In Diablo 4 Defensive Stats includes various of stats that helps you stay alive. The Defense Stats are a set of attributes that affect your character's ability to resist damage from enemies. All of these stats are important for your character's survival in Diablo 4. By improving these stats, your character will be more resistant to enemy attacks and be able to survive longer in combat.
Diablo 4 Defense Stats
If you want to survive in Diablo IV, you need to know how defense works. It's not just about drinking health potions, but also about stacking different kinds of defenses. Your Life and Barrier are important, but you'll also need to focus on Damage Reduction to avoid taking too much damage. Without a good defense, you'll be spending more time on the floor than fighting monsters. So, pay attention to your defensive stats and abilities, and don't forget to keep your health up!
Restoring Life
In Diablo IV, your character can restore lost health in a variety of ways. One of the most common methods is by using Healing Vials, which are available to all Classes. When you use a Healing Vial, it will immediately restore some of your Life, with the amount depending on the level of the Vial. Additionally, you'll gradually recover 35% of your Maximum Life over the next 3 seconds. You can carry multiple charges of Healing Vials at once, and your maximum capacity can be increased by earning Renown points. To replenish your charges, you need to defeat Enemies or deal significant damage to Elites and Bosses.
In addition to the Healing Vials, there are several other ways to restore your Life in Diablo IV:
- Helmets and Amulets +Life Regeneration per Second rolls.
- Helmets, Amulets, Rings, and Focuses, as well as Skulls socketed into weapons, can provide +Life On Kill rolls.
- Certain Skills and Passives have the ability to heal you for a percentage of your Maximum Life.
- Healers in towns and Healing Wells can also restore your Life.
- To enhance your Life restoration capabilities, you can increase the Healing Received stat, which can be found on Amulets and also on Skulls socketed into Armor.
However, Life On Kill and Life Regeneration bonuses are not very effective in comparison to the amount of damage you may take. So, unless your character has access to specific Skills and Passives that can restore Life, you will primarily rely on Health Vials to keep you alive.
Barrier
In DIablo 4, Barrier is a mechanic very similar to Life except it has no set maximum but only lasts for a certain duration. When you take damage, it first depletes your Barrier and then the remainder goes into Life. When you have multiple Barriers their amount is added together, but the duration of each Barrier is tracked separately and when one of your Barriers expires, your total Barrier goes down. You can gain Barrier in following ways:
- "Your Potion Also Grants 30% Maximum Life as Barrier" roll on Pants
- Various Legendary Aspects such as The Protector
- Ice Armor and Deep Freeze skills (Sorcerer Only)
- Protection passive (Sorcerer Only)
Armor
Armor is one of your main ways of reducing damage. You get Armor from every armor piece and its amount scales linearly with the item power. Additionally, you also get 1 Armor for each point of Strength. You can further increase your Armor by socketing Skulls into jewelry or by rolling it as a stat on your Pants, Boots, and Chest.
Armor reduces all incoming Physical damage by a percentage that is based on your total Armor and on the level difference between you and the enemy. For Elemental (Cold, Fire, Lightning, Poison, and Shadow) damage, Armor is less effective. In PvE the damage reduction you get from armor is halved for Elemental damage, while in PvP you get 65% of your Armor's damage reduction.
Resistances
You can stack Elemental Resistances to further reduce Elemental damage. Resistances stack multiplicatively, for example 2 source of +50% Cold Resistance actually cut incoming cold damage by half, thenremaining half is halved again. So you only take 25% of original damage. In other words, the outcome is 75% Cold Resistance.
Resistance works at reduced effectiveness. Since your Armor already reduces some of the elemental damage, the Damage Reduction you get from Resistances is multiplied by the inverse of your Armor's contribution. So in PvE you get only half of what you'd expect from your Resistances, while in PvP it's even worse: you get only 35%.
Dodge Chance
When you are hit by any attack you have a chance to dodge it, completely nullifying all damage and other harmful effects. You can't dodge individual ticks of Damage over Time (DoT) effects, but you can dodge the initial attack and prevent the DoT from being applied to you in the first place. There's a few ways to increase your dodge chance:
- 0.025% Dodge Chance per point of Dexterity
- Rolls on Pants and Boots
- 3% Dodge Chance per rank of the Agile passive (Rogue only)
Much like Damage Reduction, Dodge Chance from different sources stacks multiplicatively.
Damage Reduction
Damage Reduction reduces all incoming damage by that many percent if the conditions are met. You can get damage reduction from:
- As a primarily melee class Barbarians get 10% base Damage Reduction
- Every class gets an extra 92% Damage Reduction in PvP
- Chests can roll a variety of Damage Reduction stats, such as Close Damage Reduction or Distant Damage Reduction
- Skills
- Passives
- Legendary Aspects
Similar to Resistances, Damage Reduction stacks multiplicatively. The only time when Damage Reduction stacks additively is when something stacks with itself. For example when you put multiple ranks into a Damage Reduction passive, or when using Rogue skill Dark Shroud, which gives up to 5 shrouding shadows and a stacking Damage Reduction value for each shadow you have.
Fortify
Barbarians have access to a unique source of Damage Reduction that comes with its own set of mechanics to increase their defense. There's a number of skills, passives, and Legendary Aspects that can give you some amount of Fortify. When your Fortify is greater or equal to your current Life, you become Fortified. Fortified characters have 10% Damage Reduction. This number can be increased by Defensive Posture passive and by Sapphires socketed into armor. When you are Fortified, incoming damage reduces both your Life and your Fortify by the same amount. The amount of Fortify you get can be increased by Bonus Fortify rolls on Rings and Helmet.
Max Life
Your Life stat measures how alive you are. When it hits 0 you die, and at that point, the only thing you can do is respawn at the last checkpoint or get revived by your party members.
You get some Base Life for leveling up, starting at 40 Life at level 1, and up to 420 Life at level 25. There are several other ways to increase your Maximum Life:
- +Max Life roll on your Chest (scales with item power)
- +%Life from Rubies in armor (scales with gem quality)
- +20% Life while Enhanced Challenging Shout is active (Barbarian only)
- +5% Life per rank of Imposing Presence passive (Barbarian only)
- +8 Life from some Altars of Lilith
You can restore lost life by using Healing Vials. Using one will instantly restore some flat amount of your Life (based on the level of the Healing Vial) and also 35% of your Maximum Life over the next 3 seconds. You can store several charges at once (boosted by the Renown system) and you regain these charges by killing enemies or damaging Elites and Bosses past a certain threshold.
Other than Healing Vials, there are some more ways to restore Life:
- +Life Regeneration per Second rolls on Helmets and Amulets
- +Life On Kill rolls on Helmets, Amulets, Rings, and Focuses and from Skulls socketed into weapons
- Certain Skills and Passives can heal you for a percentage of your Maximum Life
- Healers in towns
- Healing Wells
- Boost Healing Received stat, randomly rolled on Amulets and also comes from Skulls socketed into armor.
