Damage Mitigation and resistances are explained, from all your base mitigation to all the ways you can boost your survivability.
First of all, you should know that damage mitigation, is what you can deduct from the incoming damage, and what is not mitigated is the amount left that hurts you, and in turn, makes you lose health.
ESO Damage Mitigation
Physical and Spell Resistance is your baseline of damage mitigation, the only way that can drop is if someone debuffs you or uses a skill that ignores some or all of your resistances. Physical and Spell Resistance is weighted against the opponent’s physical or spell penetration.
These base resistances are capped at 33.000, which means every point above that is wasted (unless you get debuffed or your opponent got some physical and spell penetration). With every 660 resistance, you get 1% damage mitigated, which then tops it off at 50%. (50*660 = 33.000)
You can use a Damage Shield spell or skill, to shield you entirely from damage, however, they usually only last 6 seconds.
On top of your base damage mitigation, you can get mitigation from racial passives. If you play a High Elf you get 5% damage mitigation while casting, the description reads like this: Reduces damage taken by 5% while you are using an ability with a cast or channel time.
Some classes have built-in damage mitigation, some are situational, while others are fixed or need to be used as a skill/Ultimate.
Templars have another 5% damage mitigation while casting or channeling, while Dragonknights got Corrosive Armor, which will cab all incoming damage at 3% of their max health.
The same goes for armor set bonuses, like the Light of Cyrodiil 5-piece bonus: While you are casting or channeling an ability, your damage taken is reduced by 15%.
ESO Resistance Cap
ESO resistance cap is in place to make sure no one can make an immortality build. But players search for loopholes and find them all the time, making the immortal or at least close to, until the next patch arrives. ESO resistance is capped at 50% damage mitigation and block mitigation is capped at 90%.
A great Tank will first block the damage and then resistances will take up to 50% of the damage that gets through
For this example let’s say you play a High Elf Magicka Templar, you wearing 5 pieces of Light of Cyrodiil armor, and you spamming your skill Puncturing Sweeps. As long as you are using that skill you will have:
- 5% High Elf passive
- + 5% Templar passive,
- +15% from Light of Cyrodiil armor
- giving you a total of 25% extra damage mitigation.
If you on top of that got 33.000 physical and Spell Resistance, you would have a total of 75% damage mitigation while using puncturing sweeps or any other skill with a cast or channel time. What is damage mitigation besides armor and natural resistance you might ask.
Minor & Major Protection
In ESO we get both minor and major buffs and debuffs. When it comes to protection, you get 5% damage mitigation from Minor Protection and 10% damage mitigation from Major Protection. They stack, so having both buffs up will grant you a total of 15% extra Damage Mitigation.
Here is a list of skills that will grant you Major Protection, some are passive which means you just have to have them on your skill bar, while others need activation.
| Blinding Flare | Launch a blinding flare, revealing stealthed and invisible enemies in the target area for 5 seconds. Exposed enemies are stunned for 4 seconds, and cannot return to stealth or invisibility for 4 seconds. While slotted you gain Major Protection, reducing your damage taken by 10%. While slotted = Passive and 100% of the time you are on that ability bar, it can be double slotted (so you have it on both the front and back bars) This is the only skill with 100% uptime on the 10% damage mitigation | Alliance Skill |
| Bolstering Darkness | Conjure a ring of shadow, reducing the Movement Speed of enemies by 70% and granting you and your allies Major Protection for 10 seconds, reducing your damage taken by 10%. Allies in the area can activate the Hidden Refresh synergy, granting them invisibility, increasing their Movement Speed by 70%, and healing them for 9110 Health over 4 seconds. Major Protection persists after leaving the area. | Nightblade |
| Consuming Darkness | Conjure a ring of shadow, reducing the Movement Speed of enemies by 70% and granting you and your allies Major Protection, reducing your damage taken by 10%. Allies in the area can activate the Hidden Refresh synergy, granting them invisibility, increasing their Movement Speed by 70%, and healing them for 9110 Health over 4 seconds. | Nightblade |
| Deaden Pain | Sap the lingering life from fresh corpses, granting you 2 Ultimate and healing 682 Health every 1 second for 2 seconds per corpse consumed. While you have the healing effect, you gain Major Protection, reducing the damage you take by 10%. This ability scales off your Max Health. While slotted, your damage taken is reduced by 3%. Gain Major Protection after casting. | Necromancer |
| Lingering Flare | Launch a blinding flare, revealing stealthed and invisible enemies in the target area for 10 seconds. Exposed enemies cannot return to stealth or invisibility for 4 seconds. While slotted you gain Major Protection, reducing your damage taken by 10%. The flare lasts longer. | Alliance Skill |
| Northern Storm | Twist a violent storm around you, dealing 1161 Frost Damage every 1 second for 8 seconds to enemies around you and reducing their Movement Speed by 40%, and increasing your Weapon and Spell Damage by 300 for 30 seconds. You and nearby allies gain Major Protection, reducing your damage taken by 10%. Increases your Weapon and Spell Damage after activating. | Warden |
| Permafrost | Twist a violent storm around you, dealing 580 Frost Damage every 1 second for 12 seconds to enemies around you and reducing their Movement Speed by 70%, and applying the Chilled status effect. You and nearby allies gain Major Protection, reducing your damage taken by 10%. Increases the snare potency and applies the Chilled status effect to enemies hit, but at the expense of damage done. Increases the duration as the ability ranks up. | Warden |
| Remembrance | Channel the grace of the gods, healing you and nearby allies for 2788 Health every 1 second for 4 seconds. Gain Major Protection, reducing the damage you take by 10% for 10 seconds. You cannot move while channeling, but you gain immunity to all disabling effects. Gain Major Protection after casting, reducing your damage taken. | Templar |
| Revealing Flare | Launch a blinding flare, revealing stealthed and invisible enemies in the target area for 5 seconds. Exposed enemies cannot return to stealth or invisibility for 4 seconds. While slotted you gain Major Protection, reducing your damage taken by 10%. | Alliance Skill |
| Sleet Storm | Twist a violent storm around you, dealing 1161 Frost Damage every 1 second for 8 seconds to enemies around you and reducing their Movement Speed by 40%. You and nearby allies gain Major Protection, reducing your damage taken by 10%. | Warden |
| Veil of Blades | Conjure a ring of shadow, reducing the Movement Speed of enemies by 70%, dealing 1438 Magic Damage to them every 1 second, and granting you and your allies Major Protection, reducing your damage taken by 10%. Allies in the area can activate the Hidden Refresh synergy, granting them invisibility, increasing their Movement Speed by 70%, and healing them for 9110 Health over 4 seconds. Enemies in the area take damage over time. | Nightblade |
Armor sets that grant Major Protection
| Coward’s Gear PvP | (2 items) Adds 1206 Maximum Health (3 items) Adds 129 Stamina Recovery (4 items) Adds 129 Stamina Recovery (5 items) Adds 250 Stamina Recovery, While Sprinting you gain Major Expedition and Major Protection, increasing your Movement Speed by 30% and reducing your damage taken by 10%. |
| Hagraven’s Garden Dungeon | (2 items) Adds 1206 Maximum Health (3 items) Adds 129 Health Recovery (4 items) Adds 4% Healing Taken (5 items) When you take damage while under 50% Health, you summon a preservation of nature around you in a 8 meter radius for 8 seconds which grants Major Protection to you and up to 5 group members while in the area, reducing your damage taken by 10%. This effect can occur once every 30 seconds. |
| Immortal Warrior Trial | (2 items) Adds 4% Healing Taken (3 items) Adds 1206 Maximum Health (4 items) Adds 4% Healing Taken (5 items) When you take damage while below 35% Health you gain Major Protection for 20 seconds, reducing your damage taken by 10%. This effect can occur once every 20 seconds. |
| Ironblood Dungeon | (2 items) Adds 1206 Maximum Health (3 items) Adds 1487 Armor (4 items) Adds 1487 Armor (5 items) When you take damage, you have a 10% chance to turn your blood into pure iron for 10 seconds, gaining Major Protection, Major Aegis, and Minor Protection, but also reducing your Movement Speed by 25%. This effect can occur once every 10 seconds. |
| Pirate Skeleton Monster Set | (1 item) Adds 1487 Armor (2 items) When you take damage to your Health, you transform into a skeleton and gain Major Protection and Minor Defile for 15 seconds, reducing your damage taken by 10% but reducing your healing received and Health Recovery by 8%. This effect can occur once every 20 seconds. |
| Steadfast Hero PvP | (2 items) Adds 1487 Armor (3 items) Adds 1487 Armor (4 items) Adds 1206 Maximum Health (5 items) When you cleanse a negative effect from yourself or an ally, gain Major Protection for 10 seconds, Giving you 10% Damage Mitigation. This effect can occur once every 12 seconds. |
Skills of Minor Protection
| Agony Totem | Summon an effigy of bone at your feet for 13 seconds that grants Minor Protection to you and your allies, reducing damage taken by 5%. After 2 seconds, the totem begins fearing nearby enemies every 2 seconds, causing them to cower in place for 4 seconds. Allies can activate the Pure Agony synergy, causing enemies to take 2100 Magic Damage over 5 seconds and applying Minor Vulnerability to them, increasing their damage taken by 5%. Allies can activate a synergy to damage and apply Minor Vulnerability to enemies. Increases the duration of the totem as the ability ranks up. |
| Bone Totem | Summon an effigy of bone at your feet for 11 seconds that grants Minor Protection to you and your allies, reducing your damage taken by 5%. After 2 seconds, the totem begins fearing nearby enemies every 2 seconds, causing them to cower in place for 4 seconds. |
| Bound Aegis | Protect yourself with the power of Oblivion, creating a suit of Daedric mail that increases your block mitigation by 40% for 5 seconds and Minor Protection for 20 seconds, reducing your damage taken by 5%. While slotted, your Max Magicka is increased by 8% and you gain Minor Resolve, increasing your Physical and Spell Resistance by 2974. Passively grants Minor Resolve while slotted and increases the duration. |
| Bound Armor | Protect yourself with the power of Oblivion, creating a suit of Daedric mail that increases your block mitigation by 36% for 3 seconds and Minor Protection for 10 seconds, reducing your damage taken by 5%. While slotted, your Max Magicka is increased by 5% |
| Circle of Protection | Brand the earth at your location with a rune of protection for 20 seconds. You and your allies in the area gain Minor Protection and Minor Endurance, reducing your damage taken by 5% and increasing your Stamina Recovery by 15%. |
| Dark Cloak | Shroud yourself in a protective shadow to heal for 853 Health every 1 second, over 3 seconds, increasing by an additional 150% when you are not moving. This portion of the ability scales off your Max Health. You gain Minor Protection for 10 seconds, reducing your damage taken by 5%. It no longer grants invisibility. Now heals over time based on your Max Health, and grants Minor Protection. |
| Elemental Ring | Release a surge of elemental energy, dealing 1799 Magic Damage to enemies at the target location. Fire Ring hits Burning enemies with Ring Afterburn, which deals more damage based on their missing Health. Frost Ring also provides Minor Protection. Shock Ring’s damage increases based on the number of enemies hit. Deals damage at a target location instead of around you. |
| Ice Fortress | Wrap a thick cloak of ice around you and your allies. The ice grants Major Resolve, increasing your Physical and Spell Resistance by 5948 for 30 seconds. You gain Minor Protection, reducing your damage taken by 5% for 30 seconds. Grants Minor Protection to you. Increases the duration as the ability ranks up. |
| Impulse | Release a surge of elemental energy, dealing 1742 Magic Damage to nearby enemies. Fire Impulse hits Burning enemies with Impulse Afterburn, which deals more damage based on their missing Health. Frost Impulse also provides Minor Protection. Shock Impulse’s damage increases based on the number of enemies hit. |
| Pulsar | Release a surge of elemental energy, dealing 1742 Magic Damage to nearby enemies and afflicting them with Minor Mangle, reducing their Max Health by 10% for 10 seconds. Flame Pulsar hits Burning enemies with Pulsar Afterburn, which deals more damage based on their missing Health. Frost Pulsar also provides Minor Protection. Storm Pulsar’s damage increases based on the number of enemies hit. Applies Minor Mangle to non-boss enemies, reducing their Max Health. Triples the innate chance to apply the respective status effect. |
| Ransack | Shroud yourself in a protective shadow to heal for 853 Health every 1 second, over 3 seconds, increasing by an additional 150% when you are not moving. This portion of the ability scales off your Max Health. You gain Minor Protection for 10 seconds, reducing your damage taken by 5%. It no longer grants invisibility. Now heals over time-based on your Max Health, and grants Minor Protection. |
| Remote Totem | Thrust your weapon with disciplined precision at an enemy, dealing 1199 Physical Damage and taunting them to attack you for 15 seconds. Also inflicts Major Breach on the enemy, reducing their Physical and Spell Resistance by 5948 for 15 seconds. You also gain Minor Protection, reducing your damage taken by 5% for 15 seconds. You also gain Minor Protection, reducing the damage taken. |
| Ring of Preservation | Brand the earth at your location with a rune of protection for 10 seconds. You and your allies in the area gain Minor Protection and Minor Endurance, reducing damage taken by 5% and increasing Stamina Recovery by 15%, and are healed for 435 Health every 1 second. The rune now heals allies inside for the duration, but the rune lasts half as long. |
| Spear Wall | Gain Minor Protection for 6 seconds, reducing damage taken by 5%. |
| Temporal Guard | Step backward in time, resetting your Health, Magicka, Stamina, and position to what they were 4 seconds ago. While slotted you gain Minor Protection, reducing your damage taken by 5%. While slotted your damage taken is reduced. |
| Turn Evil | Brand the earth at your location with a rune of protection for 20 seconds. You and your allies in the area gain Minor Protection and Minor Endurance, reducing your damage taken by 5% and increasing your Stamina Recovery by 15%. Upon activation, enemies in the area are feared for 4 seconds. Enemies in the initial area upon activation are feared. |
Armor sets that grant Minor Protection
| Indomitable Fury PvP | (2 items) Adds 1096 Maximum Magicka (3 items) Adds 1096 Maximum Magicka (4 items) Adds 129 Stamina Recovery (5 items) After Breaking Free, you gain Minor Protection and Minor Heroism for 7 seconds, reducing your damage taken by 5% and generating 1 Ultimate every 1.5 seconds. |
| Ironblood Dungeon | (2 items) Adds 1206 Maximum Health (3 items) Adds 1487 Armor (4 items) Adds 1487 Armor (5 items) When you take damage, you have a 10% chance to turn your blood into pure iron for 10 seconds, gaining Major Protection, Major Aegis, and Minor Protection, but also reducing your Movement Speed by 25%. This effect can occur once every 10 seconds. |
| Oakensoul Ring Mythic | (1 item) While equipped, you are unable to swap between your Primary and Backup Weapon Sets and gain Minor Berserk, Minor Courage, Major Brutality, Major Sorcery, Major Prophecy, Major Savagery, Minor Force, Minor Protection, Major Resolve, Minor Mending, Minor Fortitude, Minor Intellect, Minor Endurance, Minor Heroism, Minor Slayer, Minor Aegis, and Empower. |
| Vampire Cloak Overland | (2 items) Adds 1206 Maximum Health (3 items) Adds 129 Weapon and Spell Damage (4 items) Adds 1206 Maximum Health (5 items) Adds 171 Weapon and Spell Damage, Gain Minor Protection at all times, reducing your damage taken by 5%. |
Calculating Damage Mitigation
We will start off with the base calculations with only your own damage mitigation.
You have two main ways that mitigation works, BEFORE or AFTER a damage shield have been hit.
Some sources of mitigation will reduce the damage taken before a damage shield takes damage from the attack and others will reduce the damage that overflows from a potentially depleted damage shield.
However, if there is no damage shield then all sources count as being on the same level.
The only known sources of mitigation AFTER a damage shield are the base blocking mitigation and any source that says “increases the amount of damage you can block by x%” or similar, all other sources of mitigation are applied BEFORE a damage shield.
Now with the change of the champion point system, there are some sources of damage mitigation that stack additive together before being multiplied. Hardy/Elemental Aegis+Preparation+Duelist Rebuff/Unassailable/Enduring Resolve. These stacks together.
The other two Champion skills are both related to blocking, “Fortification” and “On Guard”.
They both stack additive together with all other sources of extra block mitigation.
They can all work at the same time, and stacking multiple sources can give you quite a lot of mitigation.
Now, something else fairly important for some to know is that blocking mitigation is capped at 90% this is cause it was possible to achieve mitigation past 100% making you immortal.
The heavy armor bonus that grants extra blocking mitigation, behaves in a way I was not expecting.
Instead of being additive with all the other sources like previously mentioned it is added into the blocking mitigation after the extra blocking mitigation has been multiplied with the base blocking. This prevents some of the diminishing returns on the bonus, making it much stronger than one might first see.
The light and heavy armor bonuses for magical or martial mitigation are applied additive to the base damage mitigation making them slightly stronger as well.
Lastly before showing an example of the formula I will mention that we now have a 10% base mitigation applied to us at all times and battle spirit for PvP has been reduced to 44% instead of 50%.
The way you would use this template is to replace the placeholders with the percentage numbers that are shown in the tooltips in the game and obviously, the resistance should be the number of whichever resistance you want to test with.
If you have more sources then just add more to fill your needs in the same way that is shown. Now, something you might notice is that this way of calculating will result in diminishing returns, what that means is that for each added mitigation source the usefulness of each individual source gets reduced.
How to calculate Blocking
As an example, having 2 sources that give 50% mitigation will give you a total of 75% mitigation.
This now again has an exception with extra blocking mitigation and certain CP as they stack additive with one another, to add the additive CP into the form just copy the way that extra blocking is done.
Let’s do some examples using things the average tank would use. Let’s make it a Dragonknight, for obvious reasons.
So they would have 50% from blocking, let’s say 40% from resistance, 5% from minor maim, 10% from the Iron Skin Passive and 20% from the Sword and Board Passive, and 10% from base mitigation. The calculations would look like this:
100-(100*(1-5/100)*(1-10/100)*(1-(26400/660)/100)*(1-50/100)*(1-(10+20)/100))=82.045
So with all of those sources added together we ended up with a total of 82.045% of damage mitigation.
Now if we want to apply these calculations to see how much damage we would be taking from a hit we would just change it to be like this:
150,000*(1-5/100)*(1-10/100)*(1-(26400/660)/100)*(1-50/100)*(1-(10+20)/100))=26,932
Vulnerabilities vs damage mitigation
Now since last, I updated this thread vulnerabilities have gotten a big change.
For those that don’t know, vulnerabilities are effects that increase the damage that you take.
With the changes to Light and Heavy armor, we got 2 new sources of vulnerability, as wearing light armor makes you take 1% extra martial damage per piece and heavy does the same for magical damage.
Now the way that vulnerability used to work is that they used to be additive together and then the first few mitigation sources would subtract them, this has changed slightly. What happens now is that vulnerability affects the base mitigation that you have.
So for example, if you have your 10% base mitigation with 5% from say Minor Vulnerability then you get only 5% base mitigation.
What’s interesting here though is of course that the light and heavy armor bonuses also work upon the base mitigation that you have. So if you have your 10% base and get attacked with magic damage while under Minor Vulnerability but you have 5 pieces of light armor then you get to keep your base 10% as the 5% from light armor removes the 5% from Minor Vulnerability.
Now when the vulnerability outweighs the base mitigation then you obviously start taking a bit more damage.
Something like Stage 3 or 4 Vampire against fire damage would do the trick on that.
Now let me show you two examples. One with a 7 Light bonus against Minor Vulnerability and then a 5 Light Penalty working with Stage 4 Vampire damage mitigation
Total Mitigation=100-100*(1-(10+7-5)/100)=12%
Total Mitigation=100-100*(1-(10-7-20)/100)=-17%
The last one would show that you would take 17% extra damage. Any extra vulnerability would be added on just like in example 2. Now let’s show how this would work from the last example we used with Damage Shields. We will add Stage 4 Vampire damage mitigation and Heavy armor Penalty.
Weapon & Spell Resistance explained.
So there are two main types of damage mitigation/resistance which are Spell and Physical, but each of them also has subcategories.
Spell resistance has Flame, Frost, and Shock resistance and Physical has Poison and Disease resistance.
Now one important thing to know about resistance is that there is a Hard Cap, which means that after you reach a certain point it won’t give you anything extra. For Champion point 160+ characters the ESO resistance cap is 33,000, or 660 resistance per 1% mitigated, which then tops it off at 50%.
Read that again, up to 50% damage mitigation!
Another thing we need to address now is how those subcategories work with the main resistance types.
Subcategories add to their main type whenever the attack element is of the same element.
As an example, if I have 15000 spell resistance and 5000 flame resistance then if I get attacked with a fire spell then I will have 20000 spell resistance against that attack.
One last thing to remember is that even though players no longer have a base 100 penetration the mobs in PvE still do.
So when trying to calculate your resistance and damage mitigation in a PvE scenario one should always account for that.
Penetration is of course a subtraction of your resistance for example if you have 15000 resistance then against someone with 5000 penetration you only have 10000 resistance and then in PvE, if you have 33000 resistance you will still not be at the proper cap as against PvE mobs you only have 32900. But now on to the next part of this thread and the last form of resistance.
Critical Resistance Explained
Now critical resistance works very differently from the other forms of resistance.
Critical resistance is only damage mitigation when you are hit by critical damage, however, I made a build with almost 92% crit chance, and with potentially being up to 2.25 times the damage of a non-critical hit, you better believe you need to take crit resistance as a means of damage mitigation serious.
What it does is it lowers the enemy player’s critical hit damage modifier. A character’s base modifier is 1.5 which means that if you land a critical hit then you deal 50% more damage or more.
There are ways to improve this, such as minor and major force. What we are gonna be looking at of course is how we can reduce that modifier.
This one is yet another subtraction one. Your critical resistance will lower the attacker’s critical modifier by a rate of 1% for every 68 critical resistance. This means that to remove an attacker’s base critical modifier you need 3400 critical resistance. It looks like this:
CRITICAL MODIFIER=1.5+(Critical Damage Buff #1/100)+(Critical Damage Buff #2/100)-(Critical Resistance/68/100)
Damage Taken=15000*(1.5-(1700/68/100))=18750
As this is the final calculation I will add this to our previous example and see how it all works in its entirety.
(150,000*(1.5-(1700/68/100))*(1-5/100)*(1-(10-7-20)/100)*(1-(26400/660)/100)-5000)*(1-50/100)*(1-(10+20)/100))=42,015
I will add here though that 150,000 base damage is PvE numbers and PvE mobs cannot critically hit, but it goes to show that even just 25% extra critical damage can deal a lot more damage if your mitigation against it is not enough.
As a final note, I probably have a bit more to test to double-check all possible combinations but I wanted to get this update out there, if you see anything wrong in the thread that I need to edit then let me know, and obviously, if I messed up big times or forgot to test a specific scenario let me know.
Check out this tanking guide or my Youtube channel next.
Thank you for reading all the way to the end, by now you know everything there is to know about damage mitigation in the Elder Scrolls Online.