Diablo 4 Defenses For Beginners
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Diablo 4 is a hack-and-slash action roleplaying game set in a dark fantasy world. Dealing damage is the most important thing for dealing with hell's minions, but you shouldn't forget about your defense. After all, staying alive is necessary to deal with any damage. So in this guide, we will walk you through everything you need to know about protecting yourself even against the toughest minions of hell.
Max Life
Life represents the maximum amount of damage that a player character or monster will be able to withstand. Taking damage causes the Life Points to decrease. When Life reaches 0, the player character dies. But you can 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
Restoring Life
There are also a few different ways to restore your Life after you take damage. First of all, every class has access to Healing Vials. Using one will instantly restore some flat amount of your Life and also 35% of your Maximum Life over the next 3 seconds. You can store several charges at once, and you regain these charges by killing enemies, using Diablo 4 gold to buy, 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
Use Barrier Mechanic
Barriers are a term to describe some very temporary shielding from skills across various classes. These types of skills provide a very limited form of shielding for a small period of time. 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 the 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)
Use 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's 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.
Master Dodge
Last, you cannot forget the importance of the evade action within Diablo 4. Mixed with dodge chances, evasion can save you in the worst situations, and using it wisely can open up space in a fight when you need it most. While you can't dodge individual ticks of Damage over Time effects, you can dodge the initial attack and prevent the DoT from being applied to you in the first place. There are a few ways to get 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)
And with that, we've explained Diablo 4 Defenses For Beginners so that you can use it to its full potential. For more on Diablo 4, keep reading our Diablo game hub.