments didn't seem to matter. If there's any difference between "ideal" locations and "intentionally as bad as possible", it doesn't show up on the character sheet, or at least I couldn't make it happen. Didn't matter which character I used, which gear I used (endgame or semi-decent, like the difference between Iron Shield and Titansteel Shield, Chain Greaves or Pitted/Scorched), whether I had skills allocated, whether I used 5 pieces of gear with HER or none, I got a big fat nothing. No combination of things got me a different result when the only change was which pieces of gear were enchanted.

The only thing I really noticed was that lots of 4% Physical Damage Reduction on high-armor gear seems to make total armor more effective (the gear seems to calculate its armor as 42% armor, rather than 38 and 4, as 44% rather than 40 and 4, etc) simply by having more armor on a single piece of gear, as expected. It seems the armor *is* added up per-item because of that, including the enchantment, but I couldn't see that effect with HER/Golden. If the game does actually calculate accurately enough for moving around a couple 4% bonuses to make any difference at all, the difference is so small that rounding on the character sheet makes it invisible.

 

That said, it *is* possible to have multiple characters with maxed out resistances given the available gear and charms (and making sure Resistance Chant and Blade Shield are up when appropriate). My Tinkermage and Nathalie both have 90% to everything (except mind/curse on the Tinker and curse on Nathalie). A third character, Khalida in my case, can still reach 85-86% armor and 83+ to most other things, but they start running out of ideal gear choices once two other characters have perfect setups.

 

That much munchkin probably doesn't matter because even on Torment Tinker/Blademaster/Sorc can slap around Velusa like his power is meant to be a joke, but I was curious, and maybe somebody would care in the future for balance adjustments