Worthwhile effects on hit?

[rangerjeff]

Still very newb here, and I'm wondering if I'm overly excited about all the effects I can get from equipment on melee hits. Specifically, I suspect that many tough bosses and especially endgame bosses will resist them. So them I wonder, what may I be giving up that will be useful when I need to survive for another couple rounds in exchange for effects that might not work?

Blind
Slow
Wound
Damage Reduction
Daze
Cripple
Arcane Resource Burn

I know I'm forgetting a few, lemme know if any I've missed are good or not... but I've been pretty excited early-mid game with all of these. Should I instead be focusing on Stat boosts? Resists? Saves? Certain activations?

Just hoping a few more experienced players would weigh in on this.

Oh, and what's procs? I see this term used even in the game and I'm not really sure what it means exactly.

Thanks!

[Razakai]

Cripple is very good. Slow is also good if you can get one of the high % ones like 30%+. Some to look out for are Warp, Insanity and Torment on-hit. Those inflict debilitating debuffs like confusion, stun etc so are very nice albeit rare. Damage Reduction isn't bad either, and Amnesia (chance to forget talents) can be good.

There's also some rarer artifact on-hit effects which tend to be very powerful, but they're unique and rare.

Procs generally just mean on-hit effects.

As for what to focus on, there's quite a few things. Most important is getting good inscriptions - make sure you have physical Wild, a strong healing/shield, and then an escape like teleport or movement. Gear-wise some useful stuff is stun/confuse immunity, resists for common damage types and stats useful for your class. Often depends on class though.

[rangerjeff]

Thanks for the feedback!

I'm playing an Ogre Marauder on Normal to get used to the class for a try on Nightmare.

http://te4.org/characters/12495/tome/20 ... 93bbc89241

At lvl 32 I'm running 2 Movement, 1 Wild Physical (wish I could find a phys/ment...), 1 Heroism, and 1 Healing. So I'm not concerned with stun/pin resistance. Disarm is at 90%, wearing a hat for 100% Blind, Confusion is only at 30% and I'd like to max that.

When you say common damage types, you mean fire/cold/elec? Nature? Acid? For the endgame what do the bosses spam?

And I'm a bit confused how procs from multiple sources stack. I've got two sources of slow, one at 30% and the other at 15%, and reading the log when I hit the game checks for slow at 45%. Does this mean that slow is a fixed effect (say 20% global) and the percentages on the items just indicates the chance of inflicting the slow (and that the chance adds multiple sources together instead of just using the highest single chance?)

[ghostbuster]

And I'm a bit confused how procs from multiple sources stack. I've got two sources of slow, one at 30% and the other at 15%, and reading the log when I hit the game checks for slow at 45%. Does this mean that slow is a fixed effect (say 20% global) and the percentages on the items just indicates the chance of inflicting the slow (and that the chance adds multiple sources together instead of just using the highest single chance?)

Procs from multiple sources do stack. If it is a % chance to apply an effect, theses chances are added. Concerning slows, the effect is always applied (and there is no way to resist) and the final "slow" is computed by adding all the "slows" from differents sources. In your situation, you will have a "slow" of 30+15=45%.
BUT, it means that any action that the foe will do will cost him 145 "energy" instead of 100. And his relative speed is 100/145 ~ 0.68 with an actual slowdown of 32%. You should see this when inspecting the foe after applying the effect.

[Razakai]

Resists vary by stage of the game, here's a rough breakdown:

Fire - Common throughout the game, especially on orc casters, 2 types of dragon, and demons. Pretty handy to have.
Cold - Reasonably common due to dragons and orc casters. Very handy early-midgame as a lot of threatening bosses have Freeze.
Lightning - Less common, but very useful in the tempest peak/storming the city quest as there's lots of nasty lightning casters. Gets used a bit later by some casters and dragons.
Arcane - Very rare, and finding resists for it is equally rare. It's restricted to a few bosses, rares and a couple of casters.
Light - Rare. Luminous/Radiant horrors use it, apart from that there's few set enemy types with it.
Darkness - Common. Undead use it, as do some demons, and it's a common type for rares to have.
Temporal - Very rare. Generally only encountered in certain zones and rare enemies.
Acid - Uncommon. A type of dragon uses it, as do a few demons and horrors, so it's useful but not terribly common.
Blight - Common and dangerous later in the game. Demons, undead and horrors use it, along with certain dangerous caster enemies. Useful to stack.
Physical - Very common damage source, but rare to find resists for it.
Nature - Quite common, as all poisons deal nature damage and there's a few mobs with slime attacks and the like. But outside of early game poison damage and the like can be dealt with.
Mind - Rare, outside of a few mobs like horrors.

If I was looking for resists lategame, fire/cold/blight/physical/darkness would be at the top of my list.

[rangerjeff]

Thanks for breaking it down, guys! That's good info to work with!

[jenx]

And I'm a bit confused how procs from multiple sources stack. I've got two sources of slow, one at 30% and the other at 15%, and reading the log when I hit the game checks for slow at 45%. Does this mean that slow is a fixed effect (say 20% global) and the percentages on the items just indicates the chance of inflicting the slow (and that the chance adds multiple sources together instead of just using the highest single chance?)

Procs from multiple sources do stack. If it is a % chance to apply an effect, theses chances are added. Concerning slows, the effect is always applied (and there is no way to resist) and the final "slow" is computed by adding all the "slows" from differents sources. In your situation, you will have a "slow" of 30+15=45%.
BUT, it means that any action that the foe will do will cost him 145 "energy" instead of 100. And his relative speed is 100/145 ~ 0.68 with an actual slowdown of 32%. You should see this when inspecting the foe after applying the effect.

just to clarify, on melee hit effects stack, on weapon hit effects do not. always look to get on melee hit effects. many talents will also trigger these (e.g. call of the ooze, dream hammer, telekinetic weapon, etc).