Beginners Guide for Path of Exile: Learning Resistances

Learning Resistances

There are three primary forms of Elemental damage in Path of Exile: Cold, Lightning, and Fire. Players and monsters alike can also have Resistance to these damage types, which can greatly reduce the amount of damage they take.

Elemental damage can also inflict status ailments, corresponding to the type of damage taken. Having greater amounts of Resistances also reduces the chance for these ailments to be inflicted. Critical Hits have a 100% chance to apply status ailments, and Chill can be applied by any hit. The four main types of ailments are:

Elemental Resistances are the most important aspect of your character’s survival.

Resistance for each Element is capped at 75%. This means that while you may have 150% Fire Resistance, only 75% will be applied to damage reductions from Fire spells. If your character were to be cursed to have reduced Fire resistance, however, this excess Resistance would also act as a buffer so that you do not fall below Resistance cap.

You can see your character’s Resistances by opening the Character Pane ( C ) and clicking on the defense tab.

The number in brackets is the “Uncapped” or total resistances, while the number of the left is the capped Resistance value. Resistance caps can be raised beyond their normal value using certain means, such as the Purity of Fire (and other elemental auras) gem and certain items such as Loreweave or Saffell's Frame. There are also several skill nodes on the Passive Tree that can increase maximum Resistances by 1%.

It is extremely important you stay at 75% Cold, Fire, and Lightning Resistance whenever possible. Resistance is generally found on items, although there are also a wide variety of Passive Skill tree nodes that offer additional Resistance.

The Basic Math Governing Resistances

Whenever you are hit by Elemental damage in Path of Exile, the damage is filtered through a multiplier based on your Resistance to that damage type. For example, if you are hit for 20,000 Fire damage with 70% Fire Resistance:

20,000 × (1 – 0.70) = 6000 Fire Damage

If you were to have capped Resistance, however, the damage would be:

20,000 × (1 – 0.75) = 5000 Fire Damage

Now, look at the following:

1 – (5000 / 6000) = 0.167

And therefore, despite there only being a 5% difference in flat Fire Resistance, a player with capped Resistances would be taking 16.7% less Fire damage.

This is a dramatic example, as there are very few forms of damage that hit for such extreme values, however, it illustrates the concept well. Aim to remain Resistance capped whenever possible to reduce the possibility of being one-shot by a large Elemental attack.

Chaos Damage

Chaos Damage bypasses Energy shield, affecting the Life pool of enemies directly, and it is not considered Elemental damage. Chaos Damage is relatively rare in Path of Exile, as is the corresponding Chaos Resistance. By the end-game of Path of Exile, you will likely have -60% Chaos Resistance, the default value for all Resistances if you none on your gear or Passive Tree. Fortunately, most Chaos damage dealt by enemies is balanced around this, as it is unlikely for most players to have more than a marginal amount of Chaos Resistance.

Unlike the Elemental Resistances, you should not be worried if your Chaos Resistance is deeply negative, as this is a natural and expected part of the game for most builds. Chaos Innoculation builds are completely immune to Chaos damage, however, most other builds must simply deal with it.

Resistances Throughout the Game

There are penalties to Resistances that increase throughout the game. When you start the game in Act I, the default Resistance value is 0%. As you progress further into the game, however, there are additional penalties applied to Resistances, as your gear will also get better and better to counteract this.

Essentially, this means that if you had 75% Cold Resistance in Act I-V, you would have 45% in Act VI, and only 15% upon reaching the Epilogue. The only way to counteract this is to continually upgrade your equipped items as you level up and progress further into the game.