Resistance is futile

Resistance offers a static debuff on damage. 1 point of res = 1 point
less damage taken, or 1% less damage taken, whichever value is -lower-.
Attacks that would normally kill you have about a 7 time multiplier on
damage reduced. This only has effect on PvE enemies in game, not other
Players and hence is not useful for PvP.
-the wiki

I know we all already know that resistance is a pretty horrid stat for pretty much everything but joke builds but, I had to test this for myself. The testing i did was pretty basic, but enough to get the idea behind whether or not resistance even offers anything. I simply made two deprived and pumped ones vit to 20, and the others resistance to 20. I then tested the amount of damage they'd take from the hollow crossbowman in the parish and the titanite demons lightning attack. Once while naked, the other wearing leather armor. The test confirmed two basic facts for me:

A) The damage reduction gained from the extra defense resistance gives is not even close to on par with the health gained from vitality.
B) that static damage reduction the wiki states is false. The damage from the titanite demons lightning was the same on both builds.

I know this kinda sounds like I'm just repeating what everyone already knows, I just had to get this off my chest.

It blows my mind that, in addition to what you said, resistance gives almost NO bonus to resistance against poison/bleed/fire/etc.

Guess that stat was another troll on new players by FROM. =/

I had a throwaway build with stats all over that I made in to a dex/res build a while ago. Level 100 with something like 35 vit, 30 end, 14 str, 40 dex, 30 res, and some random points in att, mag and fth. It was fine to co-op with, but I lost almost all my pvp matches. The only positive was that I could throw a lot of dung pies without being poisoned.

I'm not questioning your results, but do we know if it has massive returns at higher levels?

It's the 'Luck' stat of Dark Souls.
Scratch that, even 'Luck' was more useful.

Those results were the results of some fairly extensive testing, you're going to need more than to actually prove anything.

There are a couple people here who swear by resistance in pve, and none of them are stupid. They'd notice if it wasn't doing anything.

ublug wrote:The only positive was that I could throw a lot of dung pies without being poisoned.

Yeah, that's the only time I've ever used it for anything. I had a poison based PvP toon for awhile, and I boosted it's RES to 25 so I could throw poo. Still probably didn't work as well as the blood shield and gargoyle helm combo though.

I've always been confused by what attacks 'kill you' and the 7x multiplier. All attacks do damage, so is this any attack that would do enough to kill you has a 7x damage reduction on it?

So if you have 21HP left, and take 21 HP damage, and have 1 point in resistance... it makes it do 3 damage?

I've always been completely confused on how that part of resistance works. I primarily PvE and have tried it before and didn't notice much difference.

PlasticandRage wrote:

ublug wrote:The only positive was that I could throw a lot of dung pies without being poisoned.

Yeah, that's the only time I've ever used it for anything. I had a poison based PvP toon for awhile, and I boosted it's RES to 25 so I could throw poo. Still probably didn't work as well as the blood shield and gargoyle helm combo though.

Maybe this was the primary purpose of resistance? Who knows, but it is still amusing that you would need a special stat to toss poo.

Well... it's gross....

Well, you need a special stat to be proficient at tossing poo, but anybody can toss poo if they want to. Go ahead, try it. It's fun for the whole family.


There's really nothing quite like killing another player solely by throwing poo at them. I don't have that toon anymore, so I haven't done it in a awhile, but it was fun while it lasted.