Just how much resist/armor do you need to beat reflect with Lifesteal?

After getting fed up with Siegebreaker wrecking my current non-whirlwind/twister/whatever-based build, I decided to figure out just how much defense + lifesteal you need when LoH isn't an option.

From testing I found the Reflect Damage % to be 10% (not sure why the wiki doesn't mention this). With this I calculated the following values:

Lifesteal	Req. Mitigation	AR = AMR	AR = AMR (B/M)	AR > AMR	AR > AMR (B/M)
1.5	0.97	1500 / 15000	1280 / 12800	2260 / 10000	1920 / 8500
2.5	0.95	1090 / 10900	920 / 9200	1640 / 7300	1380 / 6100
3	0.94	970 / 9700	810 / 8100	1460 / 6500	1220 / 5400
4.5	0.91	740 / 7400	610 / 6100	1100 / 4900	910 / 4000
6	0.88	590 / 5900	480 / 4800	890 / 4000	720 / 3200
7.5	0.85	500 / 5000	400 / 4000	750 / 3300	600 / 2700
9	0.82	430 / 4300	340 / 3400	640 / 2800	500 / 2200
12	0.76	330 / 3300	250 / 2500	490 / 2200	370 / 1700

Where:

• AR = All Resist
• AMR = Armor
• B/M = Barbarian / Monk (due to their 30% bonus damage reduction)

So for example, a Wizard with 4.5 lifesteal would need either 740 AR and 7400 Armor or 1100 AR and 4900 Armor to fully negate reflects damage with lifesteal alone.

Some comments on the data:

• The AR = AMR columns assume you have equal AR and AMR while the AR > AMR columns assume you have more AR than AMR.
• 3 is the maximum lifesteal a 1-handed Witch Doctor can attain.
• 4.5 is the maximum lifesteal a 1-handed Wizard can attain (requires skill).
• 6 is the maximum lifesteal a dual wielding Monk can attain.
• 12 is the maximum lifesteal a dual-wielding Barbarian can attain (requires passive + belt).
• You need insane gear to break even with Lifesteal < 4.5 on non B/M classes
• Make sure to visit d3up.com to find out your current mitigation!

Depending on your skill's proc ratio you can make up for lower mitigation/lifesteal with LoH instead. The ever popular 'whirlwind' builds are prime examples of this. Note that for every 1% mitigation below the breakpoint you are, you will take 0.1% of your DPS as damage per second.

So for example, at 1 million effective DPS, 4.5 LS and 88% mitigation you will take 3000 damage/second. In this case you will need 3000/skill-proc-ratio/attack-speed LoH to negate reflect.

If I've made a mistake in these calculations please let me know.

Discuss.

Posted in: Wizard